By Martha Hobart, AIB
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Conference interpreters are a quintessentially multinational lot and often live, permanently or temporarily, in countries other than their birthplaces.
Sometimes it’s because they feel drawn to a particular country and its culture, and other times it’s because they are learning a new language and choose to take up residence in a country where the language is spoken. Said residence may be temporary, or they may fall in love with the place and decide to make it their permanent home.
It’s an exciting life choice for the adventurous, but it can involve complications for interpreters, who are often called upon to work in multiple places around the world.
Full disclosure 🙂
I started in the United States and later as a young adult went to live in Spain, where I’ve been for most of my life.
I had some work experience in the United States before I left and therefore made some contributions to the Social Security system in that country, which I was entitled to claim as benefits when I retired. This of course affected my tax situation.
Most of what I’m describing here is based on my own experience, which may be useful to readers, at least to give you an idea of some of the complications involved in living the multinational life. The terminology I use is based on my knowledge and experience in the US. I hope it will be comprehensible to people from other countries.
Now let’s look at what’s involved in living the multinational life.
An important aspect is adapting to unfamiliar cultural norms. Another is whether to opt for permanent residency or to become a citizen of the new country. That’s a very personal decision, but it can have practical implications.
Let’s say you intend to live for a limited time in a new country and then move elsewhere. Entering on a tourist visa (if you are so required) may not be practical since you would not be allowed to work legally, so the next step is a residence permit. Different countries have different ways of handling residency of foreigners and may or may not offer the option of eventual permanent residency.
The other legal status option is to become a citizen of your new country, which is not a minor decision and depends on what arrangements exist regarding your birth citizenship and how that is affected by acquiring citizenship in another country. Citizenship is often seen by authorities as equivalent to loyalty, especially if there has been a history of hostilities between your birth country and your new country.
If you decide to take on citizenship in another country, this would usually mean adding another passport to your collection of documents. And learning when to use which passport for international travel.
There is also the matter of how your name will appear on your documents, which may or may not be so simple. But I’ll leave that subject for the end.
Now we’ll move on to taxation, which will likely be a major concern for you, no matter what your citizenship/residency status is.
Two questions arise: Which is your country of residence, and where do you pay income tax?
As an interpreter, you may be an employee of some sort of organization, or you may be freelance, which means self-employed in tax jargon.
When we work in countries other than our place of residence, we need to be clear about payment for our services. This may be handled by the organization that employs us, which will have already specified the details of our financial arrangements with them.
But things can be more complicated for freelancers, depending on whether we are hired by an agency for the assignment or directly by the end client.
In either case, we will report our earnings on our annual income tax return. I’m assuming that most working people are required to pay yearly income tax in their country of residence. But what about those who are citizens of one country but residents of another?
Most countries have fiscal arrangements to make sure we are not subject to double taxation, although you may be required to report your earnings in the country of which you are a citizen but not a resident. This means filing an income tax return or some other type of documentation to justify that you have already paid your yearly income tax in your country of residence.
Sound confusing? It is, but it is important to understand that tax liability is subject to multiple factors, which you will learn as you go along in your career.
Hence the importance of rigorous bookkeeping, either doing it yourself or hiring a professional. And it is always a good idea to be in contact with a financial adviser who can assist you when in doubt.
Important also is the subject of contributions to retirement funds. Automatic withholding for deposit in some sort of retirement fund is usually standard when billing for interpretation assignments, and different countries and international institutions have different ways of handling this. The interpreter needs to be aware of the details in each case.
If you are a freelancer and are able to deal directly with the end client, you would most likely be required to add the retirement fund contribution to your invoice. And that money could be deposited in a retirement fund of your choosing.
But if you are an employee of an organization or a freelancer on assignment through an agency or an international organization, you need to be aware of how and where your retirement fund payments will be deposited. And how you can access the benefits you are entitled to receive when you retire.
Now I backtrack to the subject of what your future name might be. If you remain as a foreign resident in your new country, it should be the name that appears on your passport. However, my experience was not so simple.
I came to Spain when Franco was still alive, and the country was extremely isolated from the rest of the world. It was then and still is the custom to use two surnames, both father and mother, and I came from the US where only one surname is the norm. I found myself constantly coming up against obstacles when doing things like opening a bank account, purchasing standard services like telephone, electricity, etc. In other words, all the things we do to establish a home. I was missing the second surname and people didn’t know what to do with me.
I had to do a bit of juggling to find a rather makeshift solution to the problem, which I can’t go into now. But it came up again when I decided to apply for Spanish citizenship and was asked what I wanted my name to be. That required some more juggling, but I figured out a way to manage it for passport purposes that has worked. So far.
So a quick look at what would seem to be a simple matter, but there are actually many different ways of naming people:
1 given name - surname 1 - surname 2
2 given names - surname 1 - surname 2
2 given names - 1 surname only
1 given name - 1 surname only
And there are yet more ways to handle people’s names. The Chinese, for example, put the family name before the given name, which causes much confusion in western countries.
How do Chinese people manage this situation? One way is by adopting what they call their western names and living with more than one name. It could be interesting to ask Chinese colleagues how they manage it.
Other non-western countries may also have different naming structures, but I know nothing about that.
And, finally, an amusing anecdote told to me by a Spanish colleague, which highlights the importance of culture as part of the interpreter’s linguistic toolbox.
She was the only Spanish interpreter on a multinational team with several languages in some international setting. A Spanish speaker jokingly mentioned pastillas Juanola, which flummoxed the entire team — except this particular colleague, who knew quite well what he was talking about, since these iconic candies had been part of her childhood.
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