Latest / Found in Interpretation Podcast / Ep. 33 - Unlocking Emotional Intelligence in Interpreting with Sarah Wheeler

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Ep. 33 - Unlocking Emotional Intelligence in Interpreting with Sarah Wheeler · Found in Interpretation Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Fun and
• 0:02
  interpretation podcast. And once again I'm one of your
• 0:05
  Co hosts Alberto and I'm here with Brian.
• 0:07
  Brian, how you doing? I'm doing great buddy, let's do
• 0:10
  this. Cool.
• 0:11
  I'm also here with Sarah Wheeler.
• 0:14
  How you doing, Sarah? Doing great.
• 0:16
  How are you? Absolutely.
• 0:17
  Great. Thank you very much.
• 0:20
  So let's kick it. Alright, has actually a very
• 0:34
  interesting 1. Sarah is an interpreter educator
• 0:37
  and emotional intelligence coach on a mission to transform the
• 0:43
  interpreting profession from the inside out.
• 0:46
  As the founder of Building Bridges Global, Sarah brings
• 0:50
  neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and cultural
• 0:53
  competence into the heart of interpreter training.
• 0:58
  She also has a website that focuses on interpreter education
• 1:02
  around emotional intelligence at the link that will put in the
• 1:07
  description below. Now we're talking about
• 1:11
  emotional intelligence as Sarah. I'll kick the first question
• 1:15
  here. What's the link between
• 1:18
  emotional intelligence and interpreting?
• 1:21
  Yes, so much so when. We start getting chances like.
• 1:26
  I mean, there's a huge link, I think if we had to break it down
• 1:30
  into a couple sentences. It would be, don't have to.
• 1:34
  From for humans, right? Like it's, it's the, it's what
• 1:38
  we do is so much more than just language.
• 1:42
  And so for many of us who are in between cultures and in between
• 1:46
  a lot of languages we understand, many of us, you
• 1:50
  know, are bilingual. When we do interact with
• 1:53
  different cultures, different people, we realize that when
• 1:56
  they use an interpreter, when anyone uses an interpreter,
• 1:59
  there's that intersection of this is my life.
• 2:01
  This is what's going on. I'm going to school, I'm getting
• 2:04
  an education, right? I'm going to the hospital.
• 2:06
  I Whatever the case is, it's, there are these important touch
• 2:11
  points that happen in a person's life and whether it's through an
• 2:14
  interpreter or not, the importance of connecting with
• 2:18
  the people that you're with, I think is extremely important.
• 2:21
  And so the intersection of emotional intelligence and
• 2:25
  interpreting is the intersection of human connection and
• 2:29
  authenticity. You know, can we be authentic
• 2:31
  with the people that we're communicating with?
• 2:34
  Now, the way that I, like, was visualizing this whole emotional
• 2:37
  intelligence thing before we got on, was that like, say, like a
• 2:42
  doctor patient interview and you're trying to give the
• 2:44
  information about someone's health.
• 2:46
  And yeah, you would have to have that emotional intelligence kick
• 2:48
  in. Does it apply to you to, let's
• 2:51
  say conference interpreters say, like you're like going over like
• 2:54
  a, a yearly budget and like there's all these numbers like,
• 2:59
  and you don't really need to be emotional about numbers unless
• 3:03
  you're, you know, really a big bookkeeping buff.
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  But like so, does it apply to that context as well?
• 3:12
  So when we think about emotional intelligence, there's, you know,
• 3:15
  it's, there's a lot of different domains, a lot of it, you know,
• 3:18
  there's, there's emotional precision, there is how to
• 3:22
  manage your emotions. So there's even the point where
• 3:25
  it's how to manage your boredom, right?
• 3:27
  How are you able to stay focused?
• 3:29
  And when we think about, you know, this era of AI and we have
• 3:32
  technology all around us, you know, you're at a boring meeting
• 3:35
  where it's all numbers and there's not a lot of emotions.
• 3:38
  You as the interpreter may want to check out.
• 3:42
  You know, you may not be able to hold that kind of attention for
• 3:46
  that long of a span. You may be getting some things
• 3:47
  wrong because you're not emotionally attuned.
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  And so it's, it's more than just the idea of I'm going to have
• 3:54
  this huge emotional variance. It's more of can I regulate
• 3:59
  myself in different situations as well?
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  Am I show how am I showing up in these situations?
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  You know, how am I managing the way my professionalism?
• 4:09
  You're saying about like the one you're talking about, like,
• 4:11
  yeah, the whole boredom part. I'm like, yeah, there's some
• 4:13
  pretty dry conferences that we've done and I'm like.
• 4:16
  Yeah, you should. Are you showing some sort of
• 4:18
  appetite on your work, Brian? You need a holiday.
• 4:22
  It's a long weekend coming up, I'm looking forward to it.
• 4:26
  Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot to it.
• 4:28
  It's a lot more than just, you know, what we see is, you know,
• 4:31
  just be happy and connect and be nice, which is a great part of
• 4:34
  it, which is the, you know, social skills.
• 4:36
  But there's a lot more to it. But there's also think that
• 4:39
  there's a link between emotion and memory, right?
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  If you're emotionally invested into something, then your memory
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  starts working better. Because we remember vividly in
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  our minds, even for years, things that we feel, don't we?
• 4:54
  Absolutely. Yeah.
• 4:55
  No, that's great. I'm glad you brought that up.
• 4:58
  Absolutely. When you think about like how
• 5:00
  you memory is one thing, but you have to pay attention to
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  remember. And one of the things is if
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  we're in this fight or flight, when we're stressed, we get into
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  these Mig Amigdala takes over and information doesn't go to
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  our frontal cortex. So we're in these fight or
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  flight stages where we're not even able to retain long-term
• 5:20
  memory. We're not able to process things
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  on a higher level. Explain that slowly so we can
• 5:26
  all really understand because you taught amygdala, the front
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  lobe and all of that. And you know, imagine you're
• 5:34
  explaining this to, I don't know, a 15 year old, which is
• 5:38
  basically me with. OK, alright, let's see.
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  So yeah, it's OK. So we the middle is right over
• 5:47
  the this the spinal column, right?
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  So we have the brainstem and the amygdala is right over that.
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  Location. Is right, right there, right
• 5:58
  there, right there behind. Yeah, Alright.
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  Yeah. And so it's still attached to
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  your body. You think about like how
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  everything that goes up to your spinal column, all of your
• 6:08
  nerves that send information out quickly can respond.
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  The fight or flight is your body not having to think.
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  It's just saving you from whatever situation that you're
• 6:18
  in. Right brain #1 and #2 from that
• 6:21
  book a long time ago. Yeah.
• 6:25
  Exactly. I don't know, Brian.
• 6:26
  You know the book that I'm talking about, I'll post it.
• 6:30
  It's sorry, I'm just interrupting you, but it's it's
• 6:33
  a book that was talking about the that we have two brains,
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  basically one that acts very quickly when we don't have time
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  to think, but it's a survival mode.
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  And the other one, which is using our uses our reasoning and
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  basically what marketing is trying to do is just to use our
• 6:49
  politicians are just trying to activate our one side of our
• 6:52
  brain. So we just, I don't know, act
• 6:55
  irrationally, but if we start and think or frown, then
• 6:59
  suddenly we'll use the second part of our brain which helps us
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  reason or something like that. I don't have to read the book.
• 7:06
  Well, that's my summary after 15 years.
• 7:09
  I write it 15 years ago. That's perfect.
• 7:12
  I love. It but that that's what you're
• 7:13
  talking about, right? That's the response side.
• 7:17
  Yeah, yeah, that's I mean it's, it is, it's that, right.
• 7:20
  So that even you you touched on that which I thought was good
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  the fear side, right. Like are you are we in constant
• 7:26
  fear? Are we constantly in this
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  heightened state of all things are going to happen?
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  Are we constantly stressed out? Because if we are, then our
• 7:35
  brains are decide our amygdala, which is the one that's controls
• 7:39
  our not only emotions, but then also the chemicals that come out
• 7:43
  in our body that can speed up our heart rate, that the
• 7:47
  cortisol that gives us that, you know, spare tire, all of this
• 7:52
  stuff is like is put out by that.
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  And so if we're constantly living in this state, which many
• 7:58
  of us do you know, many, like you were saying, you know,
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  we're, we're bombarded with this information on the news and, and
• 8:04
  life happens and, and the way that we live is very stressful,
• 8:08
  right? So we have all of this going on.
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  So when you're like, what example would be like, say, for
• 8:13
  example, if you're at a conference and there's a speaker
• 8:16
  and you just says pace is just out of like he's just speaking
• 8:19
  about a minute. And so like as an interpreter,
• 8:21
  you have to keep up And like, so you're, you get super like some
• 8:25
  trappers get super stressed and like it's hard to keep up and
• 8:27
  stuff on my end. I enjoy the challenge and I kind
• 8:30
  of like like slow my breathing down a bit and I'm able to like
• 8:34
  try to not compete, but at least like stay at the same pace as as
• 8:37
  the the speaker. But is there like, is that kind
• 8:41
  of what you're talking about? Like one of the like as an
• 8:43
  example of of how like as an interpreter, you could feel that
• 8:47
  that anxiety and that beer and, and like trying to have to try
• 8:50
  to overcome that. Yeah.
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  And what you mentioned I think was really powerful.
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  So you feel that anxiety and fear and it's Even so it's this
• 8:59
  it's term that's coined by Doctor Lisa Feldman.
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  So she I would recommend reading her book.
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  She's brilliant and she's a neuroscience and she talks about
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  this idea of interception. So as we're talking about before
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  with, you know, we, our Magdala is really responding quickly to
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  everything that's going on and it's very connected with our
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  bodies. So this idea of interception is
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  to be first self aware, if you're going emotional
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  intelligence, but being self aware of what's happening in our
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  bodies and then being able to label that.
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  So I recognize, OK, when my, when I start feeling this way,
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  instead of being hijacked and just reacting, I go, oh, I'm
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  feeling when this is happening, I'm noticing that I'm tensing
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  up. I notice that I'm starting to
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  panic. I'm noticing that my
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  interpreting is starting to not, what is this feeling inside my
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  body? Oh, it's fear, it's anxiousness.
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  And there's so many more nuances to emotions that once we start
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  practicing and we could start, it's almost like, you know, if
• 10:04
  you're into wine tasting or if you're really into wine, you
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  can, you know, if you drink wine, you're like, oh, it's just
• 10:09
  wine, but would you start getting into it?
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  It's like, oh, this is white wine and this is this is red.
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  And then you start, there's more.
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  Then it's all this smells woodsy.
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  And this is, you know, there's so many layers to something that
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  you can even get into. And that's how emotional
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  intelligence is, too. But how?
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  How can you? Like when we're interpreting, we
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  have to manage many things. We have to listen, we have to do
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  our work as interpreters. And sometimes we maybe because
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  someone said something and it's completely out of the blue, some
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  thought enters our mind and then suddenly it's as if we're
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  interpreting and then suddenly our mind drifts onto something
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  else. How can you use that?
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  The the what? What you explain about emotional
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  intelligence to help us bring us back to being focused, focused
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  again. Yeah, Yeah.
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  That's a great question. So that's that's the grounding
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  techniques. A lot of dialectical behavioral
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  therapy talks about this and just the idea of bringing our
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  body and regulating our body. So bringing it back to not the
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  fight or flight, but bringing it back to centering it.
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  And so I, I don't are you? So do you mean if someone says
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  something that's just random or if it's something?
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  That bothers you. Give an example.
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  I, I, I did, um, a week on divorce cases or in front of
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  judges and young people were coming to bring their testimony
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  and they were talking about a lot of the divorce cases.
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  And suddenly while my own parents divorced, I don't, I
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  don't think I have any trauma about it, but this is just what
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  happened. And suddenly during my
• 11:50
  interpretation, I started and one side of my mind, I was
• 11:55
  thinking about my own childhood and the fact that my parents
• 12:00
  divorced and I was like, wow, what's going on?
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  OK, I gotta focus now. Gotta focus.
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  And for some reason my mind was drifting and it's, it wasn't
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  something traumatic that I was reliving in my mind, but it's as
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  if I would have it. I was having, as I was
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  interpreting 2 parallel thoughts I was having the one that I was
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  interpreting and the other track where I was reliving some parts
• 12:24
  of my childhood. So I was like wow, this is so
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  strange and I was wondering if something like that has a
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  connection with what you're explaining right now.
• 12:33
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's So what our mind does is
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  we try to protect ourselves and a lot of our emotional
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  experiences sometimes come from the past.
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  We predict. And so like you were saying,
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  something will come and and it'll happen.
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  It'll be a stimulus. They're trying to.
• 12:50
  So the word trigger is something that is widely used, but not
• 12:54
  necessarily accurate, right. It's, it's just, it's stimulus
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  like nothing is it triggers maybe a high emotional reaction,
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  maybe for me or like maybe for you because you had this
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  experience. Maybe for me, nothing happens
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  based on my own experiences. So everything is is.
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  Predictive. Yeah.
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  So it's, it's it being able to then.
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  So if this happens, you ground yourself in the present moment.
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  You realize, you notice this is self-awareness.
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  It's a huge thing. And being able to practice his
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  self-awareness. So you get to a point where if
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  you're not able to keep yourself in this conscious mind and it's
• 13:35
  you're in very automatic kind of unconscious, your body is going
• 13:41
  to take over and your emotions are going to dictate what you do
• 13:43
  because it's easier that way. It's it's, it's a heuristic,
• 13:46
  it's a shortcut. So, So what would be something
• 13:49
  like, say, tips for like an interpreter who like feels
• 13:51
  anxiety at certain points and, and time, like for whatever
• 13:55
  reason, Like it could even be like say like I do a lot of
• 13:58
  stuff in the financial sector and you're talking about
• 14:00
  pensions. And then like, not like the, the
• 14:03
  divorce thing, but like for me it's like, oh, like how's my
• 14:06
  mortgage, my mortgage payments, You know, how much money do I
• 14:09
  have before I could retire? To tell you it's expensive,
• 14:12
  yeah, yeah. It's really interesting.
• 14:13
  So anyways, my mind goes to other places for all the time.
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  But yeah. And now I forget when when I
• 14:22
  started with. But no, if they I'm just joking.
• 14:25
  Are they? Are there tips that you can give
• 14:28
  interpreters who are like feeling that pressure under when
• 14:32
  they are under pressure? Right and right, it depends on
• 14:36
  the person, but absolutely. So there's there's first before
• 14:38
  you go into an assignment. I always like to prepare myself
• 14:42
  mentally for what I'm going into and making sure that I'm staying
• 14:44
  focused so I'm not jumping into an assignment to another
• 14:47
  assignment. So if I was doing financials and
• 14:50
  I was like, OK, I'm probably going to be pre checked out.
• 14:52
  I went to bed late last night, what have you.
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  Then I would just take a little bit of time beforehand and say,
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  OK, this is my intent for this assignment.
• 15:02
  This is what I want to do. This is the outcome and you're
• 15:05
  climbing your brain to say, OK, these are the things that you're
• 15:07
  gonna do. You stay grounded and your
• 15:09
  intentional. And then when you get in there,
• 15:12
  if you do notice that you're starting to check out or drift,
• 15:14
  you have ways that you could either do breathing exercises,
• 15:18
  there's grounding exercises or brings you the whole point of
• 15:21
  that is bringing you back into your body and in the present
• 15:24
  moment, instead of drifting off in the future, in the past,
• 15:27
  you're in the present moment. And then what I'm really big on
• 15:31
  is afterwards to reflect because sometimes in the moment you
• 15:34
  can't, right? If you like, you were just
• 15:36
  mentioning about the, the divorce situation.
• 15:38
  And if you're getting emotional about this and something's
• 15:41
  happening in the moment, you have to do is you have to manage
• 15:44
  it. You regulate.
• 15:45
  That's part of emotional intelligence is regulating your
• 15:47
  emotions to be able to do the task at hand.
• 15:50
  You do it well. And then after you start
• 15:52
  thinking, well, what was that? What was that a motion that I
• 15:55
  was feeling? And was it, was it a reality do
• 15:59
  reality testing? Was it something that was?
• 16:02
  Reality testing. So it's it's basically looking
• 16:05
  at the facts. So you look at how you felt,
• 16:07
  which is very important. You look at the facts of what it
• 16:12
  was neutrally and then you go, OK, how does this come in
• 16:16
  together? What do I need to do next time
• 16:19
  to to change it? Does anything need to change?
• 16:21
  And you really look at it with a more holistic perspective
• 16:25
  instead of just an emotional one or just a rational 1.
• 16:28
  Because emotions tell you stuff too.
• 16:30
  That's true, yeah. Now you had a, a diagram of the
• 16:34
  brain on LinkedIn that you posted.
• 16:35
  That's what caught my attention with you.
• 16:37
  Um, can you go over that? Because, well, we don't have
• 16:40
  that visual aid, but maybe we can add it to the.
• 16:42
  Well, we'll we'll add it to. Like that, yeah.
• 16:44
  I thought it was really fascinating so.
• 16:45
  But I didn't understand all of it, so my brain doesn't work
• 16:49
  that well. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 16:51
  So is the interpreter brain. And I actually came up with this
• 16:54
  like years and years ago, so it was kind of cool to revisit it
• 16:57
  and just take a look at it. But there's a lot of things on
• 17:00
  there that I think are some of the things that we've been
• 17:03
  talking about. So I think, for example, one of
• 17:05
  the things on there is working memory.
• 17:08
  So you're constantly doing that. But what's so important about
• 17:12
  working memory is the prefrontal cortex, right?
• 17:15
  These are things that I don't think we think about have
• 17:18
  anything to do with emotions, emotional intelligence.
• 17:20
  But if we're under stress or things are going on, then our
• 17:23
  working memory is not gonna be as effective as it should be.
• 17:27
  Yeah, I remember when actually when I was going through my
• 17:30
  divorce many years ago, there was a lot of times where I was
• 17:33
  like not focused. And that's exactly what you're
• 17:35
  talking about. Like you're working memory is
• 17:37
  not what it where it is when you're thinking about other
• 17:41
  things basically. So yeah, it's so important to
• 17:43
  just stay in the moment. But like when coming back to the
• 17:47
  tips that you were giving, I think that one of the the
• 17:49
  advantages that we have is conference interpreters.
• 17:52
  We work in Paris. So I do think that when we feel
• 17:55
  flooded over some emotions, say for example, I did one on a
• 17:59
  conference on AIDS in Africa. And the, the speaker was talking
• 18:03
  about being in Africa and talking about the lost
• 18:06
  generation because there's a whole generation of children
• 18:09
  who's growing up without parents because they passed away from
• 18:12
  AIDS. So they're, and sometimes they
• 18:14
  don't have grandparents, so they have to basically raise
• 18:16
  themselves. And my colleague was
• 18:18
  interpreting and I could feel her tearing up and, and like,
• 18:22
  and I was like, just give me the mic.
• 18:23
  I'll, I'll, I'll keep going. So that would be like, so a tip
• 18:28
  would be like, don't stick to your like, you know, we have to
• 18:30
  work every thread 30 minutes and take shifts and stuff like be
• 18:33
  aware of your colleague and like that's so we're there for we're
• 18:37
  there to, to support them when, when things get real.
• 18:42
  I love that. Yeah.
• 18:44
  I think, I think this whole idea that, you know, we don't just
• 18:46
  show up, but we show up for each other and, you know, we're
• 18:50
  responsible for meaning making. So we're both making the meaning
• 18:53
  or our experiences. We're Co not only Co creating,
• 18:56
  but we're Co we're Co regulating, right.
• 18:59
  So that shows up. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:02
  We're not robots. We're not AI.
• 19:05
  Great, and that's that's really sets us apart.
• 19:07
  I mean, I think now the more that AI is coming out and a lot
• 19:10
  of people are thinking, you know, I've been doing a lot of
• 19:12
  research on that. You know, a lot of people are
• 19:14
  scared and I, and rightfully so, but it to me AI has something
• 19:20
  that we don't have. And I'll say that with the
• 19:23
  caveat because AI can read emotions and we know the latest
• 19:28
  chart TPT release, it can do emotions very well and be very
• 19:34
  friendly and even make us feel very good, right?
• 19:36
  So can you make it? Very well.
• 19:39
  But the one thing you can't do is it doesn't have an embodied
• 19:42
  experience and it doesn't rely on emotions the way that we do.
• 19:46
  But we need emotions because it tells us to sleep.
• 19:50
  It keeps us in our tribe. It it makes us survive.
• 19:54
  AI doesn't. It doesn't need that at all.
• 19:57
  This is not, it doesn't even operate on the same operating
• 19:59
  system that we do. And this is what makes us sensus
• 20:02
  apart, really. But when it comes to
• 20:06
  interpretation, some people could just say, well, do we
• 20:12
  really need all of those things that makes us human?
• 20:17
  Because basically what we want is a result.
• 20:20
  I just want to explain a financial like an explain a, a
• 20:23
  quarterly report to to the shareholders.
• 20:27
  I don't need to have emotional intelligence.
• 20:30
  So as interpreters and the I mean, we know that being in the
• 20:34
  financial sector is a is a big market for us in the in
• 20:37
  conference. So how?
• 20:40
  What's the counter argument here?
• 20:42
  No, that's, I mean that's a great question.
• 20:44
  I mean, if you want to, sure, you could translate documents.
• 20:48
  Um, but we even know that like if you read captioning, it's
• 20:53
  not, it doesn't bring any emotional nuance or any
• 20:56
  connection. And let's say it does.
• 20:58
  Let's say it does, you're still not looking a person in the eye
• 21:02
  and seeing that they really care and they're invested in, of
• 21:05
  course, right? If it's a financial transaction,
• 21:07
  if it's something like this, but even a financial transaction, if
• 21:11
  it's something that is based on investor or something like that,
• 21:14
  there's still that. Right now, emotional
• 21:17
  intelligence is huge in investing and they're now
• 21:20
  talking about how emotional intelligence can influence the
• 21:24
  fear, you know, the fear factor when you're buying or you're
• 21:27
  selling and all of this. So it's run by humans, and I
• 21:30
  think that's the core of it, it We can't take the humanity away
• 21:35
  and just make it transactional. You know you're going to do that
• 21:37
  to education. Are we going to do that too?
• 21:40
  We just can't do that. I would say also that the
• 21:42
  counter argument for like the all the examples I've been
• 21:45
  giving on finances and how boring they are, all my clients
• 21:49
  in finance, the financial sector, I apologize, but but in
• 21:53
  any event, like, yeah, like that's why a lot of times as
• 21:56
  interpreters, we emphasize that we need to see the the people
• 21:59
  who are speaking because we're not interpreting the words,
• 22:01
  we're interpreting the body language too.
• 22:03
  So that speaks volumes as well. And their emotions are there.
• 22:08
  Like if the person like is talking about a quarterly report
• 22:11
  that where they didn't do too well, they start sweating and
• 22:13
  you know, like feeling uncomfortable and agitated that
• 22:16
  we can see that. So we could convey that.
• 22:19
  Oh, you know what, what you're telling me reminds me in this
• 22:21
  whole thing reminds me of the difference between and I'm sure
• 22:26
  you guys did some, some work like that, but the difference
• 22:30
  between a live interpretation and our pre recorded
• 22:35
  presentation. And for some reason, when it
• 22:38
  comes to the live performance, I'm engaged.
• 22:42
  And especially if it's on site, I'm engaged.
• 22:45
  I'm right there, I see the speaker, I, I take the energy in
• 22:48
  the crowd. Then there's the next level
• 22:50
  where I see the energy in the crowd through my display.
• 22:54
  Not the same thing. It's hard to be invested, but
• 22:57
  it's still possible if the speakers right.
• 22:59
  But then take exactly the same speech and do a pre recorded
• 23:03
  presentation and you're like, for some reason, you know what,
• 23:06
  I'm gonna pause. I don't like it.
• 23:08
  I'm just gonna I'm gonna redo that part.
• 23:10
  OK, What did I just say? I just screwed up.
• 23:13
  There's there's something about it.
• 23:15
  And I think that maybe here there's a link to that emotion
• 23:19
  that you were talking about because if it's prerecorded, I
• 23:22
  don't feel as invested. Yeah, there's definitely a leak.
• 23:27
  So they're actually, there's some research now that shows
• 23:30
  that if we were watching people on a 2D platform, so we're
• 23:34
  doing, you know, different interpreting, let's say online
• 23:36
  or we're watching a video. Even online, we don't see all of
• 23:40
  the emotional cues. So we're missing out on if a
• 23:43
  person is tapping their foot or if they're leaning in or
• 23:46
  stepping back. And that's how we respond.
• 23:49
  That's how we relate. We're trained to relate to
• 23:51
  people and Co relate to people based on what their feedback is.
• 23:56
  And once we start missing those pieces, so like you and you
• 23:59
  start narrowing down your ability to see all the emotional
• 24:02
  cues, which is so much of our communication, like we talked
• 24:06
  about before, it's you lose that connections and we really we're
• 24:10
  operating on like half the bandwidth that we would if we
• 24:13
  saw people face to face. So what sparked all this
• 24:17
  research for you? Because like you, I could tell
• 24:19
  you're passionate about this. Like I'm like, what was like the
• 24:21
  thing that you're like, oh, like I want to blend interpretation
• 24:24
  with all the all this neuroscience, like how did like
• 24:28
  or how did this all start? Yeah, I, I think initially, so
• 24:32
  my parents are both deaf. And so I grew up and I saw my
• 24:36
  parents use interpreters and I also saw he's incredible points
• 24:41
  where they could have had really authentic, genuine connection,
• 24:45
  but because it was going through an interpreter, there was always
• 24:50
  a disconnect. People felt like they weren't
• 24:51
  genuinely connecting. There were times and I remember
• 24:56
  thinking, gosh, why can't they just see each other for who they
• 25:00
  are showing up authentically without this barrier in place.
• 25:04
  What, what, what was that barrier, you know?
• 25:06
  And so as I started getting into interpreting, and then I taught
• 25:09
  interpreting for a while, I noticed that that wasn't part of
• 25:13
  the curriculum at all. And we weren't teaching people
• 25:17
  about the, the, the, the emotional connection to not only
• 25:21
  interpreting, right? So we could express that or
• 25:23
  recognize emotions, but then also just how we show up in our
• 25:27
  presence and our self-awareness and how we're regulating and how
• 25:30
  we're thinking about power and presence and all of these
• 25:33
  things. So I went back to school and I
• 25:35
  started, I started, I went back for another degree.
• 25:39
  But in that journey, I just realized that that that really
• 25:42
  was that for me. It's not if we all show up and
• 25:46
  we're all aware this emotional intelligence, we're all
• 25:50
  emotionally intelligent and we're we're aware of our
• 25:53
  presence and Co creating, I think then that leads to a much
• 25:56
  more authentic communication experience for everybody.
• 26:01
  You talk about the way we present ourselves.
• 26:04
  Are you talking about, for instance, how we dress when we
• 26:08
  go to an assignment? What do you mean by that?
• 26:12
  So we we send out emotional cues all the time.
• 26:15
  You know, there's ways that we show up and if we're not aware,
• 26:19
  sometimes the way that we're feeling unregulated can show up
• 26:23
  in the way that we act and behave and other people pick up
• 26:26
  on those emotional cues. And so, you know, naturally, of
• 26:30
  course, when we're nervous, maybe we'll be a little bit more
• 26:33
  closed off. This is not always we could be
• 26:35
  cold. It's not a one-size-fits-all.
• 26:37
  Another thing that's really interesting is that culture also
• 26:40
  has a big part in how we learn emotions displays as well as
• 26:46
  being able to interpret emotions.
• 26:48
  Which is why part of the work that I'm doing really stresses
• 26:51
  on the ability to to study culture as well and have
• 26:56
  cultural humility in everything that we do because this is part
• 26:59
  of it. Instead of just thinking that we
• 27:00
  know and one-size-fits-all with emotional response and
• 27:03
  understanding. And this has to do with that,
• 27:06
  like with what Hebrew was saying.
• 27:08
  She'll be on on another episode, but she was talking about how
• 27:13
  like the invisible interpreter, because our profession can be
• 27:17
  quite invisible, where we're just like letting into the
• 27:20
  background how we become visible.
• 27:22
  And like, I think that's this, this whole aspect of the way you
• 27:26
  look, the way you feel, the way you present yourself is very
• 27:28
  important. And in your, in your job, Yeah.
• 27:31
  You can't show up with like, you know, a hole in your shoe and
• 27:34
  like your hair disheveled and all this stuff, like you know,
• 27:37
  it's true. Yeah, that's true.
• 27:39
  That's true. It creates trust and we we think
• 27:43
  in the first, but three, is it 3 seconds?
• 27:45
  I have to pull up the research, but I I think I read it
• 27:47
  somewhere that immediately we go, are you friend or foe?
• 27:50
  Immediately when we first meet somebody, we have very little
• 27:53
  time to show someone that hey, we're trustworthy.
• 27:57
  You know, we have and we're making these split judgments
• 27:59
  right away. So yeah, I would.
• 28:01
  Agree according to our colleague method does Allah has several
• 28:05
  opportunities to do that because he has wardrobe changes
• 28:08
  throughout the day, so. Depends on you gotta you gotta
• 28:17
  dress depending on the situation.
• 28:19
  There you go. Yeah.
• 28:20
  You gotta look at. You gotta look the part I.
• 28:22
  Really into that, yeah. If you show up to a union
• 28:24
  meeting with like a suit and tie, it's like, oh, you look a
• 28:27
  little bit more like an. You look like the boss, and
• 28:29
  maybe that's not a good thing. Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:32
  Now, can you talk a bit about the interpretations or the
• 28:35
  interpreter school? Yeah, yeah.
• 28:38
  So we're we're starting to do just a whole series, not only
• 28:41
  we're going to try to focus on emotional intelligence in
• 28:45
  interpreting, but teaching the skills, right.
• 28:47
  So it's one thing to like talk about it.
• 28:48
  I know I talk about it a lot and I post a lot about it, and it's
• 28:51
  one thing to talk about it, but it's another thing to put it in
• 28:54
  practice. So that's really what I'm trying
• 28:56
  to do. I'm trying to make sure that
• 28:58
  everything right now, a lot of it's in sign language, but I'm
• 29:02
  going to work on putting everything in different
• 29:04
  languages as well. So that's definitely a goal,
• 29:06
  just to make it accessible and having a space where everyone
• 29:09
  could start thinking about what this means to not only the
• 29:12
  interpreting work, but having places where we could practice
• 29:14
  it. You know, what does it look like
• 29:16
  when we can practice, you know, recognizing emotions or what,
• 29:19
  how can we name them? How can we understand them?
• 29:22
  And really diving deep into this.
• 29:24
  I think that's what's going to set us apart moving forward,
• 29:26
  especially with AI and everything going out there.
• 29:29
  That's what's going to set us apart.
• 29:30
  If you could start honing these skills in.
• 29:32
  But there seems to be two aspects from it.
• 29:35
  There seems to be one way where we're talking about our own
• 29:39
  emotions and how we regulate ourselves during an
• 29:43
  interpretation. And there's also the the
• 29:47
  transfer of emotion between the individual and ourselves when
• 29:53
  communicating the message. And they, they seem to be quite
• 29:57
  different, don't you think? Yeah, I do.
• 30:00
  I do. But but one influences the
• 30:03
  other. So we'd have to have good
• 30:04
  emotional regulation and capacity to recognize emotions
• 30:08
  not only within ourselves, but within within others to be able
• 30:12
  to do that job well. How do you do that all this and
• 30:15
  interpreter school like the the the courses that you're giving,
• 30:18
  is it all online or is it in person or combination?
• 30:22
  Yeah, they're all online. And right now I'm just looking
• 30:24
  at different tools that can be created so we can start making
• 30:28
  sure that there could be something that people do on
• 30:31
  their own time. So we're kind of exploring that
• 30:33
  and seeing if there's ways that we can really make this be a
• 30:37
  little bit more widespread because it's something that
• 30:39
  especially, you know, with everyone on their cell phones
• 30:42
  now and nobody's really seeing each other anymore.
• 30:44
  This is something that's becoming even more of not a
• 30:48
  problem, but something that we can learn or relearn.
• 30:51
  It's not really that we don't know what our emotions are.
• 30:53
  They've always been there. It's not, it's there, but we
• 30:57
  don't know. We can't describe it.
• 30:59
  It's like breathing air, you know, you breathe it all the
• 31:01
  time. It's not something that you even
• 31:03
  think about. So bringing it to the forefront
• 31:05
  is. Good.
• 31:05
  And I yeah, I also like I was talking to a colleague of mine.
• 31:09
  I remember the days when like we used to travel all the time and
• 31:12
  we were on the road 6 months of the year.
• 31:14
  If not, we were like in our hometown interpreting still like
• 31:17
  we were just like nonstop and but at least we had that like
• 31:20
  that net of colleagues that we always bumped into it.
• 31:23
  We're able to keep in touch and help each other out.
• 31:25
  I find that we're a lot more disconnected now, like this next
• 31:28
  generation of interpreters. I feel it's going to be a lot
• 31:30
  more disconnected because of everything being online, like so
• 31:33
  many online meetings and Zoom and all this other stuff. 100
• 31:38
  percent, 100%. And I know for the field of sign
• 31:41
  language, interpreting the cutting programs left and right,
• 31:44
  there's a shortage and unbelievable shortage.
• 31:47
  And so it's how do you keep up with the skills and making sure
• 31:50
  everyone feels connected and invested in at the same time?
• 31:53
  Yeah, it's so much going on right now.
• 31:55
  There's been cuts lately at the Canadian Hearing Society here in
• 31:58
  Canada as well, yeah. Yeah.
• 32:01
  So how, how do we keep the ones that we have or the
• 32:03
  interpreters, the strong and engaged and connected?
• 32:06
  It's a big part of feeling. If I feel connected or if I feel
• 32:09
  burnt out, if I'm not able to process the emotions.
• 32:11
  There's so many things that go into the longevity of an
• 32:14
  interpreter and their ability to be motivated, which is a big
• 32:17
  part of emotional intelligence, keeping up their skills.
• 32:21
  And I feel like also like the our for ourselves, like our as
• 32:23
  conference interpreters. It's I to me it feels like a
• 32:26
  profession, but I feel like for sign language interpreters, it's
• 32:29
  more of a vocation. Like you guys are really like,
• 32:32
  it's from the heart. Like when you guys are
• 32:34
  interpreting like you're doing? Something depends on who you
• 32:36
  talk to. Really.
• 32:38
  OK, Yeah, for some people it's just a job.
• 32:40
  Like this is just something that came up in my mind, I guess.
• 32:44
  I don't know. I fabricated it a long time ago.
• 32:46
  Just it's romanticize image. That's right, my emotional
• 32:50
  intelligence was not quite as intelligent.
• 32:54
  Yeah. But, but maybe if I, if I may
• 32:57
  put a hypothesis here on the table.
• 32:59
  For instance, for a lot of interpreters and myself
• 33:04
  included, we were raised in an environment where several
• 33:09
  languages were spoken. And for instance, when I went,
• 33:15
  when I was a child, let's say I was, let's say, helping my mom
• 33:19
  because my mom spoke Spanish and in Quebec is French.
• 33:22
  And then something, if she didn't understand it, something,
• 33:24
  then it would help her out. For instance, when I was a
• 33:26
  child. And, but so in a way, then I
• 33:31
  realized that some point in my life I was like, well, I've
• 33:33
  always been an interpreter. I'm not a trained interpreter,
• 33:36
  but I grew up in that environment where I was
• 33:38
  multilingual. And when it comes to a sign
• 33:41
  language, well, I hear sometimes this story of, well, my parents
• 33:45
  or my brother or someone in my, in my relative who needed help.
• 33:50
  And that's how I got interested into it.
• 33:52
  So is is that something we also find in your field?
• 33:58
  Profession, you know, I think it's it both ways I mean you
• 34:01
  just. Have the the the trigger to get
• 34:03
  into it. And people will join for so many
• 34:05
  different reasons. Yeah, probably same spoken
• 34:09
  language interpreting as well. People join for so many
• 34:12
  different reasons. And there's so many interpreting
• 34:15
  education programs across the United States.
• 34:17
  So I think there are, there's a, there's a, a wide attraction for
• 34:21
  people who just want to get into the field as a profession.
• 34:25
  And then I do think there's people who grow up, you know,
• 34:28
  being multilingual and have, you know, these experiences where
• 34:31
  they want to. That's what they've been doing
• 34:33
  and they want to keep doing it, you know, So, yeah.
• 34:35
  So, so the I know that like the spoken language interpretation
• 34:39
  is like they're reevaluating everything after all of the
• 34:42
  stuff that that the current president is doing and what not.
• 34:46
  But like, are they like, because if they're making English the
• 34:49
  official language, does that include American Sign Language
• 34:51
  or? No.
• 34:53
  American Sign Language. Yeah.
• 34:56
  But there, I mean there's, there's sign language is all you
• 34:58
  know, there's different sign. Languages.
• 35:00
  Yeah, yeah, there's Quebec QSL. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:03
  No, it's not. It's not English.
• 35:04
  It's a different language. OK.
• 35:06
  Yeah, yeah. Wow.
• 35:08
  Is it like this, but just like when we talk about spoken
• 35:12
  language, where there's a there's a subject, there's a
• 35:16
  verb, there's an object, and we can just switch the order
• 35:19
  depending on which language is that?
• 35:21
  Is that the same idea like the Quebec Sign Language versus,
• 35:23
  let's say, the American Sign Language?
• 35:25
  It's a different sign language, but the basic structure,
• 35:28
  fundamental fundamental structure, or are we talking
• 35:31
  about it's totally different? Different.
• 35:33
  Yeah. It's got its own grammatical
• 35:35
  structure. It's a completely different
• 35:37
  language. It's topic comment is completely
• 35:41
  different. Michelle, I know nothing about
• 35:44
  it. How would you?
• 35:45
  How would? You explain that like, in a
• 35:47
  nutshell, how can you? How can you help me imagine what
• 35:50
  you're just saying right now? Because it's you have to.
• 35:53
  Learn. No, no, no, no, no.
• 35:55
  But what I'm saying is, I don't know.
• 35:57
  Imagine something like in a. Nutshell it, yeah.
• 36:01
  So it uses space. That would be something there's,
• 36:03
  there's different grammatical structures.
• 36:06
  So if you look at the English to Spanish or if you're looking at
• 36:09
  any other language, you know, there's a different grammatical
• 36:11
  structures. It's it's signed, it's not
• 36:13
  spoken. So that's completely different.
• 36:17
  There's not, there may be lexical borrowing, but you could
• 36:20
  see that in other languages as well.
• 36:23
  So it's, yeah, it's not. It's actually more closely
• 36:26
  related to Ellis Q, which is French Sign Language then it is
• 36:31
  even to to English. Oh wow.
• 36:35
  So that's the root. So if you look at and I could be
• 36:37
  wrong, I'm not a linguist. So if I'm saying anything wrong
• 36:40
  but from what I understand and I.
• 36:42
  Fact checkers need to. Research it.
• 36:43
  Yeah. Fact technique.
• 36:46
  Writing a comment below. Yeah, please.
• 36:49
  And yeah, no cause. And but I'm thinking now about
• 36:52
  the whole emotional intelligence and how taxing that could be for
• 36:54
  you guys because you actually people have to see you.
• 36:57
  Whereas like us, we're like a voice like like say on, on, on
• 37:01
  on TV, like where you know, we're, we're a voice in the
• 37:04
  background or like, you know, but you guys are like like there
• 37:08
  like you're like this. Sometimes they just like the
• 37:10
  split screen there. Because it feels like a
• 37:12
  performance sometimes. Yeah, yeah.
• 37:14
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you do, right?
• 37:15
  You do use your whole body, right?
• 37:17
  It's part of so you definitely this idea of embodiment, I think
• 37:21
  is very different when you communicate.
• 37:23
  I know for me, my experience is they always say you have two
• 37:25
  souls, right when different languages and so you your
• 37:28
  personality shifts in different languages.
• 37:30
  And I definitely can see it when I'm signing versus speaking.
• 37:35
  For Unable you Alan, do you feel different when you're in the
• 37:37
  booth then when you're? Like I, um, I was one of one
• 37:42
  piece of advice that I, that I heard a long time ago is that we
• 37:46
  need to have our own booth character.
• 37:50
  And, and then I started watching all kinds of videos of speakers
• 37:54
  that I like. And I was trying to think how
• 37:56
  can I emulate certain aspects that I like in order to create
• 38:01
  my own character. So if you meet me in person or
• 38:07
  if I'm in the booth, then I, I, I, I change my tone, I speak
• 38:12
  differently, I use different words, my everything changes.
• 38:16
  It's it's like being basically, it's like being an actor.
• 38:20
  I've created the persona in the booth that is not me.
• 38:25
  It's Alan in the booth, and the Allen in the booth is a
• 38:28
  different person. I've met both of them and
• 38:30
  they're both very nice, so yeah. One of them gets paid and the
• 38:35
  other one drinks. So that's that's right, spends
• 38:37
  the other ones money. Exactly.
• 38:41
  I would say, though, I would say, I would, I, I think even
• 38:44
  spoken language, right? So we, we interpret from sign
• 38:47
  language to English, right? And so it would be the same, I
• 38:51
  would say that you still are bringing the same kind of not
• 38:54
  only emotional regulation, emotional awareness, like the
• 38:57
  self, this presence, this idea of how do I ground, how can I
• 39:01
  recognize the emotions that are going on with the need?
• 39:03
  But then also even in voice, there's so much that you could
• 39:06
  play with where it could be monotone.
• 39:08
  It could be, you know, this is the personality of the other
• 39:12
  person that I'm trying to represent.
• 39:13
  Are they mad? Are they, is it a diplomatic?
• 39:16
  You're interpreting A diplomatic setting where there's very
• 39:19
  nuanced, you know, heavy nuances that you have to capture.
• 39:23
  And there's a lot that goes into it.
• 39:24
  Yeah, no, for definitely. And I'm just wondering like in
• 39:28
  terms of like literature for those who like to read like, do
• 39:30
  you, I didn't say in your in your biography whether you have
• 39:36
  published anything but or if not, then would you recommend
• 39:39
  some some literature to our avid reading fanatics?
• 39:45
  Yeah, So Lisa Feldman is a great, great book.
• 39:50
  It's she has, I think it's 7 1/2.
• 39:54
  I have to remember it 7 1/2 something of the brain.
• 39:58
  So I'll get that in the notes how motions are made.
• 40:02
  It's another really good one. And that's.
• 40:05
  The same author. Lisa Feldman Barrett, OK.
• 40:08
  So how motions are made and the I got it right here, the seven
• 40:13
  and a half lessons about the brain.
• 40:15
  That's it. Yep, by the same author.
• 40:17
  But I wanted eight lessons about the brain.
• 40:19
  I guess that'll be the next book, right?
• 40:21
  Yeah, it started out one and it just kept on going up.
• 40:25
  And how emotions are made. The Secret Life of the Brain.
• 40:31
  And actually working on a book now.
• 40:33
  So with a another deaf co-author, I'm not gonna say too
• 40:36
  much about it, but but but I can say is it's exploring emotional
• 40:42
  intelligence with so the connection between people from
• 40:47
  different cultures and maybe the people that we interpret with.
• 40:51
  So what does that look? Like, and what you're saying is
• 40:53
  you're going to do a soft launch unfounded interpretation of this
• 40:56
  book or? Look at a podcast to to to
• 41:00
  present your book. Yeah, yes, well, we'll publish
• 41:03
  it everywhere. We'll make sure it does.
• 41:05
  Well, it'll be on the new. York Time.
• 41:06
  Millions of viewers, obviously. Absolutely.
• 41:11
  You know what I was thinking earlier.
• 41:13
  I was talking about brain number one and brain #2 the now I
• 41:16
  remember it's thinking fast and slow I think it's called.
• 41:19
  That's the book I was thinking, yeah.
• 41:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one with the.
• 41:23
  It's a famous book, but yeah, I read about 15 years ago or
• 41:26
  something like that. Cool.
• 41:29
  So the fighter flight so well, Sarah, you know what it's been,
• 41:35
  it's been lovely to greet you here at our podcast.
• 41:39
  Yeah, unfortunately we've only hit the tip of the iceberg, I
• 41:42
  feel, and that there's a lot more, but that's what these
• 41:44
  podcasts are about, is for people to go out on their own
• 41:46
  and explore the world of this time emotional intelligence, so.
• 41:52
  Thank you for having me. It was an honor.
• 41:54
  Thank you so much. Yeah, alright, so everyone
• 41:57
  please like share, subscribe, comment.
• 41:59
  You know it, I know it. So we want to make sure that
• 42:03
  emotional intelligence, the emotional intelligence message
• 42:06
  is spread all over the interpreting community.
• 42:11
  It's very important to be connected to our own emotions so
• 42:15
  we can end up also doing much better performance, I guess.
• 42:20
  So thank you very much. And we'll see each other next
• 42:23
  time for another episode of Fun and Interpretation podcast.
• 42:27
  Take care everyone.