A. Conference—and an Interpreter

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 555, 10 February 1950, Page 7

A. Conference—and an Interpreter

N May, 1948, the Social Security Correspondence Committee of the International Labour Organisation met in Montreal and recommended tc its Head Office in Geneva that a Social Security Committee of experts be set up. Through B. F. Waters, its representative in Montreal, the New. Zealand Government issued an invitation to the LL.O. Governing Body to hold the first session of the newly-formed Committee in New Zealand. The Governing Body was pleased to accept. This Conference, which is in session in the House of Representatives Social Hall, Wellington, this week, is a historymaking occasion. For one thing, it is the first full-scale international conference that has been held in New Zealand, and for another, it is the first international conference that has ever been held solely to discuss social security. : The members number about fifty. The majority are delegates sent by the various national governments who have accepted invitations to attend, but there is also a United Nations representative, C. Michel, two people from the Inter-: national Social Security Association, a representative of the World Health Authority, and I.L.0. Employers’ and Workers’ Representatives. By the time the Hon. J. T. Watts, Minister of Social Security, has onseued® the Conference, and the official siete | starts, a lot of unofficial but vitally necessary preparation will have been completed by Mr. Waters and his staff from the New Zealand Social Security Department. z A suitable conference room had to be selected, name plates stencilled, adequate telephone communication laid on, and staff provided to handle necessary work that R. Rao, Secretary to the Conference, and his staff of three, could not do.’ Arrangements had to be made to meet delegates and accommodate them. In these days of air travel, when actual travelling time is short, but bad weather or the need for some slight mechanjca! adjustment may’ mean the loss of a day en route, no one is quite sure when a certain delegate may arrive, particularly if that delegate has not advised his hosts that he has left his own country. Although it was hoped, at the time of going to press, to broadcast at least part of the opening session, the actual Conference is private, and before any information on its deliberations is published, a report will be sent to Geneva. However, it is safe to say, as a generalisation, that by exchanging information and views, the delegates hope to help their governments evolve the social security scheme best suited to each particular country, . NTERNATIONAL conferences cannot function without interpreters. English, French and Spanish are spoken here and a modified system of successive interpreting is used. Conference interpreters do get around. One of the L.L.O. staff team, Joan Riley, left Geneva on December 26 and flew

to Mysore, India, where she attended a quarterly I.L.O. Governing Body meeting from December 29 to January 7. She then went to Ceylon, where the Asian Regional Labour Conference met at -Nuwara Eliya from January 16 to 28. Owing to difficulties with aircraft reservations Miss Riley had to leave Ceylon on January 23. She flew to Australia, spent two days in Sydney, crossed the Tasman, spent two days in Auckland, and on January 30 arrived in Wellington, where she hopes to settle down for three weeks. Miss Riley told The ‘Listener that there is a very good training school for interpreters in Geneva, but she did not attend it. She was born in Chile o1 IrishEnglish parentage, speaks Spanish as her native tongue, and French and English as well.'as most citizens of those countries, She also gets along in Portuguese and Italian. After her schooling in Chile, which finished with the Bachillerato, an examination equivalent to our university entrance, she went on holiday to New York, got a job, worked there for two years, and then joined the IL.O. in Geneva as a researcher. During the war the IL.L.O. moved to Canada, where she lived for six years, and it was at the 1948 Social. Security Correspondence Committee that she first started inter-

preting. One of the usual interpreters had_a breakdown. "They asked me to interpret," Miss Riley said. "I was scared stiff, but there was no one else to do it, so I had to." ° "Here," Miss Riley went on, "there will only. be a fairly small number of Spanish speaking delegates, and to speed

up proceedings we'll use what is known! as’ whispering iaterpreting. Pet. is, the Spanish speaking delegates , will go ‘off into a corner with the interpreter, who will translate in a whisper, either as the speech is being made, if the speaker is easy to follow, or as it is tater eter into French." When Miss Riley is not at conferences she continues her work at Geneva as a researcher, following developments in social security legislation all over the world, studying conference reports, writing articles in the monthly Labour Journal, and supplying reports to industrial committees on social security questions within their particular industry. "For instance," Miss Riley said, "boat‘men_on' the Rhine work in five different countries: Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their union Called for a report from us on the differenic+s — between social — security Measures in each country; compensation, sickness, and old age benefits, so that they could hold, a couference and try to find some way of making these benefits uniform, or at least the. qualifications for them." Miss Riley, who has lived in so many places that she is at home anywhere, liked the gardens "of Auckland and ‘Wellington, and is* ‘enthusiastic about New Zealand tea, but one of the first things she did in We menatees wat’ to buy "a sturdy tweed suit to*keep the winds out." ee Iws *