Your Inner Interpreter

Your "Inner Interpreter"

I met Laura Bertone twenty years ago this summer at my first general semantics seminar-workshop at Hofstra University in New York. We served together as trustees for the Institute of General Semantics for several years. 

In 2006, Laura published a wonderful book that serves as both a textbook and a memoirs, of sorts, that contains illustrative examples from her career as a "Paris-based conference interpreter." That's how the book jacket describes her profession. I prefer to think of it as "simultaneous translating" which, to my mono-lingual mind, is almost akin to magic.

The book is The Hidden Side of Babel: Unveiling cognition, intelligence, and sense (Amazon link Links to an external site.). The excerpt below, which you can read inside this page with preview function, or download as a PDF document, is the chapter titled "The Inner Interpreter." I've selected this excerpt because I believe it reinforces several important points about how, even within one language, we have to interpret or translate in order to evaluate and understand.

The Inner Interpreter (PDF) Download The Inner Interpreter (PDF)