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White House Interpreter
The Art of Interpretation
By Harry Obst AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Harry Obst
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4520-0615-4
Chapter One
PRESIDENTIAL VIGNETTES Lyndon B. Johnson
1963-1969
DINNER AT BLAIR HOUSE
It was not at 1600 but at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue, diagonally across from the White House, where I met my first president. A working dinner at Blair House on June 3, 1965, was to kick off a visit by German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard. Blair House, where General Robert E. Lee once declined Lincoln's offer to lead the Union Army in the Civil War, had been a government guesthouse since World War II.
I had been on a long escort assignment with a German newspaper editor since April 26 and had reached Denver on May 29 when the phone in my hotel room rang late in the evening. It was Donald Barnes, the chief interpreter. He ordered me back to Washington the next morning, because Erhard was to come there on short notice to see President Johnson. "Good!" I said. "You want me to observe how such a visit is interpreted."
"Observe?" Barnes exclaimed. "Have you read your job description?"
Although I had been hired as the then only German staff interpreter about five months earlier and had gone through several weeks of in-house training, I was not ready for such a difficult assignment at the highest level. In fact, I had requested the assignment with the editor of a small newspaper in order to practice my consecutive notes and ideograms. They left a lot to be desired. The journalist liked to make lively and humorous speeches at Rotary Clubs and other local gatherings. This gave me an opportunity to try different techniques without having to worry that my mistakes would cause problems in international relations.
Back in Washington the next day, I was nervous and worried. The chancellor was coming with two interpreters of his own. One of them was Heinz Weber, probably the best German-English interpreter in the world at that time (maybe at any time). The other was Hermann Küsterer, another seasoned professional. Would it not be like a young tenor stepping on the stage next to Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo? How could I possibly get through this without suffering major embarrassment?
Fortunately, there were many veteran interpreters on the State Department staff. I asked some of them for helpful hints on what to do and not to do. I spoke with Charles Sedgwick, one of my trainers, who had accompanied President Kennedy to Paris, with James Wickel, then the senior interpreter for Japanese, and with Bill Krimer, the senior interpreter for Russian.
Their first advice was to buy myself a dark-blue pinstriped suit. Diplomatic protocol expected and often demanded that interpreters wear such standard diplomatic attire when interpreting in public or at dinners. Staff interpreters did not get a clothing allowance. We had to buy our own business attire, including tuxedos, with our private funds. Bill Krimer told me to use a narrow interpreting notebook that could quickly be slipped into a jacket pocket to disappear during photo ops. Jim Wickel told me not to be afraid of presidents but to beware of their mid-level aides and of the Secret Service agents, who inadvertently will push interpreters away from the principals and out of earshot. Charles Sedgwick, a Harvard PhD and former Broadway and Hollywood actor, told me to eat a sandwich before dinner. "You may be served," he said, "but do not expect to get a chance to eat." Charles, a martini drinker when not interpreting, also gave me advice on the consumption of alcohol. "You will probably be scared the first time out, but do not try to calm your nerves with anything strong. You may take a glass of sherry or half a glass of wine, if offered. But even one full glass of wine may impair your ability to properly analyze information and pick up nuances or between-the-lines messages."
When my taxi pulled up at Blair House in the pouring rain, all of this advice was still stored in my mind, but I was frightened and my heart was pounding. Two Secret Service agents checked my credentials and let me proceed to the door. I rang the doorbell. When the door opened, I was greeted by an elderly gentleman who seemed the spitting image of a London butler. "Good evening, sir!" he said with a warm smile and took my raincoat. "You are the first to arrive. I would suggest that you take a seat in the parlor. May I offer you a sherry?"
"Yes, a dry sherry, please," I answered nervously.
The parlor walls were lined with American historical oil paintings. Too agitated to sit down, I walked around the room from painting to painting, trying in vain to slow down my heartbeat.
The doorbell rang again. It was Dean Rusk, also in a raincoat, also asking for a dry sherry. I turned to face him as he entered the parlor, glass in hand. He did not know who I was. Being the consummate diplomat, he bowed slightly and said, "I am Dean Rusk, the secretary of state."
I returned the bow. "I am Harry Obst, the American interpreter."
A puzzled look replaced his smile. "I have never seen you before. Where do you work?"
"I am a staff interpreter at the State Department."
"Really? How long have you been with us?"
"Five months, Mr. Secretary."
And then came the question that would haunt me for many years.
"How long have you been interpreting, then?"
"Just five months, sir."
His mouth opened slightly, not to sip his sherry, but in disbelief. He did not ask any more questions. But in his mind he must have made a checkmark. "A totally inexperienced interpreter! I better watch him like a hawk." And that he did from that day on, examining every word I uttered in his presence with a critical magnifying glass. Nobody else ever doubted my translations as much. Nobody else corrected them as often as he did. As his knowledge of German was limited, many corrections were unwarranted. But I quickly learned that a diplomatic interpreter does not complain when unjustly corrected. You also apologize for the mistakes that you did not make.
Next I greeted Ludwig Erhard, Gerhard Schröder, and Heinz Weber when the German party arrived. I had first met Erhard in Bonn when I was a student at the Germersheim campus of Mainz University, the home of its school for professional interpreters and translators. Even though it is one of the best university schools in Europe for learning professional interpretation, I was not interested in becoming an interpreter at that time. I elected to take courses in translation of the written word instead and later graduated as a translator. Nevertheless, I was asked one day to travel to the German Bundestag in Bonn with a handful of my fellow students to assist German congressmen with interpreting. This was in 1955, and I was assigned to Erhard. He was then minister of economics in Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's cabinet as well as a Bundestag deputy (the German system did not mandate a separation of powers). Ten years had passed since. Erhard did not remember me, nor did I mention our previous encounter.
Gerhard Schröder, a namesake of the later German chancellor from the other big party, was foreign minister at the time. Heinz Weber was the typical Rhinelander, courteous and laid back. Nothing ever fazed him. He greeted me with a smile and did not look down his nose at a mere rookie, knowing from the day before, when we had interpreted for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, that I still had a lot to learn.
Before the president arrived, the butler explained to me that the two interpreters would sit at the ends of the table and the four principals would be facing each other in the middle, to ease the flow of the conversation. He pointed to my chair and remarked that Charles De Gaulle and Winston Churchill had sat in it. This did not make me any less nervous.
Once LBJ arrived, the dinner got under way. There was a little small talk, and we got into substantive discussions rather quickly. The topics, mostly economic and military, were familiar to me from having read the State Department briefing book for the Erhard visit.
I had seen Johnson often on television and had noticed that the role of president fit him naturally. He had always wanted to be top dog in any environment anyhow. As a result, he felt completely at home in that role, similar to Eisenhower, Kennedy, and even Bill Clinton, despite the latter's informal way of being natural. Diametrical opposites would be Nixon and George W. Bush (for whom I have never interpreted). They always seemed to try hard to look presidential and walk upright and somewhat stiffly, jutting out their chins, emanating an air of artificiality. With LBJ, I always felt that if he had been in a crowd of a hundred Washington politicians when a spaceship from another planet landed unexpectedly in the nation's capital, the captain of that ship would have made a beeline for him, not needing to say to anybody, "Take me to your leader!"
You could not help but be awed by his physical presence. Everything about him was big, his Texas-sized frame, his hands, even his ears. This evening he was relaxed and smiling. There were only six of us, and the food and wine were excellent. My fear began to dissipate a little because the president treated me the same as Weber, whom he knew from previous encounters.
But it was not only Johnson I was awed by. Heinz Weber's English renditions flowed like a river on a sunny day. He delivered them seemingly effortlessly. I did not discover any mistakes or omissions. He also used a small pad that he carried in his jacket pocket. By contrast, I occasionally had trouble reading my notes or my memory and made several minor mistakes. Weber noticed them but never corrected me. He taught me a valuable lesson immediately. You do not correct minor mistakes of your colleague unless they damage the substance of the conversation. Usually, nobody but the other interpreter notices them anyhow. Do not sweat the small stuff. There are enough big problems to solve to achieve accurate interpretation.
I sneaked a couple of sips from my wineglass while Weber was talking. What a great wine!
Wistfully, I stared at the glass and at the meat on my plate while the interpreting work went on nonstop. It was my first whiff of the perennial torture interpreters suffer at banquets and meals. You can look and smell, but you rarely can touch.
I somehow got through the evening without embarrassment, but a tough agenda was waiting in the morning. When the president left, he shook my hand like everybody else's. His hand was big and his grip firm. A hundred of his handshakes were ahead of me. The Germans had a limousine waiting and left in a hurry, giving me no chance to consult with Weber. The butler handed me my raincoat, and I walked to Seventeenth and Pennsylvania, where I hailed a cab to go back to the State Department. Later I drove home through the rain with a little more confidence. But I did not sleep well that night.
THE OVAL OFFICE
The next morning, somewhat pale and still apprehensive, I took the elevator up to the seventh floor of the Department of State. The main building is arranged like a hierarchical pyramid. The higher up your office, the more important your function. The seventh floor houses the offices of the secretary and his most important assistants, while the eighth and topmost floor holds the fabulously appointed reception rooms of the department, in Washington only rivaled by some of the rooms in the White House.
Another baptism of fire awaited me here, my first plunge into serious simultaneous interpretation. Most of my training had been in consecutive interpretation, working from memory and notes with ample time for analysis of the message hidden behind the spoken words. Working in simultaneous, from memory only, just three to five words behind the speaker, affords too little time for reliable analysis. It is hard for accomplished interpreters and murder for a mere beginner, as I was that day.
We had assembled in what was then known as the Undersecretary's Conference Room. The room had two positions for simultaneous interpreters behind a wall with a window looking into the conference room. We each had a microphone and earphones. The conference participants were listening to us through their own earphones. It is important for interpreters to be able to see the speakers in order to be able to read their gestures and other body language, tell who is speaking, watch the passing around of documents, and see what places are pointed to on wall maps, projected slides, or charts.
The principal briefer was Secretary of Defense McNamara. He was known to be a fast and rambling speaker. Even more annoying to Weber and me was the subject: nuclear missiles in Europe, an overview of the arsenals of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Terms like "MIRVs" (multiple, independently targeted reentry vehicles) and "phased-array radar" were thrown at us in bundles, together with a shower of numbers. Erhard was half lulled to sleep by this rapid-fire technical onslaught, while his foreign minister listened attentively.
I was struggling through the entire briefing, using up buckets of adrenalin. My only comfort was that Weber, too, was straining when it was his turn, proving how daunting was the task in front of us. When the one-hour briefing was over, both of us had exhausted much of our mental energy. For me, there was no time to rest. Next on the schedule was the Oval Office, where Weber would be replaced by his colleague Hermann Küsterer.
We went straight down to the main entrance of the building and left in separate motorcades, the Americans first, the Germans a little later, so that the chancellor could make an appropriate entrance before the press and be properly greeted on arrival. In each motorcade, there were security cars with blaring sirens and flashing blue lights. That detail was from the State Department, not from the Secret Service. In front of all this were outriders from the District of Columbia police on motorcycles, clearing the way and blocking the traffic on side streets until we had passed.
Thank God, this was only a working visit, sparing us interpreters at least the elaborate arrival ceremony on the South Lawn, accorded during official and state visits, with anthems, review of the troops, and speeches on live television.
Before I had time to compose my nerves, I found myself, for the first time, in the Oval Office for a one-on-one between the two leaders. At least Dean Rusk was not there to watch my every word. Still, I felt insecure and worried. During the opening exchange of small talk, I let Küsterer do the interpreting in both directions while I stayed a step back. I looked around the room. It was not opulently furnished under Johnson. It had three comforting features: a fireplace, a tall grandfather clock that reminded me of several such clocks dispersed over my grandfather's apartment in East Prussia's capital of Königsberg, and an enormous lounge chair for the president. Still, my heart was not slowing down. LBJ plopped himself into his chair. Erhard took a smaller armchair across from him, his famous cigar in his left hand. Hermann and I pulled up chairs and whipped our notebooks out of our coat pockets.
I did not react fast enough to interpret Johnson's opening statement. Küsterer had to do it for me. Suddenly, I realized that if I did not take over the next time the president spoke, my interpreting career would be over. When LBJ made his next statement, Küsterer smiled at me and made a hand gesture indicating that it was my turn. The first of thousands of sentences I was to interpret at the Oval Office over the next thirty years finally rolled off my tongue.
The usual procedure in a private meeting between two leaders is that each interpreter does his own principal into the other language whenever possible. The reasons for this are many. The local interpreter usually will have read the same briefing book as his principal, having familiarized himself beforehand with the subjects, proper names, and places that are likely to come up in the conservation. He will know the current policy of his government. He will know what just happened in his country: a surprise resolution in the Congress, the resignation of a cabinet member yesterday, and so on.
Even more important is that he will be more familiar with the cultural and regional peculiarities of his country than the visiting interpreter. In the 1960s, no European interpreter could have guessed the meaning of "I think it is time to punt." American football was not yet known in Europe. Conversely, an American interpreter might have been baffled by the statement "And all of this happened in the eighty-ninth minute!" not knowing that soccer games last ninety minutes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from White House Interpreter by Harry Obst Copyright © 2010 by Harry Obst. Excerpted by permission.
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