President Obama is currently in the middle of his four-nation seven-day tour of Asia, meeting with national leaders and prime ministers from November 13-19. This is his first time in Asia since taking office in January, and his first stop was in Japan.

President Obama at a joint press conference held with Prime Minister Hatoyama in Japan. (Photo credit: Saul Loeb-AFP/Getty Images)
President Obama at a joint press conference held with Prime Minister Hatoyama in Japan. (Photo credit: Saul Loeb-AFP/Getty Images)

My father works as an independent interpreter, and regularly receives translation jobs from the State Department due to our proximity to Washington, DC. In the past, he’s met and translated for several famous political and celebrity figures and has sat in on major international conferences. Despite how much they deal with high profile individuals, being an interpreter is not a glamorous job. It is very demanding and mentally taxing. If the job deals with a specific industry such as the medical field, one must study for days beforehand and know the industry jargon well enough that it rolls off their tongue. Some jobs require being away from your home and family for days, weeks, even months. (My father had actually just returned at the end of October from a two month job on location in New Mexico, during which my mother temporarily had to take care of the family as if it were a single parent household.) Simultaneous translation has got to be one of the most stressful, exhausting, and high-pressure forms of translation, since you are essentially translating what the speaker just said while listening to what you will need to translate next, without pauses. My father would often return home totally wiped after translating for over ten hours straight at a conference or summit.

But last Friday was one of the few moments of glory, where my father got his chance to shine. He got a call early in the morning from the White House through the State Department, asking him to take on a rush job. The job was to translate the speech manuscript that President Obama had prepared to read in Japan the next day. The document needed to be transcribed into Japanese for the Japanese media, and it had to be ready by the end of the day. Despite such short notice, my father came to the rescue and got the job done. We were all very excited and of course incredibly proud of our father for his significant contribution to the president’s Asia trip. They say that living in Northern Virginia, local news often becomes national news, but this time my father played a key role on the international stage.

Three cheers for my father the hero! πŸ™‚