Speaker: Izumi Suzuki
Session Title: Handling the Unpredictable: Navigating Unexpected Situations in Interpreting
Review Author: Shizuka Otake (大竹静香 )
Veteran interpreter Izumi Suzuki spoke about unexpected situations she faced in her interpreting career and how she handled them. After she explained each minor disaster, she asked attendees how we would have handled it, then told us what she did. Her goal was for us to collectively create a toolkit of possible solutions.
Her experiences ranged from the we’ve-all-been-there things, like getting sick on the day of a job, to the hair raising, encountering pigs preserved in formaldehyde and human heads during a dental implant conference.
Possible solutions from the audience included finding a replacement if you’re sick, using a word that’s close in meaning if you can’t come up with the correct term, and writing on your arm if you run out of paper.
Izumi’s suggestions could be summarized as: take care of your health because your voice is your most important tool, get as much information as possible before an assignment, try to be flexible, and ask for help if you need it.
As well as being informative (I know now that I can use paper towels from the bathroom if I run out paper during an assignment), her session was very entertaining. I will never forget those pigs.
I was relieved to hear that even someone as experienced as Izumi has made some of the same mistakes I’ve made. It’s encouraging to remember that we were all once inexperienced and new. And I now have some new tools in my interpretation arsenal.
Edited by: audra lincoln
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