By Martha Hobart, AIB
Thoughts on the new AIB with the entry of a younger generation of interpreters as associates.
What one might call a blending of ages, the wisdom of elders and the energy of youth. Something that is/was common in many so-called “primitive” cultures.
I officially retired a few years ago but continued working as an active interpreter for a few more years, until I felt drawn to dedicate more time to “those things I’d always wanted to do but didn’t have time for”. You know — that’s what this stage of life is supposed to be all about.
Both AIIC and AIB have been my home and family for many years and, naturally, I was reluctant to leave them behind. So I stayed on and took on a new role, leaving behind the life of an active interpreter and contributing to AIB in different ways.
As the events of recent years unfolded, I watched from the sidelines while my colleagues adapted to a new way of practicing the profession: remote interpreting. It wasn’t an easy transition. Remote interpreting had always been “strongly discouraged” by AIIC but now became an absolute necessity. Go remote or forget it.
This was an incredibly radical change in the way all of us were accustomed to working, when personal contact with clients and audience was part and parcel of our job. We had already had a taste of it, when it was called videoconferencing, and always felt isolated when we had to sit in some remote space and stare at a monitor, often not knowing what was going on in the conference room.
I remember an occasion when everybody had left the room for a break, but we didn’t know it because the sound was cut off and our only view was the on-stage projection screen. We were left wondering what had happened until somebody went to investigate.
Fortunately, things have improved considerably.
Actually (I can’t resist another anecdote), the idea of remote interpretation had been around for a long time in a primitive form, called telephone interpretation. It consisted of placing a long-distance call from the place where the audience was located to a person located somewhere else on the globe.
Telephone on a podium or table, interpreter standing or sitting with the receiver in one hand (headset? whazzat?), which complicated note-taking because there was only one hand left to wrangle notebook and pen.
Connection problems were also a constant. Sometimes it was necessary to cut off the call because the voice on the other end was slowly fading into the ether.
For anybody with a bit of intellectual curiosity, try delving into the history of the telephone. Talk about technological development!
All of this has clearly been a process of evolution in the profession.
The concept of evolution originally discussed differences in biological speciation. My university career focused on anthropology and microbiology, and the concept of evolution became present in anthropology as social evolution.
Image generated by AI on freepik.com
In my student years, the concept of evolution had been around in biology for many years (remember Charles Darwin?). It was thought to be a slow, gradual process occurring throughout millennia, but scholars sometimes found what they described as gaps or leaps at certain points in the fossil record, which they took to be periods in which no fossil evidence had yet been found.
But in the early 1970s, a couple of scientists introduced the idea of what is called “punctuated equilibrium”, when major changes seemingly appear out of nowhere. It was described as the result of significant events that provoke bursts of activity in evolution that are sudden and compressed in time. From the standpoint of social evolution, this is what happened during the covid years.
The recent events in AIB sparked the above meanderings. I watch in awe when I see how our new associates sail through tasks involving what for me are new and unfamiliar methods but for them are everyday tools of the trade.
Likewise, how their approach to the business/administrative side of the profession is different from what I am used to.
In AIB we’ve been accustomed to a more or less semi-structured approach to running the company and our methods probably seem rather primitive to younger generations. But the world has always seen a wide range of generations, and the differences become more noticeable with greater age differences.
Some people don’t like finding themselves in the position of oldsters being confronted by youngsters with different views of the world and ways of being in it. But the universe marches on and change is inevitable. Anyway, it’s the youngsters who will have to live in the world they are creating.
Before youth became an object of worship, the differences between the ages were considered a way of maintaining balance, with the oldsters tempering the tendency of youngsters to rush headlong into unknown territory. Nothing wrong with exploring the unknown, but probably wise to know where you’re coming from.
I personally am enjoying the experience, and I think the rest of the AIB family are too. Our associates gave us their opinions of our website and ways of managing social media, for example, but they didn’t just stop with pointing out the downsides; they’ve given us ideas for modernizing. And they’ve introduced us to new resources to replace Word docs and spreadsheets. Et cetera…
All in all, a great adventure.
