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BRIDGING TWO WORLDS: AN INTERPRETER’S PERSPECTIVE. MARTA ZIELYK PRESENTATION AT THE PRE-CONVENTION PROGRAM OF THE 24TH NATIONAL CONVENTION When I was a little girl growing up on 7th St. in Manhattan, we had a next door neighbor who once reproached my mother with the question “Why are you torturing your daughters with Ukrainian. After all that will not earn them their daily bread” or as he put it “Пані, чому мучите дітей українською мовою. Не ьудуть вони з того хпіба їсти”. I don’t know what my mother answered him then but were he alive today, I would say on her behalf that Ukrainian has indeed been earning me my daily bread for the last fifteen years and in the most unexpected ways. Whether it was at the Ukrainian Museum, or at the Voice of America in Washington or at Radio Liberty in Munich or finally, at my present position, it is my knowledge of Ukrainian which helped me get those jobs. But it was a truly a historic event that led me to interpreting. As a direct result of the breakup of the Soviet Union I left one job, with Radio Liberty, and found another — as the first ever Ukrainian staff inter preter at the Department of State. It began in those first euphoric months of 1988 when the occasional visiting Ukrainian dissident needed an interpreter for a very low key meeting with a low level US government bureaucrat. Over time visitors from Ukraine became more high-level and they began having meetings with people whose names were preceded by such titles as deputy assistant secretary or assistant secretary. It got to the point where requests from official U.S. government agencies for Ukrainian interpreters were coming in to the State Department’s Interpreting Div ision with such regularity that it was deemed a simple matter of financial advantage to pay a salary to a Ukrainian staff interpreter rather than rely on the unpredictable whims and schedules of freelancers. So in April of 1995, after 6 years of freelancing for our government, I became official. And talk about a “bap tism by fire”. My very first assignment after coming on board was accompanying President Clinton to Kiev on his state visit to Ukraine. I can tell you honestly that I regard this experience as one of the top three most difficult things I have done in my life. The pace of the President’s sche dule, the pressure to interpret well, to not breach the minutest protocol rule, to make sure that through me the President sounded appropriately Presidential — were all intense. The high point of the state visit was the Pres ident’s speech before 70,000 Ukrainians — most of them young students — who gathered on the grounds before the Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv. What made that event particularly memorable for me was not only the fact that I successfully met the challenge of inter preting a difficult but masterfully written speech which was broadcast live to a potential audience of 50 million. But what was truly unforgettable was the practically tangible wave of energy which emanated from the crowd gathered at the feet of the President. He in turn fed upon it and gave it right back to the crowd tenfold. I could not help but be drawn into this wave of excite ment which crested when the president ended his speech with the words, and I quote him directly, “God bless America and Слава Україні”. I didn’t even bother to interpret. At that point, anything I would have said would have been drowned out by applause and cheers. The best interpretation, I learned, is often silence. But these kinds of moments come rarely in an interpreter’s career. As in any job there are ups and downs. I have to be ready to travel at a day’s notice 18 ’’НАШЕ Ж ИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 1996 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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