An interview with Lynn Visson, retired United Nations interpreter

Every interpreter has surely had excruciating nightmares about a panicky moment at the microphone, and my guest today is no different. (In one instance, she recalls waking up clutching her pillow, relieved to find that her ghastly moment was just a dream.) She has written about her experiences as a United Nations interpreter. Lynn Visson is a New Yorker of Russian heritage who has spent a lifetime engaged with her languages as a teacher, writer, translator, and interpreter. (Her husband was also Russian.) She has a PhD in Slavic languages and literature from Harvard University. After teaching Russian language and literature at several American colleges, including Columbia University, and freelance interpreting for a while, she became a staff interpreter at the UN in 1980, working from Russian and French into English. Retired since 2005 but still freelancing, Visson is also translating, teaching interpreting, and is a consulting editor at Hippocrene Books, a New York publisher specializing in dictionaries and language text books.