The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2022 - 23

" Votre histoire, c'est votre
arme, " I told him. " Your
story is your weapon. "
Years later, when Ahmed's
narrative began shaping
itself into a poem, I described
his response this way:
He tries again,
and again
we move through the long
afternoon, over and
over till his story
enters his voice like a room
where both can feel
at ease,
till what he has lived
becomes at last
what he knows
how to speak.
For Both Immigrants and
Interpreters, Finding a
Place to Stand
Ahmed would continue to
stumble occasionally on
his path to asylum. At his
last hearing, though, he
succeeded in pulling from
inside himself the story
that would finally vanquish
his shadowy attackers, that
would convince the judge to
grant him the right to live in
the U.S., free of persecution,
and to reunite his family.
Ahmed's life here isn't
easy. At night he no longer
greets customers returning
to their favorite tables at his
restaurant. Instead, he cleans
offices in San Francisco's
Financial District. Yet he
knows that, when the time
was right, he was able to
stand his ground.
But on what ground can
the interpreter stand for
immigrants like Ahmed
and countless others?
Whether in legal, health
care, or community settings,
interpreting for asylum
seekers, refugees, and other
www.ata-chronicle.online
immigrants who've been
forcibly displaced can test
emotional resources as
intensely as linguistic and
cultural knowledge.
In Interviewing Clients
across Cultures: A Practitioner's
Guide, by clinical
psychologist Lisa Aronson
Fontes, " highly experienced
court interpreter " Ilia
Cornier shared the following:
The worst time for me was
when I was interpreting the
victim impact statement of
a sadistic rape [of a young
girl]. She was weeping...and
I was repeating everything,
[...] using the word 'I,' as
if it had happened to me. I
was trying to put emphasis
where she put emphasis
and convey in my speech,
as much as I could, the
feelings she was conveying
as she spoke. Then, at the
end, the court took a recess
and I went to the bathroom,
splashed water on my
face, and I was supposed
to walk right into the
next courtroom and begin
working on the next case. I
was shaking like a leaf.2
In her ATA webinar
" Vicarious Trauma and
Language Professionals, "
interpreter Ludmila Golovine
described the difficulty of
" not just witnessing but
channeling the trauma
through you. " 3
As trauma
may be carried in the body
of the person who has
experienced it, an interpreter
may sometimes experience
an immigrant's narrative of
trauma as a kind of assault
on the interpreter's own
body, not literally, but
through other manifestations
of distress like trembling,
nausea, or dizziness.
I haven't experienced
vicarious trauma. But in
one of my first interpreting
sessions, during a meeting
with attorneys, I interpreted
for Aissata, an asylum
seeker from Guinea who had
been subjected, as a young
girl, to genital cutting. As
an adult she was tortured
by government forces for
belonging to a political party
opposing an attempt by
Guinea's president to extend
his term for life.
The meeting lasted several
hours. For at least an hour
afterwards, I sat in my office
with the door closed, the
phone silenced, and stared at
the surface of my desk. I felt
as if I had been flattened by
a truck.
Yet I also felt I had just
discovered work of enormous
complexity and utility, a way
of using whatever I knew
about French to support
a woman from another
continent, whom I had never
met before, in telling her
story of integrity and courage
before an American judge.
She had fled Guinea because
her life was in danger. If I
could help her convey her
story, I would be helping to
save her life.
I recognized, in that
moment, that I wanted to
continue this work. Over the
years that followed, I also
came to recognize that, if
the work is to be sustainable,
interpreters need techniques
for building resilience.
Interpreter Self-Care:
A New Wealth of
Online Resources
I'm deeply grateful for
the extensive, expert work
accomplished over the past
decade by practitioners,
researchers, agencies, and
organizations to support
interpreters with a range of
self-care techniques. During
2022 alone, the following
invaluable free resources have
become available online:
1. " Trauma Basics for
Interpreters: When
Trauma Is in the Room.
Foreign Language
Interpreting about
Traumatic Experiences. "
A webinar presented by
Lisa Aronson Fontes on
June 15, 2022, through
Blue Horizon, the
online training platform
of Cross-Cultural
Communications, LLC.
2. " Vicarious Trauma and
Language Professionals. "
An ATA webinar
presented by Ludmila
Golovine on February
15, 2022. Golovine's
presentation also
references self-regulation
techniques.
3. Breaking Silence:
Interpreting for Victim
Services, by Marjorie
Bancroft, Katharine
Allen, Carola Green,
and Lois Feuerle. This
is a specialized training
manual for trained,
professional interpreters,
with accompanying
workbook and glossary,
produced by CrossCultural
Communications,
LLC in 2022. The manual
was undertaken as a
project for Ayuda, which
provides legal, social, and
language services to help
low-income immigrants
access justice, with
funding from the District
of Columbia Office of
Victim Services and
Justice Grants.
American Translators Association 23
The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2022

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