When I was much, much younger, I dreamed of being an interpreter.
That dream occurred sometime after I had relinquished my first dream of being a cowgirl. After all, it was the cowboys who had all the "fun" and I much preferred the idea of pants to skirts, although I really wanted to find some way of having horses in my life - and still would. Sigh. It was also after I had progressed from potential career dreams as follows: veterinarian, from which I was actively discouraged (no "girl" should be a vet and "girls" don't need to study science) and for which I had no role model; interior decorator (VERY short-lived!); archaeologist (the study of ancient languages that figured large in that career actually helped feed into the idea of becoming an interpreter and I adore studying ancient civilizations); and diplomat (linguistic skills are very much in demand there).
Although I did study foreign languages and now speak languages other than English, what I actually did become was a member of one of the two professions (teaching and nursing) that were considered "acceptable" for women. Of course, that was "back in the days." One of the ironies with the teaching profession today, IMO, is that there are not enough dedicated women - or men, for that matter - like those whom I had as teachers and with whom I worked as a colleague, in part because of increased professional opportunities in other fields. Another is that today's public schools have become dumping grounds for every sort of social problem. Basic common-sense ideas such as smaller class sizes, allowing teachers actually to teach, and allowing teachers to receive decent salaries and benefits seem always to be trampled before the latest fad (e.g., charter schools, etc.). Moreover, today's classroom teachers are held to standards by so-called business leaders that those selfsame business leaders do not even hold themselves to. But all that is a whole other topic.
On the whole, I enjoyed my various and varied teaching experiences and found that those experiences gave me invaluable skills for motivating and managing people from different cultures and walks of life, and also for solving problems, all of which were very useful in my later career transitions. And while I never became an "official" interpreter, there have been times when I have served as an "unofficial" interpreter, including one heady period when I ended up assisting my birth state of Montana to obtain international trade contracts as a result. I thoroughly enjoyed those experiences and they inspired me into returning to the international sphere in careers other than teaching.
That may explain in part why this recent article in the Guardian newspaper caught my eye. It discusses the newly released memoirs of a longtime British Arabic-speaking interpreter. From an "unlikely" background - read "not from the so-called upper class elite" - growing up between Lancashire and Liverpool in the UK, Leslie McLoughlin became the UK's Arabic interpreter of choice for British ministers and Arab VIPs. He has now written what the Guardian refers to as an "engaging autobiography." Also according to the Guardian, he is "good on the frustratingly wide gap between literary and spoken Arabic in its regional variations from Kuwait to Morocco."
This comment rings true to me and it is refreshing to see it acknowledged by a respected and pragmatic academic. I lived and worked in Morocco for a total of eight years and became quite fluent in the Moroccan Arabic dialect. When I actually studied the language, however, I was taught "Modern Standard Arabic," which is a dialect more commonly spoken in the Middle East. I remember when I was studying the language and mentioned to an Arab student colleague from Saudi Arabia that I had lived in Morocco, I was surprised when he told me that he had never understood what any of the Moroccan Arabic speakers he had met were saying! It is true that words and expressions, as well as pronunciation, were different in the various local dialects, as compared to the more commonly spoken Middle Eastern idiom.
The article related a few anecdotes from the autobiography, one of which reminded me of a couple of experiences that HWMBO and I had in Morocco in the early 1980s. The pertinent McLoughlin anecdote related to when the family was fleeing from chaos in Lebanon in 1976. "The trick was to pretend, for their own safety, that they were monoglots who didn't speak a word of Arabic. They were relieved to hear a gunman shout: 'Let them go, they're English and don't know what's going on.' They crossed the border unscathed into Syria."
Our experiences were different in that we were not fleeing from Morocco but trying to return to it after having been to nearby Ceuta, a Spanish-speaking enclave within Morocco, where we had purchased electronic items, including a stereo record player - all of which were technically subject to customs duty. The customs officer asked my anglophone (aka monoglot) husband what the items were. HWMBO responded in English. The customs officer simply nodded and waved us through. No duty. Nothing. It was as simple as that.
A few months later, I made the trip by myself and on this trip purchased a cassette player as a Christmas gift for No 2 Son, Big S. On returning via the same border, I was asked what the boxed item was. Unfortunately, I responded in Arabic that it was a cassette player. That was a mistake. I was stopped for few harrowing moments. They were not simply requesting payment of duty but planning to confiscate the player entirely.
Fortunately for me and my son's Christmas present, the customs chief had a heart. Of course, a few well-placed tears on my part didn't hurt. The chief even carried the player back out to my vehicle for me before waving me through. It was one time where my feigning incomprehension would have been the wiser course - by far.
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