The T+I program at Monterey Institute

Dateline: 5/30/99

As far as I'm concerned, irony is one of life's most basic ingredients. Just about every single thing I ever swore I would never ever do, I have done. I vowed that I'd never write a thesis. I promised myself that I would never try smoking. And of course, I swore up and down that I would never teach. I especially did not want to teach French. In high school, I fell in love with the French language and knew that I wanted to spend my life working with it, but I felt sorry for those who taught me. I drove my teachers crazy, demanding to know the reason for all those exceptions. I had no intention of being on the other side of that mess. However, I soon learned that there were very few viable options besides teaching. I discovered simultaneous interpretation - probably one of the most difficult tasks that the human brain can perform - and I decided that I wanted to be one of the few people that can do it.

Determined to succeed, I did everything I possibly could in order to make my dream come true. I set my sights on the two-year graduate program in translation and interpretation (T+I) at Monterey Institute (MIIS), one of the few schools in the US that offer simultaneous interpretation classes. I attended Knox College in Illinois for a couple of years, but then realized that I was not getting the education that I needed in order to be accepted into MIIS' grad program. I almost immediately moved to California in order to finish my BA at MIIS.

After completing my BA without incident I was conditionally accepted into the T+I program. This is a standard practice at MIIS: it means that the candidate's language skills are not quite up to the "near-native proficiency" requirement of the program. The graduate classes do not teach you French; they teach you how to transfer meaning from one language to another, thereby necessitating superior knowledge of both working languages. At the end of the first year of the MA program, if my French still proved to be unacceptable, I would be expected to spend a year overseas perfecting it. I spent that summer working on my French: six weeks in Normandy and eight weeks in the "French for T+I" preparatory program at MIIS.

The school year began. My first lesson was on T+I jargon. The written transfer of one language to another is called translation. Sight translation is when a document in the source language is explained in the target language, and interpretation (often mistakenly called "translation") is the oral transfer from one language to another. This includes simultaneous, consecutive, and liaison interpretation. Translators and interpreters should always work into their native ("A") language from their fluent ("B") and additional working ("C") languages.

I began with an introduction to consecutive interpretation (consec) class, working on both English to French and French to English interpretation, as well as two translation classes, one in each direction. In the spring, I added Spanish as a C language, and took Fr-Eng and Sp-Eng translation, Fr-Eng and Sp-Eng consec and simul(taneous) interpretation classes.

T+I is not an easy program. Research must be done in preparation for giving speeches in class for the other students to interpret and for the translations to be turned in each week. In addition to classes, students are expected to hold 3-4 interpretation practice groups with their peers each week.

The faculty is excellent. The head of the French T+I department is Prof. Christian Degueldre, the most amazing person I have ever met. In addition to leading the French department, he is a working translator and interpreter. He could read a text in English, his C language, and analyze the text better than we Anglophones. He could also give a ten-minute speech on virtually any subject - global warming, women's lib, assisted suicide - at the drop of a hat. It was an honor working with him.

At the end of the first year, students have to pass qualifying exams (quals) in each of their languages and skills. They only have two chances to pass, so after failing it is important for them to put serious effort into polishing their skills. I took three translation and four interpretation quals, but passed only 2 of the translation exams. This was due to my less-than-native abilities in French and Spanish. With input from my professors, I decided to live in France and Spain for a year apiece before returning to MIIS and finishing my degree.

Unfortunately, due to lack of planning on my part, helped somewhat by extremely strict immigration laws, I was only able to live in France for 2 months before conceding defeat. I couldn't get the working papers to get a job, and I couldn't get a job without working papers. Without a job, I could not support myself in France, and thus I returned to the US.

So here I am finishing a Master's in French at San José and teaching French and Spanish to adults. I am almost certain I won't return to MIIS - even if I eventually get over to France (which I hope to do after finishing my MA), so much time will have passed that anything I gained in the first year will be lost.

However, I did learn a great deal and I certainly enjoyed working with those amazing teachers. It was an incredible year.

For more information, check out MIIS' web site or my translation links.

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