Four Decades of Seattle Interpretation Work
Sep 7th, 2010 by beauty writer
Let me tell you about my translator’s experience and what I have lived through in the last forty years.It is about the future of Europe, too. But, as my life on both sides of the Atlantic has taught me, any paper about translation services as they relate to Europe must also be about America. You may not believe it, but I have worked on this paper for more than twenty years. For me, as a young Texan living and working in a cold-war London translation agency during the 1970’s and 1980’s, I thought I heard the answers to all of Europe’s problems. Not only I had heard them, but I had heard them in different languages, too. But like many American’s of my generation, I had accepted the Reagan doctrine and the sentiment which drove it. It was the time when I also thought that Europeans and Americans had the same interests. First and foremost, this was expressed in a perseverance to stop Soviet power over Europe.
Since I worked for a Washington D.C. Translation agency during the 70s and the 80s, I had the chance to see the things first0hand. Almost on a daily basis, I worked with influential Washington thinktanks and university administrators. There I met a number of remarkable conservative, or rather neo-conservative research workers and strategists, whose ideas were getting popularity in the Republican Party. Many of these scientific workers were involved in the administration of George W. Bush as well. What was interesting was that some of these people used to be social democrats. They exhibited superb international intelligence.
The unexpected disintegration of the Soviet Union put a sudden end to the cold-war world. The job I was involved in then, required a lot of travel from the U.K. to the USA and back. Since I was employed by a Portland Translation Services agency and I was good at German Translation, I often visited Europe. So I had the chance to watch the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Many Europeans view this event as a great point in history. That’s because Europe without the Wall ushered in more than just a new future for Europe – it changed the character of the Atlantic world. For, with the Soviet threat removed, Europe, suddenly, was no longer dependent upon the USA its security. Europeans could now bring to an end their dependence on the USA. This dependence widely reported on German media could literally be translated to “unhealthy dependence”. Perhaps this tended to the strengthening of the anti-American movement at that time. Regardless, Europeans now felt that they were free to unite, develop towards a federal future and eventually become a world power.
But on a visit to Washington during the 1990s, I recognized a change in attitude. It could be spotted among the conservative and neo-conservative representatives of policy organizations and research institutions, among Bush’s political advisers and even among some of the people around Clinton. Even in Seattle Translator company where I worked I could feel this change. For example, one of the features that made Americans appealing was that during the cold war they were humble in their behavior and attitude. This was not a pronounced feature of the great powers in Europe. But everything had changed following the America’s triumph in the cold war. By the late 90s no one would get impressed when hearing strong terms like ‘hegemony’ and “dominance” even in everyday communication.
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