The Making of : A Day in the Life of An Interpreter

Sometime in early 2007, while brainstorming on new ideas, it occurred to me that it would be fun, interesting, and perhaps even profitable to produce short documentaries that profiled a given profession. We spend most of our waking lives at work, yet most of us has hardly any idea of what our friends, family, and fellow citizens actually do every day to earn their proverbial "daily bread". That is when I decided to pursue this idea of "A Day in the Life..."

I had gone to graduate school to study International Environmental Policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 2003, and that is where I met Iciar Gomez and Andrea Verdasco, who were training to be conference interpreters at the famed School of Translation and Interpretation at MIIS. At the time, I had recently produced a short documentary called "Recyclers", which had won an award at a film festival, so they invited me into their classroom as a guest speaker. I would speak about my film in English and they would then offer a consecutive interpretation into Spanish. Whew! I was blown away by the precision of their interpretation, and the little symbols they were scribbling down on their notepads whilst I spoke - so I came to appreciate their craft and their process, just as I was sharing with them the inner workings of my craft as a filmmaker, which is in a sense a craft that entails interpreting, or translating an experience or story to an audience.

So I asked them if they might be interested in being featured in a profile about the profession, in essence, being the guinea pigs for the pilot episode of what I hoped, and still hope, could be a longer series. They responded enthusiastically and together we came up with a game plan and then executed our plan: I interviewed both of them down on the Mall in DC, and then spent a day with them at a conference on affordable housing where they had been hired to interpret.

The piece came together in the edit suite quite nicely, and we immediately generated interest on behalf of Current TV, who made an offer to broadcast it (another story unto itself), and the American Translator's Association, who loved the piece and expressed in interest in using it for their PR efforts.

I was particularly impressed by the strong character presence of Andrea and Iciar on camera, as they had never worked in that capacity before - they were both very natural and engaging, each in their own way. The music in the piece was played by my good friend Fred Engelfried, whom I knew from my Peace Corps days. I knew that he was a talented flamenco guitar player, but he had never recorded anything. I called him up, sent him a rough cut of the piece, and asked him if the thought he could put something together. He blew me away with two beautiful tracks that fit perfectly in the piece. I also received camera assistance from Brian Wright and Teddy Symes, both of whom are talented filmmakers in their own right.