Spotlight on... Karim Bouarar

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Karim Bouarar obtained a Master’s degree in Arabic translation in 1985 from the École de traduction et d’interprétation (School of Translation and Interpreting – ETI), which later became the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting. His native language is Berber, but he is also fluent in Arabic, French, English and Spanish, and has good knowledge of German and Russian. He worked at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva for 27 years. In the early nineties, he served for five years as the Arab-language spokesperson for the ICRC. As part of his work, he visited prisoners in Europe, Palestine, Afghanistan and Guatanamo Bay, and participated in high-level exchanges. He also provided consecutive and simultaneous interpreting services at numerous international conferences on international human rights, Sharia law, refugee law and international criminal law. He has worked with magistrates, deans, international law professors, diplomats, members of the military, police officers, Islamic studies scholars, representatives of international criminal courts and healthcare professionals. His many field missions have taken him to the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, East and West Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab countries, and the Far East. He has taught translation and interpreting classes in Geneva, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Russia and the conflict zones of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. He is specialised in humanitarian activities and their legal bases in times of conflict.

M. Bouarar joined the FTI in 2015 and has taught the classes Traduction argumentée French-Arabic to the Ma students and Pratique de la traduction French-Arabic and English-Arabic to the Ba students.

What does it mean to you to be a translator and interpreter and to teach translation and interpreting?

Being a translator and interpreter is a noble career, but it is also rife with challenges. It is a profession that demands a great deal of expertise, patience, general culture and knowledge of languages. This is why I always advise my students and the translators working under me to read in all of their working languages – not only newspapers and journals, but books, above all. A translator or interpreter needs to display curiosity and interest in a variety of different subjects. The best way to nourish that curiosity and interest is to travel to a country where one of their working languages is spoken, as it is extremely intellectually enriching. Teaching translation and interpreting is a formidable task that requires a lot of energy and patience, but to me, it is also a means of transmitting knowledge and an entire profession to our future translators and interpreters. I am immensely satisfied each time my students say that they have learned something in my class. Sometimes I teach them things that I learned from my own teachers at the ETI.

How did you deal with the lockdown and online teaching?

Teaching online was very frustrating for both lecturers and students. Nothing can compare with in-class learning, where we can interact in a manner that is both simple and direct. At first, my students were discouraged and depressed, which is entirely normal. They are young and eager to learn. I myself experienced things from their point of view as a student at the Maison des Langues. Although I was more used to teaching online by the fall semester of 2020, the occasional technical difficulty triggered connection problems and made group work challenging. Some students were also feeling quite unmotivated.

Finally, tell us a little bit about your retirement plans.

I plan to continue taking Russian classes at the Maison des Langues and to do a language stay in Russia this summer or fall, so that I can continue to progress and increase my knowledge of the language. This will also provide me with the opportunity to discover yet another population, culture and civilisation. Learning foreign languages and travelling have always been my two greatest passions. As I was working full time, however, it was not always easy for me to devote time to these activities, despite my frequent travels all over the world.