The Interpreter’s Blunder

It’s not funny to be trapped in one’s own craft in the public, more so in front of a huge crowd. The feeling of frustration and embarrassment was enough to consume my colleague and I as we stood before so many people “brain dead” and totally clueless.

 The Parent Teachers Association (PTA) meetings take place every three months. In fact, these PTA gatherings had become a school tradition, and in turn, an integral part of the school’s Academic Calendar.

The Second Term

This particular Second Term meeting would have been very successful if not for the mishap resulting from an interpretation blunder. The PTA meetings always kept everyone on edge. The reason is obvious. For the teachers, these moments used to be a time of reckoning. Therefore, a period of nervousness on both sides of the aisle. Teachers had to account for their work: How they handled their job during the past three months. For the parents, on the other hand, were eager to receive a good report about their children.

 Students’ Predicament

Let’s not forget the students, the main purpose of this meeting. For obvious reasons, they were more nervous as they would have to get first-hand information about what their conduct and performance had been during the term just ended. Bearing in mind that only the third term was left to complete the current school year. The pressure was on because they would have to work harder if they wanted to excel and be allowed to move on to the next grade starting in the fall. 

The Sitting Arrangement

During these meetings, school officials including myself sat at the main table in front of the audience. But that stopped when they discovered my interpreting skills.

 So, on this particular day, I became one of the interpreters of the meeting. As a bilingual school, interpreters were present to make the message flow freely and accurately from school management to parents and vice versa. While I had to interpret from Spanish to English, my colleague handled the reversal from English to Spanish as we worked as a team.

The Attendance

These meetings were well-attended and parents and teachers usually come in time to grace the occasion with their presence. This Second Term coming together was not an exception as parents and teachers, and other invitees, as usual, walked into the school hall and sat down comfortably. Making sure they occupied seats of easy visibility from where they could catch a glimpse of any detail of the meeting. With the hall now filled to the brim, and the event of the day about to commence, one could feel that the momentum in the room was high reflecting the readiness for the meeting to take off.

The Frustration and Embarrassment

 Everything moved smoothly unhindered until a particular killer English word was spoken. The funny part of this is that a word like this one among many others could make one’s life miserable when and where they wanted. They could disappear from your brain like you never used them before and just like that your recall would become blank in a matter of seconds. Gone was any hint of the word’s root. This brain freeze was quite frustrating and embarrassing.

So, the problematic English word was AVERAGE and its equivalent in Spanish would have been PROMEDIO or MEDIA. My colleague was stuck, and everything came to a standstill! To make matters worse, this happened in the nineties and in a developing country for that matter where technology was scarce, not to speak of cell phones as of then. The only resource we could rely on would have been a dictionary. But in the situation, we found ourselves, we didn’t even remember to ask for permission to find a dictionary. Oh, thank God for His mysteries! Or how else could I describe the hopeless state we were in? Sweating profusely without any forthcoming solution, was just not easy. The fact is that the Spanish word mysteriously just flashed in my mind! And my memory grabbed it without hesitating. I was more than relieved to have saved the day. My colleague was damned relieved, too, from the nightmare we had lived through.

The Big Lesson

 Come to think of it, how would have the rest of the meeting proceeded and ended if we could not figure out what the equivalent word in Spanish should have been? Anyone’s guess would have been good as mine! What is interesting here is that we both left the meeting quite happy and relieved. We saw the whole thing to be a big win-win for both of us. 

The lesson learned is that interdependency should have a human face. Where there’s the sincerity of purpose, and man depending on each other, the world can also be moved closer to fulfilling its collective goals and objectives. The result, making it a better place for all to live.