Feature story
What do these have in common? Words. Specifically, words translated by Roswitha Ginglas-Poulet, who shared what it’s like to have a storied career as a translator.
Growing up in Frankfurt, she didn’t always know that would be her direction in life. “When I finished school, I wanted to study mathematics, which I could have done in Frankfurt—and stayed home.”
But one of her friends was studying languages in Heidelberg. And Ginglas-Poulet decided to go, too. “She quit after a few semesters but I kept on—and then there was this offer from the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey.”
She signed her first contract with Bossey on 15 May 1973, where she thought she’d remain for a little while. During this time, she met the first of four popes, Pope Paul VI, in 1975, when students from Bossey traveled to Rome for their annual study visit.
“I stayed for 30 years,” said Ginglas-Poulet, though after six years, the job became half-time.
She then also began serving as an interpreter for the WCC, and for other organizations, NGOs and businesses as well.
Translating, interpreting—what’s the difference?
Ginglas-Poulet has mainly served as an interpreter, and readily explains to laypeople what the difference is between translating and interpreting. “Translating is writing, as in a publication,” she explained. "Interpreting is oral.”
And interpretation can be consecutive, meaning the interpretation occurs after the speaker is completely finished in front of the public, “so sometimes you’re nervous,” said Ginglas-Poulet. Simultaneous interoperation is working mainly from a booth but can also be done via mobile equipment—the kind used during WCC assemblies and central committee meetings.
Interpretation can even be offered to an individual, by sitting next to a person and filing them (whispering) in on the content as it goes along.
It’s an art that Krystyna Konovalova, WCC Language Service coordinator, describes this way: “Translators have time to think. Interpreters? There’s no time to think. You catch the wave and float down.”
And that’s even more difficult when working from German, said Ginglas-Poulet. “In German, you always have the verb at the end of the sentence, so sometimes you miss the middle of the sentence, and you guess—and it can be completely wrong!”
She also recalled situations where translating very painful topics isn’t easy, such as during the aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia in December 2004.
Constant adaptation
Having traveled now to 131 countries, Ginglas-Poulet wants to hit 150. And, all-in-all, she has no regrets about her chosen career.
Along the way, she’s adapted to some major changes in the field of translating. “The most recent change is AI, of course,” she said. “Some of my younger colleagues, they come with computers and they have all the speeches translated already and they just read the speeches independent of what the speaker says.”
In fact, some translating jobs have stopped altogether—or only require a translator to check an AI-generated translation for errors (post-editing).
Yet there are, in fact, still many jobs left for translators and interpreters—even jobs originally intended for AI. “I was at a medical conference. I was supposed to translate a speaker
from the U.S., and I asked her if she was able to follow,” recalled Ginglas-Poulet. “She said yes, since she had her Apple phone. But then the speaker said, ‘Today we will do it in Bernese dialect.’ And that was it: she needed an interpreter. You still have to adapt.”
When Ginglas-Poulet was just starting out, “Everybody said: don’t do it because everyone will speak English in a few year’s time.”
Of course, that hasn’t happened. Yet today, Ginglas-Poulet sometimes finds herself hesitating to recommend careers as translators for young people.
“Just a week ago, I was asked to review a text translated by AI to make it would look as if it was a human translation,” said Ginglas-Poulet. “I refused.”
