Farooque Ahmed Khan
Translator or interpreter (or both): both
Language(s) and direction(s): Bangla–English
Location: Sydney, NSW
Practising as a translator/interpreter since: 2000
Member of AUSIT since: 2015
Main area(s) of practice: legal, medical
Q1:
How did you come to be a T/I?
A1:
Two significant incidents in hospitals – both involving my wife – were my motivation. In the first, a Bangla interpreter had been booked but after more than four hours, a Hindi interpreter arrived instead – the Bangla interpreter had asked him to cover for her, assuming my wife would understand Hindi (she didn’t). A few years later, and about to give birth to our first child, my wife required urgent surgery, so the doctor needed her consent. An interpreter had been booked, but he didn’t arrive until long after the surgery – and when he did, his conduct and language were highly unprofessional, and the doctor, my wife and I were all deeply upset.
Q2:
Tell us about a project you have worked on that was especially interesting or challenging (within the bounds of confidentiality of course).
A2:
Shortly after finishing an exhausting assignment on a complex police investigation, an interpreting agency called to ask if I could fly overseas that evening for an assignment of a sensitive nature, as they’d been unable to find anyone else. I agreed (despite knowing it would be difficult and challenging), packed my bags, and headed to Sydney airport to fly to Brisbane, where I just reached the international airline’s check-in counter before it closed. I hurried aboard the aircraft hoping to get some sleep, but the flight experienced technical difficulties and I barely slept – and to make matters worse, there was no food available for me. Upon landing I was taken straight to the assignment, and spent the entire day assisting with interviews. At the end of the day, the officer I’d been working with expressed appreciation for my hard work and dedication. I believe interpreters often make sacrifices for the betterment of society. This opportunity gave me a lot of satisfaction.
Michèle Dreyfus
Translator or interpreter (or both): both
Language(s) and direction(s): French–English
Location: Fremantle, WA
Practising as a translator/interpreter since: 2002
Member of AUSIT since: 2003
Main area(s) of practice: mining, immigration, law
Q1:
How did you come to be a T/I?
A1:
I trained as an English and French teacher in France, and looking back, I can see I’ve always been interested in languages – their evolution, grammar and influence on each other, the cultural gaps, the untranslatable and so on. In 1997 I was doing postgraduate studies at the ANU, Canberra when a friend who was an immigration lawyer asked me to sight translate some documents. I did, and at his suggestion I then sat the NAATI exams and took the interpreting test. I went back to my ESL teaching job in the Northern Territory for a while, but then moved to Perth, stopped teaching and became a fulltime translator. Interpreting is less of a passion for me than translation – I think of myself primarily as a translator; I’m doing a fair bit of community interpreting at the moment, but the satisfaction I derive from doing so has more to do with being able to help people in circumstances where they’re vulnerable (such as in hospitals and courts) than with solving linguistic challenges.
Q2:
Tell us about a project you have worked on that was especially interesting or challenging (within the bounds of confidentiality of course).
A2:
Last year I was involved in a very large post-editing assignment for a mining project. It was the second round of post-editing of a very large feasibility study, and it really made me realise the limits of artificial intelligence. There were four of us in the team, and one coordinator. We grew into a good team, sharing our findings and our ideas, asking questions, building shared glossaries and so on over the several months that the project lasted. I don’t know if anyone learnt a lot from me, but I learnt a lot from my colleagues, and I enjoyed being part of a team, which is quite rare in our trade.
