The waiting

I've always felt that one of the main perks of being a well-paid, highly-skilled gun for hire is that you get to set your own hours.

As it turns out, much like the gun-slinger, interpreters spend vast quantities of time waiting anxiously - for the next client to call, the next institutional accreditation dates, the results to be announced, the speaker you're interpreting to start speaking, your language combination becomes needed at a meeting, or, worst of all, for your pay.

Each of these is an invitation to while away minutes, hours and days worrying, gnawing at your soul.  Some of these factors lessen over time, some you get used to, and some you learn to manage better or avoid entirely.

In my - admittedly so far limited - experience, it's nearly impossible to do without.


For starters,  being on the Paris marked for roughly a year now (really more like 4 months followed by a 6 month hiatus followed by 1 more month), there is a LOT of waiting around.  Of course, my friends and peers with more experience tell me there are good years and bad.  But when you're a beginner, expect to have a rough start.  To be honest, I shouldn't complain.  I was lucky in getting accredited nearly immediately following my final school exams.  This allowed me to work for the EC (and once the EP) relatively intensively through my first autumn as a pro.  This was a boon as the private market offers - despite much vaunting of my combination as absolutely splendid - proved to be sluggish at best.

While I was happily working, many of my friends and classmates were calling, posting and frenetically emailing all sorts of applications for accreditation tests, often with minimal success.  As accreditation tests roll around at best once a year, less for the more exotic booths, this meant grim prospects in the short term.

I also had the thoroughly entertaining (hum hum) opportunity to work for television.  Now the boob tube, as it happens, has a rythm unto itself.  In paris, interpreters are generally hired for 4-hour time slots.  During this time slot, there is typically one expected event, and, if it's a busy news day, perhaps a second.  The events, often press conferences, typically last about 30 min tops - or the station loses interest after that period of time, which amounts to the same for the interpreters.  The great thing here is that when production is reasonably sure there won't be anything else to interpret, they may let you go early.  On the other hand, as press conferences are seldom on time, you can sit around, waiting to be given a 2-minute warning, sometimes for hours.  Thrilling stuff.  High-tension, at any rate.

This however is not particularly uncommon for english As in general.  When you're in the english booth, at a multi-lingual meeting, it is a reasonably well-known fact that you often work less than the other booths, since many of the speakers will - unwisely - decide to muddle their way through in english (globish, more like).  Of course, this also means that once someone finally does decide to use another language, all the headsets go on, and everyone is listening as you try to figure out what they said for the first 30 seconds or so, while you were waking up and tuning in.

And, of course, the worst of the worst.  As a free-lancer, you typically have to wait to get paid.  This delay can stretch from anywhere between 30 days to 90 days.  This means, for instance, that you may have done some work in April, and not be paid until, say, August.  While this seems absurd to the average individual (myself included), it's hard to negotiate on.  Not really sure why, but that's the way the market seems to operate.  Sometimes, I really, really wish I could implement that system for my rent, too.  No luck.

Natch, this means that you will need to have a pretty hefty piggy-bank for all those rainy days (this is Paris, let's not forget.  Actually it's similar to London, but with crustier bread and worse chips).

That, so far, is maybe my number one pet-peeve about this profession.  Though one way around it is to work for institutions, which typically pay you within 1 week (!!!).  Whoever said civil service is slower than the private market can stuff THAT down their gullet.