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thelinguist.uberflip.com APRIL/MAY 2016 The Linguist 9 MIGRANT CRISIS able to pass on their messages, questions and needs to the Greek authorities. What are the biggest challenges involved? The first challenge for me is psychological. Every day I face deeply frustrating human tragedies. Now I'm working on Lesbos and every day at least two or three boats berth, and some days more than 35 boats. It is not easy to see dead or injured people who have been starving for weeks and are emaciated, who have observed the death of their dearest relatives and friends, who have seen their children scrawny and sometimes dead from thirst or hunger. No matter how much you try to stay focused and relaxed, these bitter experiences put you continuously under intense pressure. The next serious problem is financial. Sometimes Athens-based interpreters are not paid for more than six months, but they expect us to keep working. If you work on the islands, as I do now, payment is more punctual. If they are not given permission to stay, immigrants can be imprisoned. As an interpreter, what has been your experience of the prisons? Illegal immigrants are kept in very small cells, without any windows or standard facilities, for a long time. These rooms are designed to have an inmate for two or three days, not more. There is no yard for the prisoners to do outdoor activities. The first time I went to a jail, near Thessaloniki, I saw a middle-aged Afghan immigrant who approached me and broke down in tears. He said: "I'm not a murderer or a criminal, but they have put me in to spend time with criminals. I came out of my homeland to blot out the horrors of war." He had lost family members crossing the river Evros. I went to an underage prison as an interpreter several times. The migrant children were leading a tough, lonely life there. They knew nothing of their parents, whether they were in Greece or had left the country. I remember an Afghan 12-year-old who had lost his parents at sea. The only thing he asked me was to bring him some Persian books. When I went back with the books he was no longer there. I looked for him a lot. What happens to illegal immigrants once they pass the border? They have to wait for the authorities to call them for an official interview, give them permission to stay or ask them to leave. They mostly set off for Patra, the third largest city in Greece. Many of them are killed trying to go to Italy in cargo ships. For example, I saw an African immigrant who had unknowingly crept into a fridge truck inside a ship. It was shocking. This process takes sometimes more than seven years, putting jobless, undocumented immigrants into financial and psychological difficulties. What are the language requirements for interpreters working with new arrivals in Greece? There are more than 200 interpreters working with METAction in 29 languages and dialects, including English, Kinyarwanda (Rwandan), Georgian, Lingala, Aramaic, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Kurdish and Albanian. I am a Farsi-Greek interpreter but sometimes I use my English skills when it is a matter of great urgency. What conditions do interpreters work in? The interview room is simple and not professionally equipped. Sometimes we record the interview with a recorder. Another issue is that most of the time there are two or three people sitting around in the room while we are interviewing. This sometimes shifts my focus from the interviewee to other things and has a negative effect on the quality of my interpretation. What are some of the linguistic issues that arise? Many different dialects exist in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iran and some parts of northern India. There are several dialects in northern Iran alone that are so different that people from different northern regions can't always understand each other. When they are interviewed, migrants try to speak plain Farsi but some words and phrases are not clearly understandable so I try to interject to ask them to clarify the ambiguities. However, the major problem arises from Afghani dialects that are not easily understood by Iranians: I speak Farsi but I am called to interpret Dari almost every day. Do the authorities, and the migrants themselves, understand the role of the interpreter? Fortunately, yes. They show eminent respect to our job, especially the immigrants who feel excruciatingly shattered and drained, and severely depressed when they pass the borderline. Sometimes you hear their shouts of exultation when they see an interpreter who is "Sometimes you hear shouts of exultation when they see an interpreter who is able to pass on their messages" DISPLACED A child waits with hundreds of refugees on the railway tracks in Idomeni on the Greek border (left); and a man fleeing the war in Syria sits in a tent in a camp on the Greek island of Kos (above) IMAGES: © SHUTTERSTOCK