The Lightness of Not-Being

I recently became a regular Staff Interpreter… as opposed to a Supervisory Interpreter. I changed my profile description in one of those networking pages that is always sending e-mails asking you to “congratulate so-and-so on this-and-that”, so I suddenly had all these messages congratulating me on my new post. I thought, “How nice”, and started thanking everyone individually until I noticed every message said exactly the same thing. I then realized it was a “boilerplate message” and that no one had read what I wrote about my “new position.” Only one person asked, “Did you move to a different district?”

Well, no, I did not move. I have been planning my retirement for the past five years, and I simply decided (for the sake of my own mental and physical health) that I really did not have to wait for my retirement to stop being a supervisor. So I am now a regular staff interpreter and someone else has taken on the responsibilities I relinquished.

Being a supervisory interpreter is not just about contracting freelancers when needed, and making sure every judge has an interpreter in his or her courtroom when one is needed. In fact, that’s probably the easiest part of the job.

The way I see it, being a supervisory interpreter means that you are somewhat of a “linebacker” for those interpreters you supervise, because many of us still work in settings where a lot of people do not really understand what we do and how difficult it is to do it well. Oftentimes there are demands or limitations put on court interpreters that are not reasonable or even realistic. It is up to the supervisory interpreter to handle those before they have a negative impact on the interpreters he or she supervises.

I may not have the perfect football metaphor here, but in my mind a supervisory interpreter is there to defend and protect the professional interests of staff and contract interpreters so they can all do the work they are called upon to do, under the best conditions possible.

Conversely, when management has an issue with any or all the interpreters, the supervisor is there to be their voice and “give face”, find solutions to any problems that may arise, convey all the information everyone needs to have so as to implement those solutions, and develop action plans to prevent such issues from coming up again in the future.

When anything goes wrong, the Supervisory Interpreter is the one who gets blamed and has to bear the brunt of whatever consequences such wrongdoing may have. But when everything goes right, no one is there to give you a pat on the back and say “good job.” The only satisfaction comes from knowing you have done your best each and every day. But the bottom line is that this is (for the most part) a thankless job.

So, yeah, after a number of years (enough, I’d say) of trying to do my best while fielding complaints left and right for things that should never have been a problem (there are some people in every workplace, I am told, who just like to complain about everything); after years of being on call day and night (because contract interpreters do get sick all of a sudden and you have to scramble to find a replacement at eleven o’clock at night for a nine o’clock hearing the next day); after seeing how little things really do change even though as a profession we have come a long way, I realized one day, “I don’t really have to do this any longer!”

I expect to retire this year, so it seemed like the perfect time to let someone else step up to the plate (sorry about my mixed sports metaphors here), while I start to “wind down” and simply enjoy what I really love doing: interpreting in court.

I feel rejuvenated! I even walk with a little spring in my step.

Ah… the lightness of not being (a supervisory interpreter)!