Yesterday I read a nice article (in German) in the German newspaper “Trierer Volksfreund”. This article explains in an easy-to-grasp fashion what it is that interpreters do. I was intrigued by the last paragraph which describes that in venues whithout permanently installed interpreting booths interpreters sit behind plastic walls. As it says in the article, these “translating booths” look like a “cardboard box”.
Wow, that hurts! That was my first reaction. Then it dawned on me that what the article refers to as “cardboard box” is the interpreting booth “Audipack”, for many of us the standard workplace. In the eyes of a child the booth probably looks like a box indeed…