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Friday, September 30, 2022

Call the Interpreter Tales

Now offering a new series on where life as a French-speaker and an interpreter might take you. One of my friends joked it could be named "Call the Interpreter" as one of my beloved t.v. series is entitled, just with "Midwife" instead. Only with less blood and gore and screaming, except during labor and childbirth, of which there was quite a lot for the first nine years.

And truthfully, it all began spontaneously. I was a former translator and interpreter, but currently a mom at home. The first phone call was to request I report for duty... at the western wall of the in-patient psych ward one wintry day. "Yes," came out of my mouth, it does sometimes. I have kept much of it tucked away as this used to be a homeschooling blog. But the hard, real, hilarious at times, truth of being a semi-working mom and wife and homeschooling five children will be interwoven in the fabric of these stories.


The plan

Share the juiciest, most exciting, lively, and tender moments of this 20-some-year adventure in every type of interpreting encounter you might imagine, but entirely fictionalized. No real stories will be shared, would-and-might-have-beens only.


        My short-list 

of people, places, memories and scars, as noted on my Ipad. Please do excuse the formatting, as I have only one hand and I'm relying on a write to text app to produce this.


People from:

France  ðŸ‡«ðŸ‡·                 Congo RDC 🇨🇬

la Belgique   🇧🇪     Congo RC 🇨🇩           la Cote d' Ivoire 🇨🇮

Benin  ðŸ‡§ðŸ‡¯             Haiti  ðŸ‡­ðŸ‡¹          Togo  ðŸ‡¹ðŸ‡¬

le Liban  ðŸ‡±ðŸ‡§                               Cameroun 🇨🇲

le Quebec 🇨🇦                 la Suisse 🇨🇭

le Maroc  ðŸ‡²ðŸ‡¦           l'Algerie 🇩🇿                     Burundi  ðŸ‡§ðŸ‡®

Rwanda  ðŸ‡·ðŸ‡¼                          Niger 🇳🇪                     le Burkina Faso 🇧🇫

le Mali 🇲🇱                                        Senegal 🇸🇳

                                The Central African Republic 🇨🇫

Gabon  ðŸ‡¬ðŸ‡¦                           Tunisia 🇹🇳                             Roumanie 🇷🇴

.

Places

les Landes                         Springfield                  Las Vegas

Iceland                   Nashville                  Muscatine 

Paris                                Cedar Rapids

San Francisco                    Racine

Waterloo           

                …and hidden FLW masterpiece gems like Cedar Rock and its boathouse

        Des Moines... my own capital (but hardly known)

        Chicago... my own city of proximity (scarcely visited)

Dublin                 Salt Lake City                     Rock Island

        London                             La Salle                          Adel  


Scars:

relatively few

- one or two from biking the Golden Gate bridge...

-psychological ones from high-winded, icy, bleak highway travel in winter


Memories made:

the best and the worst and everything in-between


Names and any other identifying factors shall be disguised beyond all recognition and stories will just be stories, based on treasures of all sorts I’ve seen and heard. Weird treasures. Beautiful treasures. Terrifying treasures.

1 comment:

  1. I love it!! This is such a great example of using the material of our lives to tell stories and open up new worlds to readers. You've had so many unique experiences, and I can't wait to read more about them.

    ReplyDelete

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