Bittersweet memories of Paris

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” --- Ernest Hemingway, to a friend, 1950

Four years after the American novelist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) took his own life with a shotgun in Idaho at the age of 62 in 1961, his nonfiction <A Moveable Feast> was published. A moveable feast literally refers to a festival that ‘moves around,’ like Easter’s or Thanksgiving that does not come on a specific date. The above quote, taken from the book’s introduction, implies that memories of Paris will resurface in your life when you least expect it, just like a moveable feast does. Another quote just before the excerpt goes, “Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.” Hemingway, reminiscing his life in Paris between 1920 and 1924 (21-25 years old), mentions a lot about local Paris cafes and bars throughout his book.

I guess I can call myself a ‘lucky person who lived in Paris as a young man,’ as I went to Paris in 1980 when I was 27 and lived as a Parisien for three full years.

Exactly one year after entering the Graduate School of Simultaneous Interpreting at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul in 1979, the first of its kind in Korea, I flew to Paris with my recently wedded wife in September 1980 on a government scholarship. It took an arduous 23-hour flight with 1-hour transit in Anchorage before I could land in France. It was my very first journey to a foreign country and came as an overwhelming culture shock, as everything was ‘foreign,’ indeed. I could barely survive thanks to my French-major wife who had been to Paris a year before and ever since, I had to live as a hen-pecked husband and let her win in every argument afterward.

Three years in Paris was not quite a long time, but it was the most remarkable turning point in my life plastered with sweat and tears. Those three years defined the path of my life from then on. Three years was the longest possible time allowed even for local students to master interpreting including simultaneous. They let them “swim or sink”, ousting them after 3 years anyhow with or without a diploma. Though I was one of the first Korean wannabe interpreters in history, Korean was not taught at school and I learned how to interpret from French into English only, my C to B language. When you are deprived of your mother tongue at an interpreting school, you always feel like a motherless child. I had to embark on a truly Spartan training course to finish the 2 to 3 -year graduate program just like any other European students.

My life in Paris centered around École Supérieure d'Interprètes et de Traducteurs (ESIT) of Paris III, two subway stops away northeast from the Arc de Triomphe. I admit it; I blamed ESIT for ‘torturing’ me and not being attentive enough of me at the time, but looking back now, I could not be more grateful. ESIT received no contribution from my government or my school – I was only asked to pay about 50 dollars every semester for the student council fee. So, it seems like my government and school had the nerve to ask ESIT to “train some promising students from an underdeveloped country as a humanitarian favor” and the Korean government sent me a 500-dollar check only every month. It took me years after graduation to even vaguely capture the philanthropic spirit of French fraternity that so generously allowed a sub-par student from a poor non-contributing country to be educated for free for three whole years, rigorously train him to excellence, and even certify him as an ESIT graduate with a certificate for conference interpreting.

But I did not forget to return the favor to ESIT – one year after returning home, as Director of Language Services of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee, I made sure to allocate a significant sum of the Korean government budget and sent ten junior Korean interpreters to Paris.

The students were supposed to work for the Olympics with two official languages, French and Englsh. The initiative came as a pleasant surprise to the underbudgeted Paris school management. ESIT Dean at the time was late Danica Seleskovitch, the most prominent scholar of translation studies of the 20^th century in the world. I still recall her eloquent remarks when I visited her office in 1985 for an MOU signing on sending Korean students to ESIT: “Monsieur Kwak, congratulations on your brilliant career. Let us celebrate this MOU with a fine glass of whiskey from Serbia, my father’s homeland!”

Salle 7, or the ‘Room 7,’ is an 1800-square-feet classroom guarding the gateway to ESIT. This biggest classroom is now named “Salle Danica Seleskovitch” in her honor, who served as ESIT chief for some 20 years before she passed away in 2001.

Salle 7 still has the three simultaneous interpreting booths from when the building used to be the NATO headquarters. ESIT Director of Interpreting used to teach consecutive and simultaneous interpreting to all 100 interpreting majors from admission until graduation in this particular classroom.

The then Director was Christopher Thiery, a well-built French man who was a complete bilingual with English. He was notorious for his sharp and often menacing critiques that spared no students from the beginning until the end. No wonder everyone sweated in nervousness in his classes. My mother tongue Korean was not recognized nor taught as a working language[LC1] , and I was called “a special-case student” who needed to be evaluated in C-B interpreting only, namely C to B language. I remember being awkwardly evaluated every few months in Thiery’s classes. I still vividly recall the striking stage fright I felt when I interpreted from a tiny chair and desk placed in the middle of a U-shaped line of tables full of other students blankly staring at me. Thiery singled me out a month before the graduation exam and made me interpret a French speech of a Canadian speaker into English, which I nervously did, with all my possible might imaginable. After asking for peer critiques, I could finally hear Professor Theiry saying, “I had no idea you had it in you, Mr. Kwak. Good luck with your exams.”

On June 13, 1983, I sat alone in the rightmost booth of Salle 7 and took the Korean-English simultaneous exam for graduation. Korean was never taught, but the Korean speech read by a Korean reader was then-Korean-President’s remarks on his departure to tour the Africa continent. I interpreted it to English in front of four seasoned interpreters in Paris, including Thiery, which I scored 18 points out of 20.

At last, I could finally graduate from ESIT with an average score of 16 of all three subjects. In announcing the results in front of all examinees, he said to me, “My colleague, congratulations. This is a very good news”. It was nothing short of a miracle. My mother later shared that she had dreamed of a bright candlelight that kept on burning beneath a rushing waterfall that day.

It was the Salle 7 where I proudly presented on Korea’s translation and interpreting market at the general meeting of the CIUTI (World Interpreting Schools Association) in June 2005, representing my school, GSIT. It was also Salle 7 where I talked about Korea’s TV interpreting at a sideline conference, when the new ESIT Dean of Interpreting Clare Donovan introduced me so kindly as moderator, who had graduated ESIT with me in 1983.

I do not believe it was a pure coincidence that I attended the CIUTI conference held in Paris as the first Korean Dean of the first Korean Interpreting School and made a workshop presentation at the very same hall I took my graduation exams in. I do not believe it was a total coincidence that the moderator of that workshop graduated from ESIT the same year as I did.

Professor M. K. Choi of Ewha Woman’s University, also an ESIT graduate, commented that my stories were wrought from a fatality. Does such fate really exist? After long years, the newly renovated Salle 7 did appear much cleaner, but it looked somehow smaller than when I trembled with fear in it 22 years ago.

Many seem to guess I must have traveled through Europe and enjoyed high-end French wine and cuisine during my stay there, but it could not be further away from the truth. I had to live off a 500-dollar scholarship every month; cars and hot meals were a luxury.

I vaguely thought about returning to Paris when I flew back home in July 1983, but as fate would have it, I found myself back in the French capital once every few months when I started working for the Seoul Olympics. As a member of the Blue House entourage of the Korean President during his state visit to France, I drove through the wide Champs-Elysees on a long line of motorcade escorted by the French chevaliers. I even treated some of my friends staying in Paris with fancy wine and dinner at a luxury hotel restaurant in the chic boulevard. Looking back after my retirement, I sometimes feel that my 3-year stay in Paris may have changed the rest of my life like a moveable feast, it might have let me sacrifice more than I earned on the bottom line. (END)