On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared a pandemic. The novel coronavirus had received its official name—COVID-19—only one month before, and a mere two months before that it had not even existed in our consciousness. Our perception of the world as we knew it was rapidly shifting but my, how things have changed in the thirteen weeks since!
A day before the pandemic was declared, my 8-year old son and I took off on an adventure that would pull him from school a few days before the start of March Break. We flew to New York City first, which unbeknownst to us was about to become a hot spot for the disease, and rode the subway into Manhattan for a day-long excursion. That night we flew to Lima. We planned to spend a week there and attend my cousin’s wedding, a mega family event with many relatives flying in from all over the world, and then fly to Santiago with my mom and sister to spend a second week with them and my brother’s family, visit friends and enjoy the last bit of the southern hemisphere’s summer before heading back via NYC to Toronto, to school and work and our normal life.
But as soon as the pandemic was declared, things escalated quickly around the world and we had to pivot for the first time. We cancelled the Chile leg of our trip and booked a direct one-way flight from Lima to Toronto, only that same night, Peru closed its borders for two weeks. We had to pivot once again, rebooking our flight for the first day after the quarantine would supposedly end. We didn’t know then that the quarantine in Peru would be extended over and over again (and is still in effect up to the date of this post). But then, when Air Canada cancelled our rebooked flight, we understood that we would now need to pivot again and rely on the Canadian Embassy to get us out of the country.
Since then the word pivot has become a buzz word for everything we have had to do to stay financially and emotionally afloat in these crazy Covid times. We’ve pivoted March break plans, summer plans and plans in general; pivoted our lives from packing lunches and heading out to school and office every morning, to preparing three meals a day and staying home; pivoted from working at the office to working and teaching our kids at home; and as the weeks have turned into months with no end in sight, we are pivoting in our professions too. In particular, those of us who made a living in close contact with other humans are having to pivot drastically to other fields or industries, or to technologies that allow us to continue in our fields but at a distance.
The week before the pandemic was declared, I was sitting beside the Chilean Minister of Mining at the PDAC conference in Toronto, performing whispered simultaneous interpretation for him at his meetings. This client-interpreter dynamic was the bread and butter of our interpretation services offered before Covid, with interpreters helping people communicate with one another and get things done, like start or promote a business, interview with people wanting to become parents through surrogacy, take business partners on tours of industrial facilities, or take tourists on city tours. However, the scenarios where clients and interpreters are in close contact are not the only ones that have had to change. With restrictions on travel, and lockdowns that have left many without much disposable income to travel anyways, tourism is at a standstill and those international conferences that have not been cancelled have also had to pivot. From hosting a multitude of people from all over the world in one conference centre, with two interpreters sharing one booth at the back of presentation rooms, to Zoom webinars with interpreters in their own home offices, struggling with technology to figure out how to hand each other the “mic,” while silencing their children and dogs. It’s been quite an adventure!
There is a lot of reckoning to do in this ever-pivoting new reality. Our inventiveness and creativity are being put to the ultimate test. Our fall-back talents are being dusted off. And all of this is happening while our heads are spinning in an upside-down world. But the truth is that this is what humans do best: we adapt. It’s not easy, but it is possible. The need to communicate will always exist and luckily, unlike pandemics in the past, we have platforms like AblioConference, Kudo and VoiceBoxer, and hubs that are slowly appearing, where interpreters can go to carry on helping our clients talk to the world in a professional environment. With a little extra prep time, training, and patience, we’ll get there!
Patricia Beiger
Director