Meeting Passionate, Caring and Conscientious Chinese Interpreter Bing Ling
From today, I’m going to talk a number of professional interpreters on my blog, allowing my readers to meet fascinating individuals, getting to know the kind of work they do, and highlighting some of the issues this profession is facing right now. Today I welcome a lovely colleague, fellow Mandarin interpreter Bing Ling to my site, who originally hails from Shanghai, China and have lived in the UK for a number of years. It is my hope that by the end of this wonderful interview, you’ll get an interesting insight about ‘life of a professional interpreter in the UK’.
Bing, Can you please tell us how long you have worked as an interpreter, and why you decided to become one? Was it a conscious decision or did it happen without planning?
I’ve been working as an interpreter for close to 10 years. I started working on a very part time basis and soon I discovered how much I loved working with my language skill and how I could make a difference with that skill. I decided to be a freelance interpreter and translator full-time. So I think that was a conscious decision.
What a coincidence. That sounded exactly like how I started my interpreting career as well :) What did you have to do to become a fully qualified interpreter?
Like a lot of other professions e.g. solicitor or doctor, I needed to be a member of a professional body and be qualified and certified. As far as the legal interpreting profession is concerned, it is the National Register of Public Services Interpreters (NRPSI).
In order to be on the Register I had to take the DPSI exam (Diploma in Public Services Interpreters. DPSI is university first- degree equivalent and it was not for the faint-hearted. It tests all the interpreting skills that are required in the real interpreting world, consecutive interpreting, whispered interpreting, sight translation and written translation.
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