Practice makes.

Yesterday morning I was having coffee with my colleagues like every morning and chatting away about the usual things, when I suddenly saw it. It was standing on the other side of the room, nice and tall, in all its beauty. An interpreting booth! My face lit up and I felt like a child who just received its Christmas present. I left my coffee at the bar and told my colleagues I'd be back in a second: "I just want to have a look at the consoles." 

Yes, I tend to get overly excited about anything related to interpreting, whether it be headphones, notepads or booths. I often think of the booths at Heriot-Watt with the kind of nostalgia typical of anything related to Scotland. They were so nice and cosy. When I was sitting in that small box, I felt safe and protected. I knew I could count on the wooden table and the walls around me for support, regardless of what was going on in my head (usually excitement, happiness and panic all at once). I still remember how disappointed I was when I first saw the booths in Ljubljana: they were ordinary portable booths - no firm walls around me. But after spending a whole year in their company, they felt like home, which means I now feel at home and happy wherever I go, provided that there is a booth somewhere near. 

It didn't always used to be like that. The whole of last year was really hard. I don't remember ever being so emotionally unstable as during my master's in interpreting. There were so many things I had to learn, so many do's and don'ts to remember...The hardest part was to stop striving for perfection. As we were once told in an interpreting class: "Practice makes perfect". It took indeed lots and lots of practice (I can hardly remember a day spent without interpreting) and a fair deal of patience from the side of my parents, friends, lecturers and a lecturer who is now a friend, for me to get to the end of it all. At one point I was so sick of interpreting I decided I would take up any job, provided that it was a routine job, that there was no stress involved and that it didn't  make me feel stupid all the time. It didn't take long for me to realise that any job can be stressful and that unexpected things happen anywhere all the time, not just in an interpreting booth. As for feeling stupid... I have never felt as stupid as now that I am expected to do things I have no clue about. I figured out that the only way for me to get rid of this feeling is to keep telling myself that it's ok for me not to be good at purchase orders, accounting and the like. I am an interpreter, people, why don't you get it?  :)

I wouldn't say I was born to be an interpreter, but of one thing I am sure: doing it makes me feel great. Now that I don't interpret that often, I really miss it - all of it: the adrenalin rush you get when you turn the mic on, the feeling of greatness when you find the perfect expression, the happiness after a productive day in the booth, even standing (sitting) in front of an audience and delivering a speech (something which I used to dread until recently). I've interpreted a few times after I finished uni, but certainly not often enough to call myself an interpreter. I knew things had to change or I would have no excuses for being bad at what I do now. My alarm clock (an extremely annoying French voice) started telling me that c'est l'heure de se réveiller half an hour earlier, so I can watch the news and read the papers before I go to work. Nerdy/masochistic, I know, but being up to date with what is going on in the world makes me feel in control of things and extremely intelligent :) I've also started practising again with a friend. We do not have a booth, of course, but it actually doesn't take much to re-create one.   

       My "booth"

Today it was the first time I did some simultaneous since my last exam. To my great relief I realised that interpreting is like swimming or cycling: you can get rusty, you can be a bit clumsier than you were, but you never forget how to do it. Once an interpreter, always an interpreter [Reminder/encouragement for those of you (of us?) who are going to sit an interpreting test in the (near) future]. The best part of it are certainly the blunders I make when I am working. Today I said: "Kmetje so morali vstajati zgodaj, da bi pomolzli kavo"(Farmers had to get up early to milk the coffee; kava = coffee, krava = cow). Why am I not surprised? :)