SUZIE NAPAYOK-SHORT

Interpretation for “Words from Whale Cove,” p. 36

“I know Whale Cove well. My parents live there, and I go to that part of Nunavut every summer. It always helps if an interpreter knows the community, the people, the politics. You have to educate yourself before any assignment, and you can’t be biased. Otherwise it could a ect the interpreter’s main goal, which is to make people understand one another. But there is a part of the community that you will never fully learn until you hear what is being said in the local language.”

Suzie Napayok-short is a leading scholar in the Inuktitut language at Tusaajiit Translations and Interpreting and the author of Wild Eggs. Her next book, Cubs, Kits and Calves, is out in 2020.