Latest / Found in Interpretation Podcast / Ep. 61 - Consecutive Note-Taking and Mindfulness for Interpreters — Laura Burian & Julie Johnson

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Ep. 61 - Consecutive Note-Taking and Mindfulness for Interpreters — Laura Burian & Julie Johnson · Found in Interpretation Podcast

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To all the listeners of this podcast, this week's guest Laura
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Burien and Julie Johnson gave us a great discount code which is
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found 2026 Found 2026. This code is for note taking for
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consecutive interpretation and a mindfulness course.
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The discount code is valid through June 1st, 2026.
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So once again the discount code is found 2026.
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The link is in the description below.
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Let's begin. Hello, hello, and welcome to
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another episode of Found in Interpretation podcast, the
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podcast that talks about translation, interpretation
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technology, artificial intelligence, university
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courses, anything in between. And I'm here, Brian.
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Brian, how you doing? I'm doing great.
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You did a great summary of everything we do by friend as
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usual and we are here with Laura and Julie from the Middlebury
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Institute. How are you 2 doing today?
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Great. Thanks.
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Alright. Don't forget everyone like
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share, subscribe. I know that a lot of you watch
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but don't necessarily like each and every time.
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Press that like button. It really helps out with the
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algorithm. Alright, let's kick it.
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OK, we are here with Doctor Julie Johnson and Laura Burien,
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if I'm not mistaken. Perfect.
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Alright, so it's marked with Julie, professor at the
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Middlebury Institute of International Studies at
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Monterey, recognized for teaching excellence, integrated
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mindfulness training into her interpreter education.
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She's the creator of Mindfulness for interpreter and Open Access
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self-paced course, which will be talking about today.
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And she's also a seasoned French interpreter.
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She has contributed to interpreting books and courses,
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also with Laura. Laura is a professor of Chinese
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English translation and interpretation.
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She's the former Dean at a Graduate School of translation,
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interpretation and language education.
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She's a frequent guest speaker at conferences.
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She's the Co presenter of a Ted talk, a widely used as an
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introduction to interpretation. The link probably will be in the
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description below. And she's also an accomplished
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violinist who draws on musical analogies in her teachings.
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That's very interesting. Wow, yeah, that's quite the
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quite the mouthful. That's better than what I've
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done in my career, that's for sure.
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Anyways, thank you for both, for accepting our invitation to come
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on on founded interpretation. This is gonna be a great
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episode, but let's let's talk about the elephant in the room
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before. First and foremost, let's talk
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about the Middlebury Institute real quick.
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And maybe like this spell all of the the different rumors that
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have been circulating. So from what I understand, the
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Middlebury Institute as a whole is shutting down, not just the
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masters program and interpretation, right?
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Right. And that's the myth that we'd
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like to dispel. You know, we've heard people
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say, oh, once again we see a targeted closure of an MA in
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translation interpretation. No, that's not the case.
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The Middlebury Institute, which formerly the Monterey Institute,
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has been around since 1955 with master's degrees in all kinds of
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international Policy Studies, language related degrees and so
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on. And Middlebury took over in
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about 20 years ago and they have a new president who came in and
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looked at the financial picture of Middlebury as a whole and
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just said we're going to get rid of this branch of Middlebury.
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And so our world renowned translation and interpretation
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program is a casualty of this closure of the bigger institute,
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as are other wonderful programs. Now, does this mean that there's
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it was that was the bastion wasn't it in the United States
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for all of interpretation and translation studies?
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Is there a possibility to do a masters or another degree in
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interpretation elsewhere? We're in discussions with some
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of these schools that have programs that are similar, and
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we're hoping that we can find a partner to continue the
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wonderful education that Monterey has been offering for
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so many decades. We're not there yet, but we
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haven't lost all. Hope absolutely.
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So this is the perfect opportunity to showcase what
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you, Laura and yourself, Julie, what you have to offer.
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And I'm assuming that there's a deadline or like it's, you know,
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kind of pressing in terms of, of how quickly you should sign up
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and register to be able to to follow Laura and Julies courses.
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Thank you. Yeah, we're thrilled to be here
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to have the opportunity because we have such a pressing
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deadline. So Middlebury Institute as a
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whole is being closed down in June of 2027, which is a little
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more than a year from now. But actually these courses that
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we'll be talking about today will be closing as of June 2026
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because of a renewal of license costs that is coming up.
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So actually if people want to take these courses, they really
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need to sign up this month, in April.
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These are online courses. These are online courses,
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they're self-paced, and each of our courses takes about 10 hours
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to complete and you come out with a certificate of
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completion. So this is totally separate from
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our master's degree programs, but kind of an offshoot because
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we had so many people saying, hey, we'd really like to engage
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with the institute even if we can't do the full masters
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degree. And so I developed a course in
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note taking for consecutive interpretation and development,
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really developed a course for mindfulness, which is another
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thing that's in very high demand for this high pressure job.
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Now which one do you want to talk about first?
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Cause I think we should do it like one at a time.
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We were thinking that concrete skills of consecutive note
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taking first and then getting more into what underlies it with
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mindfulness. Awesome.
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So let's kick it on on note taking then super.
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So um, can I share my screen as? Absolutely, Absolutely.
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OK, so this is a course that is available for anybody who signs
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up to take and I'm just taking you into the portal that you
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will see if you are taking the course.
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It's a canvas hosted course on Canvas catalog.
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The overview is that we'll be looking at the principles of
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note taking and consecutive interpretation, how to practice
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each principle in isolation and then in combination, and how to
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continue to practice independently.
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And so a real overview that takes us first into pre note
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taking exercises that really look at how do our memories work
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because it's lovely to have notes, but if your note notes
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are not paired with a really good working memory, they don't
7:39
do you a lot of good. They're there to trigger your
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memory and also how to perform analysis on the text that is
7:47
coming in as you are listening as an interpreter.
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Then we get into the nitty gritty in Part 2 looking at how
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to abbreviate, how to write down symbols and all those other
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elements that go into the note taking that then get put
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together in Part 3 looking at the structure of the consec
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notes. Overall, if you have these
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symbols and abbreviations, where do you put them on the page?
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How does it relate to other pieces and components?
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And what happens when you get to the bottom of the page and
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there's no more room to write, right?
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Everybody must have their notebook and more pens and more
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paper ready or you get into bigger trouble.
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Absolutely. Now are we talking about short
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consec or long consec? Like is it?
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Are you making the difference between both when you're not
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taking whether it's like you know, snippet or like 5 minutes?
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Yeah, this course is designed for people who are maybe used to
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doing short concept where they're primarily relying on the
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memories and now they're moving into wanting to be able to do
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longer consec of 5 minutes or so.
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And and a lot of the snippets that I deal with in this course
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are probably about two minutes in length.
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But we do start off in the memory section with somebody's
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storytelling for at least three minutes, and you have to recall
9:06
the entire story without any notes whatsoever.
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Because that helps you to get into the idea of as I'm
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listening, I am really looking for what are some markers that
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must go into my memory and how do I pay attention to the
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overall structure while also paying attention to the details.
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Do you feel that consecutive is a skill that is, you know,
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quietly being forgotten for because we don't use it as much
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or because kids nowadays don't seem to know what a pencil is?
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Yes. I mean, there's a lot of talk
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about is it useful for people to learn good penmanship because
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they're just gonna be typing all the time anyway, right?
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The good thing about this note taking system is nobody has to
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be able to read the notes except for you.
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So I don't care how good or bad your penmanship is, as long as
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you can read your your own notes, it's fine.
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Actually, I think part of what's been going away is our ability
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to maintain attention. Whether you are young and you
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were raised in this environment or whether you're older like
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myself and you've become acclimated to this environment,
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we've all shortened our attention spans.
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That's true. It used to be the case a couple
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decades ago. I would say we really thought of
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and found in our students, we thought of Consec as sort of an
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underlying base skill. And then simul was something you
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did after you mastered Consec, or at least you had a baseline
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mastery of Consec because it had higher split attention needs and
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that was seen as harder. But actually the younger
10:55
generation of students, I think many of them do better in
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simultaneous interpretation than they do in consecutive
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interpretation because many of them don't struggle as much with
11:06
the split attention or they're more used to it at least.
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Whereas having sustained listening, open listening where
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you're not going off into your head and thinking that other
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things is becoming a lost skill. Absolutely, yeah.
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And I think that you're right, I find consecutive interpretation,
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you do need to keep your attention on one thing at a
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time. And it's hard to, it's easy to
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lose focus when you're doing consecutive interpretation.
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Something can happen or whatnot. Whereas in simultaneous, I feel
11:40
like you're just in it and that's the only thing that
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you're doing all the time. So I feel like that's kind of
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what a younger generation would be more into as well.
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Like I agree with you in that sense, especially with the like
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say if you're on your phone, you're only concentrating on
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your phone and nothing else. So if you're doing Simo, you're
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only concentrating on Simo and nothing else.
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So yeah, that that makes it makes sense in my head anyways.
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And do you teach note taking skills for lefties?
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Because. Yeah, Julie left.
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She can speak to that. Yeah, we're all lefties.
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Yeah, when I when I when I did, I was preparing for my
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consecutive exams along time ago.
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I guess now it's getting a long time ago.
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One of the things that I had to relearn is actually holding a
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pen. And I remember that when I first
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started, since I was not used to holding a pen, my hand hurt
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because I was holding the pen so tightly.
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Yeah, that. And I had to just basically
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relearn cursive writing and then try to make it as because even
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if we have our own symbols, at some point I didn't understand
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the symbols that don't nobody are are supposed to understand.
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Like I it was just a mess. So even for that, I needed to
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practice. So as you said, there are some
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really fundamental basic skills that we need to do consecutive.
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Absolutely, yeah. And and note taking is just part
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of it. So a lot of what we do in the
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first part of of this, the pre note taking exercises as we try
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to ground you and having a better understanding of what is
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the role of notes, right. Because if you think of, oh, I'm
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having trouble with my interpretation.
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If I could just take good notes, it would all be fixed.
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No, that's one component, right. But we really do have to think
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about what is the role of notes, Why note taking can be so
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distracting. You know, let's say that you get
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really good at working with your memory for relatively short
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segments and you've then start taking notes.
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It can really mess up what foundation you've built unless
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you slowly step by step integrated into your process,
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right? So we work on outlining the
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content, thinking about the bigger picture, visualization
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and memory. And also we talk about different
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learning styles because people really do have very differently
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wired brains. And we need to for your notes to
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accommodate for how is your brain wired.
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And so part of this course is trying to uncover that and
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discover that if you don't already have an awareness of how
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your brain responds, For instance, more strongly to
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visual information in the written form, or more strongly
14:33
to looking at the face of the speaker and reading what the
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emotions are, or more strongly to listening to the speaker and
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visualizing something in your mind as the speaker lets the
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story unfold, and so on. So you really have to figure out
14:49
what works for your brain and, and that's part of the fun of
14:53
this course, I think. And that whole process that we
14:55
all go through as we learn to do consecutive interpretation is
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figuring out what our individual brains respond to best.
15:03
I saw that in your bio that you have, if I'm not mistaken,
15:08
Chinese, Mandarin and English and you're also teach
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consecutive. Is there a link between the two?
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Because when I was doing my training and consecutive, I've
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noticed that Chinese students were using when his characters
15:20
when they were doing consec and they seemed to provide a really,
15:26
really good result compared to those of us who are just using
15:30
the alphabet. So is there a link here?
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Yeah. I mean, I think having a
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pictographic language is certainly helpful in terms of
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being able to get things down on paper and maybe a more succinct
15:43
way at times. And I, as a non-native user of
15:47
Chinese characters and able to sort of treat them in a more
15:53
perhaps manipulative way, I really take, you know, the
15:57
different radicals or sub components of the characters and
16:00
use them to symbolize a lot of meaning in ways that are
16:04
different from the characters themselves.
16:07
And I try to, you know, explain that a little bit in here, but
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that would not be helpful necessarily for somebody who
16:13
hasn't studied the Chinese characters intensively.
16:17
I think for everybody you come up with your own symbols and
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actually, Julie, if you want to bring in your Western language
16:25
combination thoughts on this, I'd be curious to hear what you.
16:29
Have to say, well on this, I'm in the I have the privilege of
16:32
having every year, every semester now, I have students in
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my French to English courses who have Chinese as their native
16:46
language. So they're actually working from
16:48
their C into their bee language. And so I have people with
16:55
Chinese in their combination in my French consecutive classes.
17:01
And so it's very rich and we get to discuss where it's like, no
17:08
fair. You have a Chinese shorthand
17:10
there. But there's also bleed over with
17:13
some of the sharing of some of those symbols.
17:15
And even I have incorporated one or two bits of Chinese
17:21
characters into my own notes just because they're so useful.
17:27
So there's this nice crossover. Cool.
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You know how so many interpreters will use that
17:32
square to represent the idea of country or nation?
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Yeah, that comes from, I believe, Chinese characters
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because that is the outline of the character for country or
17:45
nation that is used in, in Japanese and in Chinese and so
17:48
on. And I think there's, you know,
17:50
just little things like that, but coming up with symbols,
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really whatever resonates with you, you actually in courses
17:59
like this can discover that you have a rich vocabulary of
18:03
symbols at your disposal from inside your head already.
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It's just that you haven't necessarily been walked through
18:10
how to tap what's already. There.
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Now this is maybe a little bit off topic, but we'll get back to
18:16
it. But but Laura, you have a
18:20
background as a violinist. Does music play any role in in
18:26
in in interpretation and reading and note taking?
18:29
Just because music is a language, you can read it, you
18:32
can write it, you can listen to it.
18:35
So does that help at all? Not necessarily for the note
18:41
taking phase. I mean, I probably have derived
18:43
5 or 6 symbols from my musical written vocabulary that I that I
18:47
use pretty regularly in my notes, but definitely my musical
18:52
background. My musical upbringing has helped
18:54
me immensely with interpreting because I think you use so many
18:59
of the same skills when you are serving As for instance, A
19:03
musician who is sight reading music.
19:05
It's so similar to site translation.
19:09
There was a fascinating a dissertation written by a
19:14
student from University of Geneva many years ago, and I'm
19:17
so sorry I can't remember her name, but looking at the
19:19
parallels there between site reading and music and doing site
19:23
translation and it was striking how strong they are and.
19:28
We're using the same part of our brains.
19:30
Say again. We we use the same part of our
19:32
brains. Yes, I think this, this exercise
19:36
I don't believe went into the cognitive analysis, but MRI
19:40
mapping would be fascinating on that because I'm I'm sure we do
19:44
use the same parts of our brains.
19:45
Just speaking as somebody who has not done the research, it
19:48
feels like intuitively that makes sense.
19:52
Do some deep dive into finding someone who knows the
19:57
correlation between music and language, Ala for another
20:00
episode. Yeah, yeah.
20:02
And for that, you're encouraging me to finally finish my
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production on. Do you remember Laura?
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I don't even know. Remember what year?
20:11
Maybe 2015? Sixteen.
20:15
Somewhere in that vintage, we put together an event on campus
20:20
where I asked Laura if I could interview her about the
20:25
connections between interpreting and music, and we made a
20:30
different kind of event out of it.
20:32
It was a musical event in a living room setting.
20:37
Laura brought her quartet with her and we interspersed
20:42
interview with musical interludes and it was really
20:47
lovely and we dove into all sorts of fascinating aspects of
20:51
this. Wow, that sounds amazing.
20:55
It was a really fun event, yeah. Yeah, recording of that.
20:58
I do. So I will.
21:02
But I haven't looked at it for a while.
21:03
It's one of those like 95% finished projects.
21:07
And so I will share and maybe we can finish off the production of
21:11
that. Now to transition, Julie.
21:15
Yeah, you're doing something as well on mindfulness.
21:20
So can you talk a bit about your offerings course offering?
21:25
Yes. So it's very it's the same
21:28
platform that Laura's courses on is called Canvas catalog.
21:33
And as we mentioned at the top, it's completely asynchronous,
21:40
self-paced, and I'm not sharing my screen here, but we'll share
21:44
images interspersed with what I'm describing here.
21:47
It's very different, right? The look and feel and that there
21:51
are beautiful close up pictures from nature and the content is I
22:00
I guide people through first of all understanding what makes
22:09
interpreting so challenging and how it is.
22:15
There's a lot of research on this inherently stressful and
22:19
also that it is a performative skill.
22:23
And anything that is a performative skill that requires
22:29
high expertise requires what the researcher shown describes as
22:36
knowing in action, where everything comes together.
22:42
The your experience, your long, hard acquired skills, intuition,
22:52
awareness and your body. I mean, you're there.
22:56
It's a lived performative thing where people are relying on all
23:01
of that to come together in the moment because they're depending
23:06
on you and your performance. And so there is a lot that
23:14
converges to make interpreting a really challenging task.
23:19
So first of all, just understanding that and then
23:25
diving into some of the underlying aspects, attention
23:31
which I'll come back to stress and we don't, we can't make the
23:37
stress go away. So learning how to change one's
23:40
relationship to the stress and largely writ kind of equanimity
23:52
in the sense that equanimity is about accepting that things are
23:58
what they are in the moment rather than fighting them and
24:03
then being able to respond in a positive way to what is
24:12
happening. And so we all know as
24:16
interpreters, all sorts of crazy stuff goes down when we're
24:21
interpreting. The unexpected happens, things
24:24
go wrong, the technology doesn't work in you name it.
24:28
And so rather than that throwing us off our game, being able to
24:35
respond and adapt to that. And then the 4th kind of large
24:43
topic that people are guided through through this course is
24:49
our relationship to ourselves and taming the inner critic
24:54
inside. In that our own dialogue with
25:00
ourselves and our own feelings when we mess up, for example,
25:08
can be huge distractors in us being able to continue to pay
25:13
attention to what is happening. So those are some of the major
25:21
topics. And unlike some kind of webinar
25:25
where you're, you know, uh. Passively.
25:30
Listening passively, learning information.
25:33
It's very experiential with short talks laying the
25:38
foundation for these things are offered.
25:41
Little video talks and then guided meditations, guided
25:47
reflections and also readings that relate to this and
25:53
undergird with the research that's actually out there on
25:57
these topics. And so it's designed for someone
26:03
as fast or as slow as they want to do it or repeating certain
26:08
bits to have it as being kind of a little half hour retreat
26:14
whenever they choose to dive in. To begin to address some of
26:19
these things and refind or find for the first time a sense of
26:24
agency, of realizing just how much power we do have over these
26:30
things, rather than feeling the victim of whatever it is that
26:34
we're experiencing and being subjected to as we interpret.
26:41
I just feel like I went through the last five minutes of
26:45
mindfulness. Your voice is so soothing and
26:48
I'm just like, Oh my goodness, this is amazing.
26:50
Like I feel so calm. Really has that effect on
26:54
people. How do you teach about that all
26:59
of this mindfulness for pre conference and post conference
27:03
or like pre assignment and post assignment as well.
27:06
Because we do have a tendency to stress out before, especially if
27:11
it's a topic that we haven't, we're not familiar with.
27:14
And then after where you're like, I wish I'd use this term
27:17
instead, or like I hope that this was OK.
27:21
Thank you for that, brain. Because as it turns out, so yes,
27:25
the answer is yes. OK.
27:27
But then more explicitly, the journal Teenage Journal out of
27:33
Spain that La Linterna, um, which also accepts submissions,
27:40
um, in English, reached out to me and asked me if I'd write a
27:45
piece on this. And that piece is actually
27:48
called River Flow about the upstream, the during and the
27:55
downstream of interpreting and considering all of the practical
28:00
things which really, really, really matter.
28:04
As we know, this is a made-up statistics statistic, but it's
28:07
what I like to cite that I really believe that the
28:10
effectiveness of our interpreting 85% of it's in the
28:14
prep, you know, but then not ignoring what's going on inside
28:23
in that pre phase, right? And not ignoring what's
28:27
happening in our bodies and in ourselves in the during and
28:30
having ways that through practice are learned to be able
28:34
to reground ourselves and refocus and not spin out right.
28:43
And then in the downstream, especially if we've been dealing
28:47
with really acrimonious or traumatic content, there's a lot
28:56
that we can do to insulate ourselves from vicarious trauma
29:03
by processing that experience and letting it flow through.
29:09
I, I think that a lot of the, a lot of what we do sometimes
29:13
because sometimes we tend to repeat, especially if we
29:15
specialize, we tend to repeat the same topic.
29:17
So we're pretty much on automatic pilot to some of the
29:21
assignments because we're so familiar with the content
29:26
terminology and everything. But every once in a while, like
29:30
I get smacked behind the head like maybe once at once or twice
29:34
a year for a topic that I did not expect or something that in
29:39
my case, especially if there are we talking about some trauma to
29:42
children, since I have my own children, then sometimes my mind
29:46
will diverge and think of my own children rather than what I'm
29:52
hearing. And blocking that those thoughts
29:57
from creeping out in your mind to and it brings you out of
30:00
focus. I think that training on that
30:05
would be actually really useful because we're not always
30:07
prepared to deal with certain things.
30:10
And thank you for that, Alan, because that is actually a huge
30:14
part of where mindfulness and interpreting intersect, right?
30:20
So it the practice of mindfulness, a big part of it in
30:27
there are different kinds of meditation, One is focused
30:30
meditation. And so that practice essentially
30:35
is you sit yourself down or you go for a walk, whatever works
30:40
best for you, right? And just focusing on something
30:45
like your breath and the mind will wander because that's what
30:53
brains do. Are you doing?
30:55
Sorry, are you talking about in the moment or after I'm?
30:57
Sorry I missed something. Sorry.
30:59
So in mindfulness practice. So set aside interpreting in
31:04
mindfulness practice, like learning and practicing
31:07
mindfulness. One of the practices is for
31:10
example, to focus on your breath and then when the mind wanders
31:15
because it will you, the practice is noticing that your
31:24
mind has wandered or you're off ruminating on something.
31:28
And when you notice, then bringing your attention back to
31:33
your breath. So it's that noticing and the
31:37
practicing of letting go because our minds, once we're on a in a
31:43
groove, we tend to keep going with it.
31:46
And it's about that learning to let go and come back to what
31:50
you're actually meaning to be focusing on.
31:54
And so it's really like going to the gym, you know, it's working
31:59
that muscle of practicing that again and again in a gentle and
32:05
kind way with oneself. And the more you do it, the more
32:10
you're able to do it, the more you notice when your mind is
32:14
somewhere else than where it needs to be, and the more just
32:19
instantaneously you can bring it back and drop back in.
32:23
So to my mind, that's a really underlying skill for
32:28
interpreters. It reminds me of when you're
32:30
trying to sleep, but you can't fall asleep.
32:32
So you're thinking that I'm trying to fall asleep now, and
32:34
then you're saying, OK, now let me try to fall asleep.
32:37
And then you can't fall asleep because you keep thinking about
32:39
that. Exactly.
32:42
Exactly. And so it's this awareness of
32:47
it's just create. The course is about helping
32:52
interpreters just to create that space in a guided way where you
32:58
become aware of what's happening in your body, what's happening
33:04
in your mind. And you're not fighting it, but
33:07
you're just noting and being aware and then realizing that
33:12
within that awareness, you can make choices.
33:15
You have power. You have agency to be able to.
33:19
OK. And now I'm going to refocus.
33:21
OK, Now I'm going to breathe deeper.
33:23
I'm going to drop my voice so I don't sound so shrilling and
33:29
anxious. You know, there are choices that
33:33
can be made, but it begins with that awareness and that doesn't
33:36
just come. It's not like you know ten ways
33:39
to do X it. It's about practice, and little
33:44
by little it just becomes a way of being.
33:47
Yeah, I feel like it would be such a valuable course for a lot
33:51
of people who have maybe like more of a catastrophic point of
33:56
view when there's a problem that occurs.
33:58
Like Alan, I are more of the, you know, there's never a
34:01
problem, there's always a solution kind of attitude.
34:05
But like there are a lot of them were like, Oh my goodness, like
34:07
this doesn't work. Like what do I do now?
34:08
Like, and and just like everything kind of falls to the
34:11
wayside, like including the interpretation and the quality.
34:14
So yeah, this would be a great course for someone who can be
34:19
very high strung and and very stressful situations.
34:24
Go, go ahead, Laura. Sorry, I was just gonna say I
34:26
think a lot of interpreters have the perfectionist gene.
34:29
Hmm. You know, and, and so I work
34:33
with a lot of students in particular who it's either I got
34:37
it or I failed. You know, there's there's no in
34:40
between and this is, I think, a really good way to work with
34:45
that perfectionist gene and be like, you know, what things are
34:47
going to come up that are problematic, that are
34:49
challenging that you're not going to maybe the first time
34:53
through due perfectly right. But that doesn't mean that you
34:57
have no value to offer in your interpretation.
35:00
You know, there's there's a lot of things you can do to maximize
35:04
what goes right. Even when, let's say there's a
35:07
number missing, there's a term missing.
35:09
You're you're really struggling with that thing.
35:11
And I find that this mindfulness contextualizes and takes away
35:16
the catastrophic thinking. Hmm.
35:19
Well, that's exactly, that's exactly it, Laura.
35:23
And I mean catastrophic or no. I mean, you can take your most
35:26
chill interpreter and we all face those moments where we muff
35:32
it or something goes wrong, or we realize that there's other
35:39
prep that we needed to do that we didn't right, or we wish we
35:43
had better skills. In one way or another, it
35:46
happens to all of us. And so it's about this part of
35:51
letting go of that perfectionism is so that we can do the task.
35:58
It's about realizing that if you're in the middle of an
36:06
interpretation, you can't change anything.
36:13
You can't change anything. You can't change the state you
36:17
happen to be in. You can't change the skills you
36:21
have at that moment. You can't change what the
36:24
speakers are doing or what's going on and what it is that you
36:28
are interpreting. It is what it is, right?
36:33
And so then it's this accepting, like, I may not be perfect and I
36:41
may wish things were different in certain ways, but here we are
36:48
and I'm who they have, and these people are depending on me.
36:55
And so I'll accept that I'm just going to do what I can and I'm
37:02
going to give the best that I can because these people need
37:07
me. And so you bring who you are in
37:11
that moment, but it's a lot of this letting go and the focus
37:18
not being on our own performance and oh, what are people going to
37:21
think of me and all of that. But when we open up in this way
37:26
and we're focused on what the people were serving need, what
37:30
that actually does is it opens up all of our inner resources to
37:36
be able to meet the moment the best.
37:39
Whereas as soon as we start to worry and feel self-conscious,
37:43
that constricts and we actually reduce our ability to meet the
37:50
challenge of the moment. But there are certain variables
37:55
that we can control while we're interpreting because you simply
38:00
because in a way you said that we just have to accept the
38:05
situation and there are things that you cannot change.
38:07
But for instance, sometimes I'm interpreting and suddenly I'm
38:11
like, oh, I should be more assertive in my voice and the
38:14
OR, oh, do more salami or, or, or.
38:18
There are some cues that come perhaps with experience that
38:23
it's like when you're driving and suddenly it's pretty icy
38:26
here where we are in Canada. Sorry for those who don't have
38:31
any winters. But to the analogy, the analogy
38:33
for me would be, oh, you're on the highway.
38:35
It's sliding a little bit, but then, you know, you shouldn't
38:38
push the brakes too hard. You need to accelerate, you need
38:41
to hold the steering wheel. And suddenly you're straight
38:44
ahead and you're not even thinking about that ice patch
38:46
that you had before. And it's a bit of the same thing
38:49
for me when I'm interpreting this awareness.
38:54
Then I fall back on my experience and the things that
38:58
I've learned to keep the pace and not worry about anything
39:04
else. Absolutely.
39:05
And that's so it's there. There, you're holding both
39:09
things right, The parameters of the situation in which you find
39:14
yourself with the skills that you have at that moment or not
39:18
right, and what is happening in the room, That is what it is.
39:25
And yet with this awareness, there's so much choice and
39:29
there's so much possibility and we have so much power to
39:33
actually influence our own performance and our own
39:36
experience of being in the midst of that task, just like you
39:43
described with the driving right.
39:46
And that is the mindfulness. Mindfulness is awareness and not
39:52
judging so much, but this realizing things are what they
40:01
are and also allowing our intuition and our reflexes.
40:06
To be their force and again, it's kind of that letting go of
40:11
the grip of the reins a little bit.
40:13
So all of that can kick in. Uh, there's the researcher Abel
40:20
Mikasa who was one of the Co editors of the most recent
40:27
Rutledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting and she has a great
40:31
article on receptivity where they actually did an
40:34
experimental study. Was it experimental?
40:37
No. It might have been interviews of
40:41
asking seasoned interpreters about their experience and it
40:46
becoming clear that solutions occur spontaneously with the
40:54
combination of the cognitive, cognitive knowing and the
40:58
intuition. It's both together, but.
41:02
It's not knowing and the intuition.
41:04
Can you can you give us examples of which of?
41:07
Right about here. So let's say that you're doing
41:14
some finance conference or something and the cognitive is
41:21
you need to know the financial concepts and the terminology,
41:25
right? But there might be a rise, a
41:28
moment where you don't have the terminology or you're not sure
41:32
about the concept. And so there you're easing off
41:40
into a softer a perspective and allowing Intuition 2 to enter
41:50
in, to have this sense of understanding the point that the
41:57
person is trying to make and conveying that even if you don't
42:02
have really all of the nuts and bolts that you would like in
42:05
that moment. Ability to to be able to where
42:08
is this guy going? I think I know so.
42:10
Exactly. Tuition.
42:11
Yeah, exactly. So I can use my skills, the
42:14
cognitive, to be able to convey that message.
42:16
Yeah, yeah. His peripheral vision, you know,
42:21
when we are relaxed, when we are fully ourselves, our peripheral
42:27
vision is pretty good. When we're in a panic mode, it
42:31
was like it turns into tunnel vision.
42:33
You really can't see that much. And I feel like our brains,
42:36
while we're interpreting, can do the same thing.
42:38
If we're in a panicky state of mind, then we are going to have
42:44
that tunnel vision and not hear the bigger picture that the
42:48
speaker, the context in which they're they're speaking and so
42:52
on, but not. Able not only does not only can
42:57
the brain do that, the brain does do that.
43:00
And it's a matter of Physiology, which which I dive into in the
43:04
course as well. You know, through our vagus
43:06
nerve and the way that our gut is connected through the vagus
43:11
nerve to all of our organs, our lungs, our heart rate, and you
43:15
know, our brain and our describe.
43:18
What happens to me when I go to this?
43:23
But it it's, it's not our fault. It's not our fault that when we
43:29
get nervous, we, the mind goes blank, we get fuzzy headed, we
43:35
forget. That's physiological, right?
43:40
And. So learning how do we not fight,
43:42
I mean fighting another emotion. So I will focus somewhere.
43:45
Else don't it's you have to take weird.
43:49
It's work with in the same way that because all of our all of
43:54
this is interconnected by purposely taking some slow
44:00
breaths. For instance, taking slow deep
44:05
breaths slows the heart rate. It turns off the spigot of
44:10
cortisol, right? It, it, it winds down all of
44:15
those stress hormones and, um, that begins to open up the brain
44:23
when we get stressed, the brain constricts because we're in
44:27
flight mode and all the blood goes to our muscles instead,
44:33
right when we feel threatened. And so it's all connected.
44:37
But because all of of all of this, we can take advantage of
44:40
it as well and on purpose. Take some deep breaths, feel our
44:47
body, feel our feet on the floor, drop our voice so it's
44:52
more lower and more resonant, and these things in an of
44:56
themselves. Cue our nervous system that
45:01
we're OK, we're not gonna die, and when that it's OK starts
45:09
queuing to the nervous system, the nervous system can begin to
45:13
calm down. I, I feel like your course is
45:16
kind of all-encompassing for everything that we've seen in
45:20
academics for interpretation. I mean, you can apply that to
45:24
basically any aspect of it, not including the interpretation
45:29
itself, but also like the, the whole financial financial part
45:33
and how to run your own business and how to not be anxious
45:36
because your, your calendar isn't full yet.
45:38
And like the other aspect, like the consecutive note taking,
45:42
like how like you're taking all these notes really quickly and
45:44
you gotta remember all this and they become so stressful or like
45:48
simultaneous interpretation and something goes wrong.
45:51
Like the like you can't listen to, you can't hear the speaker
45:53
anymore because the microphone doesn't work.
45:55
And like, I feel like your, your course kind of envelops all of
45:59
these different scenarios that could potentially happen in real
46:01
life. And and and packages it in a way
46:06
that like to make the interpreter feel like it's not
46:10
their fault every time, like their or and not every time, but
46:13
like it's not their fault that there's there is a solution and
46:16
that that these are the things that you should do in order to
46:19
be able to confront each situation.
46:22
Yeah, well, you're right, Brian. That's because it's not just
46:26
interpreting, it's life was going to say that.
46:29
And in many ways this course, yes, mindfulness for
46:32
interpreters, but that's just one door in.
46:35
And the most important thing is in our lives in general, in our
46:39
day-to-day life, in all of the stressors that we're
46:42
encountering in our relationships, you know, it's
46:48
all connected. And it's just that it's also
46:52
particularly helpful. Now we.
46:55
Were interpreting. Absolutely.
46:58
Now we got, we got a synopsis of of both courses that are being
47:02
offered now. How do you get to take them?
47:07
So I assume you will provide links on your website.
47:10
Yeah, there'll be a links on the description of YouTube, Spotify,
47:14
where we're where we're at. The courses are available for
47:20
anybody to sign up right away and they take mine.
47:26
Mine takes about 10 hours to complete or so.
47:29
Julie's up the same for your. Course.
47:30
Well, you know, they say to put a number on it, so we said seven
47:34
or eight or something, but as many hours as one wants to.
47:37
It depends on how you want to work with the material.
47:41
The technical aspects of this course, is it you said that it
47:45
was being licensed on, is it the one that's being licensed until
47:48
June this year? Correct.
47:50
So actually we really would encourage folks to sign up this
47:54
month in April because the course will be available until
47:59
June 30th and then it's being taken offline.
48:01
So, and you said it's at our own pace, but this time it has a
48:06
deadline. So for instance, if my pace is
48:08
really, really slow and I go until July, I won't be able to
48:11
continue, so I have to complete it until my birthday on June the
48:15
30th. There you go.
48:17
Yes. So Elaine's birthday is the
48:19
deadline? Yeah.
48:21
The other website too. There's a number of continuing
48:25
education credits that are available to folks taking these
48:28
courses. So for instance, my course has
48:30
certification Commission for Healthcare interpreters,
48:33
International Medical Interpreters Association, ATA,
48:37
CU credits, independent study form can be used for that.
48:41
So there's there's a number of certifications that you can get
48:46
for taking this course. A certificate of completion will
48:50
be issued to you. If you just complete the course
48:54
and then write to us, we'll send you the PDF of your certificate
48:58
of completion. And the same goes for the
49:00
mindfulness as well. The Judicial Council of
49:03
California has approved it for continuing education for court
49:07
interpreters. And I'll need to check with our
49:10
folks if they've obtained any other certifications.
49:16
Are you planning to offer something similar?
49:20
Normally they may be some copyright issues, but if we take
49:22
a look at beyond June 30th, yeah, right now, it's so
49:25
interesting. I mean, I just want to sign up
49:28
in all of them. Thank you.
49:30
I appreciate that. I really, I have found that this
49:33
does feel a bit of a niche. There's a lot of courses out.
49:36
There's a lot there's a lot of great free materials out there
49:39
on note taking mindfulness, not so much As for specifically
49:43
mindfulness about interpretation, but I I think
49:48
that this this course, my course has filled a niche.
49:51
I've so far 600 something people have taken it and I've gotten a
49:55
lot of really good feedback from them.
49:58
I have a former student teaching colleague who teaches at Glendon
50:04
who had said that once he looked at my course, he said, you know
50:08
what, if somebody wants to study note taking with me, I asked
50:12
them to take your horse first because then I know we have that
50:15
similar baseline and we can go from there in ways that are much
50:19
more constructive than starting from scratch.
50:22
So I think there's a really niche need for it, and we have
50:28
been in discussions with others about finding a home for these
50:33
courses after Middlebury closes them.
50:37
But the IP issues have to be resolved first.
50:40
You know, do we have to completely redo and repackage or
50:44
are there materials we can take directly from this course?
50:47
And that remains to be seen, but we're working on a new home.
50:50
Now you guys are offering two courses.
50:53
How many are there? Is there a total more people who
50:56
are offering just a 2? For translation interpretation.
51:00
Yeah, I see. OK, OK, so this is it guys.
51:05
You got till June 30th to to learn from Laura and Julie.
51:09
And I mean I wanna sign up for both as well so.
51:14
You've convinced wonderful for me is a number of different
51:21
entities, courts and also the Interpreters Association Spain.
51:26
I've been giving various in person and online sessions and
51:35
all day retreats and things for different kinds of groups of
51:39
interpreters on exactly this. So it's not the online
51:43
asynchronous self-paced course, but in, you know, workshops.
51:49
I imagine I'm Canadian, so I imagine in a cottage in the
51:53
forest we're. Watching the bears, you forget
51:56
about them. There you go.
51:58
Yeah. Julie and I love teaching these
52:02
short workshops and so yes, if you want it, we'll set set it
52:06
up. We'll be there.
52:07
What we'll do Sugar Shack in Quebec and then?
52:09
Yeah, there you go. I might be a bit noisy, alright,
52:13
So thank you so much for participating and coming on to
52:18
the podcast. We're teaching us about all
52:20
about this and I think that we've barely scratched the
52:22
surface, but everyone, if you're interested, the links will be in
52:27
the description below. I will try to publish as soon as
52:30
possible. So this way people will have
52:32
enough time not only to sign up, but to complete the courses.
52:35
And whenever you have when, whenever there's a follow up or
52:42
there are new platform or new home for your courses, please
52:46
come back onto the podcast. We can even do a quick episode
52:49
and we'll be able to give everyone an update because since
52:54
it's niche, we have to make sure that the few of us who are
52:58
interpreters actually learn all about it.
53:01
I think it's pretty important. Brian, last word.
53:05
Yes, no, Laura, Julie, thank you for teaching us about teaching.
53:10
It's been great. And thank you again, they
53:12
accepted our invitation. And yeah, we look forward to
53:16
seeing where you land and how things go.
53:18
And we wish you the best of luck with everything.
53:21
Thank you so much for having. Thank you very much.
53:23
Alright everyone again like share, subscribe, comment and
53:28
yeah, this helps with as I said in the beginning, with the
53:31
algorithm, we won everyone to know about fun and
53:34
interpretation, especially people who needed the most.
53:38
And don't forget to remain mindful in all of the all that
53:43
you do, alright? Alright.
53:46
Yeah, take care. See you next time.
53:48
Take care, bye bye.