SPEAKING THE PM's LANGUAGE

From aiding Presidents to Prime Ministers, linguists in the Department of Modern Languages have a proven reputation in the field of politics.

As these photographs demonstrate (right), the University's new Director of Interpreting and Translation, Karl McLaughlin, has previously worked with some of the most powerful men and women in the world.

His impressive list of clientele includes the former and current British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair as well as the former US President George Bush.

One photograph (left) shows Karl liasing between Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and the then US President Bill Clinton. Karl was acting as personal interpreter to the Prime Minister during an official visit to the White House.

Another picture (below) shows a meeting in New York with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, just a few days before he was assassinated, ironically by one of his own countrymen. Here, Yitzhak Rabin is discussing the Middle-East peace process with the former Spanish Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, whom Karl worked for between 1987 and 1996.

Karl later travelled to Israel to interpret funeral speeches at Rabin's graveside, in the presence of many world leaders, an experience he openly admits to be the "most harrowing of his life" as an interpreter.

Karl said: "Although it may sound strange, we treat all our customers the same. You can't concern yourself with the importance of the people you are interpreting for but rather the difficulties they pose as speakers and the potential consequences of a misunderstanding caused by you. That said, the fascinating thing about the job is knowing you are playing a role in the making of history."

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