September 5th

AFI'S Global Policy Forum (GPF) 2024

This week, I had the opportunity to participate in this year's Global Policy Forum. AFI is the world’s leading organization on financial inclusion policy & regulation. This event might have been one of the biggest events that our country had the honor to host. And I'm pleased to know that I also had the honor to be part of it. This was not only one of the biggest learning experiences, but it was an honor to work alongside my classmates and senior interpreters inside the booth. 

I was able to share the booth with our former professor Gerardo Caseres, Regina, Irene, and Madeline. During the whole week, I had the chance to put into practice my simultaneous interpretation skills, and my ability to think on the spot and adapt to whatever changes coming my way. 

If you can tell by my nervous smile, my Monday started with a presentation of the topics of “Financial Inclusion Strategies”. This presentation was filled with technical financial terms, statistics, and a lot of back and forth between English and Spanish, due to the fact that our panelist came from different countries around the world. The session started with English speakers, along the way we had our very own Salvadorean representative from the BCR who gave a presentation in Spanish. And I was lucky enough to interpret part of his presentation and the Q&A session the panelists and attendees had right after the session. 

But do not be fooled, I was very nervous and anxious all the time. Because we had 2 booths in each room, because we used relay interpretation, some participants were French speakers.  And, some of our French interpreters didn't know English, so they had to use our interpretation in order to deliver the message in French. Trust me, that right there definitely added more pressure. We had to make sure our interpretation was accurate and precise in order for everyone in the room to have a pleasant experience in the forum.

I can't thank enough my booth partners, they were awesome, kind and excellent partners. Of course, this wouldn't have been possible without the help of Komunicare, the university and the professors that put their trust in my skills. I'm a bit sad since I missed Didactics class. But, I'm grateful for the experience I gained with this event. Because I did not only work as a conference interpreter, but I also worked as a technician for the rest of the days of the forum. And here are some more pictures of the event.

Maddie was our coordinator at the event, without her, we wouldn't have been able to survive that week. She was our first contact for any inconvenient, emergency or unforeseen situation, she also had to jump into the booth to do some interpretation herself. I really enjoyed working with her. Irene was a wonderful partner as well, inside the booth she demonstrated how well she prepared herself for every presentation.

On the second day, we were three interpreters, but Regina gave us the chance to polish our skills even more. She decided to step out in order to become our real time coach and also our lifeline, for those moments where a more experienced interpreter had to jump in and save the day. I'll be lying if I said that I was extremely confident all the time. This experience made me realize the areas of opportunity I have to work on from now on, and it motivated me even more to chase what I want and make it happen. 

 

Here we have the technician dream team,

Friends that along the way become family 💫