My experience with Mrs. T would suggest so.
I studied and I continue to study foreign languages, a path that I didn’t plan to follow. Like life, a journey that never ends. It is a constantly changing path, with new turns, and new horizons. I never know where my new project (journey) will take me, and it never fails to surprise me.
Languages are a key – this is something many people agree on. Learning new languages changes the way we look at things, the way we look at people, the way we approach – and eventually embrace – new cultures. We’ve read it a million times – but it is true.
Languages are new friendships, new ways of feeling happiness and sorrow, new ways of questioning ourselves and reshaping our mindset. Learning new languages might also help us to stop believing that our culture is the sun around which all the planets turn. Well, in this case, a good dose of modesty is also necessary.
Languages are new work opportunities as well, another tool with which to make a living. I know that talking about money after being “philosophical” might sound shallow, but as shallow as it may be, we must accept that money plays a big role in the world we live in. Studying languages, translating, and teaching require a huge amount of time and dedication – it is not just, “That is my language, I can teach or translate.” It requires curiosity, a genuine desire to learn more and more, a general knowledge base that spans from history to science, arts and culture to chemistry and engineering. What you are translating is not just a word. It is an idea, a message, a concept. Ideas and concepts born in another person’s mind with specific connotations and nuances that you now need to decipher. And you’d better do it right – because we all know how powerful words can be.
Learning new languages can also take you to much-unexpected places – both emotional and physical. It happened five years ago that very odd and sad circumstances brought Mrs. T into my life.
Mrs. T is old; she has never spoken English, because her kids used to take care of translating and interpreting for her. However, Fate – if you believe in it – can have a grim sense of humor. Mrs. T. lost both her children – and so, her voice – in a world that couldn’t understand her. And when it rains, it pours, or so they say; Mrs. T also has Alzheimer’s. But her earthly guardian angel – her former son-in-law – loved her deeply, despite not speaking her language, and hired me as an interpreter.
After our first meeting, I cried. I cried a lot, feeling completely lost in a world that made no sense to me, one where I felt very inadequate. How could I tell a mother, over and over again, that she wouldn’t see her children ever again? How could I be the bearer of such sickening news? One, two, twenty, thirty times in two hours, witnessing the pure horror in her face. This is how I met Alzheimer’s. In random moments of lucidity, Mrs. T would ask me some of the most philosophical questions I had ever heard. “Does this make sense to you? What am I supposed to do with my life?” Of course, I had no answers. That new path was not a job anymore. It was a new branch of my life tree.
Soon I realized that Mrs. T didn’t have any messages for me to translate; she just wanted to talk to me, or listen to my stories. The stories I told were hers; everything she said about her youth, I would write down. Her own words helped her to navigate through her despair during the meetings that followed. “How do you know?” – “You told me and I wrote it down.” – “Oh, you know everything!” – she would say.
December came, and with it my birthday. Her son-in-law bought me a cake and some flowers. As soon as Mrs. T realized it was my birthday, she said, “We MUST celebrate!” and she started singing. She looked at me and she said, “I don’t know who you are or what your name is, but I know that I love you and that I look forward to seeing you every week.” I realized that her presence in my life was a gift to me from the universe. Nowadays, Mrs. T doesn’t remember her story anymore. Instead, we pass the time together singing songs in her language, ones that I learned from my own grandmother.
Do we still need interpreters and translators? Yes, as long as we continue to nurture human relationships.