October 28, 2025 • 43 mins
James Lupton is a Spanish Interpreter with a difference - he lived in Colombia for 12 years and understands the nuances and idioms of Spanish as spoken in South and Central America. After working freelance for an assignment for Private Detectives Answers Investigation specifically interpreting from Colombian Spanish in a live Witness Interview, we were fascinated by his experiences and invited him to talk to us in this podcast
James talks of his work with Super Barrio and of experiences with body bags - listen to Episode 1 to hear more. Episode 2 of this two part conversation will follow shortly
You can find out more about James at www.private-detectives.co.uk/office/jameslupton.htm
Or call our office on 020 7158 0332
Contact us about this podcast at podcast@private-detectives.co.uk
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Episode Transcript
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Welcome to Detective Diaries, brought to you
by Private Detective's Answers investigation.
If you're captivated by the art of deduction,
the thrill of solving unsolvable, or the enigmatic world
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Detective Diaries are where secrets are unraveled,
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and the truth is always a clue away.
Presented by Private Detective answers investigation.
Each episode contains of the conversations
about the real people involved in investigation.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Detective Diaries has returned.
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Here, we talk about some of the off the aspects
of private investigation.
In this series, we've spoken to investigators,
to forensic experts, and much, much more.
However, today, I'm in Brighton, a city
that I love and adore, where I'm meeting
with a very different type of guest.
Joining me today is James Lubton, who
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lived a long time in the heart of Columbia in South America,
navigating the rich complexities of local language.
James and I first met a while ago when a client had asked us
to interview and take a witness statement
from a Colombian national, thought
was to be a high-profile case to be heard in the Colombian courts.
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The requirement was for the witness testimony
to be videoed and recorded, and for a translator
to interpret live.
While the witness naturally spoke Spanish,
there are differences in nuance between Spanish
from Spain, often called Castilian Spanish,
and Colombian Spanish, especially in pronunciation,
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vocabulary, and pronoun usage.
When we think of translation, we often
think of converting text, but our guest today knows
it's so much more than that.
It's about translating culture, nuance, and history.
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James is a Spanish translator, specializing
in the unique expressions, dialects,
and slang of Colombian culture.
From the bustling streets of Bogota
to the rhythmic coastal towns, James
has spent years bridging the gap between English and Colombian
Spanish.
For us a couple of months ago, it would
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have been a relatively easy job to recruit a Spanish translator.
What would be ideal for us, we decided,
was to have a translator who understood those Colombian nuances,
and it needed somebody with the experience of James.
I was introduced to James by a mutual contact
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who had worked in Central America and knew him from their circuit.
James, please do not correct my Spanish, buts.
Juanatea, como va?
- We move in, gracias. - Comas, too.
Yeah?
And now I'm starting to get all of the best.
Now, when it's so pleasure, it's really nice to be here with you.
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See you again, meet you again.
I'm looking forward to this chat.
Can you enjoy it?
OK, well, I've got a few questions in my head.
I must be also didn't really think too much about this
and the balance, but a lot of your career,
it's not the normal path I suspect that the translator,
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the interpreter, or whatever, would take,
how did that happen for you?
How did you become a translator?
Well, I am a translator, but I'm also an interpreter.
That's what I actually did when I was working for you.
We always make a difference.
We always distinguish between translating.
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It is basically the written word and interpreting,
which is spoken word.
I must say, I'd prefer the term interpreting really,
because I think it's closer to what actually happens.
You're trying to interpret to make sense of
what the person that you're working with is saying
in order to communicate, translate that into interpretive,
or a new audience that doesn't speak the language that they do.
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How did that get into it?
I don't have any formal language training.
I learned my Spanish because I was doing a PhD in Colombia.
And I started without speaking any Spanish at all,
because in those days it was possible.
And I kind of realised fairly early on that the PhD
wasn't ever going to get completed.
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So I thought, well, the least I can do is come back
from quite a long time in Colombia speaking good Spanish.
So I made the decision not to have anything to do
with anyone who's spoken English, and I just submerged myself.
What you've said about translating as opposed to interpreting.
When we were sat in a room with the witness,
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which I mentioned earlier,
it was the first time I think in my life that that really came home to me
when I saw you at work, because you were not just taking
the person's words and putting them into English.
Somehow you were talking through the nuances,
and what somebody was actually saying, rather than the script,
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is that fair?
Was that fair, George?
I think moved as well.
I think so, definitely.
I mean, obviously I was being very accurate in the words
of how I was telling you that he was saying.
But I think that interpreting is more a question of,
kind of facilitate communication between cultures really.
And I think that, as you said in your introduction,
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my Spanish is fundamentally Colombian Spanish,
and I think it was really interesting that you had taken
the decision to try and find someone who was at ease
with the way that Colombians speak.
And what I was doing when I first met him,
I always try and do this.
I can with new people that I'm going to be working for.
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I always try and meet them beforehand.
So I can just have a chat.
We can have a chat, really, so that I can get to understand
the kind of language that they use, what kind of their accent
often, the expressions that they use.
And also, on the other side of that, so that they
can feel confident that I get them, that I can understand
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how they speak and what they're talking about.
Because that means that there's a sort of a level of confidence.
Yeah, I mean, safe hands here, right from the beginning.
So I will always try and have a cup of coffee with somebody
who I'll have a chat or just have a conversation before.
So we minimally get to know each other a bit before it starts.
Makes such a difference.
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So you didn't study languages at university.
You learnt from real life experience.
Yeah.
More than anything.
No formal training?
No, I mean, I went to a not very good comprehensive school
in Essex in the 1970s.
So I did a bit of French.
I did two years of French, which mainly consisted
of my fellow students saying rude things to the French teacher.
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So I didn't--
I learnt a bit.
I realised that I had a facility, that there was something
in my mind that meant that how people say things
or think in another language is something that's interesting to me.
And that it was something that I knew that I would be able to do.
But I'd never really done it before I went to South America.
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So what was your first job?
I mean, not the first job.
Everybody's first job was working in--
by the way, that was where it slits in somewhere--
it was first real job in terms of.
Well, my first job was as a paper boy at the age of 11.
But my first interpreting job was for back in the late 1980s
for Super Barrier.
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Super Barrier?
Yeah.
And then I can vaguely remember the name, the term, and who was Super Barrier?
Well, people would have seen pictures of Mexican wrestlers,
and Luchilini people who wear a mask that covers their whole face.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What's on it?
Was that again, Luchilini?
Luchilini.
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OK.
What's Luchilini?
Well, I don't know much about it, but it's a performative art form.
Let's say it's Mexicans get into a ring
and throw each other about with choreographed moves,
and it's massively popular, a bit like WFF.
Is it called WFF?
Like the wrestling that they have in the States.
Or like when I was young, we'd have Mick McManus and giant Hastax.
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It's not a sport, but it pretends to be a sport.
Did I just think about the same thing?
Because I think there's roughly the same age and the same generation.
Yeah, I can remember my mother.
I think it was Saturday afternoon at full-clock the wrestling.
The wrestling was on TV, and this is people who had videos
or any choice about channels.
And I'm going to show at the age of whatever I was,
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which was single numbers.
Yeah, I thought, why have they got people fighting on TV?
And it took some time or years to ever realise
that the whole thing was almost like a dance.
It was a copy of after, and it was a display.
And who's it?
You mentioned Mick McManus.
I can't remember any other names, but they were absolutely household names.
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So is that what?
-Lutulim is... -Lutulim.
-Lutulim. -So I say, come on, come on.
-Lutulim. -Are you going to teach us Spanish?
-Lutulim.
Is that what... that sort of thing that Lutulim and WD will be F-proof or...?
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know the history of it, but...
You made a Wimbledon Nagasaki who I think was a wrestler who wore a full-face mask?
(10:02):
Yes. I think that he was probably inspired by Mexican wrestling.
But anyway, the Super Barrio was a...
He emerged... there was a massive earthquake in Mexico City in 1987.
It's destroyed as these things do, largely for working-class neighbourhoods.
And there was a lot of, let's say, dissatisfaction with the response of the authorities.
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And...
Super Barrio emerged as the kind of hooded representative of the four victims of the Mexico City earthquake.
And he was doing a tour in London, talking about the situation, in full fighting gear.
And somebody, I can't remember who, but somebody who said, "Oh, he's a big Spanish."
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"We can ask him to do the interpreting." "They got me along."
And my Spanish was Colombian and it was much less fluent than it is now
and didn't have anything Mexican about at the tour.
It's been three months, three months, living in Mexico, actually.
So I had a little bit of Mexicans, man.
They said he can do it, and I was as nervous as he can imagine.
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But I found I could do it.
And so I sat next to him, and he spoke, and I spoke what he had spoken to,
an audience in the Conway Hall in London.
And at the end, it seemed to have gone very well.
People came up to me and said, "Oh, that is great."
And I thought, "Oh, OK, this is something I can do."
And I loved it.
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And I'm a bit of a tart as well.
I quite like the formative aspect.
So I enjoyed, and you've got no responsibility to have original ideas, really.
All you have to do is interpret, is convey what somebody else is saying
in a way that makes sense to people who can't understand me.
(11:50):
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So you talk about Mexico, you talk about Colombia.
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It's a much of a difference in the two versions of Spanish.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All Spanish, all Latin American countries,
all Spanish-speaking countries have very distinctive aspects of the way it's spoken.
A lot of vocabulary difference.
I'm not an expert in this, but Mexican Spanish sentences
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shot through with a lot of indigenous words for everyday things.
And they've picked up different bits of the original peninsula Spanish,
Spanish from Spain, that some of them have been preserved in one country
and some of them in another.
Then there might be other countries.
Argentina is the classic where Italian has had quite a lot of influence.
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And so, yeah, there's a kind of a sort of equivalent to our pee, if you like.
There's a Spanish that everybody can understand.
And there are common vocabulary that you can go to.
But if you're going to be speaking idiomatically in Southern Mexico
and let's say the Caribbean coast of Colombia,
then there are going to be a lot of local words that people might have heard of,
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but they might well not understand.
But if you think about it, that happens between us and the states.
If you're speaking to someone from the deep south,
then they're going to be talking about food that you don't know.
They're going to be using words that don't make any sense, really.
So you ask them to be put in the body in the trunk, right?
As we do in England, which is just pop the body in the boots.
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Well, exactly, that's what we tend to do, isn't it?
Yeah, so those kind of differences.
So you launch yourself off to Colombia.
You fulfill your PhD.
I said, "Dude, I can see you talking with a little bit of pride, complete your PhD."
Well, that was next.
Well, I didn't complete my PhD.
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But what I did do was meet people, get to know a fair bit about what was going on.
These were interesting times in Colombia.
This was the late '80s that I was living there.
There were negotiations taking place when I arrived
between the government and one of the main guerrilla groups.
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There was the emergence of what Colombia is most famous for, which I'm not going to name.
The government had created certain armed groups
that were working to protect the interests of certain people.
It was a complicated place.
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And it was just sort of the beginning of the understanding
of the interests of the international community
and what was going on in Colombia in terms of human rights abuses.
And there was a growing human rights movement.
And I had been looking at the relationship between 20th century politics
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from the mid-century onwards and the Catholic Church in the country.
And that history was interwoven with the way that the conflict and politics had emerged
during that period.
And people may have heard of Liberation Theology, which was
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members of the Catholic Church who became committed to the struggle of the poor
and the victims of arbitrary violence and another to the arbitrary acts.
And so quite a few of the people that I met were also from the radical Wiener Church.
I'm involved in the human rights movement.
And what I did when I got back when I took the decision to stop doing the PhD
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was that I started working with asylum seekers and refugees.
Mainly from Colombia, who were arriving in the UK.
And I also began interpreting for human rights defenders who were coming over
to the UK to speak to parliamentarians, to speak to people at the foreign office,
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to speak to public meetings and such like.
And I became in a way, I think, one of the sort of go-to interpreters for that work.
That's a good reason.
It's turbulent times, not just in Colombia, but in a lot of South America and Central America, particularly.
So I have to ask you if I find yourself in any dangerous situation,
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and why you're working, or otherwise?
I guess.
I mean, I don't particularly want to, not as many as people who are not me.
I worked quite a long time in Colombia, not actually as an interpreter,
as I translate it, I actually ran the office of a major UK and Irish development agency in Colombia.
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And most of the organisations that we worked with were engaged in human rights defence and working with local communities.
And so, yeah, there were times when that meant that I came up fairly close to the kind of issues
that they were facing day to day.
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Anything to stand out in your mode?
Well, I mean, there are a few.
I mean, honestly, I do feel a little bit nervous about,
I don't want to sort of do conflict tourism, but yes, I mean,
we were in a village once in a place called the sort of the Bolivar in central,
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northern central Colombia, which was a major river valley in the country,
and there was what was called La Vanzala,
La Vanzipada, I mean, that was taking place.
So, right wing organisations were kind of moving up the river valley,
and taking control, territorial control,
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and fighting people that they felt were sympathetic to,
I was like the, of the guerrilla groups, all were just political activists or social activists
and their techniques involved a lot of brutality.
And we did arrive in a village once where a combat had just been finished,
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just completed between a guerrilla group called the ELM,
and the outer events as well, say, Colombia, the main umbrella group
of the paramenetries, and there were four, well, when we arrived there,
there was a guy from, there was a four by four with the international Red Cross logo on it,
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and there was a man who was wretching at the side of the chapel,
and they asked me that he wasn't in any fit state if I'd be prepared to go inside,
because there were four dead combatants inside who'd been laid out on the chapel floor,
this is 40 degree heat we're talking about for a couple of days, and they had dogs
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mingling around them, they had been suffered the effects of high velocity weaponry,
they were not in a very good state, and we had to put my body back so that the international Red Cross
could take me away. And what was particularly difficult, challenging about it,
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was that there were four bodies in three body bags, so we had to use bin liners for the last one,
so that was, for me that was a really important experience because in Colombia there was a conflict,
but they used to call low intensity conflict, low intensity warfare, so there was stuff going on a lot,
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but you didn't, that didn't mean that you would experience it, if you lived in the capital city like I did,
that you would experience it every day, and for me, because I was working with people who were
affected on a daily basis, it was like sort of not to find a point on who lives were in danger because
of the work that they were doing, and for me to have this experience firsthand of what the
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implications of the war that I was working within and that I had to, for our own security and
for the security of the organisation, that we were working with that, to analyse quite closely,
I had to understand as far as I could, that to have this firsthand experience of the human effects,
of the situation within which we were doing, it was very salientry and it was very, very important,
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I think, to me, grounding myself in the work that I was doing. I don't know, I'd wish that stark
reality on anybody, so, okay, perhaps moving a little bit more about the, there must be some jobs
that you've done, not in all body bags, there must be some jobs you've done that stand out, I think,
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spring to mind. Yeah, a lot, I mean, you might have got the impression which wouldn't be wrong,
that a lot of my work is involved, I tend to do a lot of work that's based on human rights or
with law, things like that. We did a job once which I found just really moving, it was a group of,
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of human rights defenders from around the world, so we had people from different countries in Latin
America, we had, from Central America, from South America, but there were also people from Kenya,
from Nepal, from West Papua, and they were all human rights defenders from different parts of the
world, and it was a workshop on self-protection, on how you protect yourself physically, but also
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emotionally, if you're engaged in this kind of work, and so this job involved, what we call relay
interpreting, so if, for instance, somebody from West Papua was speaking in Bahasa, in Indonesia,
then the Indonesia to English interpreter, put it into English, and then we would put it into Spanish,
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me and my colleague, and vice versa, so you've got to sort of, you're almost like a chain, a chain
taking place, and yet people were talking about the very intimate experiences about being ostracised
by their communities, about being disowned by their families, about things like that that had resulted
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from the fact that they had made the decision to defend human rights, and there were, as you can
imagine, a lot of very emotional, emotional testimonies, stories were told, and they were coming from
different experiences, different parts of the world, but they were also meeting in the middle,
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because human beings who are facing that kind of pressure because of the work that they do,
you experience it in very similar ways, whatever culture you come from, and to be a part of a team
that was making it possible for these people from very, very different places to meet each other,
and to find each other in the experiences of others was very moving.
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This is a film, the whole lovey film, and I would lust in translation.
Lust in translation.
From forensic workshops to being blindfolded in treetops, tune in to listen to us
NASA about all things generation next, sorry, with myself,
Neve and my colleague, Georgia, on Detective Tirey's.
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I was in English to Spanish, and we've spoken about your experience and specialty in neighbouring you
to interpret, I don't know how carefully I'm trying to interpret, as opposed to translate,
very many found education, but to interpret what is being said, it's of danger when you go perhaps
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from Indianese into English to English to the appropriate Spanish, that things do get literally
lost in translation. Yes, what happens when you've started to lose something new ones,
I mean are you able to refer back to somebody to... Yes, that happens sometimes,
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I mean it's very much depend on the context really, what, where the work is that you're doing,
this case, what was paramount was that people could communicate with each other.
So if something did seem to have got lost, or we weren't quite clear,
what, whether what we were hearing was what had been intended, it happened very seldom,
because it was a really good team of interpreters, but in a situation like that,
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and it was an organisation that I actually used to work for, but also as an employee,
but that also we had worked with a lot. So we had a level of understanding, of trust,
that yes, if we felt that it was appropriate to stop and go back and just check that things have been
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understood properly or conveyed properly, then there was no problem. But if for instance I'm doing
work, which I've done a few court cases in the high court as a stuck in a booth in one case for three
months in a court case, let's say I'll set nights. Yeah, we were allowed at night, we were even allowed lunch.
There, it's the job of the lawyer to say, hold on, not sure that's right, not sure what,
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it's their job to ask the questions if there are things not being clear. But that was an interesting
job as well, because both sides in that case had their own bilingual staff working for them,
and they would, there would be notes at the end of each day where they would ask,
sometimes question how we had rendered, me and my colleague, how we had rendered things that
(26:32):
have been said during the day. So that was very, very different. I much, well I don't know, they're both fun.
What's the most unusual or memorable setting that you've interpreted?
Actually, I think it's one that I had in London, I really quite enjoyed this one. I'd been working
(26:54):
for actually a little bit careful, because I can't identify two close-to-one, but we don't want to be
sued either. No, I was working for a, someone who had a role in security, in a Latin American country,
(27:16):
and he'd been brought over by a part of the UK government to attend a security fair.
So he was brought over as a spookful? No, no, no, he was, he was, someone who had a significant role to play
in the provision of security in the, in the country that he came from. But at the end of that day,
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we were taken to the East India Club, which is a posh club in St. James, in the end of Palmao,
and we were sat in Margaret Thatcher's favourite window. She had a window that she loved that looked
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out over, over St. James Square, and we were told the story of how the, her own security people had
said to her, "Look, Mom," and if you say, "Mom," to Margaret Thatcher, you can't sit in that window.
Our own internal conflict was indeed, the embrace of where we sat, well, none. Indeed, all of that.
(28:27):
So that was going on when she was enjoying sitting in the window in the East India Club.
So she was, "Well, I'm going to it, my favourite seat." So they showed us the very thick,
well, it proved glass that they had put into the curved window that she sat in in the, at the front of,
of the room where we were eating, and that was actually just a cross-seroom from where, from the balcony,
(28:51):
the Neville Chamberlain had stood on to announce that Britain was at war, September the 4th,
9th, 13th and 7th and 7th. So that was quite a setting the next day. That was quite a setting,
an excellent wine, and really, honestly, the best lamb I've ever eaten in my life. And there was a guy
there who had known this client years previously, he worked at the embassy, and I'm not exactly sure
(29:20):
what kind of work he did in that embassy, but they knew each other and there were some interesting
stories that they were reminiscing about from the past. And, you know, I was employed as an interpreter.
There was a guy there who had invited this man over, and I had to keep interpreting. So I was
interpreting things, and I kind of realised halfway through the conversation that I'd never been
(29:42):
asked to sign the official secrets act. But I am a professional interpreter and I'm governed by my own
rules of confidentiality, so there was no danger that it was going to get out.
Do you think your rules, your self-imposed rules, or equivalence of the official secrets act?
(30:03):
Or does the official secrets act black and little? I have no idea. I've never signed it, so I've never
read it. The lovelyest answer I've heard from you this afternoon is, I have no idea. It's so delightfully,
so delightfully honest. Personally, my languages are a little bit, no, my languages leave a lot to
(30:25):
me, but I have seen you work, but that whole interpreting process, what does it feel like to you?
When you're there and you're immersed in it, do you become the other person or do you?
I often describe it as something that if it's going well, it doesn't always go well. There are
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different kinds of interpreting as well, so I will do a simultaneous interpreting in a booth where I've
got very high quality sound coming in and I've got microphones and the separation between what
the speaker is saying and what I'm saying is really, really good. And so that kind of puts you in a
cocoon. You must have a good ear for speech, it's if good. I think so, but funny thing is I've got a
(31:11):
terrible voice for accents. I can't. I'm really bad at reproducing healthy people speak, but yeah, I think
I think I'm quite empathetic. I think I'm quite good at interpreting people, getting them,
and I seem to be pretty good at finding a way to render that without too much trouble. So if I'm
(31:35):
doing simultaneous work, then honestly I'd describe it sometimes as if it was a bit like meditation.
I've got this sound coming in to my head and then I'm semi-conscious and there's a process by which
what I'm hearing almost in real time, I'm producing in what I hope is idiomatic and understandable
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English. So that's something I find that, I find that, so it's like one of those semi-trans states,
I'm a cyclist, so if I'm cycling around and I've got my cadence is perfect and the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and the tarmac is flat and smooth and the rhythms are just going, it's
(32:18):
that kind of feeling. Or if I paint as well, so if I'm painting a picture and things just feel like
they're working, they're flowing, a flow state, feels like that. But there's other
interpreting, there's consecutive interpreting, which is what I did for you guys with the Colombian
(32:40):
witness, where they will speak and I will be scribbling notes and then I will reproduce what they
said. That's what I did for Super Barrio, for instance. And I really enjoy doing that too. There is
the performance aspect of it, which I like. If I'm doing it for an audience, I've said before that
(33:01):
I was a bit of a tarmac, I do enjoy the sense that the audience is thinking, wow, that's a nice feeling.
I often get people coming up and then normally the bilingual people coming up at the end and saying,
that was fantastic. That's a great feeling. And then people say you must have an amazing memory. I
think my short term memory is quite good, my long term memory is rubbish. But the notes that I scribble
(33:26):
are my own sort of private way of notes, but they're good enough to be able to reproduce like 10
minutes of speech probably. I can do more, in fact, you can, but I tend not to because especially if
people haven't seen you working before, the audience gets nervous. And so you need to kind of keep a
balance between, and also I think it's important to have the person who you're interpreting for,
(33:51):
their voice to be at the forefront. And that means that having a balance between how much I'm being
heard and how much the actual focus is. So many ways you need to almost be invisible.
Less affordable. You're definitely invisible when you're doing the whispering. So you're not invisible
when you're doing consecutive. You're actually very visible. Yeah, yeah, seeing it. Yeah, but you try and
(34:19):
being humble. I can tell I'm a very humble person from the way I'm talking about what I do.
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(34:49):
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Don't forget to leave your contact details.
I'm sitting here trying to to conceive, and of course I can't, I'm not a linguist,
(35:11):
but I'm imagining sort of language flowing through your head like we in the way that we do
with our natural language. We don't think, we don't think about speaking English, we just get on
and do it and it comes through our brains and through our bodies. But I imagine that sort of language
(35:32):
comes through your head and engaging some sort of unconscious process. The analogy I can think about,
I speak French, I do not speak French fluently, it has got better. The difference when I am
in France of speaking French because I'm immersed in it, this thing, to the radio and whatever
(35:54):
I can see you in London, you can see how you relate to this. Compared to when I'm in England
and I meet somebody French and I just go, "we're stumbled and I can't do anything with it."
And I have a friend in Paris Christophe who happens to be a language teacher.
Obviously fluent in his natural French, but also in English and Italian.
(36:15):
And he is great to be with because he won't correct but he'll help in an encouragement or sort of
change a mood and change a new one and change a word there as in speaking and just help the process
and all he got better. But something that he says and tells me is that you've got to feel
the language. It's not the translation, it's not the words, it's not the vocabulary,
(36:40):
but once you start to feel it, you just speak it. I can remember, I don't want this to be about me,
but I can remember an instance, I was working in France with a couple of colleagues with Stann
in the Airbnb in a place with the Chibin-Too for five times before I went. I learned I would leave
and constantly, actually, it was absolutely lovely, came to pack up the bungalow with three of us
(37:03):
have been staying. And she started talking, and I started talking to her and we were talking for 20
minutes. And two colleagues, neither of whom could really speak French, were just looking going,
"I'd know I did, speak it that well." And afterwards, I think my response was actually neither
did I. That does kind of make sense to you and relate because I was feeling it and I was into the
(37:28):
conversation and... Yeah, I don't know really, I might say something that you're going to be a bit
surprised to hear. My Spanish is very good, but I'm not by language. I learned Spanish as an adult,
so I was 24, 23 or so. So my first started learning Spanish and I'm good at understanding what people
(37:53):
mean. It's a question of intuition and I'm pretty fluent in my own language, but I also am pretty
fluent in my Spanish, but I will make grammatical errors. Yeah, but is that in English?
Yeah, well that's in English. We all do that in English. I do, and we always, when somebody
speaks and say, "I'm sorry, can you say that again because we haven't quite heard it?"
And these are the things that my friends, you know, has set me to these natural things.
(38:17):
Yeah. Do you know, you talk about adults and children?
My daughter's husband's brother, kind of in a relationship they make, and daughter's brother,
sonal, is Estonian, married to somebody, Taiwanese and living in England. Now, their daughter at the age
(38:39):
of five will pick the person that she's speaking to whether they are Estonian or Taiwanese
or English and speak to them in their language because at the age of five she naturally speaks
all through. Well, we brought up our children as bilingual and I actually read a book. I prepared
(39:00):
myself and I read a book. It was a Scandinavian book on bringing up children by linguically.
And the takeaway from that book was have one person identify the one language and the other person
identify it with the other. Gotcha. Which is easy to do when there's only two involved.
Yes, three is different and that's what we did. It worked. And then when they got older and they
(39:20):
realised that actually both of us could speak both, then we started speaking spandlish and that
became quite fun and we still speak spandlish and we enjoy it and we play, we were playing a word
game. It was my birthday the other day and we were playing an online word game with my daughter who's
currently living in Columbia and another one who's living in London. We agreed that we were going to play
(39:41):
after the first round of my oldest daughter got a bit crossed because the younger one had used
to spandlish word in the game. We agreed that we were playing bilingual stop rather than
more bilingual which makes things easier. So we did that but I actually used to work with refugees as
well. We I worked with a with the refugee council and we set up a home for child refugees who at that
(40:09):
time were coming from the Horn of Africa mainly from Northern Uganda. And you know we'd have
these kids who were coming in they were 15, 16 years old. They spoke four, five languages exactly
as you were saying because they were all spoken where they lived and to communicate with different
groups that you lived close to you you had to have a few languages. Change I could also I could
(40:34):
talk for hours and hours and sure we probably will but quite conscious at time before we go I think
for anybody here in this you probably can't hear the background noise we have recorded this and a
fantastic pubbing horizon called the Dykes and we'd really love to give a shout out to James who's
(40:55):
behind the bar. I've got the place name right everyone. Yeah it's called the Dyke Tava on the corner
of Dyke Road and high cross minutes. We don't normally do adverts but that one is really wrong.
Is it a Tesco Express? Not sure what the satyrs go with. Oh well you can edit that out.
Okay don't say Tesco Express ever again. Yeah it's called the Dyke Tava on the corner of Dyke
(41:18):
Road and high cross minutes and they've been really accommodating to us so thanks James.
Thank you for that James. Not James behind the bar but James Lutzon who I've had the most pleasant
afternoon with can you just leave with one message we have quite we have discovered we have quite a
(41:42):
number of listeners in space. Oh so can we leave with a message from our Spanish listeners?
Oh well I'm the interpreter so it's your word so I should be interpreting it in Spanish.
That's putting me on the spot. Okay try this James here's a test. Thank you for listening once again
to Detective Diaries. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
(42:08):
You've been listening to James Lutzon on Detective Diaries.
Gracias de nuevo por a la rescuchada Detective Diaries.
You know, sprays en contra de Spotify and Apple Podcasts,
por don de descargas tus podcastes.
Alistair is Cuchando James Lutzon, en Detective Diaries. Asliway.
(42:33):
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(42:58):
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Welcome to Detective Diaries, brought to you
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If you're captivated by the art of deduction,
the thrill of solving unsolvable, or the enigmatic world
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Detective Diaries are where secrets are unraveled,
(00:27):
and the truth is always a clue away.
Presented by Private Detective answers investigation.
Each episode contains of the conversations
about the real people involved in investigation.
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Detective Diaries has returned.
(00:50):
Here, we talk about some of the off the aspects
of private investigation.
In this series, we've spoken to investigators,
to forensic experts, and much, much more.
However, today, I'm in Brighton, a city
that I love and adore, where I'm meeting
with a very different type of guest.
Joining me today is James Lubton, who
(01:12):
lived a long time in the heart of Columbia in South America,
navigating the rich complexities of local language.
James and I first met a while ago when a client had asked us
to interview and take a witness statement
from a Colombian national, thought
was to be a high-profile case to be heard in the Colombian courts.
(01:34):
The requirement was for the witness testimony
to be videoed and recorded, and for a translator
to interpret live.
While the witness naturally spoke Spanish,
there are differences in nuance between Spanish
from Spain, often called Castilian Spanish,
and Colombian Spanish, especially in pronunciation,
(01:54):
vocabulary, and pronoun usage.
When we think of translation, we often
think of converting text, but our guest today knows
it's so much more than that.
It's about translating culture, nuance, and history.
(02:15):
James is a Spanish translator, specializing
in the unique expressions, dialects,
and slang of Colombian culture.
From the bustling streets of Bogota
to the rhythmic coastal towns, James
has spent years bridging the gap between English and Colombian
Spanish.
For us a couple of months ago, it would
(02:37):
have been a relatively easy job to recruit a Spanish translator.
What would be ideal for us, we decided,
was to have a translator who understood those Colombian nuances,
and it needed somebody with the experience of James.
I was introduced to James by a mutual contact
(02:57):
who had worked in Central America and knew him from their circuit.
James, please do not correct my Spanish, buts.
Juanatea, como va?
- We move in, gracias. - Comas, too.
Yeah?
And now I'm starting to get all of the best.
Now, when it's so pleasure, it's really nice to be here with you.
(03:19):
See you again, meet you again.
I'm looking forward to this chat.
Can you enjoy it?
OK, well, I've got a few questions in my head.
I must be also didn't really think too much about this
and the balance, but a lot of your career,
it's not the normal path I suspect that the translator,
(03:41):
the interpreter, or whatever, would take,
how did that happen for you?
How did you become a translator?
Well, I am a translator, but I'm also an interpreter.
That's what I actually did when I was working for you.
We always make a difference.
We always distinguish between translating.
(04:03):
It is basically the written word and interpreting,
which is spoken word.
I must say, I'd prefer the term interpreting really,
because I think it's closer to what actually happens.
You're trying to interpret to make sense of
what the person that you're working with is saying
in order to communicate, translate that into interpretive,
or a new audience that doesn't speak the language that they do.
(04:27):
How did that get into it?
I don't have any formal language training.
I learned my Spanish because I was doing a PhD in Colombia.
And I started without speaking any Spanish at all,
because in those days it was possible.
And I kind of realised fairly early on that the PhD
wasn't ever going to get completed.
(04:48):
So I thought, well, the least I can do is come back
from quite a long time in Colombia speaking good Spanish.
So I made the decision not to have anything to do
with anyone who's spoken English, and I just submerged myself.
What you've said about translating as opposed to interpreting.
When we were sat in a room with the witness,
(05:11):
which I mentioned earlier,
it was the first time I think in my life that that really came home to me
when I saw you at work, because you were not just taking
the person's words and putting them into English.
Somehow you were talking through the nuances,
and what somebody was actually saying, rather than the script,
(05:35):
is that fair?
Was that fair, George?
I think moved as well.
I think so, definitely.
I mean, obviously I was being very accurate in the words
of how I was telling you that he was saying.
But I think that interpreting is more a question of,
kind of facilitate communication between cultures really.
And I think that, as you said in your introduction,
(05:55):
my Spanish is fundamentally Colombian Spanish,
and I think it was really interesting that you had taken
the decision to try and find someone who was at ease
with the way that Colombians speak.
And what I was doing when I first met him,
I always try and do this.
I can with new people that I'm going to be working for.
(06:16):
I always try and meet them beforehand.
So I can just have a chat.
We can have a chat, really, so that I can get to understand
the kind of language that they use, what kind of their accent
often, the expressions that they use.
And also, on the other side of that, so that they
can feel confident that I get them, that I can understand
(06:37):
how they speak and what they're talking about.
Because that means that there's a sort of a level of confidence.
Yeah, I mean, safe hands here, right from the beginning.
So I will always try and have a cup of coffee with somebody
who I'll have a chat or just have a conversation before.
So we minimally get to know each other a bit before it starts.
Makes such a difference.
(06:58):
So you didn't study languages at university.
You learnt from real life experience.
Yeah.
More than anything.
No formal training?
No, I mean, I went to a not very good comprehensive school
in Essex in the 1970s.
So I did a bit of French.
I did two years of French, which mainly consisted
of my fellow students saying rude things to the French teacher.
(07:22):
So I didn't--
I learnt a bit.
I realised that I had a facility, that there was something
in my mind that meant that how people say things
or think in another language is something that's interesting to me.
And that it was something that I knew that I would be able to do.
But I'd never really done it before I went to South America.
(07:45):
So what was your first job?
I mean, not the first job.
Everybody's first job was working in--
by the way, that was where it slits in somewhere--
it was first real job in terms of.
Well, my first job was as a paper boy at the age of 11.
But my first interpreting job was for back in the late 1980s
for Super Barrier.
(08:08):
Super Barrier?
Yeah.
And then I can vaguely remember the name, the term, and who was Super Barrier?
Well, people would have seen pictures of Mexican wrestlers,
and Luchilini people who wear a mask that covers their whole face.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What's on it?
Was that again, Luchilini?
Luchilini.
(08:29):
OK.
What's Luchilini?
Well, I don't know much about it, but it's a performative art form.
Let's say it's Mexicans get into a ring
and throw each other about with choreographed moves,
and it's massively popular, a bit like WFF.
Is it called WFF?
Like the wrestling that they have in the States.
Or like when I was young, we'd have Mick McManus and giant Hastax.
(08:52):
It's not a sport, but it pretends to be a sport.
Did I just think about the same thing?
Because I think there's roughly the same age and the same generation.
Yeah, I can remember my mother.
I think it was Saturday afternoon at full-clock the wrestling.
The wrestling was on TV, and this is people who had videos
or any choice about channels.
And I'm going to show at the age of whatever I was,
(09:16):
which was single numbers.
Yeah, I thought, why have they got people fighting on TV?
And it took some time or years to ever realise
that the whole thing was almost like a dance.
It was a copy of after, and it was a display.
And who's it?
You mentioned Mick McManus.
I can't remember any other names, but they were absolutely household names.
(09:39):
So is that what?
-Lutulim is... -Lutulim.
-Lutulim. -So I say, come on, come on.
-Lutulim. -Are you going to teach us Spanish?
-Lutulim.
Is that what... that sort of thing that Lutulim and WD will be F-proof or...?
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know the history of it, but...
You made a Wimbledon Nagasaki who I think was a wrestler who wore a full-face mask?
(10:02):
Yes. I think that he was probably inspired by Mexican wrestling.
But anyway, the Super Barrio was a...
He emerged... there was a massive earthquake in Mexico City in 1987.
It's destroyed as these things do, largely for working-class neighbourhoods.
And there was a lot of, let's say, dissatisfaction with the response of the authorities.
(10:25):
And...
Super Barrio emerged as the kind of hooded representative of the four victims of the Mexico City earthquake.
And he was doing a tour in London, talking about the situation, in full fighting gear.
And somebody, I can't remember who, but somebody who said, "Oh, he's a big Spanish."
(10:46):
"We can ask him to do the interpreting." "They got me along."
And my Spanish was Colombian and it was much less fluent than it is now
and didn't have anything Mexican about at the tour.
It's been three months, three months, living in Mexico, actually.
So I had a little bit of Mexicans, man.
They said he can do it, and I was as nervous as he can imagine.
(11:08):
But I found I could do it.
And so I sat next to him, and he spoke, and I spoke what he had spoken to,
an audience in the Conway Hall in London.
And at the end, it seemed to have gone very well.
People came up to me and said, "Oh, that is great."
And I thought, "Oh, OK, this is something I can do."
And I loved it.
(11:29):
And I'm a bit of a tart as well.
I quite like the formative aspect.
So I enjoyed, and you've got no responsibility to have original ideas, really.
All you have to do is interpret, is convey what somebody else is saying
in a way that makes sense to people who can't understand me.
(11:50):
Hi, I'm Torva Coteman, and I'm the Head of UK fingerprint.
We take your fingerprints for police clearances overseas and other licenses.
You can listen to my podcast and all the services we provide here on Detective Diaries.
So you talk about Mexico, you talk about Colombia.
(12:13):
It's a much of a difference in the two versions of Spanish.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All Spanish, all Latin American countries,
all Spanish-speaking countries have very distinctive aspects of the way it's spoken.
A lot of vocabulary difference.
I'm not an expert in this, but Mexican Spanish sentences
(12:35):
shot through with a lot of indigenous words for everyday things.
And they've picked up different bits of the original peninsula Spanish,
Spanish from Spain, that some of them have been preserved in one country
and some of them in another.
Then there might be other countries.
Argentina is the classic where Italian has had quite a lot of influence.
(12:57):
And so, yeah, there's a kind of a sort of equivalent to our pee, if you like.
There's a Spanish that everybody can understand.
And there are common vocabulary that you can go to.
But if you're going to be speaking idiomatically in Southern Mexico
and let's say the Caribbean coast of Colombia,
then there are going to be a lot of local words that people might have heard of,
(13:21):
but they might well not understand.
But if you think about it, that happens between us and the states.
If you're speaking to someone from the deep south,
then they're going to be talking about food that you don't know.
They're going to be using words that don't make any sense, really.
So you ask them to be put in the body in the trunk, right?
As we do in England, which is just pop the body in the boots.
(13:43):
Well, exactly, that's what we tend to do, isn't it?
Yeah, so those kind of differences.
So you launch yourself off to Colombia.
You fulfill your PhD.
I said, "Dude, I can see you talking with a little bit of pride, complete your PhD."
Well, that was next.
Well, I didn't complete my PhD.
(14:05):
But what I did do was meet people, get to know a fair bit about what was going on.
These were interesting times in Colombia.
This was the late '80s that I was living there.
There were negotiations taking place when I arrived
between the government and one of the main guerrilla groups.
(14:27):
There was the emergence of what Colombia is most famous for, which I'm not going to name.
The government had created certain armed groups
that were working to protect the interests of certain people.
It was a complicated place.
(14:48):
And it was just sort of the beginning of the understanding
of the interests of the international community
and what was going on in Colombia in terms of human rights abuses.
And there was a growing human rights movement.
And I had been looking at the relationship between 20th century politics
(15:09):
from the mid-century onwards and the Catholic Church in the country.
And that history was interwoven with the way that the conflict and politics had emerged
during that period.
And people may have heard of Liberation Theology, which was
(15:31):
members of the Catholic Church who became committed to the struggle of the poor
and the victims of arbitrary violence and another to the arbitrary acts.
And so quite a few of the people that I met were also from the radical Wiener Church.
I'm involved in the human rights movement.
And what I did when I got back when I took the decision to stop doing the PhD
(15:56):
was that I started working with asylum seekers and refugees.
Mainly from Colombia, who were arriving in the UK.
And I also began interpreting for human rights defenders who were coming over
to the UK to speak to parliamentarians, to speak to people at the foreign office,
(16:18):
to speak to public meetings and such like.
And I became in a way, I think, one of the sort of go-to interpreters for that work.
That's a good reason.
It's turbulent times, not just in Colombia, but in a lot of South America and Central America, particularly.
So I have to ask you if I find yourself in any dangerous situation,
(16:43):
and why you're working, or otherwise?
I guess.
I mean, I don't particularly want to, not as many as people who are not me.
I worked quite a long time in Colombia, not actually as an interpreter,
as I translate it, I actually ran the office of a major UK and Irish development agency in Colombia.
(17:10):
And most of the organisations that we worked with were engaged in human rights defence and working with local communities.
And so, yeah, there were times when that meant that I came up fairly close to the kind of issues
that they were facing day to day.
(17:31):
Anything to stand out in your mode?
Well, I mean, there are a few.
I mean, honestly, I do feel a little bit nervous about,
I don't want to sort of do conflict tourism, but yes, I mean,
we were in a village once in a place called the sort of the Bolivar in central,
(17:52):
northern central Colombia, which was a major river valley in the country,
and there was what was called La Vanzala,
La Vanzipada, I mean, that was taking place.
So, right wing organisations were kind of moving up the river valley,
and taking control, territorial control,
(18:14):
and fighting people that they felt were sympathetic to,
I was like the, of the guerrilla groups, all were just political activists or social activists
and their techniques involved a lot of brutality.
And we did arrive in a village once where a combat had just been finished,
(18:37):
just completed between a guerrilla group called the ELM,
and the outer events as well, say, Colombia, the main umbrella group
of the paramenetries, and there were four, well, when we arrived there,
there was a guy from, there was a four by four with the international Red Cross logo on it,
(18:59):
and there was a man who was wretching at the side of the chapel,
and they asked me that he wasn't in any fit state if I'd be prepared to go inside,
because there were four dead combatants inside who'd been laid out on the chapel floor,
this is 40 degree heat we're talking about for a couple of days, and they had dogs
(19:19):
mingling around them, they had been suffered the effects of high velocity weaponry,
they were not in a very good state, and we had to put my body back so that the international Red Cross
could take me away. And what was particularly difficult, challenging about it,
(19:40):
was that there were four bodies in three body bags, so we had to use bin liners for the last one,
so that was, for me that was a really important experience because in Colombia there was a conflict,
but they used to call low intensity conflict, low intensity warfare, so there was stuff going on a lot,
(20:02):
but you didn't, that didn't mean that you would experience it, if you lived in the capital city like I did,
that you would experience it every day, and for me, because I was working with people who were
affected on a daily basis, it was like sort of not to find a point on who lives were in danger because
of the work that they were doing, and for me to have this experience firsthand of what the
(20:24):
implications of the war that I was working within and that I had to, for our own security and
for the security of the organisation, that we were working with that, to analyse quite closely,
I had to understand as far as I could, that to have this firsthand experience of the human effects,
of the situation within which we were doing, it was very salientry and it was very, very important,
(20:49):
I think, to me, grounding myself in the work that I was doing. I don't know, I'd wish that stark
reality on anybody, so, okay, perhaps moving a little bit more about the, there must be some jobs
that you've done, not in all body bags, there must be some jobs you've done that stand out, I think,
(21:13):
spring to mind. Yeah, a lot, I mean, you might have got the impression which wouldn't be wrong,
that a lot of my work is involved, I tend to do a lot of work that's based on human rights or
with law, things like that. We did a job once which I found just really moving, it was a group of,
(21:41):
of human rights defenders from around the world, so we had people from different countries in Latin
America, we had, from Central America, from South America, but there were also people from Kenya,
from Nepal, from West Papua, and they were all human rights defenders from different parts of the
world, and it was a workshop on self-protection, on how you protect yourself physically, but also
(22:08):
emotionally, if you're engaged in this kind of work, and so this job involved, what we call relay
interpreting, so if, for instance, somebody from West Papua was speaking in Bahasa, in Indonesia,
then the Indonesia to English interpreter, put it into English, and then we would put it into Spanish,
(22:29):
me and my colleague, and vice versa, so you've got to sort of, you're almost like a chain, a chain
taking place, and yet people were talking about the very intimate experiences about being ostracised
by their communities, about being disowned by their families, about things like that that had resulted
(22:51):
from the fact that they had made the decision to defend human rights, and there were, as you can
imagine, a lot of very emotional, emotional testimonies, stories were told, and they were coming from
different experiences, different parts of the world, but they were also meeting in the middle,
(23:12):
because human beings who are facing that kind of pressure because of the work that they do,
you experience it in very similar ways, whatever culture you come from, and to be a part of a team
that was making it possible for these people from very, very different places to meet each other,
and to find each other in the experiences of others was very moving.
(23:35):
This is a film, the whole lovey film, and I would lust in translation.
Lust in translation.
From forensic workshops to being blindfolded in treetops, tune in to listen to us
NASA about all things generation next, sorry, with myself,
Neve and my colleague, Georgia, on Detective Tirey's.
(24:05):
I was in English to Spanish, and we've spoken about your experience and specialty in neighbouring you
to interpret, I don't know how carefully I'm trying to interpret, as opposed to translate,
very many found education, but to interpret what is being said, it's of danger when you go perhaps
(24:28):
from Indianese into English to English to the appropriate Spanish, that things do get literally
lost in translation. Yes, what happens when you've started to lose something new ones,
I mean are you able to refer back to somebody to... Yes, that happens sometimes,
(24:49):
I mean it's very much depend on the context really, what, where the work is that you're doing,
this case, what was paramount was that people could communicate with each other.
So if something did seem to have got lost, or we weren't quite clear,
what, whether what we were hearing was what had been intended, it happened very seldom,
because it was a really good team of interpreters, but in a situation like that,
(25:13):
and it was an organisation that I actually used to work for, but also as an employee,
but that also we had worked with a lot. So we had a level of understanding, of trust,
that yes, if we felt that it was appropriate to stop and go back and just check that things have been
(25:35):
understood properly or conveyed properly, then there was no problem. But if for instance I'm doing
work, which I've done a few court cases in the high court as a stuck in a booth in one case for three
months in a court case, let's say I'll set nights. Yeah, we were allowed at night, we were even allowed lunch.
There, it's the job of the lawyer to say, hold on, not sure that's right, not sure what,
(26:06):
it's their job to ask the questions if there are things not being clear. But that was an interesting
job as well, because both sides in that case had their own bilingual staff working for them,
and they would, there would be notes at the end of each day where they would ask,
sometimes question how we had rendered, me and my colleague, how we had rendered things that
(26:32):
have been said during the day. So that was very, very different. I much, well I don't know, they're both fun.
What's the most unusual or memorable setting that you've interpreted?
Actually, I think it's one that I had in London, I really quite enjoyed this one. I'd been working
(26:54):
for actually a little bit careful, because I can't identify two close-to-one, but we don't want to be
sued either. No, I was working for a, someone who had a role in security, in a Latin American country,
(27:16):
and he'd been brought over by a part of the UK government to attend a security fair.
So he was brought over as a spookful? No, no, no, he was, he was, someone who had a significant role to play
in the provision of security in the, in the country that he came from. But at the end of that day,
(27:42):
we were taken to the East India Club, which is a posh club in St. James, in the end of Palmao,
and we were sat in Margaret Thatcher's favourite window. She had a window that she loved that looked
(28:02):
out over, over St. James Square, and we were told the story of how the, her own security people had
said to her, "Look, Mom," and if you say, "Mom," to Margaret Thatcher, you can't sit in that window.
Our own internal conflict was indeed, the embrace of where we sat, well, none. Indeed, all of that.
(28:27):
So that was going on when she was enjoying sitting in the window in the East India Club.
So she was, "Well, I'm going to it, my favourite seat." So they showed us the very thick,
well, it proved glass that they had put into the curved window that she sat in in the, at the front of,
of the room where we were eating, and that was actually just a cross-seroom from where, from the balcony,
(28:51):
the Neville Chamberlain had stood on to announce that Britain was at war, September the 4th,
9th, 13th and 7th and 7th. So that was quite a setting the next day. That was quite a setting,
an excellent wine, and really, honestly, the best lamb I've ever eaten in my life. And there was a guy
there who had known this client years previously, he worked at the embassy, and I'm not exactly sure
(29:20):
what kind of work he did in that embassy, but they knew each other and there were some interesting
stories that they were reminiscing about from the past. And, you know, I was employed as an interpreter.
There was a guy there who had invited this man over, and I had to keep interpreting. So I was
interpreting things, and I kind of realised halfway through the conversation that I'd never been
(29:42):
asked to sign the official secrets act. But I am a professional interpreter and I'm governed by my own
rules of confidentiality, so there was no danger that it was going to get out.
Do you think your rules, your self-imposed rules, or equivalence of the official secrets act?
(30:03):
Or does the official secrets act black and little? I have no idea. I've never signed it, so I've never
read it. The lovelyest answer I've heard from you this afternoon is, I have no idea. It's so delightfully,
so delightfully honest. Personally, my languages are a little bit, no, my languages leave a lot to
(30:25):
me, but I have seen you work, but that whole interpreting process, what does it feel like to you?
When you're there and you're immersed in it, do you become the other person or do you?
I often describe it as something that if it's going well, it doesn't always go well. There are
(30:48):
different kinds of interpreting as well, so I will do a simultaneous interpreting in a booth where I've
got very high quality sound coming in and I've got microphones and the separation between what
the speaker is saying and what I'm saying is really, really good. And so that kind of puts you in a
cocoon. You must have a good ear for speech, it's if good. I think so, but funny thing is I've got a
(31:11):
terrible voice for accents. I can't. I'm really bad at reproducing healthy people speak, but yeah, I think
I think I'm quite empathetic. I think I'm quite good at interpreting people, getting them,
and I seem to be pretty good at finding a way to render that without too much trouble. So if I'm
(31:35):
doing simultaneous work, then honestly I'd describe it sometimes as if it was a bit like meditation.
I've got this sound coming in to my head and then I'm semi-conscious and there's a process by which
what I'm hearing almost in real time, I'm producing in what I hope is idiomatic and understandable
(31:57):
English. So that's something I find that, I find that, so it's like one of those semi-trans states,
I'm a cyclist, so if I'm cycling around and I've got my cadence is perfect and the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and the tarmac is flat and smooth and the rhythms are just going, it's
(32:18):
that kind of feeling. Or if I paint as well, so if I'm painting a picture and things just feel like
they're working, they're flowing, a flow state, feels like that. But there's other
interpreting, there's consecutive interpreting, which is what I did for you guys with the Colombian
(32:40):
witness, where they will speak and I will be scribbling notes and then I will reproduce what they
said. That's what I did for Super Barrio, for instance. And I really enjoy doing that too. There is
the performance aspect of it, which I like. If I'm doing it for an audience, I've said before that
(33:01):
I was a bit of a tarmac, I do enjoy the sense that the audience is thinking, wow, that's a nice feeling.
I often get people coming up and then normally the bilingual people coming up at the end and saying,
that was fantastic. That's a great feeling. And then people say you must have an amazing memory. I
think my short term memory is quite good, my long term memory is rubbish. But the notes that I scribble
(33:26):
are my own sort of private way of notes, but they're good enough to be able to reproduce like 10
minutes of speech probably. I can do more, in fact, you can, but I tend not to because especially if
people haven't seen you working before, the audience gets nervous. And so you need to kind of keep a
balance between, and also I think it's important to have the person who you're interpreting for,
(33:51):
their voice to be at the forefront. And that means that having a balance between how much I'm being
heard and how much the actual focus is. So many ways you need to almost be invisible.
Less affordable. You're definitely invisible when you're doing the whispering. So you're not invisible
when you're doing consecutive. You're actually very visible. Yeah, yeah, seeing it. Yeah, but you try and
(34:19):
being humble. I can tell I'm a very humble person from the way I'm talking about what I do.
Get involved. Detective Diaries is interactive, which involves you, the listener. Do you have a case
you'd like discussed? A burning question about investigative life? Send an email to podcast at private-detectives.co.uk
(34:49):
or reach out via social media. You may hear your story featured in an upcoming episode.
Don't forget to leave your contact details.
I'm sitting here trying to to conceive, and of course I can't, I'm not a linguist,
(35:11):
but I'm imagining sort of language flowing through your head like we in the way that we do
with our natural language. We don't think, we don't think about speaking English, we just get on
and do it and it comes through our brains and through our bodies. But I imagine that sort of language
(35:32):
comes through your head and engaging some sort of unconscious process. The analogy I can think about,
I speak French, I do not speak French fluently, it has got better. The difference when I am
in France of speaking French because I'm immersed in it, this thing, to the radio and whatever
(35:54):
I can see you in London, you can see how you relate to this. Compared to when I'm in England
and I meet somebody French and I just go, "we're stumbled and I can't do anything with it."
And I have a friend in Paris Christophe who happens to be a language teacher.
Obviously fluent in his natural French, but also in English and Italian.
(36:15):
And he is great to be with because he won't correct but he'll help in an encouragement or sort of
change a mood and change a new one and change a word there as in speaking and just help the process
and all he got better. But something that he says and tells me is that you've got to feel
the language. It's not the translation, it's not the words, it's not the vocabulary,
(36:40):
but once you start to feel it, you just speak it. I can remember, I don't want this to be about me,
but I can remember an instance, I was working in France with a couple of colleagues with Stann
in the Airbnb in a place with the Chibin-Too for five times before I went. I learned I would leave
and constantly, actually, it was absolutely lovely, came to pack up the bungalow with three of us
(37:03):
have been staying. And she started talking, and I started talking to her and we were talking for 20
minutes. And two colleagues, neither of whom could really speak French, were just looking going,
"I'd know I did, speak it that well." And afterwards, I think my response was actually neither
did I. That does kind of make sense to you and relate because I was feeling it and I was into the
(37:28):
conversation and... Yeah, I don't know really, I might say something that you're going to be a bit
surprised to hear. My Spanish is very good, but I'm not by language. I learned Spanish as an adult,
so I was 24, 23 or so. So my first started learning Spanish and I'm good at understanding what people
(37:53):
mean. It's a question of intuition and I'm pretty fluent in my own language, but I also am pretty
fluent in my Spanish, but I will make grammatical errors. Yeah, but is that in English?
Yeah, well that's in English. We all do that in English. I do, and we always, when somebody
speaks and say, "I'm sorry, can you say that again because we haven't quite heard it?"
And these are the things that my friends, you know, has set me to these natural things.
(38:17):
Yeah. Do you know, you talk about adults and children?
My daughter's husband's brother, kind of in a relationship they make, and daughter's brother,
sonal, is Estonian, married to somebody, Taiwanese and living in England. Now, their daughter at the age
(38:39):
of five will pick the person that she's speaking to whether they are Estonian or Taiwanese
or English and speak to them in their language because at the age of five she naturally speaks
all through. Well, we brought up our children as bilingual and I actually read a book. I prepared
(39:00):
myself and I read a book. It was a Scandinavian book on bringing up children by linguically.
And the takeaway from that book was have one person identify the one language and the other person
identify it with the other. Gotcha. Which is easy to do when there's only two involved.
Yes, three is different and that's what we did. It worked. And then when they got older and they
(39:20):
realised that actually both of us could speak both, then we started speaking spandlish and that
became quite fun and we still speak spandlish and we enjoy it and we play, we were playing a word
game. It was my birthday the other day and we were playing an online word game with my daughter who's
currently living in Columbia and another one who's living in London. We agreed that we were going to play
(39:41):
after the first round of my oldest daughter got a bit crossed because the younger one had used
to spandlish word in the game. We agreed that we were playing bilingual stop rather than
more bilingual which makes things easier. So we did that but I actually used to work with refugees as
well. We I worked with a with the refugee council and we set up a home for child refugees who at that
(40:09):
time were coming from the Horn of Africa mainly from Northern Uganda. And you know we'd have
these kids who were coming in they were 15, 16 years old. They spoke four, five languages exactly
as you were saying because they were all spoken where they lived and to communicate with different
groups that you lived close to you you had to have a few languages. Change I could also I could
(40:34):
talk for hours and hours and sure we probably will but quite conscious at time before we go I think
for anybody here in this you probably can't hear the background noise we have recorded this and a
fantastic pubbing horizon called the Dykes and we'd really love to give a shout out to James who's
(40:55):
behind the bar. I've got the place name right everyone. Yeah it's called the Dyke Tava on the corner
of Dyke Road and high cross minutes. We don't normally do adverts but that one is really wrong.
Is it a Tesco Express? Not sure what the satyrs go with. Oh well you can edit that out.
Okay don't say Tesco Express ever again. Yeah it's called the Dyke Tava on the corner of Dyke
(41:18):
Road and high cross minutes and they've been really accommodating to us so thanks James.
Thank you for that James. Not James behind the bar but James Lutzon who I've had the most pleasant
afternoon with can you just leave with one message we have quite we have discovered we have quite a
(41:42):
number of listeners in space. Oh so can we leave with a message from our Spanish listeners?
Oh well I'm the interpreter so it's your word so I should be interpreting it in Spanish.
That's putting me on the spot. Okay try this James here's a test. Thank you for listening once again
to Detective Diaries. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
(42:08):
You've been listening to James Lutzon on Detective Diaries.
Gracias de nuevo por a la rescuchada Detective Diaries.
You know, sprays en contra de Spotify and Apple Podcasts,
por don de descargas tus podcastes.
Alistair is Cuchando James Lutzon, en Detective Diaries. Asliway.
(42:33):
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(42:58):
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(43:22):
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