Yes, You Can Do It!
Nadine Touzet
Motivation, Mindset and Wellness
Last month, as I was getting ready to compose my post for the Passion Project Blog, I was thrown off-course and had to feverishly prepare for a last-minute assignment. I was hired to interpret for a famous US citizen who was passing through France on his last-but-one stop of a much-publicized world tour.
My brother was instructed to make sure my mother was in front of her TV set for the primetime news bulletin, on the unlikely but always possible assumption that they would catch a tenth-of-a-second glimpse of their Dear Daughter and Sister. My elder daughter’s in-laws in Belgium watched the news once, then switched to another channel and taped the news for me to keep, also taking a photo of the TV screen! They were lucky, and my mom got to watch the same news update on a news channel, over and over, every 15 minutes for the next 24 hours (I don’t believe she was really awake all that time). She called me the next day, telling me about a vase of beautiful flowers on a table. I had to admit that I didn’t notice the flowers.
So my family and friends were suitably impressed, but the other side of the coin is far less glamorous, because this was, after all, ‘business’ almost ‘as usual’.
Whatever the position of power, or powerlessness, of your client, it is essential for the professional to remain… professional, and that includes first and foremost keeping a cool head. I have translated for a number of Ministers and high-ranking officials, so I am used to the slight shock you experience when you see the ‘real person’, as if they had just stepped out of your TV screen. There is no need to fight that feeling but on a mission, you are not supposed to gawk and ask for autographs, as you are working for, and that really means, with these people. I once helped interview a world tennis champion who was #1 at the time. I came away from the interview feeling a little fuzzy, he was so ‘ordinary’ and genuinely accessible. So keeping a cool head is essential. There’s a job to be done!
And indeed, being good at your job - Sonia Simone, one of my favorite bloggers, calls it: ‘being insanely good’- has wide-ranging implications. Experience helps of course, since it frees you from excessive inhibition. But being good also means preparing like crazy, and never did I congratulate myself more on keeping up to date with the 2008 Election (I don’t think I’d ever been so interested in previous US elections, apart from 2000, when I was living in the US), and world news at large. I spent the whole of two and a half days reading, checking every bit of news, speech, remarks, analyses, reports, that I could lay my hands on. I watched the Berlin speech streamed live on my PC, and then went through the transcript. You can’t leave anything to chance, and you have to do seemingly trivial things like checking the pronunciation of some foreign heads of state’s names, both in French and in English.
Does this require superhuman qualities? Not that I know of. Provided that you approach your job with motivation, get serious training, offer the best possible performance, make the right contacts over your professional life, and keep the right attitude, you can achieve similar high points in your own job.
So how did you feel when you hit what felt like a high point in your career? What kind of lessons did you draw from that experience? Did it feel good? Don’t hesitate to comment below, I’ll be interested to hear about your experiences.
Nadine Touzet @ July 24, 2008
Nadine Touzet