Parlez-Usted Swahili?

A unique part of the World conference is the number of different languages being spoken - at once and in combination as delegates from different parts of the world get to know each other.

The conference is delivered in four 'official' languages - English, French, Spanish and Arabic. Headphones are provided for all the plenary sessions, giving delegates access to simultaneous interpretation into each of these. Where simultanous intepretation is available for smaller breakout sessions, the appropriate language is indicated in brackets after the title of the session - so, for example, you could attend 'Governance(French)' 'Governance (Spanish) or 'Governance(English)'. The sessions that mystified me were the ones where the words in brackets were 'whispered French' - who knew what that meant! I was soon to find out - in the way I least expected!

It turns out that a session advertised in this way doesn't have full interpreting facilities - but someone is available to 'whisper' the appropriate translation. Cue Girlguiding's GOLD special interest session, which I joined Caroline for this morning. No intepreting facilities for this session - and one very enthusiastic non-English speaker from Burkino Faso....Suddenly I find myself appointed to a new role as official French 'whisperer' to the UK delegation - a role which became even more complicated when the representative from Chile asked for Spanish support in describing her experience of working with one of our GOLD teams to the assembled group. So now, I'm providing Spanish-English back up for her, while still conveying everything which was going on to my French-speaking friend...with a strong sense that my language skills are not quite what there were all those years ago when I returned home from my student year abroad!

I've also been having fun practicising my limited (20 words or so) Swahili vocabulary - and confusing the Italian delegation by attempting some basic Italian, with a good deal of Spanish thrown in! Sadly though, the Arabic has completely defeated me and sent me running for the headphones...Maybe one day?

Perhaps fitting that Helen and I ended the day sharing a table at the Opening Ceremony with a young woman from Cambodia (pictured below) and some delegates from Austria - where we quickly discovered the value of German as a common language - No language barriers for us!