RUTH STORM - Wartburg College

14 FALL | 2012
knowledge of the rainforest,” Kelly
said. “Their culture predates the Incas
and has survived Spanish colonists,
petroleum companies, and the pressures of
globalization. Their language is beautiful and
contains extensive knowledge of the natural
world and the plants from which so many
modern medicines are derived.”
Her first job out of college — with an
assist from the Wartburg placement center —
was with AT&T Language Line, interpreting
telephone conversations in Spanish and
English. She rose to senior language
specialist managing a remote team of more
than 30 interpreters.
The experience served as the catalyst
for her book, Telephone Interpreting: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Profession,
the first “practical guide” for interpreters,
educators and researchers.
Kelly later worked as a freelance
interpreter, a consultant to government,
educational and corporate clients, and a
product development manager, before
landing at Common Sense Advisory in 2008
and making a name for herself as a researcher.
“It’s an ideal job for me because I have a
love of language, researching, writing, and
speaking,” she said.
Her new book, Found in Translation:
How Language Shapes Our Lives and
Transforms the World, is a collection of
stories about the impact of translation on
nearly every aspect of society.
“The book discusses how organizations
as diverse as the Department of State,
Cirque du Soleil, Hallmark, Nestlé, Twitter,
Google, and FIFA (international soccer) use
translation,” Kelly said. “It also has a chapter
on religion, and we discuss Martin Luther’s
translation of the Bible into German.”
Co-author Jost Zetzsche is an expert in
Bible translation history.
“This book is very important to me,” Kelly
said, “because people will be able to truly
understand how much translation matters in
their lives and what an impact it makes.”
The book opens with a personal
experience about interpreting for a 911 call.
“I heard a woman whispering, ‘He’s
Kelly is chief research officer at Common Sense
Advisory, a Boston-based language services thinktank.
going to kill me.’ I
immediately said this a
real emergency, not like
911 calls complaining
about a neighbor,” Kelly
recalled. “The person
she said who was going
to kill her was in the
house.
“We know that she is
the bedroom, and he’s
at the door, and then the call disconnects.
So we’re left not knowing what happened.
The dispatcher knows because someone is
on the way, but the interpreter doesn’t get
the possible gratification of helping to save
someone’s life.”
The book covers a wide-ranging industry.
“The industry is so big that you have
translators (written word) and interpreters
(spoken) who specialize in oil and gas
technologies, the automotive industry, and
software,” she said. “We have translators
who do opera, lyrics in popular songs, and
subtitles for movies.”
Kelly’s niche is health care. She has
advised the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services Office of Minority
Health on a curriculum for culturally and
linguistically appropriate disaster response.
She helped design a language-access
curriculum for the Georgetown University
Medical School.
“When you’re dealing with people of
different cultures, sometimes the forces of
miscommunication are
more than linguistic,”
she said. “I developed
culture competence
training for health-care
providers — for doctors,
nurses. We provided continuing education
credits for even chaplains, pharmacists, and
other people who care for patients from
diverse backgrounds.”
Language proficiency, Kelly said, is only
part of the job. Understanding dialects and
culture are important, too.
“Spanish in Spain is very different
from Spanish in Latin America, and so
much variation exists everywhere,” she
said. “‘Merienda’ means ‘snack’ in a number
of countries, but it’s ‘supper’ in Ecuador.
‘Guagua’ in Cuba means ‘bus,’ but it’s ‘baby’
in Ecuador. There’s a word in Ecuador
that basically is a type of lima bean, but in
Colombia it’s a horrible insult word. For an
interpreter, it’s very challenging.”
Wartburg, she said, helps students to
better bridge that gap by emphasizing study
abroad — a requirement for language majors
— and having a diverse student body.
“Maybe Wartburg students don’t realize
how special it really is,” Kelly said. “I didn’t
really appreciate until I left how Wartburg
is different by encouraging students to go
abroad. That is absolutely the best way to
learn a language and to understand a culture.
“Wartburg’s diverse student body with so
many international students is a real asset,
too. Since graduating, I haven’t met anyone
who had the same experience I had with so
many international students from so many
different countries.
“I continually run into people with
misconceptions. They’ll say something about
Pakistan, and I’ll say that I went to college
with a few students from Pakistan. I knew
that my friends from Pakistan were always
watching Bollywood films from India. I
remember thinking, that’s weird. But Urdu
and Hindi are mutually intelligible, so
they can understand everything that’s said,
although the written languages are different.
I learned that at Wartburg.
“Even students who might not be able to
leave campus have a common resource with
“Wartburg is different by encouraging students to
go abroad. That is absolutely the best way to learn a
language and to understand a culture.”
– Nataly Kelly ‘96
all the international students. That’s part
of the experience of learning to be part of a
bigger world, interacting with people from
other cultures.”
Kelly also would pass along “the best
advice” she ever received — from a South
African woman while on a flight to Ecuador
to study Spanish.
“She said, ‘Every language you add is
like another college degree.’ I remember
thinking that makes so much sense because
you’re accessing other worlds, other people,
other experiences that you just can’t get any
other way.
“So I believe to this day that every
language you know is like getting another
college degree.”