Isn't it time to change the script?

In some counselling book about how to change (bad) relationship with your teenager, but also your partner, there is a strong recommendation to change the script, the speech, to change the stance, the point of view, knowing well enough that the standard script will yield the standard remark, drama, dispute, fighting and reciprocal shame. Changing the redundant script requires a prior essential step : getting aware, recognizing that there is a redundant script in play.

Then I read this :

"I have not worked as an interpreter that long, but despite this I have several times been asked by the interpreter user (clerk or other official) "And what do you do for a living?"

Well, what do I do for I living? What do you mean for a living? I work as an interpreter!?

Now, I have my research paper to write (it is currently not going very well), I have the Law course I take for interpreters and translators, and I also take a unit in Lusophone African culture and reality. So I guess I have other things to do. But what bothers me tremendously is that people believe that in addition to interpretation, I have to have another job, as if interpreting did not qualify as a full-time profession? When I say that I am also studying, people ask what I will become? Teacher, perhaps?

I wonder how some people think, is interpreting not a real profession?"

It is reported in this blog.

It is a redundant script post, and, sorry to the author, a generic grunting most any field interpreter could write anywhere on the planet. I wrote in the same vein sometimes in the past. The sequel of that something you feel when asked out of the blue "and what do you do for a living" is here to stay, whether you move on turning into an even better interpreter or shifting job.

Typically, there are questions asked but not answered, like this fundamental one popping out early in the article : "I wonder how some people think, is interpreting not a real profession". Nowhere in the following text will you find an answer. This a symptom of something. The question is lingering in air like a still cloud. It doesn't deserve an answer, does it?

But wait, wait! Let's go back a little bit and look straight into the eyes at the incident :

 " And what do you do for a living?"

Right now, copy-pasting this sentence, I can remember a slew of similar situations, one being a famous : "Ha, yeah, did that in the past but I have moved to things more serious".

I think you, we, should stand still here, not throw again anymore into space a question not to be answered, but keenly observe the feelings generated by such remarks, put names on these feelings, then start moving on to something more constructive which is called self-legitimation.

Bruised, offended, ashamed, irate, gasping for air and reaching for a revolver. What else? Other words are in demand but the core word here is "shame", and the feeling is "being ashamed".  Now, before going on, read this book and come back here. It won't heal immediately and the scars are for life but it will help in the long term. A missing element for building self-professional legitimization is professional pairing.

Why on earth do they not ask the same question, "And what do you do for a living?", to physicians, politicians, lawyers, butchers and fishmongers? You see, I too am pasting into the air a question I love and hate to try and answer to, because the very question generates a strong sense of malaise in me, humor won't heal things anytime soon. The answer is however very simple : they ask or brag they can do the same, because they don't know. And the best medicine to start with is not to go defensive and teach them a good lesson, no. Can you teach them a good lesson by the way? Are they reading your blog? No, and no.

The healing starts instead with teaching "us" a good lesson. Let's communicate. Some 40 regular readers of this blog - merci beaucoup - most seemingly "making a living as an interpreter", not selling fish. Have we met, will we meet, have we made a single effort to go beyond writing a comment, to go beyond pasting a link in Twitter or throwing into hot air a less than 140 signs "Yeah! love it!"? When is our next webinar over Skype scheduled? Never. When is our next annual conference taking place? Never and nowhere.

The problem I referred to time and again in the past with definitive malaise is this "us". As far as interpreters are concerned, unless you are a proud member of AIIC, chances you are a member of nothing.  Communities - read, "professional communities of field interpreters" are so rare that chances you belong to none is probably in the +95% range. I know, there is no such community next door (unless you believe ProZ to be one). And why should I try and create one? We have Facebook. Isn't that plenty enough?

Let's shift back to the script issue. I suggest to change the script, to stop the offended therefore defensive, sly (= trying to heal the wound suffered) innuendo at those (bastards) who know NOTHING! about my JOB! Let's try and do this, starting with the following proposition.

"My job is allowing two people who don't speak the same language to communicate. I am a communication enabler."

Create your own short sentence.

Now can (we) you deliver a speech, impromptu, around this not-defensive affirmation, explanatory speech of five minutes to a crowd, just explaining what your job is about, while totally avoiding the script that "contrary to what (some f.....g!) people think, not everybody can do it at the snap of the fingers"?

Probably, the best scenario would be to imagine that you have 5 minutes to explain to a class of 10 years old or less what you do for a living (and keep smiling). That would be the first step to change the script.

To be continued ...