October 28, 2023, was the closing ceremony of the 2023 Hualien International Stone Sculpture Festival, where I interpreted consecutively. A part of the ceremony was for the guest artists from abroad to share their experiences in Taiwan during the month-long Festival. All of the ten artists spoke English regardless of their nationality, except for one Italian artist who doesn’t speak fluent English.
When he took to the stage, he first used English to apologize for not being able to talk in English and then started to speak Italian. An English-Chinese interpreter with no knowledge of Italian, I literally froze at my podium with an embarrassing smile. Interpreting his speech was impossible. Everyone in the audience started to look at me, probably wanting to see how I was going to react.
As I was prepared to be the next person to apologize (for not being able to interpret), a Bulgarian artist (the woman in the photo) came to my rescue. Once studying for her bachelor’s degree in Italy, she spoke very fluent Italian. Immediately, she went up to me and whispered the English translation to me. Although she was unable to translate the whole speech, I managed to pick up keywords from her interpretation and formulate the Chinese rendition.
Winning a huge round of applause, I knew our cooperation was successful. Government officials attending the ceremony were so impressed that some of them congratulated me when the event was over.
After that, I picked up French again, thinking that one day it will come in handy 😂
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