People often assume that work as a court interpreter primarily involves dealing with “legal terminology”. This job is one of my favourite ways to dispel this myth. Three days I was on my feet interpreting for the Japanese designer of a machine that it was alleged had been reverse engineered by a company here in Melbourne. The evidence I was called on to translate was entirely about the mechanism by which the skin was pulled and formed into cups and then deposited onto the conveyor belt, and almost no legal terminology.

Strangely, ten years later I had to interpret for an engineer servicing what may have been the same machine. Here’s one just like it.