Aleck Toumayan

Cor. The interpreters' fluency in more than one language is usually triggered in the home. This was certainly the case with Aleck Toumayan. His mother was Belgian who spoke very good English. His father was Armenian whose family fled Russia during the Revolution in 1917.

He was educated in Paris in the 1940s and then worked as an interpreter for the European arm of the Marshall Plan which rebuild Europe from the ruins of the Second World War. For this series Mr. Toumayan shared with me his experiences of working for the State Department for thirty years from 1961.

He talked to me on the line from Washington. And we began with some of the pitfalls that can catch the unwary interpreter.

A.T. What is probably the most important thing I did in my entire career at the State Department were the negotiations for the release of American hostages in Iran; in the early stages of working with the Algerians we discussed a number of financial schemes with them wherein the finance assets would be deposited in an escrow account. Now when the Algerians heard the word escrow they began to look at each other in a rather displeased mood and I understood immediately what was happening because they were hearing not the English or American conception escrow account, they were hearing the French word "escrue" which means a crook or swindler. And this was the early stage of the negotiating with them and they were a little bit apprehensive, I guess, not really being used to dealing with Americans so anything that seemed to be out of the norm would disturb them.

Cor. That sounds a little like misunderstanding that Khrushchev had with Kennedy of the use of the word or the translation of the word miscalculate.

A.T. It came out literally in Russian as meaning "you can't count". You know, you're just stupid to put two and two together and come out with four! That was really the collo quial] vernacular meaning of how it came across to him.

Cor. I understand that the word miscalculate is never used when Americans talk to Russians through an interpreter nowadays. A.T. Yes, we do learn occasionally, not always, but we do learn from our mistakes.

Cor. You worked closely with President Johnson during his discussions with Souvanna Fuma of Laos and with Prince Norodom Sihanouk. How did Johnson get on with his Asian colleagues?

A.T. President Johnson, to my view, was a very tragic figure. He was a man who felt that a tremendous burden had been placed upon him and this came through in many of his meetings. Prince Souvanna Fuma was a very dignified, very proper gentleman of the old school who spoke impeccable French. And meetings between them, and there were many meetings, were always cordial and businesslike.

One problem I always run into with President Johnson is that he liked to quote from the Bible and I did not always have the French Bible with me when I went to these meetings I was hard-put a couple of times and ran into a problem because the translation of the Biblical quotation just does not come across in French.

One day President Johnson was bidding farewell to an African President and by way of parting greeting he said "We shall toil in the vineyards of the Lord." And I remember the French expression was "le vigne du Seigneur". Unfortunately to be in. " Les vignards du Seigneur " in French means "to be drunk" so when I conveyed to the African President President Johnson's greeting he looked at me quizzically and say: " You don't really mean that literally, do you? So I had to backtrack a little trying to express it. This can be embarrassing. They are not life — threatening, but there are embarrassing moments.

President Johnson at the end of his term would often greet me cordially, shake my hand saying "How are you, my friend?" And he would gaze deep and long into my eyes, I felt I was being X-rayed, I felt that when he said that it was a question, no so much a statement. And I did really feel, maybe, he had very few friends around him. So there was that tragic dimension to President Johnson, but remember he is the one who've signed the Civil Rights Act and extended considerable civic liberties to the population of the Southern states.

Cor. He became a tragic figure because of the way the Vietnam War developed and you were very involved in the Paris peace talks. You were back to Paris to help with those Paris peace talks trying to end the Vietnam War. That sounds as if it was a quite complicated and difficult process.

A.T. Yes, yes. It was in a sense. I had been to Paris for that for a number of years. I had many-many meetings with representatives of the Lao government, several meetings with Vietnamese

representatives. I had gone to Saigon myself twice on language training and interpreting development missions so when we began in the early spring of 1968 to discuss there that possibility I was quite ready and it was understood that I would go and stay for the duration if necessary and see what would happen. So what happened — we had a number of procedural meetings before the formal start of the talks where we were to agree to a number of things. One of the procedures that was developed was the use of languages. And it was determined that each side would speak in its own official language that would then be translated first into French and then be retranslated in the other side's official language. What it meant was that a meeting that should last not more than a couple of hours would practically take all day. But it did work out very well. Though it was a strange situation for me, the American interpreter, to be translating into English very lengthy diatribes about the atrocities allegedly perpetrated by my side. You see the incongruous position the interpreter often finds himself.

We arrived in Paris early in May'68. Now, I suppose that when I say "May'68" that rings a bell and indeed we watched in absolute dismay as day after day things ground to a halt in Paris and one day there were no transportation and the other day there was no this or that so it made getting started somewhat difficult, but we did managed and around the 10^th or 13^th of May or thereabout we began to meet in the Majestic Hotel on Avenue Cleber.

Cor. The three-way translation you described sounds very long and cumbersome and in a sense

was unnecessary, wasn't it, as Averell Harriman and his Vietnamese opposite number both spoke French and could have spoken directly to each other?

A.T. There was the matter of the national prestige of not wanting to use the colonizers' language on the part of the Vietnamese and governor Harriman, who had lived in Paris and, as you know, was the head of the Marshal Plan, understood French quite well indeed and did speak quite a bit of French himself and in the US delegation a number of the officers they also spoke French but, you see, this gave you time to prepare your rebuttal. You had heard it once in the original or in the French then you were hearing it the second time and there was a lot of downtime for everybody to think or send out for more information. In the backroom we had the staff of the US delegation who were constantly drafting additional points to be made or drafting rebuttals.

Cor. Which were the occasions when you interpreted to President Nixon?

A.T. President Nixon made quite an impression on his foreign visitors. His grasp of foreign affairs was second to none. He really had an encyclopedic interests in foreign policy and total understanding, really.

Cor. What I wonder is how he got on with the foreigners?

A.T. There was one episode, you know, President Pompidou of France had come to the U.S. on a state visit, and two leaders, President Nixon and President Pompidou, met again in Iceland in June'73, and after the meeting they were standing waiting for their respective limousines to come. And the White House

limousine was there belching blue smoke. And President Pompidou looked at President Nixon and said "You're polluting the air with your big engine." It was said in jest and President Nixon looked at him and said in a horrified tone: "But this costs three hundred thousand dollars!" So you see sometimes communication was not established at an easy informal level.

Cor. His successor, President Carter — the thing that many people think destroyed his presidency and lost him the election — was the hostage taken in the American embassy in Iran. And you were very involved as you said with that, with Warren Christopher. Was this the same kind of three-way interpreting that you had in the Paris peace talks?

A.T. No, my responsibility there was strictly French to English — English to French when we began in earnest in October 1980 to work with the Algerian representatives. Then everything would be translated to Farci to be sent over to Teheran. Though very often we would get documents and requests in English from Teheran. I was somehow by chance involved from the very beginning because of what happened in November 1979. A U.S. delegation was invited to go to Algiers. This was to commemorate the beginning of the Algerian war of independence, the 25^l" year of the beginning of the war of independence, and the leader of that delegation, there were two leaders there. Between them was Zbiegnev Brzezinsky, who was the American Foreign Policy Adviser and National Security Adviser to President Carter. Well, in Algiers he met informally but he did meet with the Prime Minister of Iran and that meeting t riggered such an outpouring of resentment in Teheran that within

hours literally our Embassy was captured and when the official plane returned to Washington with the U.S. delegation carrying back some of the members [many] went oflf the plane and went directly to their offices in the State Department where they lived for days and weeks on trying to resolve the crisis.

Cor. Did you feel those talks in Algiers would ever succeed? It doesn't look as if they were intended to do, now.

A.T. This is a difficult question to answer ni retrospect since they did in fact succeed but whenever we had a meeting with Algerians there was a definite impression that they were giving that everything they have. It was really amazing that there were two different sets of people that never worked together before and they operated as one team with just one purpose. That was really remarkable, although of course the outcome is always in doubt, but you just cannot have any second thoughts when you are engaged, particularly when human lives were at stake, that was the driving force we want to get our people back. And the Algerians were very conscious of the human side. You know, the Algerians, one should not make general observations, but in this case I will venture with a very broad statement, have a very strong sense of mission. A very strong sense of the responsibility as a leading country in the Third World and they were really very strongly motivated they didn't do it out of any particularly love for the American or the American system of government. They didn't do it for profit, they were simply genuinely dedicated to bring about a favorable outcome.

Cor. But it seems as if the Iranians were determined not to release them until the very last moment after the President Carter had lost the election. Did you think the Algerians had any inkling of that?

A.T I don't believe that the Algerians were allowing any considerations of U.S. domestic policies to affect them. There was a clear understanding that the Iranians were stalling for time, at the same time, would they have had as good a deal under the incoming Reagan administration? That's questionable. I believe as the ultimate slap in the face to Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State Muskie they held off until the very last minute. In fact, there was that very surrealistic situation in the Embassy in Algiers at about eight o'clock in the evening or maybe at nine o'clock. There we were on the radio listening to President Reagan's inaugural speech on the steps of the Capitol. And that would be about two or three o'clock in the afternoon in Washington. It was nine o'clock in Algiers. And on an open line within minutes we were getting information that the two Air Algerian jets with our people have just cleared Iranian airspace. Anyway it was very hard to come to terms with that situation but, yes, everything was happening.

Cor. President Reagan was in many ways the opposite of President Nixon. He didn't have Nixon's grasp of foreign affairs. He had, though, personal skil ls and social charms Nixon lacked. Did that help him?

A.T. That is such a pertinent point. If we could somehow have mashed President Reagan's skills at personal relations with President Nixon's skills in foreign policy, in foreign affairs we would have had a super President. But we have to take each man on

his own merits. Yes, President Reagan was helped very much by his cordiality, his skill at making people comfortable, his talent as a "raconteur whereas I never heard President Nixon crack a joke or tell a story. President Reagan always had a story to tell. That was somehow, not always, but somehow related to the subject at hand.

Cor. Do you have to try and capture the emotions of the person you're interpreting for?

A.T. You do want to reflect the nuances, the feelings. But at the same time you do not want to run into the problem of a parody or coping the person. Do you see what I am trying to say? You have at all times to maintain a dignified and somewhat impersonal posture... at the same time I don't know if I make everything clear, but it is very important to reflect the nuances, reflect the feelings, reflect the exact words or thoughts because there is a very important principle. The speaker's thoughts and ideas are his or her prerogative and should not be interfered with, but the choice of words to convey that meaning - that is the interpreter's prerogative and that too should not be interfered with. So you have some leeway, provided you know exactly what you're doing. You have some leeway and sometimes you will use more words and the bottom line is - have you achieved communication? That's really what we're talking about - problem solving in the process of communication.

Cor. But if the argument gets very heated, is it part of your duty to try and at least convey that heat or is that done through the language barrier anyway, do you think?

А.Т. I think the body language is quite obvious, quite clear. And if there is a tense situation you should not try to defuse the tenses [tension].

It may be the intention of a speaker to convey that he's very-very annoyed and he's getting very- very impatient. I remember a meeting between a very distinguished American Labor leader and his counterpart from a French-speaking country. And at one point the visitor said: "But you're not being very patient". And the person turned back to the man and said: "I am a very impatient person. Yes, yes, indeed." And the meaning was clear and it was said in a gruff, straightforward way. And it would have been a mistake on the part of the interpreter to try to soften the impact. At the same time you should be very-very careful that you do not heighten the tension by inadvertedly using a word stronger than the word intended.

Cor. Sometimes the misunderstanding can be sort of purely... potentially embarrassing in a social sense.

A.T. President Reagan was escorting Madam Mitterand to her place at the table in the formal White House dining room. He was following her, Secret Service agents were following the President and I was trying to get as close as I could to the President because I knew that there might be conversation. But the Secret Service agent kept elbowing me out of the way. Obviously, I presented a great danger to the President in his own dining room! So at one point Madam Mitterand stops and President Reagan motions to her to walk on to the table. But she stops, she turns back and she is laughing and I can not hear what she is saying. So I try to get closer. But the Secret Service Agent is m the way so I lean one way and Madam Mitterand

leans the other way and finally she says "Vous marchez sur ma robe" (French) - "You are stepping on my dress," which was exactly what I said. Because I was not going to tell the President: "Mr.President, you are stepping on her dress," thus conveying to the President he was lacking in social graces. I've just blurted out as we always do speaking in the first person speaking exactly as the speaker is speaking. Now a number of people found the story absolutely hilarious and it has been repeated here ' and there, but it was exactly as it had happened.

Cor. Do you also need to brief yourself on the subject that is going to be discussed, I mean, apart from your language skills you need to have a grasp of a subject under discussion.

A.T. Mr. Miller, the language skills are, perhaps, the least important component in interpreting. And this may sound paradoxical, but I know some people who are very poor linguists and are excellent interpreters because they have innate skill for communication. And I know some superb linguists who are not very good interpreters because they simply cannot put themselves in that particular groove where you need to be a good interpreter. Yes, you do need to do your homework, you do need to brief yourself not only about the subject at hand, but any other subject that might come into the picture because that always can be unexpected. You may have a meeting which is supposed to discuss economic issues and at the end somebody will say "and by the way we have this political problem (to discuss)." So you really have to know a great deal about issues, by trying to keep yourself informed: you read newspapers, you listen to the news, you try to do background reading in a variety of subjects.

Cor. Would you say the interpreters are, in fact, born rather than made?

A.T. That is the consensus, yes. You are born with the skills whatever they are that you need to be an interpreter. Just as you are born with a knack for music or the manual dexterity that you need to be a surgeon. There are certain innate skills that you are born with. That you can develop by training, by working. 1 consider that even after all these years every time I interpret I learn something new, every time I interpret I become better at the craft, I learn new ways of expressing thoughts, new vocabulary evolves, of course, because so many technologies are evolving. So it's a matter of being born with it. And sometimes you don't even know it. I did not know it myself until I've just discovered it by accident.

Cor. Do you feel that our need for interpreters in the world is greater today than it's ever been or less?

A.T. That's a difficult question to answer. I believe that we may have passed the peak. We may be going into a situation where more and more people will communicate in one language, English. English is without any doubt the dominant language in the world today. So we may well be going into a situation where we are decreasing the number of interpreters in the major languages. At the same time we are increasing the number of interpreters in the languages which a generation ago were never considered to be international languages: Byelorussian, Ukrainian. So is it a drop or is it a shift? Only time will tell, but it seems to me that is the situation we are moving into.

Cor. One last question. From your own long and very varied experience what advice would you give young people who want to come to your profession today?

A.T. I usually refrain from giving advice to younger people. But I would say unless you are very-very proficient don't even think about it; unless you have a very genuine deep interest in the process of communication per se and are willing to be informed about many-many subjects... don't even consider it; unless you have a very good retentive memory, which is a gift, of course, you can develop it but the raw material has to be there at first.

Cor. Looking back at all those years can you say "I've enjoyed that"?

A.T. Yes, indeed. I have enjoyed it immensely. I've been very lucky. You know, I consider myself extremely fortunate to have known the people I've known and it has been a tremendous experience!

Cor. Aleck Toumayan, thank you very much indeed.

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