Rogue's Gallery: 0009 Mike

Mike is the first Iraqi that I have ever spoken to. Obviously his real name isn’t Mike he has an American name that he has adopted. Well, it’s not really fair to call him an Iraqi, he is an Iraqi national who lives in Washington, DC. He is an interpreter I met when I was on travel. What I have learned from him is that there is a difference between and Interpreter and a Translator. I, probably like most of my readers, thought they were synonymous but they are not. Mike told me that a translator is someone who simply converts one language to another without regard to context. Much like you did when you took Spanish or French or German whatever foreign language you took in high school. You simply looked at a word and converted it to English so you could understand it, basically a literal conversion. An Interpreter on the other hand not only translates the words but, understands the context in which they are used.

He was cool, he would go to the bazaar and get us fresh baked bread and stuff. It was actually pretty good but, I have this lingering feeling that some parasite is growing somewhere between my esophagus and lower intestine. He was cool to talk to when he came by. He always came by and sat with us at chow and enlightened us to yet another facet of Iraqi life as to which I was previously unaware.