Christine's interview

What are your greatest achievements?
A full life - becoming a good (home) sous-chef.

What’s your favourite smell?
Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria, Pampelune

What is your favourite taste?
Whatever’s cooking.

What’s your favourite work of art?
Holbein’s portrait of Queen Christina of Denmark.

What book would you like everyone to read? Why?
Anna Karenina because I’m reading it now and loving it.

What is your favourite sound?
Cicadas.

If you were an animal, what animal do you think you would be?
Probably a sloth – how I ended up living a busy life is a mystery to me.

What do you like to do in your spare time?
Eat, drink, chat, read, go to art galleries …

How many languages do you speak and why?
I am a conference interpreter and lecturer in interpreting with English A, French B and Spanish C (see Christine's biograhical details).

What do you like most/least about your job?
Interpreting: most: being a fly on the wall at a variety of meetings and learning a little bit about a lot of things; least: travel.
Lecturing in interpreting: most: planning and teaching; least: university bureaucracy.

What would heaven be like if you were in charge?
Quiet.

When and where are/were you happiest?
Reading on the beach on the Côte d’Azur.

Something you are never without
Hand cream.

What music did you inherit from your parents?
Musicals.

What music would you like to pass on to the next generation?
I’d like to pass on open ears and an ability to enjoy all kinds of music.

What music do you enjoy listening to/playing most?
It goes from Steve Reich to Baba Maal.

What lesson of life would you like to pass on to people younger than yourself?
There is such a thing as society.

If a young person asked you for advice about becoming an interpreter what would you say to them?
Go for it.

What were you like as a student at school?
Too serious.

How do you cheer yourself up when you are feeling down?
Listen to music.

How would you like to be remembered?
As kind.

If I hadn’t been an interpreter and trainer I would probably have been...
an editor.

What more do you want to achieve?
I’m in the funny position of hoping that nothing much changes.

Something that few people know about you.
I like to dance.

What lessons have you learned about life?
I am not the centre of the Universe.

If you could travel back in time where would you go and why?
Paris after WWI: the Treaty of Versailles marked a time of optimism in international relations – and it was a key moment for interpreters too.

What question would you have liked me to ask you?
What is your favourite city?

And your answer?
Paris.