Melanie Page

What is your name?

Armstrong Knight.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I suffered near death experiences as a child, though, seemingly not so dangerous things. I fell from a nearly two story high tree right onto concrete giving me my first months’ long hospital stays and TBI. It’s hard to dream up a future when you see double everything for a few years. So most of my younger school years were spent with the neurodivergent kids. But back then they called us much worse things and laughed at us as we got off the little yellow bus. LOL. It was rough. My friends were in wheelchairs and had cerebral palsy etc. Our classrooms were not connected to the main school. It was bad but it adds so many layers of thick skin. Its quite amazing what a human can take by way of … just not caring what people say about you anymore. I went on to suffer two more catastrophic collisions and died for some minutes in the third. All before I was 16-17 years old. I will never forget that lady who brought me back to life. Thanks, Jillian.

Does your childhood career goal now affect your interpreting in any way? Do they overlap, “speak” to each other, or are they completely separate?

I did not get engaged in career thinking until I was 26 years old. LOL. Call me a late bloomer. That is fine. I took to the legal field and accepted I have autistic traits from my happenings. I went on to be very successful at the law field, getting my paralegal degree. I went on to win several state supreme court cases with lawyers. My single claim to fame was winning a million dollars over a case where an officer ran over and killed an individual. I saw a file in a trash can and revived it with 3 months of day in day out research. I wrote these legal guides and the lawyers were able to successfully navigate the case they threw away. They did not understand the case like I did, but we pulled it off as a team. I got exactly zero dollars for that, and during that time my brother had been asking me to work with him as an interpreter. I left the legal field and YES today I totally understand cases of all nature, and when I have a legal case, it affects my interpreting in high-quality ways. So it was not a wasted thing to get into the legal field. At this point all these years later I am now full-time language service tech providing custom source code all the way though vibe coding.

In what ways do you mindfully and intentionally give back to your interpreting colleagues?

I support them with understanding how technology is making things easier. I will program things for them. Automate them. I have been able to double time it across careers and have been giving coding and programming all of my attention to the point that now…I just do language tech of any kind. I applied my TBI traits to being able to understand things in not so long a period of time. I could also be that I work around the clock. When I am not studying one thing, I am studying another.

Give an example of a time another interpreter mindfully and intentionally gave back to you.

I think when I get calls from linguists about assignments they can’t do and they are thinking about me. Making sure that someone they know is working. That means a lot. More than people realize. I get these calls from interpreters all the time about what gigs need teams, can we team together, and all that. It’s a literal paycheck we pay our bills with. It means something to get that contact.

Because interpreters are life-long learners, it can be hard to say, “Yes, I am an interpreter.” Do you remember when you were able to confidently use that label for yourself?

Well … We have been interpreting our whole lives. And if you are a mischievous kid. Eh-hem. You may have gotten in trouble with your mother for … lying in your interpreting so you do not get in trouble. LOL. So when mom swats your backside for mis-interpreting, you pretty much know you are an interpreter. Because she going to give you a beating that will make you confident you won’t do that twice. Every word honored lol. Our parents are deaf. So actually mom made me go to the local school when I was in grade school and interpret for the deaf students. It was cool.

Please give a shout out to the interpreters you are grateful you know, have worked with, learned from, become friends with, etc.

Shout out to Edward Knight – A brother’s love is … a brother’s love.