Jenny Koehring: day in the life of a sign language interpreter

The difficulty with describing a typical day of a BSL interpreter is that there isn’t one.

‘Typical’ or ‘normal’ are not words I would use to describe any working day. And that’s also one of the things I love about my job!

One day I might start at 7am in the morning, interpreting for an operation in hospital, going on to a GP or social worker appointment and finishing at 10 pm after an evening course or political event.

Another day, I might be at work with a Deaf person all day, interpreting at meetings, for colleagues, making phone calls or proofreading emails.

And on another day, I might not be interpreting at all because I’m stuck in my office scanning receipts, writing invoices or writing up what I learned at a workshop for my CPD (continuous professional development).

This also means I might have one client in a day or five, depending on the lengths and location of a booking.

But to give you a better picture, here’s an example day:

6.30 am: The family gets ready for work and school. My son can’t find his school shoes, the other half is looking for his car keys and I have run out of black shirts so it’s dark blue today. (That’s not to say that interpreters always wear black, but we are taught that we should always choose a plain top without patterns and a colour in contrast to the skin tone. As a blonde, white European, that makes black the easiest choice.) I sort out everybody else’s lost things and leave for my first booking.

8.20: I arrive 45 minutes early after a one-hour drive. The SatNav has sent me way off track and I have to consult Google to find my way. I pray that I have a good mobile connection, who knows where I might end up otherwise. I get to the venue, a big company, ask my way from one department to the next, only to be told that the appointment has been cancelled last week and they forgot to tell me. No problem, time to get a quick coffee before the next booking.

10.00: Next booking. The twenty-minute GP appointment is running late and there are a lot of issues to discuss. I have another booking soon, so I apologise and let people know that I will have to leave in 30 minutes. The doctor, the patient and I try to get through everything as quickly as possible, but it becomes clear that another appointment will be necessary. Everybody is a little frustrated.

10.45: I have a quick sandwich in the car because I know I won’t have time to eat later. I check my phone to find 12 new booking requests, two confirmations from the day before and an email from an agency who are missing a timesheet. No time to deal with this now though, I need to get to the next one.

11.15: My next booking is a social worker meeting and they have some good news. I have worked with them for a while and now I get to be the person telling the client about a happy ending. Both the social worker and the client thank me for my help, there are tears of joy. A rare and happy moment. We don’t often get to see what impact our work has had on people’s lives.

14.00: A colleague rings to tell me they are poorly and asks if I could cover one of their bookings this afternoon. Of course, I will. I arrive at the venue, the client is startled because they expected someone else. I empathise of course, it can be difficult to work with someone new, that’s the same for me, too!

17:00: I sit in the car answering emails, photographing timesheets and uploading invoices. Sometimes, my car is my office, kitchen and living room! I also reflect on the previous booking, thinking about what mistakes I might have made, how I should have said or signed things differently and clearer and what I could do better next time.

An agency calls to ask if I could do an emergency booking straight away. They are desperate and have tried several other terps without success.

I accept and ring my partner to say I’ll be late and not to wait with dinner. Arriving at the hospital, the patient is clearly distressed and in pain but staff and patient are relieved to see me. I stay for several hours until I’m sure the patient is comfortable on the ward and has all the information they need.

With the patient’s permission, I spend some time explaining to nurses and doctors how best to communicate without an interpreter, how things can be culturally different and lead to misunderstandings and that an interpreter will need to be booked for the next day as well. As most of the time, interpreting is more than just translating from one language to another. It’s also building bridges between the hearing and the Deaf world! Great responsibility but also great joy can come from that.

21.00 I am home. I check my diary for the next day’s bookings and whether any prep needs to be done. Tomorrow’s client is an ‘AtW’ booking so I go over my glossary (my homemade BSL dictionary for this particular job) and research some signs and English jargon I didn’t know last week. I make a few notes for my supervision meeting next month. It was a long and exhausting, but also a really good and rewarding day.

Please note, this is just an example derived from various bookings I have done over several weeks. It doesn’t usually go like that but it illustrates what type of things can happen in an interpreting day.

As a freelancer, I juggle a number of other responsibilities, too, starting with NRCPD registration, insurance, managing my diary (and that of my family), dealing with all the paperwork, budgeting and maintaining and improving my skills whenever and wherever possible.

But that’s not all. I also need to think about which bookings are suitable for my skill level (not always easy when there is little or no information about the event or when it’s something I’ve never done before), how to prepare for each booking and how to evaluate whether I’ve done a good job.

The latter can be especially difficult because interpreting is often a lonely job. I rarely have a co-worker and often I am the only person in the room who understands both languages so that the only way to know if I did a good job is by looking at the outcomes/results and by reflecting on my own performance.

In addition, I am of course bound by confidentiality, so I can’t talk to anyone about my work, not even my partner or trusted friends.

Therefore, lots of interpreters, like me, engage in professional supervision. That is where professionals (trained supervisors, often also interpreters, who are also bound by confidentiality) help me to reflect on my work, my behaviour and the thoughts and emotions that come up during assignments.

If all of that seems a bit complicated, I have to say: It is! But it is also beautiful and interesting and versatile and rewarding and to me, it is the best job in the world.

I get to meet people with so many different backgrounds: I often see very private aspects of people’s lives, I am there when important decisions are being made, when lives change for the better or worse.

And it is my job to make sure that both parties (hearing and Deaf) have full access to all information and can understand each other as well as humanly possible.

That starts with regularly having to explain my role and how I work, but can also include the subtleties of emotions, body language and everything that goes on around people which they don’t always explicitly say (or sign).

It’s a job that provides new challenges and new opportunities to learn and develop every single day. So every day I aim to be better than the day before, to make the experience better and smoother for my clients. It isn’t always perfect, just like everything else in life, but it’s absolutely worth the effort!

Jenny Koehring is a registered freelance interpreter. She is currently studying for a master’s degree in occupational psychology and has a keen interest in cross-disciplinary research. In addition, she is a board member for the association of sign language interpreters (ASLI), where she works with her colleagues to raise awareness for the profession, standards within, and the needs of clients and communities. She lives with her partner, son and cat in Derbyshire and when she’s not interpreting, studying, volunteering or travelling around the country for Deaf and sign language related events, she enjoys cooking and going for a walk in the countryside.