A blog article on interpreters and AI - Reinvantage.org
Love him or loathe him (and these days it tends to be the latter more than the former), José Mourinho is one of the most successful football coaches of recent decades. He has won league titles in four countries, and is one of only seven coaches to win the European Cup/Champions League with more than one team. His methods and playing style might now be a little outdated, and it’s clear that his best years are behind him, but his place in football’s pantheon is assured.
Self-titled The Special One (an epithet he awarded himself on arrival at Chelsea in 2004), Mourinho’s most fervent critics have long liked to dismiss a man whose own career as a footballer was modest (to say the least) as a glorified interpreter. Mourinho got his break in coaching at Sporting Lisbon in 1992 as an interpreter for Bobby Robson, a strictly monoglot, old school English coach. It was Mourinho’s job to convey Robson’s ideas to Sporting’s (and later Porto’s) players, as well as translate for the Englishman at press conferences. The pair worked well together, and when Robson moved to Barcelona in 1996, he took Mourinho (who also spoke Spanish and Catalan) with him. Robson left after a year, but Mourinho stayed, finally becoming a head coach himself—a ‘mere interpreter’ no more—in 2000, at Benfica.
Whatever football fans among the international interpreter community think of Mourinho, there’s no doubt that they would all be appalled at anyone (football coach or otherwise) being pejoratively labelled an interpreter. Imagine a world without them. Even in today’s increasingly international world, where English is spoken by more and more people, the need for interpreters is high. Most do not have the profile of José Mourinho, often doing their jobs tucked away and unseen in little booths, be it at conferences, events, or the European Parliament. For most, sitting next to football coaches at high profile press conferences is not part of the job description.