l am an interpreter with a past: l have been a
translator. As a matter of fact, in the bottom of
my heart, l stili am; l am, you might say, a closet
translator, clandestinely moonlighting at the
keyboard while most of my U.N. colleagues go
blithely about the business of leisure. Have you
noticed the way interpreters wince at being called
translators, pretty much as spinsters resent being
addressed as 'Mrs'? There is this rather nasty
feeling between us who interpret and us who
translate that translators are interpreters who
never quite made it, whereas interpreters are
translators who managed to move out of the ghetto. lnterpretation is one of the oldest
intellectual activities man ever engaged in. The fact
has been used as proof a) that interpreters are
born, not made, and b) that there is, therefore,
absolutely no need for any theory; the same is
adduced about translation, of course. But let us listen to what Vygotsky had to say 60 years ago. Every syllable Vygotsky writes about spontaneous
and scientific concepts in relation to the child
could be easily extrapolated to translators and
interpreters.
