As you walk east on 45th Street in Manhattan, passing Third Avenue, you begin to notice something about the people around you. Specifically, the range of foreign languages spoken by men and women in suits escalates dramatically. And the intonations sound different from the languages heard on the subway and most other streets; even without understanding them, there’s an apparent eloquence and businesslike concision. The sensation of being a stranger in your own city only deepens as you continue. By the time you hit the block between Second and First Avenues, vehicles with New York plates are almost nonexistent, having been overtaken by SUVs and dark sedans with diplomatic plates parked or idling curbside. And you may not hear English at all.
When the term adrenaline junkie is mentioned, it’s usually in relation to a rugged NASCAR driver. Or perhaps a nineteen-year-old X Games skateboarder launching himself off the lip of a half pipe. Or habitual skydivers. And yet adrenaline junkies come in more forms than you might think. Perhaps the most unlikely, though, is Giulia Wilkins Ary. A cardigan draped over the shoulders of her tall, thin frame, her black hair with hints of gray parted on the side and falling just to her chin, she wears elegant wireless glasses and is soft-spoken and warm. Like a sophisticated yet caring aunt, she projects an urbane yet unassuming demeanor, smiling easily as we meet then firmly directing me where to go for my press pass.
As a member of the elite Interpretation Service at the United Nations, Wilkins Ary works here, at the UN Headquarters on First Avenue, for those people on 45th Street, or more likely, their bosses. Without her and her colleagues, diplomats from around the world would not be able to communicate with each other. It’s not hyperbole to say that the gears of international diplomacy, to a large degree, would seize without the IS (as the service is called in shorthand). And yet its offices are in the basement of the UN. This placement could be taken as a slight. Or it can be taken as an appropriate, even respectful nod to their invisible role at the institution. For as critical as they are to the proceedings, they must remain essentially unnoticed. If all work is performed perfectly, they will function as mere conduits for one nation to converse with the next.
From grand speeches at the General Assembly to the year-round quotidian interchanges of diplomacy, Wilkins Ary hears one language,
interprets it into another language in her head, then speaks the new language while at the same time continuing to listen to and interpret the next lines of the original language, a practice known as simultaneous interpretation. (And don’t confuse it with translating. Translators work with written text and can take as long as they need. Interpreters, on the other hand, work with spoken language, and “just have to jump on the train,” as Wilkins Ary says.) There are no pauses, no taking turns. As long as the speaker is talking, she is interpreting. And research shows this to be one of the most unique and taxing cognitive activities a mind can undertake.
Wilkins Ary and I are quickly heading down a labyrinth of hallways, winding our way toward one of five large meeting rooms. We’re in a huge temporary structure on the UN site that serves the organization while the main building undergoes a multiyear renovation. Each meeting room has an adjacent “interpreters row”—a long hallway with six booths on one side and a couple tech rooms for AV people and the like on the other. There is no outside light, the walls are gray, and it’s quiet. The décor and architecture could be described as bleak institutional, but presumably that will change when they’re back in the main building. As we turn from one endless, windowless corridor to yet another, the monotony and lack of any distinguishing landmarks has me totally disoriented. Jim Harding would not be pleased here. Finally, we make it to interpreters row for Meeting Room 1, the very last hallway.
We enter the second-to-last booth. FRENCH is written on a plaque next to the door. There is charcoal gray foam soundproofing material on the walls, dark gray carpet, light gray paint on the door. A gray desk, gray chairs, and, clearly the result of an insane error, the chairs have blue cushions. Because of the soundproofing there is no echo in the booth. I clap my hands to demonstrate the dead sound and I remark that this is just like an “iso booth” at a recording studio, where you do vocal takes. Wilkins Ary is amused that this is the very first thing I comment on.
There are three large double-paned soundproof windows looking out onto the conference room. The booths in interpreters row are roughly a flight up from the main floor of the meeting room, looking down on the proceedings, simultaneously giving the feeling of authority yet the physical distance implying you are observer more than participant. The architecture reflects the interpreters’ importance and their intended heard-but-not-seen neutrality. Each booth, interestingly, also has double-paned side windows so all the interpreters can see one another. I look to the left and peer into booth after booth, the figures inside each one successively more opaque with distance and the additional layers of glass. Alone in their silent pods yet connected through sight, the interpreters function in a strange kind of communal isolation. As maligned as cube farms and open office layouts are, the interpreters’ row plan won’t likely supplant either as the next office design trend.
We’re here for the 333rd Plenary Meeting of the United Nations Disarmament Commission. It’s a closed meeting and ostensibly off-limits to the press. There will be no official transcript released to the public. It’s not entirely clear how I’ve made it in, other than I’m not a political reporter and I’m a guest of the IS. This is not the only time an Invisible has gained me access to an otherwise restricted environment; one starts to realize how much power certain behind-the-scenes people have.
We’re joined by Myriam, Wilkins Ary’s French booth colleague. Because the work is so taxing, UN interpreters always work in pairs, taking half-hour turns. It’s extraordinarily unusual to have a visitor in the booth, and though Myriam earlier agreed that my presence would be okay, she seems slightly uneasy now. That we’re in a gray, echoless booth probably doesn’t help. I feel for Myriam. I’m not surprised why, as policy, outsiders aren’t allowed in here. It’s a sacred work space. And these people, whose stress load has been compared to that of air traffic controllers, need to concentrate. Hard. I’m a distraction. Wilkins Ary, though, is relaxed, and offers me a glass of ice water. I decline and wish I could melt into the chair she’s brought in for me as they settle in for the meeting, which is about to start.
A microphone and small audio mixing unit is in front of each interpreter in the booth. Wilkins Ary and Myriam both are wearing headphones now and rapidly pass back and forth papers on the desk that give the schedule of the conference overall and of the speakers at this meeting. “Okay,” Wilkins Ary says quickly, “we’re about to begin.” She takes a big breath and hits a button on her mixing unit. A red light goes on and a torrent of French flows out her mouth. Since I don’t have headphones I can’t hear the speaker, and since delegates speak from their seats in the meeting I can’t tell who is talking by sight either.
UN speeches (outside the high-profile ones at the General Assembly) tend to have a style. The speech, often read from prepared text, is accelerated and just north of monotone, as if they’re all in a rush to say what they have to say and then get out. Though I don’t know French, it’s clear she is speaking very, very fast. Languages, of course, rarely have one-to-one translations. For example, French tends to not use acronyms, so a one-second utterance of “ICBM” in English by the speaker requires a lengthy interpretation in French. For the French booth this means an acceleration of the already fast pace; this is especially problematic because acronyms are a mainstay of UN-speak. (Russian, which is wordier than French, is even more challenging in regard to word-to-word ratios.) This differential has become a trope of comedies—Google “Japanese photographer in Lost in Translation”—but it’s based in reality. Feeling lost amid Wilkins Ary’s indecipherable flood of Français, I console myself by making out “nuclear” quite a few times.
As time passes I continue to marvel at the cognitive churn that is taking place in her brain. English is going in, French is going out. At the same time. Without stopping.
~~Invisibles- The Power of Anonymous Work In the Age of Relentless Promotion
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