I was a French major in college. After giving up on a degree in music performance, French was my next best subject. French literature got me out of practice room isolation and into the library with the rest of my friends. It would seem I let my need to socialize dictate my major and by extension my future career.
Senior year found me scrambling to make post-graduation plans for what to do with myself in “the real world.” The most obvious paths for someone with a B.A. in French were to become a high school French teacher or to pursue further studies in French, i.e. an M.A. or a PhD in French Literature & Culture. My dream at the time was to become a translator/interpreter and go to work for an important organization like the UN. But I’d have to go through special training for that type of work, and heading directly back to school after finishing 16 consecutive years of it was unappealing at the time.
I ended up making a post-graduation 3-year plan and followed it through: one year living with friends in the Twin Cities and working a random call center job; one year living in France teaching English to high school students; and the third year entering the Master of the Arts in French program at the University of Minnesota. The intervening summers I spent teaching French in an outdoor language immersion program for teenagers. For the duration of the 3-year plan I was using my language skills, developing my teaching skills, and following along the path laid out by my choice of college major. But when I finished the first year of grad school I was no longer interested in acquiring another degree in French. I left the program to join Americorps and, as their slogan says, get things done.
My professional path has ranged wide since then, twisting and turning with no clear direction, but providing engaging and worthwhile experiences nonetheless. I left behind my focus on French language and culture as I discovered new fields that captured my interest and passion. Since abandoning my French career I’ve developed skills in natural resources fieldwork, volunteer event management, grant writing, non-profit development, international development work and HIV education, as well as canoe instruction and wilderness trip leading. Though I’ve retained my ability to speak French, the full-time foreign language speaker in me went dormant for several years. My overall language skills served me well when I served in the Peace Corps and learned the Ghanaian language Twi. But taking on a new language pushed French further into the background as familiarity with Ghanaian language and culture gradually took its place.
When I returned from Ghana I concentrated first on being gainfully employed, then on settling into the house my husband and I bought. When I realized I wouldn’t be able to continue in international development or public health work without susbstantial schooling, I settled on work that would at least pay the bills. I didn’t give any thought to reestablishing my French career path. But last summer I got a call from the St. Paul Public Schools Special Education Early Childhood Intervention program (say that three times fast!). They were in need of a French interpreter/translator and they were given my name by a friend who used to interpret for them. I gladly accepted the call and embarked on what has now been 8 months of regular interpreting work.
A family from French-speaking West Africa needed interpreting services for their regular meetings with a special ed intervention team. My job is to accompany the team – consisting of an occupational therapist, speech therapist, physical therapist, and early childhood teacher – on home visits to work with the parents and their child with a particular disability or developmental delay. The visits last an hour and take place twice a month on average – I conveniently schedule them over my office job lunch hour. I mostly do real-time interpreting where the challenge is to know how much to let one person say before translating it to the other. I’ve also had to learn some very context-specific vocabulary words for physical therapy exercises, early childhood development terms, elements of speech, etc. As a result, French has rushed back to the forefront of my mind with such regular use. On occasion I will even translate a document or two with instructions for particular exercises from English to French. And so, unexpectedly and serendipitously, I am living the long-lost dream of using my college French major for translation and interpretation.
The other serendipity - or synchronicity - in this whole affair is that the family I work with is from one of Ghana’s neighboring countries. They don’t speak Twi as their native language, but they are from an ethnic group that lives in Ghana too, so I am generally familiar with their cultural and communication customs. Because of this, I am able to convey information to the parents with cultural sensitivity, bringing a major aspect of the Peace Corps experience – learning a foreign culture – to bear directly on work I am doing back home. In this one fortuitous opportunity, my academic study of French has combined with my Peace Corps service in West Africa to form a unique set of skills and background knowledge that are perfect for this job.
Through this work, I am helping a recently arrived immigrant family respond to and cope with a discouraging diagnosis for their youngest child. And I am hopefully making their experience of the American school and health care systems that much more manageable. While I am helping them meet their communication needs, they are also helping me feel a new sense of personal and professional purpose. In the end, I'm not actually working for an internationally important organization like the UN. Translating and interpreting twice a month may be one small job, benefiting one small family, but to me it’s making a world of difference.
