The Strange, High-Pressure Work of Presidential Interpreters
“To work at the very top, you have to have an incredible arsenal of general knowledge, because the president will get into every damn topic you can imagine, from nuclear submarines to agriculture to treaty problems to labor problems to God knows what, jellyfish in the sea,” Obst says. “If you don’t know how an airplane flies, if you don’t know how a nuclear reactor works, you’re going to make mistakes.”
Like anyone else in a sensitive meeting, an interpreter must have high security clearance. He or she will also have received all the same briefing books as the president. That’s essential so that the interpreter can understand the nuances of the information discussed and knows the vocabulary. But it also means that the interpreter can serve as a crutch for the president, catching minor factual errors or slips of the tongue.
Interpreters also serve an essential role as record-keepers, taking notes that end up in the National Archives, Obst said. Of course, interpreters are not always asked to take notes. It’s unclear who the U.S. interpreter in Friday’s meeting was and whether he or she took notes, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. While such a record would not immediately become public, it does create an account for posterity. Within an hour after the Putin-Trump meeting, differing accounts had already begun to emerge about what the two men discussed.
But Obst said the Trump administration need not worry that the linguist will speak out about what occurred between Trump and Putin. “Our top interpreters will never reveal anything to anyone to anybody who was not a participant,” Obst says. If so, he or she might be the only staffer who isn’t leaking.
https:// www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/trump-interpreters/532968/
I realize this is old information, but it is relevant to current events, given the recent calls for a hearing with the interpreter in the Trump/Putin meeting. This should get all up to speed on the roll of any individual with these credential in a meeting of this nature. Harry Obst, is one of most well known in the industry and the first to write a book about his experiences during his time in this role.
Description:
Harry Obst interpreted for seven American presidents. This book takes a look at five of them from the interpreter's perspective inside and outside the Oval Office: Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Most Americans have very little familiarity with professional interpreting, a profession known fairly well in Europe and Canada. After finishing WHITE HOUSE INTERPRETER, the reader will understand what interpreting is all about and why this profession is of considerable importance to many segments of our society: from the White House to the courthouse, from the military battlefield to our hospitals. Many thousands of highly trained professional interpreters and translators help the European nations and other highly developed countries successfully export large amounts of goods and services and keep millions of jobs at home. Obst examines the dismal training picture in the United States and urges remedial action. The book is written for the general reader. The author avoids the linguistic jargon. He mixes the technical information with interesting anecdotes, many of them never published before.
https:// whitehouseinterpreter.com/documents/WhiteHouseInter2016.pdf