The name Jean Bisping probably doesn’t mean much to you. However, his voice is familiar to many. For 30 years, he has been the in-house interpreter for RDI. He is the one who translates live the speeches of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Rob Ford and Justin Trudeau. A behind-the-scenes job, as little-known as it is demanding, for which a perfect command of English and French is far from being the only skill required.
“People think you have to do two things at the same time: listen and translate. In reality, I have to do three things at the same time: listen, translate and listen to myself, to make sure that my translation is faithful to what the person is saying. Because sometimes I make mistakes, between the words “millions” and “billion,” for example. I have to be able to correct myself,” explains the friendly Jean Bisping, probably one of Radio-Canada’s best-kept secrets.
He was hired by the public broadcaster 30 years ago, in preparation for RDI’s launch in January 1995. Since then, he has spent most of his working days alone in the booth, ready in case the news requires his services. Sometimes, he can know in advance when he will be called upon, for example during the traditional State of the Union address, that long tirade of nearly an hour in which the American president recites his priorities before Congress. He also confides that it is one of the most exhausting exercises for an interpreter.
“It’s an extremely demanding job. In many organizations where there is simultaneous translation, interpreters take turns every 15 minutes because it’s so tiring. One day, a colleague wanted to try. He found himself having to translate the words of a woman speaking with an extremely pronounced African accent who was giving a press conference on a topic as niche as hemp cultivation and microcredit. It was impossible to do! He had a nervous breakdown and never returned to the booth,” laughs Jean Bisping, who also sometimes faces his limits.
Translating New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern live during the pandemic required her full concentration because of her strong accent. The expressions of some politicians also give her a hard time, especially when they have no equivalent in the language of Molière.
“It is often said that English is easier than French, but that is not so true. Learning the first 800 words in English is true that it is easier, because they are always the same conjugations. But English is a language that evolves much more than French. In the Anglo-Saxon world, there is no equivalent of the Office of the French Language. No one tells English speakers how to speak. That means there are always new words and new expressions. It is not easy to follow. I am always in the “Urban Dictionary””, emphasizes this enthusiast.
Accident on the course
Retirement is not in his plans for now. He intends to continue working as long as he feels like it, and is not afraid of being replaced by artificial intelligence by then.
Jean Bisping never dreamed of doing this job that he loves so much, even if he seemed predestined for it, he who was almost born a polyglot. The result of a bilingual education: he speaks French and English, but also Spanish and Polish, the language of his parents. It was to pay for his studies in sociology that he began working as an interpreter at the courthouse in Ottawa. He got the bug.
“I once worked on the trial of a guy who was accused of murder. He said he didn’t understand English. At the end of the trial, we asked him why he went out with a unilingual English speaker. We realized that he spoke English very well. He just wanted to hear the questions twice to give himself time to answer better. In the end, he got 25 years,” recalls this chatterbox, who is never short of anecdotes.
Filthy talk
After 30 years at Radio-Canada, the memories are piling up. The RDI interpreter says he scandalized many viewers by finding himself translating extremely racist remarks after the hurricane hit. Katrinain 2005. The camera was then focused on disaster victims who were abusing a woman of Korean origin who had come to take advantage of their misfortune by selling bottles of water on the edge of the dikes.
“What do you do when that happens? It’s not easy. But I tell myself that if management has decided to put something on the air, I have to be as faithful as possible to what’s happening,” emphasizes Jean Bisping, who applied the same principle last week by dubbing Donald Trump during the presidential debate.