I'm an old coot

When you have worked as long as I have as a conference interpreter, you end up meeting the most varied fauna thanks to the randomness of remote contracting.

There's your veteran, the one that knows and kisses every one in the booths and knows every good bars and/or restaurants in every city. There's the crazy one, who specializes in the most obscure fields, like «stamp collecting among albino left-handed bishops from Madagascar». There's the loner who leaves the booth as soon as his half-hour is over and won't come back until 1 minute before his turn. There's the freeloader who always finds a way to forget her notes at home and has to borrow the results of your terminology research; most likely she will also somehow manage to schedule the sessions in such a way that she ends up leaving early, while you have to do an extra fifteen minutes all by yourself after the last half hour, because the conference participants had too many questions for the panel. Me? I'm the souvenir maniac. During my free half-hour, I like to tour the exhibition kiosks and pick up free souvenirs like T-shirts, baseball caps, pens, badges, etc.. After my last conference, I went home with a frisbee, two monitor screenwipers and a business card holder. I have an extended collection of conference bags, the type that messengers like to carry.

The one thing that all interpreters seem to have in common nowadays are laptops. The best conferences are the ones in hotels that provide wi-fi because then the interpreters can access their lexicon on line. At my last conference, I was paired with a very young colleague who carried a laptop but apparently nothing else, because she had to borrow everything from me: papers, pens, kleenexes, etc.. even the conference programme and agenda. I repeatedly urged her to go get her own copy of the programme, but she kept saying: «I have it, it's on my laptop», but for some reason, we end up sharing my copy.

Personally, I like to read my documents on paper. I find it faster to find the ones I need when they're printed, and I have trouble reading anything on any screen smaller than 21", but apparently I'm the only one. All the other interpreters carry laptops which they claim are useful to find the right vocabulary during a session. I have never witnessed any instance where a translation was found on the spot thanks to a laptop, but the legend endures and laptops are now THE obligatory accessory to carry if you want to look like a serious interpreter. IMHO however, if you want to sound like a serious interpreter, the best way is to research your terminology ahead and come to work prepared. But then again, I'm old school.