Your Words in Mine

I am fast becoming a disciple of Flow. I believe I have referred to it elsewhere in these articles as "muscle memory". Now, having read up on facts due to a rogue podcast I stumbled on, I prefer this definition. It carries a sustained rather than an only reactive connotation which I feel matches the true experience. The facts I will spare you, not only because I am still digesting them and frankly they are not entirely in my possession yet, but mainly because it is a bad habit to develop a habit and then a theory to justify it. It happens with coffee and chocolate, say. First you drink/eat it, then you look up the unfailingly scientific article on why it's good for you.
There is one other reason: I know Flow, I'm sure it's there. Any explanation is no doubt of interest, but unnecessary.
Heaven forbid my yielding to the temptation of juxtaposing academia and real life. It is true however to say that most of the training we receive as language professionals is classroom-based, and whilst helpful and indeed essential, scholarly reflections are rarely the reason we like the job or why we choose to learn about it in the first place.
If we are honest, the first spark - the one we constantly try to re-create - is that sudden projection of the nerves towards a pitch of reactivity; the rush of endorphin-powered availability of words in the brain; the highs and the lows displacement and dissociation creates; the steady anaesthetic descent into a realm where our bodies no longer hurt; the awareness of oneness with the machines enhancing us; time standing still as we impeccably link up a sequence of perfect choices...in short, we are slaves to Flow.
Maybe you give it another name. Or maybe you really actually do do it all differently, and I'm alone in my world. That's fine, really, I can cope, and I'll read about my mistakes on the other blogs. Now, back to mine.
And my reasons to share: first, I like to note how all my own apprentices over the years have been trying to acquire this trick of the trade more than others. Second, I see that light in my fellow wanderers, simply we don't talk about it because it's a language they don't teach us at school.
And why should it matter? Well, because this is our experience, and our life. And because we suffer chronically from providing a service without an experience (I generalise, but do we never ever learn from the CEOs we have to translate?), whereas we all need to transfer just that to those we care for professionally. I know the latter must be a good reason for someone to employ a communicator, rather than the sad reality that one is incompetent at languages. In a mature consumer society needs are wants. My client's money can harness this energy, which is different to buying an automated software (yes, it will come about!). This is powerful.
To press the point further let me suggest a backchaining approach: what do we do all this for? Allow me to exclude the mirage of money and the triviality of travel from the conversation. Is it the noble goal of enabling communication? That of uniting the world by promoting cultural understanding? Or perhaps forwarding business deals and helping the economy? Yeah, me too - and I mean it! But that is the destination, not the fuel burning up inside of you as you fly.
Shall we try the other question then: what makes you bear it all?
Before this it seems to me that all the higher codified arguments fall out of focus, diseased as we are with the how and having obliterated the crucial why. This is where vision blurs.
Which is fine, as now I want you to close your eyes and just let go...

I never did like short forms of language. Mind you, I can clearly see why they keep coming about. I remember when sms functionality happened in my youth. The point was of course to save money, and naturally I immediately invested the same amount on a txt dictionary, the first of its kind. Few people then (and now) realised that the incompleteness, the terseness and the speed of the exchanges made for what is in fact an oral language in written form, if you see what I mean, hence the need for body language, i. e. emoticons - some of my learners who still read me will recall my enthusiasm in class. But acronyms! That's a different kettle of fish. A more subtle aroma, though I am pushing my metaphors. Here, we are peddling added value. You do not need examples, but it is easy to see how KPI-toting executives are not trying to be parsimonious in terms of breath usage. Rather, they are keeping that necessary step ahead, the millisecond it will take you to decode the spec which is really the gulf between the world made of easy ideas your kids, your old parents and a prosaic plethora of simpletons surrounding you force you to live with and the sleek clickable clipped sharpness of the man who knows exactly who he is.
The temptation cannot be resisted: you will sneer in disgust at the artificiality of it all only to champion it when your turn is due. And here it comes, the BQ (big question): why should I care? Well, for one I just can't forget that language professionals are not only followers, but are called to be trendsetters in their field. Translators have always been, and they have historically more often than not become literary giants in their own right. Why not other practitioners? Then there is the argument that the prosodic features really also entail stuff like sound and function, the ripe fruit of which is more than just a message getting across. How can you love a town or a country which is hypertextually atrophied, or a woman whose name your cannot taste in a rosary of syllables? Moving swiftly away from Latin spirit, here's my line: words are a bridge, not a cool accessory. Sure, even an edifice must have a style, but its peculiarity still cannot fall short of general appreciation, or we are back to the carbonari and their secret codes. Diversity is surely an asset, but fragmentation is a limit, and originality at all costs vulgar. A skilled craftsman may produce works of beauty using traditional tools and techniques - the newness is in the concept, the unit of meaning. An artist employing at once exclusively new implements, hitherto-unknown methods and unheard-of messages is to be viewed with suspicion. Never trust what is too recent only for novelty's sake, the Romans used to say, and their language may now be tricky to decode for some, but it retains its charm beyond meaning, like a middle-aged true lady who finds a half light more flattering now, yet still evoking a dream of lust evolving from the shadows exactly through that subdued brightness. How did I get talking of things Latin again? Silly me, I got lost in another aimless promenade, in a...fruitless undertaking chasing...credibility. I was going to say kudos, but I will refrain. Just in case the above expression acquires some academic dignity and becomes cleft and re-assembled. This Frankenstein soundbite could not hope to live. XOXOXOXO

Such is the language the great Oz employs to empower those approaching him to seek his advice. Three empty beings from the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. And it works. He is able to make them whole by maieutically eliciting what force lies within them. But you know the story. So where have I been? Keeping busy, perhaps, but also keeping my promise. I remember once reading an article about the only newspaper circulating in the most remote island of Tristan Da Cunha. As the number closed, it would always bear the following: the next edition will be printed in the coming week if there is any news. Since I have no obligation to provide a regular front page for a paying readership, I have the privilege not to have to flatten real news against non-news simply to meet the deadline. And it has been dead: the polemic on machine assisted virtualization has died down, the various criminal justice systems and universities are nearly on holiday language-wise, and the big boys...well I suppose they've been busy too. So why do I pick up my keyboard? I'm worried. I've had more and more work which has required of me to learn a metalanguage. Company-speak, a lesson in vocabulary geared at promoting products. And why is this wrong? As a person who makes his money selling words, I should be less concerned than most. But look here: there is a trend among patients which entails going to a doctor to tell the practitioner in question what's wrong with you and how you should be healed. So why don't we do it ourselves? Well, it helps to have someone take the blame if things go wrong. The same happens in restaurants, fashion outlets, hotels...the customer is king - and the expert service provider is a mere executor acting rather passively and in a perfunctory way, with the added problem that s/he might be called to account when everyone ends up with egg on their face. Can we change any of this then? Well, probably not the world, but we could do ourselves up a bit. I shall call it serving with mastery. Think of it: rather than reluctantly kowtowing to illiterate projects involving language (no offence: it's just not their job sometimes) let us begin to respectfully lead, to everyone's advantage. Crazy? Well, I think it's what Apple Corporation did, not ten years ago, and it seemed to work for them. We're not Apple, some say. Clearly not then, I would agree. Does it work for me? Yes! Not always, but often enough to share here. I get it right when I can shift my brain away from the worry that they are going to blame me, or from the laziness that too much business can bring about. And the result can be empowering. Which brings us neatly back to the Wizard. Who was he? Not a good wizard, by his own admission, yet not a bad man. Just a man. With a megaphone. A bit like all of us, a bit like me now if you are reading this through the Facebook link (gotcha!). He is saved because he embraces change, and never suffers any inferiority complex. He returns home. Now I'd like to tell you where my home is professionally, but I just don't know. Kansas lies far away, in the great Country whose motto is the title you have no doubt recognised. Academically, I spent a little time in a place called Wisdom (La Sapienza university, Rome), but not enough to acquire residency, for too many reasons. But that motto stuck too: Il futuro è passato qui. I suppose my time warp began then, as well as other twists. It takes a linguist to correctly translate the future was once here. It takes respectful leadership and passionate proficiency to steer the mind away from the dangerous the future is the past, here. Which would you pay for? End of homily. Amen. I'll see you wayfarers on the road.

Ramblin' on my mind (the phenomenology of baggage)

20/4/2013

Whether wholeheartedly or not, when acquaintances react with the "lucky you! In sunny Spain again" attitude following my accounts of the working weekend as part of a perfunctory school-run exchange, I don't like to dust it off with an equally overused "well, just business, mainly airports and hotels, you know" spiel. Though technically true of course, I find it in sour grape taste and not a real portrayal of the way I feel. It is surely an exact description, because I do not in fact see or do anything I could not see or do at home. But travelling is not about checking out with your own eyes what you knew existed all along. There is something about being, as ever the essence of these pages of mine. I do not possess the ability to dissect my idea of genius loci for you, but I have found it well summed up in Alain De Botton's The Art of Travel: you move from place to place despite yourself, you being the most cumbersome piece of luggage weighing your own self down. Travelling used to be a luxury, especially in business terms. The name still adorns a Class of its own. In my father's generation's case for example, life back at the office would continue as usual protecting absent staff from deluge on return, the scant communication resources would ensure lots of respectful quiet, and of course the mission was rewarded with a salary over and beyond standard, since the idea of performing away from home was extra-ordinary.
I won't bore you with a description of how things have changed, but do note this: it is at least amusing that in our current predicament it is stability, not mobility, which is rewarded. Let us pick some random examples. Whether it's dealing with quarrelsome neighbours, hoping for some respect at your local restaurant, getting a convenient broadband deal or simply asserting your right to park somewhere, the stable dwellers always win, and the passer-by soon gives up any claim as the time needed to follow anything up is lacking. The commercial reasons behind this are of course obvious, but what is less remembered and understood is that it was not always like this. The outcome is a demographically significant wave of movers who at all costs wish their companions to know how stable (respected) they are (at home, i. e. somewhere else). This takes on strange forms. On occasion it is the type who clearly does not live or eat in five-star surroundings complaining like a rockstar in a six-star environment; it might be the tourist just emerging from the foggy north grumbling at one single cloud one single day of her holiday; or even the call-of-the-wild explorer appalled at the level of English spoken in the jungle he has chosen to lose himself in. The list goes on, outwardly varied, but featuring one unmistakable quality: we are still lugging ourselves around. This is where I find the previously evoked airports and hotels come in handy. As non-places, they are cleansing to our system. They resist modification, in fact defy us in terms of leaving a mark, and suddenly we are relieved of all responsibility. I have tried Christmas, New Year and birthdays in such twilight zones - never through my own choice - and have made the most of what I had, finding it rather soothing, since being in transit is, I find, the most correct of life's metaphors.
No affectation intended, but the device where dreams reside is more than a tourist adaptor. A herioc perspective is the realistic way to house any everyday action, strange as it may seem. As a new Blues People, discovering the road as a home - once destinations are mapped out by those who inevitably control us - may represent the most subversive form of liberation since the first generation set out, troubled but free, from the Delta to the Big City.

Abnormal Program Termination: Striptease in Cyberia

28/3/2013

I present here a slightly edited version of an older post from heartbeat in the big city dating back to a time when this platform was used for a range of functions, and before being entirely devoted to poetry. Again, this blog seems to be its natural home now, and the time feels right not only in the wake of the inescapable debate on technology, but also in the light of what appears to be an obsession with looking at constituent parts.
Whilst I cannot condemn the many lists purporting to make the professional which the web is rife with, I express concern before a method which looks like it wishes to generate through a process of breaking down, rather than putting together.
How many tests? How many dictionaries? How many contacts? How many hits? Let's take a look inside. The Golden Goose will be none the worse, I hope.
After a long and opulent night out lasting most of the 1990s, bigcitymartin wrote:

...can I have your number...?
Mmm...
Please, I'll do anything!
Oh, of course you can...let me see...I need to check - I can never remember my own number :)
Look carefully for the signs of data fragmentation: initially, a sense of freedom and mystery surround the clubbers who cannot be reduced to a simple string of numbers. They are liquid, evaporating and reforming in the most distant corners of your mind's world. They transform into a mere username, forever mutating to suit moods and trends. Their strings are traded casually, and always smell of exotic horizons, shaped on faraway sandy shores. Control is unnecessary. I am my own core, nothing else will describe me.

"You can call me whatever you like..."
The totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century knew well that we are defined by the data whose combination cannot but result in our person: the sacred value of a name has been explored in the holiest of books, and has been the subject of our speculations here. A man was also made respectable by being Mr Jones of Mayfair, London, and the penalty of exile served to erase such dignity. Passports or the lack of them, places of birth and star signs all made a person into a recognisable value. Technology in the form of a telephone number increased - for a time - a sense of belonging: when people could remember yours, you were certainly worthy of some pre-eminence. Lovers' hearts would skip when dialling, and many readers must remember the digits of their early passion.
Data alienation reduces all this to expendable modules: it begins with the seductive abandonment of the stripper, whose cast-off clothing reveals boldness and a fierce, wild carelessness no woman normally uses towards her favourite garments.
When the balance is lost, the items originally meant to enhance, support, reveal and shroud become a costume - then a mask.
The spell is broken, and blood runs cold as the nakedness changes into the technicality of exfoliation. The juices stop flowing completely at the chemical peeling stage, which is followed by terror as the corner of a now frigid lover's eye catches a glimpse of the sterile knife of the surgeon in readiness for slicing.

Data loss follows. The numbers and figures a rigorous and attentive maintenance should have kept together to specify us have been gambled randomly, swapped and exchanged by a monkey on a programmer's keyboard, a drunken and profane reading of our own personal Torah.
It may be only digital - that is of course our choice - but it cannot not be still truly me.
No one is ever this shallow when it comes to other apparently small things: the colour of our lover's eyes, her scent on our fingers or a single hair from her head on our pillow.
Outside clamouring, inside Oz prays for Dorothy's speedy deliverance...

Finished in London in 2009
(Skin graffiti courtesy of S.S.)

Fugees

15/3/2013

There are few exceptions to the costumer-is-always-right adage. One is possibly to be found in the medical profession, though my ignorance in this field prevents me form carrying out a deeper analysis on the aesthetic surgery segment, where I would imagine demand rules, at least if my conference experiences are anything to go by.
What it really means is that even where the request is ridiculous, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Unless of course it can be proven beforehand that the result will in fact damage the client, in which case it is best to back off lest one gets sued. Okay, thus far it's been egg-sucking time, sorry.
The carry-on language baggage businesses we provide a service to travel with is rarely marked Duty Free. "Fragile" and "Heavy" spring to mind as more suitable labels, as little thought is given to the effect wear and tear have on language. Normally, the highest goal entrusted to a code of communication is "getting through". Speed is a virtue. Simplicity too. And of course unequivocable clarity.
Yet in our own native language of epic tales, love and poetry, they rarely are an asset. Being real, beautiful and evocative come more to the front. Not because we love the complex per se, but because it actually describes things better. Life can be shaded, faded, dazed and confused, and a binary on/off take-home-message choppy soundbite system of meaning transmission may well be an easy tool to use, but frequently turns out to be a blunt one. It is simpler in absolute terms to employ a fork for everything, but when assessed in real context (a soup) it turns out we've oversimplified a little. And anyway complex needn't mean complicated.
You can't blame companies for wanting this: a white and black univocal description increases product saleability and exotic quality, lends sexiness to anything sordid and some say it is even a good way to keep personal opinions and dissent under control. I'm overdoing it? Try getting a mobile phone contract: the first half-hour is really a vocabulary lesson, where you become the unwitting and inevitably weaker party. After that, it's your problem, and they know it.
We are paid to convey meaning. And all in all I feel relieved when a client indicates that all the technical terms (the ones I'm most struggling with, it turns out) can be left untranslated. Great! So I end up with a scattering of syntax loosely wishing together a load of acronyms and other foreignisms. I pocket my fee, I go home. I learn little, and WCS (Worst Case Scenario) after a few editions of the event if emerges that no one is really listening to me. Fast forward a few budget cuts, I never see the client again.
Was it my fault? Not in my view. Did the client appreciate my service? Probably.
Was he/she enjoying it? Probably not - since it sounded awful albeit right - but what sort of a question is that? It wasn't in the contract, and I performed exactly as the end user required.
My point exactly, way up at the beginning of this article.
What, business should not be evocative? I must have misread all those ads then...
And as you leave the booth for the last time and walk past the buffet table, you wonder why the expensive canapés guarded by the expensive-looking stewards who have exceeded expectations yet again - exactly because they did not listen to the customer who knows nothing about food anyway and tailored their choice on what their educated palate would have eaten - are still there and will be for some time to come.
You can't hold a conference without good food, I hear? Sure. Try holding one without good words...

Sustainable Beauty

5/3/2013

For a blog with only a handful of albeit deeply appreciated comments, I have certainly had quite a few visitors over the last week or so. The Supreme Search Engine tells me I'm not at the top of the game page-wise yet, so somehow punters at some point have made a choice. Thank you. Some have commented on the Socials (thank you), and I'm trying to oblige: I have changed the background colour - no problem; I am trying to write shorter posts - bear with me; I will immediately quit musing over a cosmeticized representation of the world and get down to business, like fees, conditions of work, techniques and my ten favourite dictionaries - simply...no.
Forget it. I will of course respond to questions as per my Ouverture manifesto-post, but even then I will do it in my own little way. Why? Well, lack of alternatives for one, and really lack of any incentive to do it differently as the other reason. But that is not to say I won't tell you what I think. And I will do so through a real-life example.

Sometime in the middle of the last decade a big fuss was made in the United Kingdom about Christmas lights. Yes, the flashing ones in the street, and their appendages of verbal wishes and greetings. The common view the media fed us was that some unidentified cultures were feeling a little left out as we Christians enjoyed the yuletide spirit, and we really should not make them so sad. Response from all the official channels was immediate and unanimous. All parties, the Islamic groups in the lead, said they did not care a tinker's and we could go on with the fun unhindered.
Yes, said someone at the top, but it just isn't right. The winter festival is at the end of the day an adaptation of a preceding pagan ritual, so let's call them Winter Lights!
Soon afterwards the BBC got involved, asking their listeners and viewers what they thought. Among the responses they received was mine, posing as a disgusted Australian. I was hurt, I said, that no consideration had been give to the fact that in my Country it was in fact summer, and why not just call the damn things "Lights", so we could all be happy. Whether the BBC reacted to this I do not know, but had they chosen to, my next trick would have been to pretend I was blind and found the word "light" offensive - let's change it to a glottal stop such as "Ugh", I was going to say.

You see the point, of course. It's all about salience, as we do our job or challenge an organisation or move up in the pyramid of needs and belonging. Salience is the key to existing at peace, or the door into psychosis, a recent job of mine teaches me.
Life is not in fact a silent score or a white canvas - rather a wall of painted-over graffiti, an only apparently muted organ, a rock gig going strong where all the controls on the mixer have been turned down. But it's all there. The worries about money, the tiff we had this morning, the train being late, the future of our industry, the late night client request...it never goes away. We turn everything down, when we can, if we can. And who better than an spoken word translation specialist, riding that narrow edge existing between input and output signals, on the crest between disruption and meaning?
Sure, I'd be perfect if clients spoke slowly and clearly following their text and came through the fine-tuned insulation of my booth enabling my recently-awakened and breakfasted person to elegantly serve up their message. And please don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with wanting and even fighting for this. Yet it is a bit like prospecting for gold in a jewellery store - not entirely exclusive, nor always real, and not even that interesting. You need to play to win, and playing means walking a path. Getting there, including all the points in between.

They say a true gentleman is able to imagine and blend into the most sophisticated of environments whist not missing it or feeling out of place when this does not materialize (just pick your favourite spy movie). Again, please don't misunderstand me - I am as far as can be from this, or I wouldn't be writing about it.

In the metaphor above it is, quite simply, my chosen soundtrack. To know what you want from the beginning, but currently to be engaged in getting there. "Apologies for our appearance as we put up our...Lights". Yours are on already? Great!

It's just a background inspiration, my way of getting through the day.

What's yours?

...firmly to the mast!

28/2/2013

I have just come back from the doctor's surgery. Oh, I'm fine - better than I thought in fact, hence the enthusiasm as I sit down to afflict my small audience once again. What it was is not the subject of this debate, but it did bring up in my mind a term heard in many medical conference peregrinations: is it operable?

They tell me epic poetry has a precise function in our brain, and that is to live out an experience without actually having to endure it. Say, understand what war teaches us without the mess. That is good, and I would extend the concept to events we work at. From behind the glass, we are able to experience without joining in, if you see what I mean, and once the tiredness is vanquished, we emerge cleansed, pure and wiser.
Once the tales of heroes leave Greece and reach Rome (I am getting to the point), they seem to acquire another dimension. Romans love heroes too, but they serve better if they are distant, untouchable and, well... dead. If you want to live forever, you'd better get killed first. It is our little way of getting rid of people: it happens with politicians, religious leaders...read today's papers and take your pick.

So what is this post about? Well, I am wondering what latent exposure to all these worlds of words for a day or two at a time does to us. And what will happen next. Sherlock Holmes states that you should "tell a weaver by his tooth", and I'm thinking about the effect I have on my unwitting fellow men and women when we meet in any social context. Okay, hold the irony there. They may meet an eloquent human being, who can probably hold a conversation on most topics for at least three minutes. Cool. Yes, because differently to an airline pilot who can choose to leave his job at the door of any club he is about to spend the evening in safe in the knowledge that he won't encounter a plane there, words are everywhere. And try as we might to lighten the register for the night, the wordsmith will still show - or split personality must ensue.

Then come the reactions. You are seen as the Ferryman of Meaning, the Charon whose surgical precision allows the world to turn and be such a lovely place. Naturally, this will be expressed in more concrete terms than I am able to summon - namely the question "What happens if you don't know one of the words the speaker says?" A more prosaic compliment is "Wow, your brain must have the biggest RAM ever!" Normally, I smile my best Etruscan smile, betraying the melancholy that knows that machines one day will replace me.
No comments, please, they will. The only thing I want to know is what to do about it, given that if machines became just as good, I mean really precisely like a flesh and blood practitioner, the honest thing to do in theory would be to bow out. In addition, far from being what evoked above, more often than not I feel like a wayfarer peddling second hand significance hardly able to re-write history with his lips.

Here's a thought: could exposure to many (or no) truths make us unique? Not in the sense that we will know the Truth, but that we are inclined to pine for it in a loving and transverse way. And people need and love people who in turn to do the same. Think of it: why do you buy hand-made? Or at least, why is it more precious? It is certainly not more perfect, but is endowed with that emotional impact, like the one odd colour in an Arabian weft stating that only God does not need perfecting. Someone has worked for you. Someone at that instant is thinking of you. Of course, it may be a niche church. It's perhaps for fewer than we thought. Some may think of it as a luxury - and I would point out that the current economic climate seems to be sparing this market segment - but this and no other will be the reason the professional linguist may still be alive a few years from now, as far as I can see from here.

You think it's an idealist stance? No, far fetched? Eccentric? Okay, crazy?

Ah, but, yet, however, I mean, you must remember that...

It is.

Care to join in?

...a pint of the black stuff, Landlord!

23/2/2013

...so this is the one about when along with an esteemed colleague I was trying to set up professional development masterclasses for interpreters in the United States. The main feature was to be the new sim-consec technique, which I only mention virally in passing. Any reader wishing to know more will certainly display their interest below, and of course I will oblige. More than a year on then, despite ample accreditation from the right Bodies, a decent following and a technology-based solution powerful enough to rock the industry once detonated, I am still preaching this side of the Pond, and my colleague is successfully doing the same at her end. We never did meet, though any start-up is susceptible to turbulence, and we haven't given up.

The big problem was cost: the air fare I might manage thanks to those miles clocked up around Europe (more of that later), but domestic travel, lodging and hiring the venue broke the camel's back. And, my colleague informed me, "you must offer coffee and pastries", presumably to ensure credibility and happiness. We got a few quotes, mostly reasonable. But I could not help noticing that coffee was measured by the gallon. Not that this was a problem: if you take a cup of coffee or two per person per day, measure the mug's capacity and multiply it by fifty, for example, you might come close to or go beyond gallons. I wouldn't know, as back in Rome we do litres, but that's not the point. The truth is that I had never seen coffee as a liquid. By this I mean something you ingest to quench thirst or wash down food or hydrate the body or warm your innards. In Italy (here I virally hint that I expect my compatriots to contradict me), we do not even collocate coffee with the word drink. We take a coffee, imagining perhaps that it goes straight to the brain or the soul in order to readily produce its effect: the final seal to any meal, the subtle reek announcing to the world "Serenely full, the epicure would say, Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today" [Syndey Smith, 1771-1845]. The process is more akin to taking a drug, in any sense of the word you desire.

Let's get back to travels in Europe, then. I will come clean. Of course I adore espresso. In fact, I make a little hobby of seeking out the best outlet near the conference venue in any country I visit. I brave whatever weather whilst puzzled colleagues tied into less trivial language combinations smile understandingly at my passport protruding from the wallet where I hope to find just a little local currency, as they mix up a few brown gritty pebbles at the bottom of an enormous vessel and drown them in milky water. Also, I am never shy to advise anyone who cares or is standing too close that cappuccino is a breakfast drink and should not be sipped after midday (I remember doing so last week when I made it my business to check out a new start-up at London's Google University - but this post is becoming too viral). When I couple this with the fact that I also enjoy a beer (no pints, just bottles, and only lager/pilsner as a tribute to my all-German mother), I see we have finally got to the point.

What is acceptable varies across cultures and of course time. Yet coffee is on the rise in the parlance of, say, deskbound translators. In the infosphere, when we ask one to summarize their work in three words, we elicit responses such as "coffee, dictionaries and more coffee". Social networks greet us in the morning with steaming cups and slurpy sounds, and of course it is the safest topic booth-side if we wish to conceal our next assignment or who our contact was for this job. In short, the social function of coffee is exactly what whisky used to be for Lieutenant Kojak. The light side, the offline fruitful talk before the word networking was invented, the pardonable weakness every great man must have, perhaps the secret balm to an invisible wound. Getting drunk was never part of it. Not because they didn't, but because most psychologists will tell you that it's not only about the quantity, but about intention as well. Gone are the days when my Russian colleague had (took?) vodka in the booth (not a slanderous sweeping comment: first-hand experience, the noun is in the singular), but the fact is no one thought he was going to pass the line, starting from him. Now, a drink during the evenings between working days is half-frowned upon; not a good idea after a job, at the airport, as one might get dehydrated; bad if you have worked too hard and are tired; possibly a mistake during networking evenings (nothing viral, my dear London friends). But if I don't go for it during the Christmas bash, or on a Friday night, I'm a spoilsport. Anyway, as a Public Service Interpreter on the police scene, am I ever really not working?
How do people cope? My thought: it's all still there, but change the word "wine" (I never drink wine, I do have morals) with coffee. And if anyone seriously lets the "isn't it time to stop now" phrase escape, you can always seriously look peeved: it's just coffee, for crying out loud. It's not like I'm downing brandy...

Speaking of escapes, I almost forgot. The cigarette crowd seems to be excused. I feel now I have to reassure you it's a vice I don't have. But in their case, an I-know-it's-bad-for-me-but-hey smile will suffice, and leaves us all a little envious about the fact that they are really having a great time under that shelter. No ice to break except on the ground, and all united by a subtle understanding. Enough.

But think about it: it's not what's in our cup that makes us virtuous. One can be dangerously addicted to origami, or loud punk music or work or scented candles. One may be more harmful than the other - I'm thinking about the paper cuts - but it is the relationship we entertain with anything or anyone that makes or breaks us as a person, and by extension our professional persona. The effects and dangers of our habits and talk are not what this post is about, and I am not doubting any scientific evidence, to be clear.
We are about words, and words should dress meaning, never mask it. As culture and time progress, and collective lexis needs to hop away from the derogatory meanings perfectly innocent words seem to acquire by (black) magic, it is worth reflecting on the substitutions taking place as we become absorbed in a global movement of consumption. Where what is in and what is out are not necessarily dictated by health or wellbeing, but by a need to buy and sell - witness the enormous contradictions in packaging trends vs. recycling, taxation vs. smoking, insurance vs. healthy lifestyles, charity vs. war, and the list goes on... In short, we are moving away from alcohol-speak and into an apparently more harmless realm simply because we need to devour something new now and again, as the old becomes unacceptable. Such is the fashion of language, or shoes, or travel, in the consumer age. Along with words, we shift our habits, but we do not become better human beings. And changing shoes may be fun, as they do not have a soul (!), and we can still keep the old ones. Respectively, with words there is a possibility that they might, and we might not be able to.

Perhaps I have gone too far. Not so virally, I feel you will let me know. But thanks for humouring me. I swear I too follow all your posts to the bottom, where I read the dregs, and try to fathom what it is you want to say in the spaces between the lines.

Cheers.

Ouverture

22/2/2013

Something's wrong. They tell me my only other blogging experience now cruising at silent altitude is an inhospitable home for poetry. More to the point, my own bigcitymartin persona is stuck somewhere between fiction and friction. Yes, personal. Yet, virally hopeless.
And I agree. Martin Esposito bigcitymartin is a neutral complex. It cannot (but has tried) to muster the thrust of an organisation, whose name must be the resultant of any harnessed good. But somehow some people escape the positive gloss a company can clothe itself in - unless we are evoking a celebrity. We are not.

One thing is certain: language use here cannot be a mere means to an end, nor an additional hobby. More like a keyhole through which the truth is gained, thanks to the interpretative (sorry) key leading to meaning.

Those who will read on and therefore have made it till here may encounter the tales of a conference interpreter and more dealing essentially with English and Italian. A composite, not splintered, identity, though this is true only in a very liquid way - more of a goal I guess. But not many tips, few links, and I'm not sure yet about the frequency either, though I'd love to fill so much of this white.
Of one thing I am certain. I care. I mean comments, mean comments too; and about the stories, necessarily rendered universal for safe fruition, but true and uncut from the cerebral cortex. I suppose it will be about belonging with only a dash of doing - others deal with that wonderfully, and I will point you in the right direction as we go along. Come here for the offline moments, like when Pinocchio needed his feet seeing to after a fire. Sat on a bench, he had to stop and take stock. What happens when you stop?

Where else my shoes will take us we shall see. Like GPS, I track in threes: the requirements of life, my travel companions, and the taste for words as bullets I just won't give up.

See you down here.