美国国家公共电台 NPR The Pressures Of Being An Interpreter At A High-Stakes Summit

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

All right, so when President Trump¹ meets with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, tonight in Singapore, there is going to be a language barrier. A lot is going to be riding on the skills of interpreters. Now, typically, they are invisible - unless, that is, they slip up. There was that time in 1990. Former President George H.W. Bush was deep in nuclear negotiations² with Soviet³ leader Mikhail Gorbachev. All of a sudden, the White House Cabinet Room froze. The Soviet interpreter, Igor Korchilov, remembers the sinking feeling he had.

IGOR KORCHILOV: They were astounded⁴ that Gorbachev had changed his position a hundred and eighty degrees overnight.

GREENE: Except, he hadn't. Korchilov, the interpreter, had simply said the wrong word. They corrected the mistake pretty quickly. But Korchilov did wonder for a moment - had he just accidentally changed the course of history? He approached President Bush afterwards to offer his apology.

KORCHILOV: He made a stern look, you know, put his arms in his pockets and said, relax; the good news is that you didn't start World War III.

GREENE: NPR's Danny Hajek talked with some of the interpreters whose words carry the weight of the world.

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DANNY HAJEK, BYLINE⁶: October 2000 - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lands in Pyongyang to meet former North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. And right there between them is U.S. interpreter Tong Kim.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What did they say?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Unintelligible).

HAJEK: Then the doors close, and the talks begin.

TONG KIM: That was the most important meeting I have ever interpreted for.

HAJEK: The delegations⁷ sat either side of a glossy⁸ mahogany table that spanned the length of the room - Kim Jong Il and Madeleine Albright face to face, interpreters by their sides. Each leader brings their own. To prepare, U.S. interpreter Tong Kim reviewed top-secret documents. He read a dozen books on nuclear bombs.

KIM: I kept reading and reading and reading.

HAJEK: He learned a North Korean accent.

KIM: I picked up their language, their intonation⁹, their dialect. And that gives them some trust.

HAJEK: See; the best interpreters are part linguists¹⁰, part diplomats¹¹. They have to know the politics behind each word.

STEPHANIE VAN REIGERSBERG: It can be scary, but you get yourself into a kind of a zone.

HAJEK: Stephanie Van Reigersberg spent 18 years as head of the interpreting division at the U.S. State Department, and she has stories.

VAN REIGERSBERG: I had one experience with President Bush Sr. when he was vice¹² president during the...

HAJEK: All right, so this is December, 1983 - a secret mission into El Salvador. They flew in on Black Hawk¹³ helicopters through the Salvadoran mountains to a presidential villa¹⁴. And Bush was there to deliver a warning to armed military commanders about their government's brutal¹⁵ death squads¹⁶.

VAN REIGERSBERG: I don't want to use the word vulgar about Bush because that was far from the way he is, but basically, he cussed them out. Having a woman interpreter using that kind of language really got their attention. And after the meeting, Bush said, well, I almost got us both killed, didn't I? (Laughter).

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: The president of the United States and Mrs. Reagan.

HAJEK: Years of negotiations led to this other moment more than 30 years ago when President Ronald Reagan welcomed his Cold War rival Mikhail Gorbachev to Washington.

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RONALD REAGAN: Today marks a visit that is perhaps more momentous¹⁷ than many which have preceded it because it represents a coming together not of allies but of adversaries¹⁸.

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DIMITRY ZARECHNAK: We were just agonizing¹⁹ over this word adversaries.

HAJEK: Dimitry Zarechnak was interpreting the speech that day. Here he is on NPR in 2001.

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ZARECHNAK: ...Because in Russian, the actual word for adversary²⁰ is protivnik, which sounds very much like protivniy, which means disgusting, and it has that kind of a flavor.

HAJEK: It could've thrown off the whole summit. So to save the moment, Zarechnak made a change. Instead of adversaries, he went with the Russian word for competitors.

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ZARECHNAK: (Speaking in Russian).

HAJEK: And it seemed to work - a nod from Gorbachev, and the summit was underway.

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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Applause).

HAJEK: So when it comes to interpreting, it doesn't get much more high-stakes than this - President Trump and Kim Jong Un. And just weeks ago, it was fiery²¹ rhetoric²², and the talks were canceled. But for interpreters who hold onto every word, the challenge in this meeting room will be keeping up with a president who's known to go off script. Again, Stephanie Van Reigersberg.

VAN REIGERSBERG: You hear the message that comes to you, and you deliver it as best you can, and that's all you can do.

HAJEK: Danny Hajek, NPR News.

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