I have often been accused of yapping. Yet, I cannot deny the peculiar irony that emerged when I channeled this propensity into becoming a conduit for others' communication. The smallest disparities between what I hear and what I must faithfully reproduce have come to define the contours of my existence. Some professions lack the requisite vocabulary to sustain their very essence. A posture slightly pinpricked commands you to capture every word cascading upon you—the cobwebby ones, those with sporadic twitches, and the ones palpably jerky in their delivery. Some merely position you within the chiaroscuro of translucent barriers, observing the world through refracted light while remaining perpetually separate.
“These are thugs who have generationally generously looted from us,” declares a woman, her voice exquisitely adenoidal, appearing as death merely warmed over. Ravenous voices saturate my mindscape, incoherent yet determined to bolt down gobfuls into my auditory perception. My consciousness briefly descends into a nebulous haze, yet remains unlatched and nonchalantly ajar. I continue mumbling with coherence throughout, apprehensive about uttering an equivalent of “thug,” contemplating my professional ethics and morality with each syllable. I scrutinise the speaker's countenance, attempting to decipher their political inclinations with haste. I witness myself articulating progressively condescending phrases, utterances my aspirational, polished upbringing would never sanction.
All this transpires within thirty fleeting seconds.
For the disinterested reader, I am endeavouring to register and process 130 words per minute, amidst overlapping arguments, slogan-ing, and attempted discourse in mediation. I merge and form words, struggling to maintain pace with the linguistic jolt through coherent and cohesive sentences that attempt to convey the essence of what has been spoken, overlapped, or reiterated. Breathlessness soon envelops me, fingers moving anxiously, eyeballs restlessly scanning. I grasp the water bottle adjacent to me; I remove the cap in a whisker's breadth; my parched throat demands hydration. I harbour distaste for whatever I am articulating. A sigh refuses to manifest. Do I genuinely speak with such animosity? Am I truly this verbose? The water remains untasted. I invoke my inner muse. Unsurprisingly, my muse manifests merely as a constriction in my larynx. The profound recesses of my abdomen generate sufficient saliva to maintain vocal moistness. My fingers press more forcefully upon the bottle. What am I expressing again? But these are not my words, either.
I yearn to utter something else today. Perhaps some Frank O’Hara. Perhaps some Richie Benaud. Perhaps I merely wish to emit cat noises. What reaches my ears is merely white noise. I contemplate whether you comprehend the curse bestowed upon Echo?
A brief caesura in the siphoning. Think with clarity. I admonish myself. My Adam's apple executes a somersault as I gulp both water and words. I gaze toward the other potential salvation. The clock. It offers no respite. I remind myself that I am intended to function as an absorbent entity, unabashedly so, contriving yet unburdened by quotidian biases. I attune my auditory faculties with heightened cognitive compulsion and enhanced integrity; yet I remain incapable of contemplating anything beyond the confectionery I presently crave. The cadence of human vocalization, female, a voice decidedly apostolic yet tremulous, materializes and captures my attention. Synchronicity is achieved; I encompass as much as I can absorb from her discourse—devoid of personal emotion that might cause words to become askew.
As an Interpreter, one is duty-bound to overhear—condemned and cursed to articulate sentiments never intended for personal expression, in a diction foreign to one's own. The most solitary occupation globally entails attempting to serve as the vessel for others' dialogues.
The interpreter is a purblind individual blessed with Olympian gifts. A simultaneous interpreter undertakes a Caligulan endeavour. I position myself within a cautious, conscious sphere; un-coerced cognition, through verbal reflex, guides my tongue to layer murmured syllables upon the reciter's floor in a dissonant duet. My consciousness bifurcates—one segment examines what escaped comprehension from that intricate preceding sentence, while the other hopes I have not inadvertently mentioned “muffin” or “mousse” even once thus far. Extracting myself from the overlapping contemplations atop others' voices, I progress languidly toward the conclusion of my assignment.
Raising a male child, my mother sensed her existence teetering on the precipice of unforeseeable transformation—of what demoniacal entity might she have gestated if her child-rearing proved deficient. General consensus suggests my mother harboured no desire for my existence. This was not an unplanned conception. Girish Karnad, in his later years, reminisces about his profound disquietude upon discovering his parents had not intended his conception and had resolved to terminate the pregnancy. His mother visited the clinic, remained for half a day, grew weary of waiting, and departed when the physician failed to appear. His mother's reluctance to revisit the clinic preserved his existence. Karnad asserts he cannot envision a reality devoid of his presence. I never experienced such sentiments, however. Lyadh did not intervene on my behalf. Anesthesia did. When I had scarcely entered adolescence, my mother once confided that she never desired a male child. Following her cesarean delivery, upon regaining consciousness, she inquired whether she had birthed a girl. When the attending nurses failed to respond affirmatively, she became hysterical, much to the amusement of relatives and family members. Still heavily influenced by the anesthetic, her frenzy subsided quickly. She informed me she was not entirely cognizant when I first partook of maternal milk and that emotional recovery from the disappointment of not producing a female child required months. I remain uncertain why she shared this narrative with me before I had even entered adolescence. But this established the tenor of my existence.
Scholars frequently assert that most interpreters in our nation are accidental practitioners. They never chosen this profession but pursue it because they found themselves incapable of alternatives and discovered nothing else to pursue. I concur with this assessment. Neither surprise nor shock accompanied my mother's revelation regarding the events following my birth. I still cannot comprehend her guilt concerning this matter, but I recall responding, “That's amusing. But I would not object to being female, either.” Similarly, I approached interpretation—simply because I wouldn’t mind it, either.
Ministers carefully script speeches, laden with hollow promises and climate platitudes. “We are committed to ambitious carbon reduction targets,” he declared, while I knew his ministry had just approved three new coal plants back home. The disjunction between his words and reality created a dissonance so severe I felt physically ill. In that moment, a small, treacherous thought entered my mind: What if I simply altered a conjunction? The smallest grammatical differences that would transform his meaning entirely. My finger hovered over the mic button.
The ethics handbook for interpreters is clear: “The interpreter must maintain absolute fidelity to the speaker's intent and meaning.” But what happens when the speaker's intent is deception? When their meaning masks ecocide behind diplomatic niceties? When the small difference between what is said and what is true might cost millions of lives in coastal communities?
I didn't alter his words that day. Perhaps I lacked courage. Or perhaps I recognized that my role, while seemingly passive, carries its own peculiar power. Instead, I interpreted with a precision so exacting it bordered on parody. I reproduced every empty promise with such crystalline clarity that its hollowness became apparent to all who listened. I slowed my cadence during his most egregious falsehoods, allowing each syllable to hang in the air, exposed. The smallest difference in delivery, imperceptible to most, but transformative in effect. Later that evening, a delegate approached me. “I've never heard such transparent bullshit made so transparent,” she whispered. “Usually the interpreters smooth out the politicians' lies, make them sound more sincere. You did something different.” Had I violated my professional ethics? Perhaps. But I had found the hairline fracture in neutrality where my humanity could breathe. The small difference between interpretation and revelation.
Occasionally, interpreting for someone whose ideology contradicts your own can prove extraordinarily exhausting. You might experience helplessness against their onomatopoeia that persists five seconds too long for you to deactivate your microphone and abstain from interpretation. The illumination at the tunnel's opposite extremity undoubtedly emanates from a locomotive that resembles a certain Member of Parliament producing “Ku-Jhik-Jhik” or “Kit-kit-kit” sounds. Maintain your position; that train approaches inexorably. Behind those substantial glass panes, that soundproof enclosure begins to resemble a rectangular confinement, with infinite walls gradually converging. Mother advised never to fabricate untruths, lest one be consigned to perdition. Yet, positioned behind this microphone, they compel me to articulate those falsehoods each turn, each day.
In this era of “alternative facts” and “post-truth politics,” interpreters find themselves in a precarious position. We are expected to be perfect neural interfaces between languages, but language itself has become weaponized. When a politician describes refugees as an “infestation,” am I truly neutral if I reproduce this dehumanization verbatim?
I neither initiated nor participated in the discussion. I frequently interrogate myself: does the account suspended in the ephemeral sphere attribute those falsehoods to my tally? Worse still, does imagining me reiterating their words absolve the original speaker of transgressions, transferring them entirely to me? I believe the burden of sin that interpreters bear continues to delay the reconstruction of the Tower of Babel. Echo, the nymph capable of engaging in extensive conversations, was cursed by Hera for verbal deception. She was deprived of the ability to speak her own words and condemned to merely repeat the final words addressed to her.
During my childhood, I would request my mother to narrate stories during meal. She typically delegated this responsibility to my father. On occasions when she could not evade this duty, her inadequate narrative skills became apparent. She could recall neither a single plot, nor a character, nor a story unfamiliar to me. Consequently, she would construct fictional narratives centered on me. Her lack of subtlety was evident. Unable to digest her inconsistent narration alongside the alu-seddho bhaat, I would persistently question and highlight discrepancies. She would listen patiently and nonchalantly to my remarks while calculating my remaining bites. I would quasi-concur with her disquisition, most impassioned because I valued the narrative above her making small rounded rice balls. Sometimes she would admonish me, stating, “You aren't supposed to vocalize when another is speaking. That contradicts proper etiquette. A babushona will listen diligently and speak only upon the other's completion.” I never internalized these admonitions. Certainly, had my mother been familiar with sophisticated terminology like “mansplaining,” she would have cautioned against that as well. She recognizes the term now. I elucidated it for her.
Workers' aversion to extended hours constitutes capitalism's most formidable adversary. I am no exception. I am expected to function as a lexical wizard, continuously speaking in words and ellipses to facilitate others' expressions. No one instructs us how to facilitate others' voices. Even the staunch Marxist desires to speak for himself and reluctantly becomes the voice of the masses. Seated within the booth, striving to identify substitutes that are culturally, linguistically, and experientially appropriate, I frequently must create equivalences while synchronously decoding incoming speech, reformulating content into lexically, semantically, and syntactically valid forms of another language while incorporating language-and culture-specific terms and connotations, and expressing the reformulated information into the target language, all while new speech continues to stream in. All this while combating the cognitive dissonance of maternal instruction: “Never interrupt someone. Mukhe mukhe kotha bolena.” Yet here I have mastered the art of eavesdropping on someone while simultaneously speaking over them. Like every other labourer exhausted by working hours, I follow Nietzsche's Zarathustra—I muddy my waters to create an illusion of depth when disengaged from the content I am processing.
Attention represents the rarest and purest form of generosity. Yet rarely does a discourse I interpret capture my attention. I either contemplate my position in a recent chess game or, more commonly, consider whether another visit to the lavatory is necessary. I served as interpreter for Mohammad Lokman Hossain (name altered), employed by Dhaka WASA as a day labourer. Undoubtedly, I was displeased with my cooling coffee as he spoke in extended, complex sentences without pauses allowing me to sip. Then Lokman bhai continued, “Suppose we are working and experience hunger and request tea from any establishment, they would scrutinize our appearances and demonstrate considerable reluctance to serve us. Simply because we are sweepers—and the other term they employ, Methor—and instruct us to step aside. Occasionally they claim to have exhausted their tea supply despite its availability. I mean, even after we have cleansed ourselves and seated ourselves beside them, if they observed us earlier working with 'dirt,' they would depart.” Rarely did I sit upright and feel compelled to modulate my voice slightly to convey his emotional point. How does one feel when speaking as the voice (interpreter) of a sanitation worker demanding fair wages while charging for two hours what they receive as monthly compensation? This revelation momentarily disquieted me, but we had already advanced to subsequent lines, so I prioritized keeping pace and postponed reflection.
The sage individual, within her penetralium, discoursed on neuro-imaging and cognitive reserves during our orientation. My greatest challenge as an interpreter is uncertainty regarding the sentence's destination, yet decisions must be made continually. I believe years in this profession will erode my capacity to formulate personal feelings, having sold my tongue to malevolent forces and been cursed to echo their final words. I descend in my chair. A table, a microphone, headphones, a lamp, several adhesive notes on the wall—this constitutes the domain of backstage existence, removed from the attention economy. As an interpreter, I would characterize this life as “Nepathye Jibon.” Behind the facade of the dark, substantial glass partition, I prevaricate and attempt to determine who might presently be listening to my interpretation. I cannot identify the individual among the impassive, fatigued countenances.
I have begun to collect them—these small differences that matter. The slight emphasis I place on “alleged” when interpreting a powerful man’s denial of sexual harassment. The microscopic pause before “traditional values” when it's clear the speaker means regression of rights. The tonal shift when translating “enhanced interrogation” instead of calling it torture outright. These infinitesimal adjustments exist in the liminal space between absolute fidelity and moral conscience. They are the hairline fractures in the glass booth that allow oxygen to enter.
Last month, I interpreted for a tech CEO discussing AI developments. When he casually mentioned “minor disruptions to the labor market,” I found myself adding the exact number of predicted job losses from his company's own suppressed internal report, which I had read about in the financial press. “Minor disruptions to the labor market—approximately 340,000 jobs eliminated in the first phase alone,” I heard myself say. No one questioned it. The number blended seamlessly into his corporate platitudes. A small difference that brought buried truth to the surface. Derrida’s différance—the idea that meaning is always deferred, never fully present, always shifting in the space between words—feels less like abstract theory and more like a daily reality in the booth. I am constantly negotiating the gap between what is spoken and what is understood, caught in the liminal space where language resists perfect equivalence. When I hesitated before translating “thug,“ when I let a climate envoy’s hollow promises stretch just long enough to expose their emptiness, when I gave the sanitation worker’s words the dignity they were so often denied—each was a moment of différance, a fracture where meaning wavered, where a small difference became the only thing that mattered. Language is not neutral; it is a battleground of intent, interpretation, and power. And if I must live in its fault lines, then let me at least be deliberate in the cracks I choose to widen.
Each day, with every interpretation, small pieces of my own voice disappear, replaced by the echoes of others.
I have become a linguistic chameleon, morphing into the syntax patterns of whoever I interpret. The small differences between what is said and what I reproduce, between who I was and who I’ve become—these microscopic fractures have accumulated into chasms. I am neither fully myself nor entirely a vessel for others. I exist in the liminal space between, a perpetual interpreter of my own existence. When I dream now, I dream in multiple languages simultaneously, none of which feel entirely mine.
As I leave the booth each evening, removing my headphones like a diver surfacing for air, I wonder if Echo ever found peace in her curse. Did she, as I suspect, create a secret language from the echoes—a patchwork identity stitched together from borrowed sounds? Perhaps there lies my salvation: not in reclaiming some mythical authentic voice that may never have existed, but in celebrating this mosaic of minute differences that now constitute my being. Perhaps the most radical act available to me is not grand resistance but these small differences—these barely perceptible shifts that redirect rivers of meaning through the tiniest adjustments to their banks. I no longer wonder if Echo found peace in her curse. Instead, I ask myself a different question: what if she learned to bend the echoes? What if, rather than resigning herself to repetition, she discovered the tiny spaces where she could shift meaning, redirect a phrase, stretch a syllable just enough to plant doubt in the listener’s mind? I am nobody’s voodoo, nobody’s echo either. I am the accumulated whispers of a thousand conversations, transformed through infinitesimal distinctions into something strange and new. And in a world where words themselves have become battlegrounds, these small differences may be the only revolution left to us. Maybe I was never meant to be an Echo. Maybe I have always been a quiet tremor, a distortion, a whisper that nudges meaning just enough to change it. And maybe—just maybe—that is enough.
Rohit Saha is an interpreter, translator, film reviewer, and an occasional writer. He grew up in North Bengal. He works with the Parliament of India and is currently pursuing his PhD from English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He is the associate editor of The Apollonian: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies.