New Interpreters

I experienced one of the most fascinating things a few weeks ago.

Half of my office are Korean Air Force. Every six months they choose people to be interpreters for us and the upper leadership here in Korea. As every male must do some form of national service (military, police, hospital, etc.) these are relatively prestigious positions. They are working directly with US and ROK General Officers and high level diplomats. I was asked to help screen the potential candidates from an English language perspective. We interviewed about 50 candidates. Some of them were very young 20-21 years old and other were older 32-3 years old. many of them had been educated in the US, England or Australia and spoke very good English. Others had learned it here in Korea, but were still better at English than I am at Korean.

It was very impressive how some of them could go back and forth between English and Korean very easily (a necessary skill for being a translator). I was told by my Korean counterpart that although some of them spoke very good English their Korean was not so good as they had spent much of their life overseas. Speaking excellence Korean is just as important as excellent English.

I was mentally drained after the day. Trying to listen to each one and give them a fair assessment was hard, but very interesting and rewarding. I look forward to doing it again in 6 months.