Hello, London! An Adventure of a Translator in the UK_6; Moving Heart by Interpreting and Translation

Hello everyone, I’m Chayun.
I’ve been diligently taking action to approach my goals. I’m still in the middle of the process, but I want to keep my discoveries in this post.

As you can see from the title of the essay, I am trying to make my life by interpreting and translating. I’d devoted myself more to interpreting rather than translation but I have more actively tried translation these days. I’m also into translation. While I was hoping to challenge translation more, I found job opportunities and received messages to invite trials. The contents were App games and UI of social media, which I had never tried before. Even though it was a trial, I felt unique excitement and intensity that I hadn’t had for a while. I couldn’t seize the opportunity of games in the end, but I’m grateful for the chance to experience the new industry.
Similar feelings occur to me when interpreting. I felt excited and thrilled about the trial of a US company mentioned in the previous article. They actually offered me an interpreting job in the field of public service and medicine. Every time I receive calls, the topic varies, making me feel like I am in intense practice. Although there are some obstacles to keeping this job, like the time difference, and I might quit it not very far in the future in order to stay healthy, I feel satisfied, fearful, and rewarded about interpreting. It’s been almost a half year since I provided interpreting before. However, my performance wasn’t too bad. Maybe I’m spoiling myself at the moment… Of course, I must continue learning and practising though.

In my life with a lot of trial and error, I provided my friend with casual interpreting as she plans to establish her own fashion brand. She speaks English but she’s not confident about it, and I assisted her in the project. In the first place, her future business partner was my friend, and it was natural for me to join them.
On that day, I remembered my first experience of interpreting that had made up my mind to be an interpreter. Recently, the advance of AI has been often rumoured to threaten human interpreters and translators. I felt the opposite of the trendy statement. The content itself might’ve been so simple that AI could deal with it, indeed, whereas her passion and the partner’s kindness were not conveyed to the deep part of them if it was handled by AI. I felt it might be pointless to use lifeless AI for that kind of unshaped and sensitive things. Why we were indescribably satisfied on that day is because we were all human beings after all.

Well… I might be a little heated. My endless thoughts were triggered by one question from a person I recently met for the first time. ‘Why do you like interpreting and translation so much?’ I haven’t been questioned that kind of thing for a while. Since then, I’ve been deeply and carefully thinking about how I can tell my satisfaction and enjoyment to the person who does not experience the same thing. This happened at a time when I had a busy and unstable mind occupied by life, thinking to myself ‘I have to make a living… I have to find a job…’ The innocent question was thrown at me and made me face my feelings once again. I’m still trying to figure it out. I can verbalise my thoughts. But I have not found a perfect-fit phrase yet. That is the exact reason I want to remember all the precious emotions through the experience of interpreting and translation. 

An interpreter/ translator is a wonderful job which influences somebody’s life and my own life as well. This concludes my essay this time.

Don’t get me wrong about AI! I believe it can enrich our lives, depending on the usage. I’m not against it💦

Might be fun to write about moments and events that determined me to be an interpreter/ translator next time! I’ll try to make it more concise…

Thank you very much, kind readers.

See you soon!