The Linguist

20 The Linguist Vol/63 No/3 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES network, or even be the first step to creating your own. This exchange creates a sense of community and may be an excellent chance to reflect on your performance. Analysing and talking about these experiences is not a sign of weakness but a way to gain another perspective, acknowledge your strengths, and take note of anything that could have gone better. This is not a way to 'punish' ourselves or self-scrutinise, but an opportunity for professional growth. It is important to stress that managing negative emotions usually becomes easier over time as interpreters gain more experience and get to know ourselves and our (emotional) responses better. Professional development and exposure are key. The more competent and comfortable we become in our work, the more equipped we feel to handle the emotional challenges we may face during a project. Vicarious trauma is a dark corner in the world of interpreting, but rather than brushing it aside, it is crucial to acknowledge it and find ways to cope with its symptoms. It offers an opportunity to build emotional resilience and prioritise self-care in order to keep providing high-quality interpreting services and ensure people's voices are heard. Notes 1 Birck, A (2002) 'Secondary Traumatization and Burnout in Professionals Working with Torture Survivors. In Traumatology, 7,2, 85-90 2 Figley, CR (1999) 'Compassion Fatigue: Toward a new understanding of the cost of caring'. In Stamm, BH, Secondary Traumatic Stress: Self- care issues for clinicians, researchers and educators, Lutherville, MD, Sidran Press 3 Lai, M and Heydon, G (2015) 'Vicarious Trauma Among Interpreters'. In International Journal of Interpreter Education, 7,1 4 American Counseling Association (n.d.). Vicarious trauma fact sheet; cutt.ly/CrisisSup 5 See Macdonald, JL (2015) 'Vicarious Trauma as Applied to the Professional Sign Language Interpreter'. In Montview Liberty University Journal of Undergraduate Research, 1,1; Op.cit. American Counseling Association; Lor, M (2012) 'Effects of Client Trauma on Interpreters: An exploratory study of vicarious trauma', University of St Thomas, Minnesota 6 El-Metwally, M (2021) 'Position Statement on Vicarious Trauma in Interpreters'. In ITI Bulletin Kashif Khalid traces the history, art and poetry of the language According to 2022 estimates, Urdu is the tenth most widely spoken language in the world, with 230 million speakers, including those who speak it as a second language. The national language of Pakistan, it is widely spoken in India, as well as in various countries worldwide, including Afghanistan, Bahrain, Botswana, Fiji, Mauritius, Nepal, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand and the UK. Yet it receives considerably less attention globally than many other major world languages. An Indo-Aryan language, it shares close ties with Hindi, and speakers of the two languages can understand each other. Both stem from the Khari Boli language and are known collectively as Hindustani – the lingua franca of Northern India. Though Standard Urdu and Standard Hindi exhibit few significant differences, linguists recognise them as distinct formal registers primarily due to their widespread usage across different regions (dialects are usually confined to smaller areas) and the fact that their written forms are not mutually intelligible. While Urdu is written in the Nastaliq script and draws vocabulary from Persian and Arabic, Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and incorporates more Sanskrit words. Emergence from Old Hindi Urdu underwent significant transformations during the Islamic conquests of the Indian subcontinent from the 12th to the 16th centuries. Its early form, known as Hindavi or Old Hindi, was spoken in Delhi and its surrounding regions, and was written in the Perso-Arabic script, typically in the Nastaliq style. As settlers integrated and mingled with the local population, the modern language began to emerge. Persian became the official language of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857), leading to the integration of Persian vocabulary into Urdu, alongside loanwords from Arabic and Turkish. This era witnessed the emergence of several monikers for the Urdu language, The Urdu tapestry

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