I was thinking the other day...

... how did I become an interpreter?

Well, it's all my mother's fault. I don't mean that the way it sounds. I am very grateful to my mum for being very good at spotting my talents – or rather inclinations at first – and finding ways of fostering them.

I jumped around a lot in the kitchen to a folkloric music programme on the radio while mum tried to cook lunch on Saturdays. She spotted an article in the newspaper about a ballet group that was to be set up, took me along, and I loved it. Years later there was talk of sending me to the entrance exam for the Palucca ballet school in Dresden but we moved town a few months before the date. One example.

Mum was a pediatric nurse. She took me to hospital a lot when I was smaller, sometimes to cheer up children in the emergency room on the children's ward. I wanted to become a nurse like her, probably because I saw her be happy there, competent, decisive, respected – more so than at home, if I have to be honest.

Mum directed this wish into studying medicine due to my grades in school. In East German schools, Russian was the first foreign language at age 12. At 14 pupils had the option to add either French or English. The optional bit turned out to be somewhat academic as class schedules of the two classes in my year clashed, and to learn English – as mum had advised me to do for my future medical studies – I would have had to change to the other class.

I know it's a long-winded story but please bear with me.

I didn't want to change class as throughout my time in school, we had moved home every two years already, and this would have been my third change in friends, teacher etc. I simply didn't want to any more. So mum again did something for me that I really can't appreciate enough: she went to my head teacher and got permission from him for me to start English classes at age 13 in evening school, i.e. the adult education system. Frankly, who other than my mum would have come up with such an unconventional idea? Two other girls ('s parents) joined in, and so we three of us got the go-ahead. The condition was that our marks in other subjects wouldn't suffer, and so I learnt Russian, then English, and then French, as well.

At some point mum sat me down for a chat. As a medical doctor I would have to work long hours and be on call, and I had not the right temperament for this, she said. That sounds harsh but by that time I hadn't been getting the cuddly treatment for a few years, and besides, I knew that the assessment was honest and – what's more – spot-on. However, she said, I seemed to really enjoy those languages. I had to agree with her. So we explored the options. There was foreign language correspondent, which was basically a typist with language skills. No university degree needed for that. The two academic options were teacher and interpreter/translator, and I'd rather be dead than a teacher. The choice was clear.

tbc