In this guest post, we hear from Maria Zhang, who is about to enter Year Two of the MCI. Maria takes stock of her first year in the program, and she comes up with a few pieces of advice for young people thinking about a career in interpreting.
In the short time that I have been in the MCI, the program has pushed me to explore new places and situations. For example, towards the end of the semester, I received my first interpreting assignment. It was nerve-wracking, right up until the moment when I actually started. Then my training took over, everything made sense, and nothing was as difficult or terrible as I expected.
Also, I’m in China as I write. I’m here to immerse myself in the culture, to improve my command of the language, and to teach English on the side. During my stay, my interpreting skills have come in handy! I use them when an idea needs to be communicated to my coworkers or when we hold little meetings to discuss student progress.
As these two experiences suggest, since becoming an interpreting student, I’ve had to become familiar with the unfamiliar. In a few short weeks, there will be a new cohort of MCI students experiencing that same learning curve. So I found myself wondering — what sort of advice should they receive?
To come up with an answer, I thought about myself at different points in my life — as a university graduate, as a third-year university student, and as a sophomore in high school. I tried to decide what I would have wanted to tell my younger selves, knowing that I’d be in the program, trying to pursue this challenging line of work. Below are some of my thoughts. No one idea is a must when applying to the program. But all of them will certainly help you navigate the path that will take you to the MCI.
I’ll start by going back as far as possible, to when I began to spend more and more time on the computer playing, and less time reading. I’d probably tell my younger self to hold onto the books that I love, and show them how much I love them by reading their pages. Earlier this year, I realized I have some work to do on this front. I attended a talk given by Ms. Akiko Shinoda, an experienced interpreter who has done work for NHK as well as interpreted for well-known political figures and companies. She mentioned the need for interpreters to have a comprehensive liberal arts education. This means that you have to be familiar with classic novels, plays, famous speeches, famous quotes, religious texts, words of Latin and Greek origin, sayings, idioms, etc. As I listened to her speak, I realized that I had very little knowledge of any of the areas she mentioned! I left the talk wanting to run home and just READ!
The cultural knowledge you get from reading is particularly important. If I have to memorize a lot of terminology, with a bit of effort, I can do so in a short period of time. But books, plays, and the other cultural artifacts Ms. Shinoda mentioned — these require a lot more time to be “consumed” and “digested”. Fine books age in our memories like fine wine. As you go about your daily life, an experience you have may help you realize that something you’ve read before has suddenly been given a whole new meaning. Reading more helps expand your knowledge base, and it allows you to become a more cultured person. This was one of the most important points I wish I could tell my younger self.
Another thing I wish I could tell my younger self was that I was glad I chose to major in something I was interested in for my undergrad.I didn’t major in translation, interpretation, or anything relating to the industry. (Indeed, you don’t have to have prior knowledge of translation or interpretation to apply to the MCI.) I was able to devote four years of my life to the study of something that I thought was interesting at that stage. I was able to make friends in another circle of professionals, and I now have knowledge of something besides interpreting. In short, my undergraduate degree is like a valuable coin deposited into my piggy bank of interpreting knowledge.
I went into the MCI as someone fresh out of university. I was twenty-one years old, and I didn’t have much work experience. Heck, for that matter, I didn’t have a lot of life experience either. At the start of the program, I hadn’t the foggiest idea about economics, finance, or investment. I certainly wasn’t familiar with the terminology from these fields. Truth be told, I was poorly informed about a lot of different fields. This was mainly because I never bothered to learn about them, nor had I encountered them in my life. I’d love to tell my younger self to go out, experience things, take a few different jobs or volunteer positions, and become interested in a wider array of activities early on. How can you interpret world issues and events if you don’t know anything about them? As we have all learned in the MCI, knowing the subject at hand helps with interpretation.
In the end, as much as I would have liked to have known these things, I didn’t. But luckily, it’s never too late to learn! Learning with a purpose is better than learning without one. Thanks to my training as an interpreter, I now have that purpose. As a result, I can move forward with a clear goal in mind.
So, all you young people that might be reading this and discovering that you might be interested in interpreting, let me leave you with this thought. The things you have already learned are a kind of wealth. But so too is your youth, as it gives you the time to make up for your shortcomings. Spend your youth wisely, and you’ll have an investment that will take you to the MCI and beyond…
As for me, my time in China is coming to an end, and I’ll soon be headed back to Toronto. I’m really glad to have the chance to be a part of the growing MCI family at Glendon, and I cannot wait to continue with my training as an interpreter!
Think you would like to follow Maria’s example? And apply to the MCI? Our next intake of students will be in September 2015, and we’ll start in early December 2014.