There is a proverb that I made up, it goes like this: "No interpretation is uncomfortable for ever". I know this for a fact. Each time I go to an interpretation job I feel a subtle anguish at the beginning, I feel a bit blinded by flashing lights of the new topic, but after a few minutes I just get used to it and some invisible wings grow on my shoulders and I soar in the beautiful sky of words.
I came to peace with those minutes of anguish at the beginning, I expect them and I wisely wait for them to pass me by. But yesterday, it was something else, because the anguish hung there around me throughout the entire day, and I could not sense the relaxation until I was doing my last two turns only.
In the morning I was left for 90 minutes on my own without the relief interpreter (a word that I learnt today! Relief: substitute, assistant, someone who relieves you when you are suffocating) and when I got to the room (a room not a hall or anything) and I found no interpretation booth I just wanted to flee the hotel and pretend like I never got the call: It was CONSECUTIVE!
I can't mention enough how much I hate consecutive interpretation, can I? No I can't.
Consecutive interpretation tests your ability to memorize what people just said, it has nothing to do on how fluent you are, or how good of an interpreter you are.
And the topic, Dear Lord of the Heavens!!
(I am not gonna go in details because I am not entitled to) But hear me out here, it was a project team from the European Union that had been working in Jordan for 4 years now, and their project ends this upcoming October, So they were working with "partners" from a Jordanian ministry so the project will be "sustainable" after the Eu team leaves.
Hahahaha, really, I came to find those meeting terribly funny, "Sustainable" who?!! If the project barely moved forward a couple of steps meanwhile the EU team was above the government's head all the time, how will anything move forward when they leave?!
Anyhow I learned some new words (the hard way of course, my Manager\Co-interpreter\Teacher whispered them to me in a small room where everyone could notice that I did not know them)
On probation: تحت المراقبة، تحت الاختبار
court of appeal: محكمة استئناف
court of cassation: محكمة التمييز
penal code: قانون العقوبات
feasibility study: دراسة جدوى
grand criminal court: محكمة الجنايات الكبرى
palace of justice: قصر العدل
Bar association: نقابة المحامين
liaison officer: ضابط ارتباط
pre trial detention: الاحتجاز قبل المحاكمة
administrative detention: التوقيف الإداري
execution of judgement: تنفيذ الحكم
defendant: المدعى عليه
radicalization of prisoners: تطرّف المساجين
I feel ashamed for not knowing those words, but what shall I say, late better than never.
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