Караваева Н. А.. The abcs of simultaneous interpreting

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: «We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?» They said: «Of course». My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college,

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the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple,

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and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: «If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right». It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: «If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?» And whenever the answer has been «No» for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare

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form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: «Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish». It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

Ecotourism

This is a speech about ecotourism, and it contains a lot of figures, nothing but figures, really.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want to talk to you today about tourism, and ecotourism, in particular. Well, the first thing that you should know is that tourism is on the increase in the UK, and people are going abroad more and more. In the 12 months to February

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2007 visits abroad by UK residents rose by 2.5%, so that’s from 66.8 to 68.4 mln. If we break that down by region, visits to Europe increased by 1.9%, visits to North America actually fell 4% to 4.5 mln, but it may be that this year that trend has reversed, because the pound is so strong against the US dollar.

And other visits increased by 9.1%. to a total of 9.7 mln. So, tourism is big business, and ecotourism is growing. The green travel market in the UK now is worth 409 mln pounds, and as I said the pound has been buoyant, more so last year, but still buoyant against the US dollar, so according to Mintel, this is a market that is likely to grow by 25%, as environmental concerns become more mainstream.

There’s actually been a study carried out on the UK ecotourism market on a sample of 1004 people, and this study defined ecotourism in a particular way, so I’m going to run through that definition for you now. People were defined as ecotourists, if they had done at least one of the following things: seen wildlife in its natural surroundings, and 39% of the sample answered «yes» to that question; stayed in the wilderness, the figure there was 10%; visited a rainforest or a jungle, the figure there was also 10%; visited a national park, the figure for that was 28%. And people had to do other things as well, so there is a total of three things they had to do, – you’ve already heard one, – the second was that they were defined as ecotourists if they had also looked for at least one of the following things: environmental or ecological sites to visit, and 49% of the sample said that they had looked for those things; wildlife in its natural surroundings, so 62% said that they had looked for wildlife in its natural surroundings, and a walk in untouched countryside or nature, – 65% of respondents said they had deliberately looked for a walk in untouched nature. The final criterion was this: that to be defined as an ecotourist a person had to sometimes plan holidays around at least one of the following: bird or animal watching (11% said they did this); camping (11% again); environment or ecological or nature or wilderness activities (22%); walking or hiking or rambling, or bush or rainforest walking, all the same thing, really (21%). So, that was a breakdown of all the individual percentages, but if you take all those responses together and try to classify people, the results were that 26% of all tourists from the UK qualify as ecotourists. 22% of them are aged 45 to 54, another 22% are aged 55 to 64, and 20% are 25 to 34 years old. The breakdown between the genders is 53% men, 47% women, and 69% of all respondents were married or living as married.

So those are the figures. Now, it sounds brilliant, – so many ecotourists, but the problem to my mind is that according to this definition we’re all ecotourists or we virtually all ecotourists, – I have walked in national parks, I have gone trekking very often. One of the criterion was seeing wildlife in its natural surroundings, – well, I could go for a walk on Ilkla Moor and see bunny rabbits at night, or indeed I could see them in the local field near where I live, so this definition doesn’t really tally with my idea of ecotourism, which would be engaging

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in a form of tourism that doesn’t destroy the natural heritage, or the resources, or the sites that tourists go to see, but instead helps to preserve them and to support the local community. In other words, to my mind ecotourism is respectful of people and of the environment.

Let me just look a little bit more closely at some of the figures related to ecotourism. On their last long-haul holiday 31% of «ecotourists», – alleged ecotourists, – from the UK stayed in luxury hotels, 4- or 5-star hotels, so that’s the biggest category of people, they stayed in luxury hotels, even though they were ecotourists. Now, I’m not saying that ecotourism has to equate to grunge, but large hotels can be extremely wasteful, and they can destroy local communities, although I know that there are some notable exceptions, for example the company called Scandic which has done a great deal to refurbish its hotels with eco materials and recyclable materials. So, I think really what’s going on is a phenomenon of «fow» ecotourism, – there are many businesses that are trying to ride the green wave in a phenomenon that’s known as ‘green washing’. There are many examples. Some companies just try hype, or they try cheeky marketing, for instance, a golf course will be marketed as being ‘eco’ because there are a few swans swimming about on the lake in the middle of the golf course. So, as I said, some companies indulge in cheeky marketing, others are far more serious companies, for example, Tourism concern which has campaigned for 15 years against some of the worst offenders. An example here is the eviction of Masa and Samburu people from lands in East Africa to establish what developers called «conservation and safari tourism». As I said, Tourism concern has been campaigning against these sorts of companies. So, «green washing» is a cynical ploy, it’s used by virtually all the companies now that green concerns are mainstream. As a result, Harold Goodwin, who is a professor responsible for tourism management at Leeds Metropolitan University, so not far from here, says that ecotourism has no marketing utility, because people just don’t believe it any more. So, he says that we are unlikely to see the words «ecotourism» used in British brochures, in tour operators’ brochures. I have to say I’m not convinced by his argument, because I think you see ecotourism, or the words «eco» used constantly, certainly if you look up holiday opportunities on the Internet. So my advice would be, if you’re trying to book a holiday and you want to be a more responsible tourist, ask lots of questions, ask the company that you’re planning to go with lots of questions about their record on the environment, and try to consider your impact on local communities. But I do acknowledge that there are no easy answers. Let’s imagine, if to try to reduce air miles, to try to reduce our emissions we all stopped going to the Greek islands, well, that would have an enormous impact on local communities. Many islands would probably become depopulated because tourism is their only source of income, and that has many knock-on effects and implications, so there’s always a moral dilemma involved.

Thank you!

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Culinary Repertoire in Britain

This is a speech about cooking, it’s about food in the UK, and the culinary repertoire in this country. It’s a speech with many figures in it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

recently I visited the Isle of Man on business – I was working at a conference, and at the end of the conference they held a gala event in a very swish hotel, and I thought that we might have a delicious three-course meal in that hotel, but I was very disappointed to find that the food was absolutely terrible. It was like some sort of horrible time warp effect, like being back in the UK thirty years ago when the food was universally terrible. And to give you one example, – the dessert at this gala event was listed as fruit salad, fresh fruit salad, on the menu, and I thought, well, at least that’ll be fresh and delicious, perhaps some pineapple or exotic fruits, and passion fruit, strawberries, I don’t know, and what the waiter actually brought was a small bowl containing chunks of apple, Granny Smith apple, swimming in cream. It was horrible. So the food was so bad, and this was so noticeable, that it suggested to me that the quality of food in the UK must have improved in the past thirty years for that to be such a huge contrast. And in fact the UK has a growing reputation as a nation of culinary connoisseurs. Now you only have to watch television to know that the great British public is interested in food, because there are dozens of cookery programs on television, – Ready, Steady, Cook, the Great British Menu, Nigella, Delia Smith with her shortcuts to cooking, – a vast number of food programs. And, as I was saying, the UK does have a growing international reputation as a nation of culinary connoisseurs, we have Michelin-starred restaurants here. But all this has been set back by recent research that shows that most people in this country have a cooking repertoire of just 4.1 dishes. They are only able to cook 4.1 dishes, an extraordinarily small number! And the explanation of this is really that lack of time and lack of bravado means that most people are very reluctant to leave their culinary comfort zone.

So let me give you some figures about the sorts of dishes that are popular, and how many people cook them. First of all, that 1970s staple, the old favorite spaghetti Bolognese, is cooked more than twice a week by 6.1 million people. And this dish is served an estimated 670 million times per year across the UK. Personally I would die of boredom if I ate spaghetti Bolognese twice a week, but to each his own. Now, men often boast that they produce the best chefs, in the same way that men often boast that they make the best interpreters. Questionable, I know. And certainly, if you look at the figures, males appear to be considerably less adventurous than women in the kitchen with the repertoire of just 3.5 dishes, and that compares to 4.5 dishes for women. Now, these figures are all based on the survey that was carried out by YouGov. Young adults in the age range 25 to 34 are the most adventurous because they have gasp a culinary repertoire of almost 5 dishes, 5 recipes. And the worst offenders are in the age range of 45 to 54. They only cook 3.2 dishes on a regular basis. A part of the trouble is a low inter-

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est in experimenting. The thing is that 2 and 3 people claimed that they were interested in the experiments, and you can see that from the popularity of the TV programs that I was telling you about earlier, but they don’t then put those ideas into practice. And the reason they gave for this was time pressure, – almost 40% of people blamed time pressure, but also one in five people admitted that they simply lacked the confidence to inject new life into their culinary repertoire.

What about the favorite foods in the UK? Have they stayed the same over the past few decades, or has there been a marked change? I think something that’s quite new in the past few decades is the immense popularity of pasta. Approximately 20 million plates of pasta are eaten in the UK per week, and of course it’s the staple of the student diet, – it’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s quick. But some more traditional favorites still endure amongst the top ten, for example roasts are still amongst the favorites, – 10.25 million plates of roast are eaten every week in the UK. Other traditional favorites in the top ten are things like fish-n-chips or stews, or bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie, – good solid British dishes, but stir fries have also made an appearance in the top ten with 7.59 million eaten per week.

Now there are problems associated with having such a limited repertoire, and I want to mention a few of them very briefly. One of them is the lack of variety in the diet. This is not good for your health. If you constantly eat the same things, you’re not exposed to a sufficient variety of foods, and thus not exposed to a sufficient variety of nutrients, and vitamins in particular. The other thing is you can create fussy eaters by having such a limited repertoire. And an interesting piece of research has shown that children, small children, need to be exposed to new foods at least six times before they accept them. And, of course, another problem is boredom, and one of the great pleasures of food is tasting new things, and it’s a shame to be so limited.

So, to conclude I think we should be more like the French, – we should live to eat, rather than eating to live. Of course, I’m not advocating obesity, I’m not saying that we should indiscriminately stuff our faces with anything that we come across, we should do this in a discriminating way, and I think that one of the most important things you need to do is to get together to eat, to be sociable about it, and eat in company.

Thank you!

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