Luis Mejia derives great satisfaction from his job, in his own words, he gets paid for talking. Mejia is a professional interpreter working in the Elgin Branch Court for the Kane County criminal justice system. He is an expert in English - Spanish translation in both directions and on a regular work day one can find him orally translating from Spanish to English and back, for defendants, victims, witnesses and the court. According to Mejia his job goes beyond literal translation, his actual goal is to interpret the meaning of that which is being spoken such that the original tone and emotion is also conveyed through the translation.
Luis Mejia was born in the US, but spent the early years of his life in Mexico, as a result he found the English language quite challenging when he came back to the US and started going to grade school. The situation turned around in high school after Mejia started taking classes in English as a second language. These classes contributed to his growing fluency in the English language so much so that he embarked on a successful career based upon his linguistic skills. Now along with legal interpretation he also provides medical interpretation services.
Make out what you will of this incident - I found it amusing/ idiosyncratic/ unfortunate, all of which I believe are valid responses. The incident in question occurred during the Libyan President Gaddafi’s speech to the UN which lasted for more than 90 minutes. It should be noted that speaking time allotted to top politicians at the UN is 15 minutes, and UN translators provide live translation services for 40 minutes stretches.
Gaddafi’s speech was being interpreted by his personal translator who faced a tough time translating the meandering speech in which Gaddafi jumped from one topic to another – he examined the various conspiracy theories associated with John F. Kennedy’s assassination, alleged that capitalist companies were responsible for H1N1 virus and also defended Somali pirates. All this coupled with the fact that the speech lasted for a very long time leading the translator to cry out in Arabic at around 75 minutes that he couldn’t take it anymore before collapsing from sheer exhaustion. Rasha Ajalyaqeen, the Arabian language translation services head at the UN, had seen it coming and rescued the situation by taking over immediately and continuing the translation till the end.
