Thread by @translationtalk

Remember before COVID when restaurants were open? Remember this situation:

(Person eating food from their country of origin): "Wow, this tastes exactly the way my mother used to make it!"

(Person eating their favorite dish): "Wow, I never manage to make it like that at home."

So what? you might ask. How does this relate to interpreting. Well hang in there. Getting to it.

Remember telling someone you are an interpreter and the person going "Oh wow, interpreting is so difficult, I used to do it a bit while I was living in Tahiti for a year."

Now, remember having a discussion with your surgeon before a scheduled surgery and you telling them:
"I really admire surgeons, I used to do some surgery on the side as a student..."

No?
Well, that's my point exactly.

Interpreters are cooks. Not surgeons.

Interpreters are cooks bc we do something that everybody "does" in their day to day life to some extent. So we constantly spend time defending the fact that we are doing this professionally.
Meanwhile, surgeons are not living in fear of anyone who owns a knife...

The point I am trying to make is for instance abt volunteering and how it can affect a profession. There are volunteer and hobby interpreters but no hobby-surgeons (I mean there are but those can get arrested if caught).

We deal in language which everyone has a say on.