From the Interpreter's Booth to the Lecture Hall: How Presence Changes Teaching
The first thing simultaneous interpreting taught me was to hand my whole attention to the meaning happening right now.
Before I interpreted, I thought "being clear" was a matter of preparation — write the script, deliver it in order. The interpreter's booth shattered that illusion. In a setting like BRICS, the speaker will not wait for you; meaning arrives at the speed of seconds, and the only thing you can lean on is the present moment. That forced presence later changed the way I stand in a lecture hall.
Three things interpreting taught me
- Grasp meaning before words. A simultaneous interpreter cannot translate word for word; you must seize, in an instant, what the speaker means and rebuild it in another language. Teaching is the same — more than reciting a perfect set of notes, what matters is being able, at any moment, to re-say a concept's core in words this particular room can follow.
- Listening is harder than speaking. Seventy per cent of interpreting is listening. So it is at the lectern: a genuinely good teacher spends most of the time listening for where the students' confusion falls, rather than rushing to empty out the words already prepared.
- There is information in the lag. Interpreting has a décalage — you stay half a sentence behind so you can understand before you speak. In teaching, that half-second of silence is just as precious: give students the time to think, and the answer is often better than the one you would have supplied for them.
Preparation gives you confidence; presence gives you life. A good lesson is a live negotiation between the prepared and the improvised.
Treating the classroom as a live event
So I increasingly treat each lesson as an event that cannot be replayed: the notes are a score, and the real music is improvised, here, between me and this group of people. A student's unexpected question is not a disruption of the rhythm but a chance for the class to truly come alive. What the booth finally taught me is a kind of trust — trust in the meaning happening in the room right now, over any script written in advance.