20 December 2019
Experience: I'm a translator for criminals
and the voiceless
I’m a talker: I’ll
have a conversation with anybody. But as a professional French-English
interpreter working in the criminal justice system, I can be a different
person’s voice every day. I’ve translated for murderers and suspected
terrorists.
I remember my first
job in a crown court. I was 27, in the dock with a drug smuggler who had been
paid to carry cocaine in her suitcase from South America. She was about my age,
with a child. I could feel my heart pounding before I opened my mouth. She was
found guilty and sent to prison. Every case I’m involved in hangs on the
accuracy of what I say; when someone’s life or freedom is on the line, I feel
additional pressure.
I translate verbatim
and in the first person. To add or omit anything would distort the dialogue. I
have to find the right words and register, but I’m also required to mirror
emotion and intonation. Silences are important, too; they are all part of how
we converse. The way words are delivered changes a whole message. You feel a
bit like an actor at times. I once spoke for a doctor accused of manslaughter
who was so desperate to prove his innocence. For that day, I felt that I became
him.
Cultural nuances can
be crucial. We understand “mon frère” to mean “my brother”. In African cultures
it can be “my friend”, too. Whether a brother or friend arranged to get someone
out of prison can change a whole asylum case.
It’s not just about
being bilingual; I work with different lexicons. Communicating court
terminologies is different to speaking for an asylum seeker in counselling, or
a child in speech therapy, where a professional relies on my exact delivery to
form a proper opinion.
I did a French degree
followed by a masters in translation and a diploma in public service
interpreting, which trains you to speak in police, local government, health or
legal settings. One day, I can be interpreting at a Premier League football
club, translating for a footballer receiving a drugs ban; the next, I might be
sitting in a high-security prison.
The criminal stuff is
really my bag; a world that’s not my own. I love being a fly on the wall. I
spent two days in a police control room listening into a wiretap in a
high-profile unsolved murder case. In reality, there was a lot of him turning
on his TV and flushing the toilet, but it felt like a civic duty.
The conversations I
am part of are confidential and often traumatic. I have repeated explicit
sexual assault details, spoken for a teenage girl who had been trafficked into
prostitution, and translated for a torture victim – but I can’t discuss any of
it with a friend on the way home. I have to deal with them in my head, which
can be hard.
Everyone has their
limits. I find the health stuff hardest, particularly where children are involved
as, at 36, I’m a mother myself. I had to tell one lady that she had cancer. It
was the only time I’ve cried in a job.
But these
conversations are a privilege, too. I have acted as a birthing partner for
women who are otherwise alone. One lady, an asylum seeker, asked me for baby
names during labour. I had watched Peter Pan that weekend; she called her
daughter Wendy.
Often I’m part of
life-changing dialogues that are left on a cliffhanger. I interpreted for a
foreign student arrested after a crash in which someone died. He was petrified.
I don’t know if he was prosecuted, but I’ve thought of him often since.
My job has opened my
eyes. When you’ve spoken, first person, for an asylum seeker who was left to
rot without food or daylight because they were gay or didn’t support their
government, it makes me furious to hear people say they shouldn’t be here.
I recently spoke for
a scared teenage girl in a Home Office interview. It took everything not to put
my hand on hers. Her solicitor pointed out each member of the team there to
support her. “Lauren is your mouthpiece,” she said.
I’m not the doctor,
the police officer or the judge in these rooms; I’m just somebody who did a
French degree and loves languages. I feel honoured to be part of those
dialogues. These conversations couldn’t take place without me.
