The healthcare debate, pen thieves, and a little translator round-up

The things a translator has to do to get her day started.

Any readers outside of the U.S. would have a hard time believing this, but my morning was spent trying to figure out health insurance. Any readers inside the U.S. would find it difficult to believe that I got my answers so fast – but I did, indeed, get them all within a phone call. And the answers are not pretty. Yeah, a member of my family can have needed surgery – but the (outrageous) costs will be 20% out of pocket AFTER we hit the (quite high) annual deductible.

And we’re the lucky ones: we’re insured. Forty-five million Americans are not; they’d have to pay 100% of the cost, or more likely, go without.

What does that have to do with translation? Did I use “French” that needed to be excused to the nice lady at the insurer’s office? No, I’m a mild mannered sort of person. This has to do with translation because many if not most of language professionals (translators, interpreters, writers, editors) in the U.S. are self-employed, which means that they’re in the same boat as we are. Self-employed? Stay healthy, or you can join in the bankruptcy fun – health-care expenses are, in fact the leading cost of bankruptcy in the U.S. Malcolm Gladwell discusses this in some detail in an excellent article in the New Yorker. Interestingly, he reverses a position he held on the subject several years ago. Read about it, pass it on, VOTE ON IT, guyz. ‘Cause the human body comes without a warranty.

We can tie that in to translation using the Olympics, which will soon – I hope! – fade out of the headlines. But it’s still there, this time with the story of one Dr. Frank Nisenfeld, an orthopedic surgeon in Frederick, spent two weeks at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, working at a clinic in the Olympic Village. But was the medical work the most rewarding? Not at all. Apparently, “serving as a translator was one of the most helpful things he did. "I felt more useful as a translator than as an orthopedic surgeon." Does this surprise your news trawler? Not at all. If you can’t find out “What hurts? How bad is it? Was it ever broken before? How many fingers?” – how are you going to practice medicine? Like most human ventures, medicine is about communication. And this means that in multilingual environments, interpreting is as healing as doctoring. Thanks for noticing, Dr. Nisenfeld (and glad you liked the Olympics)!

In terms of things that make you go “hmmmm...” file the story of one of Yale’s newest freshment. Admissions must be pretty desperate, wouldn’t you say, if they accept a former Taliban leader, who had risen to power from his position as translator (which is how I happened to notice this story in the first place)? Didn’t this guy have to check the box that says “have you ever been a terrorist” when landing in the U.S.? Or maybe the Taliban were not, in fact, terrorists? I guess a terrorist is what our Department of Homeland Security (gosh, what a name) think a terrorist is, and that’s all there is to it.

Speaking of all there is to it, I’d like to take an informal poll: anyone around here have strong opinions about their spouse coming into their office and stealing pens from their desk? How about the spouses who know that such behavior is unacceptable and bribe your children to do it for them? Not that such a thing could happen in Port Townsend, no way. We’re all waaaaAaaay too civilized to do that here in hippieville.

Or that’s what I’d have thought until I caught them red-handed (and, I might add, pink-inked).

I’ll go translate something that doesn’t need pink ink. Catch you tomorrow about this time with a new round-up of things linguistic.