I have always been entranced by language. The way it’s written, spoken, interpreted. The way the French have a word for a certain ‘blue’ type of day. The way the Spanish rolls their rs. The way there are no.
The way our minds are molded by the sentences we hear. The way our faces change by the words we speak.
I am not surprised by the knowledge that the languages we speak shape the way we see the world.
Kató Lomb was a Hungarian interpreter, translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world. Originally she graduated in physics and chemistry, but her interest soon led her to languages. Native in Hungarian, she was able to interpret fluently in nine or ten languages.
She was able to understand journalism in further eleven languages. As she put it, altogether she earned money with sixteen languages (Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Ukrainian). She learned these languages mostly by self-effort, as an autodidact. Her aims to acquire these languages were most of all practical, to satisfy her interest.
According to her own account, her long life was highlighted not primarily by the command of languages but the actual study of them. As an interpreter, she visited five continents, saw forty countries, and reported about her experiences and adventures in a separate book (Egy tolmács a világ körül, “An interpreter around the world”).
