Italian English T&I practitioner and educator Mary Gurgone was involved in the founding of AUSIT. She was the third National President (1991–93), and in 1995, one of the first three members awarded an AUSIT Fellowship. Annamaria Arnall – also an AUSIT Fellow and past president – met Mary at the first AUSIT Conference in 2002 (where she greatly admired Mary’s presentation on the future of T&I in the global marketplace). The two have been friends ever since and met up recently to conduct this interview over a coffee.
Annamaria: Mary, I welcome you to this AUSIT Stalwarts interview. Most AUSIT members know you best as a NAATI director, but many of us also remember that you were there, present and influential, at the beginnings of AUSIT. What a large and impressive arc! To enable the readers of In Touch to understand the early history of the profession in Australia today, I suggest we travel backwards from 2024. Currently you’re chairing the Association for Culturally Appropriate Services. It seems a broad role, involving much more than just languages. What led you there?
Mary: What led me there was that I’ve taken a very strong interest in the area of aged care recently. The last 25 years of my mother’s life, I was her carer – firstly because of physical issues, and then because she suffered from dementia. Once she had dementia, she went back to her primary language, and I observed firsthand the isolation and the lack of services for people whose language is not English; this is overwhelming for the elderly. It’s already difficult to get language services for
people who can stand up for themselves, but for the elderly with dementia, who are often
not able to do so, it becomes quite an overpowering burden.
... I didn't know what they were on about ... but I
knew that I was on the wrong side of the fence ...
Culture includes treating a person in a way that is culturally appropriate, and also the language component as an intrinsic component and expression of that culture.
I really took an interest professionally when I was running Fortis Consulting, a company that
my son and I established. Over 10 years it became a national company. One of the things
we did was, we won some major contracts in the aged care sector and developed some fantastic training programs in that sector. So, aged care and language and cultural issues became part of my professional life as well as my personal life, because language and culture is part of me. I’ve always had a very strong commitment to language and culture, so it all came together.
Annamaria: I know and admire your strong commitment. I always wondered what it
stemmed from, where the motivation was coming from. What started you off?
Mary: I think ... if I go back to the beginning, I was born overseas, like many people in our
industry. English was my third language, really, because I’d had dialect, then I learned Italian,
and then I came here, and I learned English. Those were post-war days, when being Italian was not particularly well regarded. Now, as you know, everything Italian is good: the food is
good, the fashion is good, the place is good to visit; but in those days we were the enemy who were on the wrong side of the fence during the war. A kid of six, I didn’t know what they were on about, clearly, but I knew that I was on the wrong side of the fence. You knew that you were being excluded, even though you didn’t quite know why. Therefore, I really got it right from the word go, as a child. A real passion for language and culture, because I realised that language and culture hold the message of who you are. People either accept who you are, and therefore you’ve got harmony and peace in the world, or they can’t stand any difference, and you have war and disharmony. So, I had a very strong commitment from a
personal point of view. This overflowed into the things I studied: I studied language, went into language teaching, before going into the public service, into policy, where I was looking at ways that inclusion and exclusion work, and how we can have policies that provide the right sort of inclusivity for people who are different from others, whatever that difference might be. Whether it’s, you know, religion, colour, language, et cetera, which are all part of
culture as well
Annamaria: Looking at some old photographs in the AUSIT archives, I can recognise your face. Were you already working in the public service in the late ’80s, early ’90s?
Mary: Well, in those days, I was in the Training and Further Education (TAFE) area. At Perth Technical College, I was coordinator of the translation programs. I established the first translation courses in TAFE, and the first nationally accredited ones. When I had my kids, I took a year off from language teaching and turned my attention to interpreting and translating as a bit of a part-time activity during my leave. I started an arts degree in interpreting and translation at Edith Cowan University. I dabbled in interpreting and translating work. I didn’t do it full-time because, obviously, you can’t when you’ve got babies, but I enjoyed it.
When I went back into teaching in the TAFE system, I said, ‘This is an area that clearly is required for a country which has so many people from so many diverse cultures.’ So that’s how it started, from that kind of passion and interest in language and culture, which spilled over from personal into professional.
And so, I was there right at the beginning of AUSIT. I was a member of WAITI (the Western Australian Institute of Translators and Interpreters, Inc.) at the time. A few of us, from professional associations right around the country, would get together. Specifically, those of us who were educators would gather as participants and organisers of the annual Conference of Interpreter Translator Educators’ Association of Australia. I remember one meeting was led by Jill Blewett from South Australia. It was at one of those meetings that I first met Adolfo Gentile. We all talked and said, ‘Look, we really need a national voice, because it’s easy to pick us off while we’re so small. If we have a national voice, we’ve got a better opportunity to be heard.’
I was part of the push, together with many leaders in associations around the country, led by Jill Blewett. We said, ‘Let’s do it! Let’s set up a national interpreting and translating association.’ And so, AUSIT was born in 1987. There were three or four of us from Perth at the time. I think Dagmar Dixon and Heather Glass were there from WA, but I can’t remember who else.
Certainly, we were all of the mind at that time that it was a good thing to have this national voice. Later, once AUSIT was established, there were a lot more pushes and pulls in different directions, but at the beginning there was full agreement across Australia—in all the professional associations—that we should have a strong national voice and unite.
And, of course, Lou Ginori was there. We voted him in as the first national president because he was in Sydney, and we felt it was important to have a bigger city leading the charge, a city where there was likely to be a larger number of interpreters and translators to support.
"We had just telephone conferences and paper-based correspondence
... it wasn't until I became president ... that I established the first national newsletter."
Annamaria: You did it without any internet. You had to just have telephone conferences?
Mary: Exactly. We had just telephone conferences and paper-based correspondence. In fact, it wasn’t until I became president in 1991 that I established the first national newsletter. I’ve got a copy of an old newsletter somewhere here—not one of the very first ones, just one I happened to have around. I wanted to show you because you may recall the old-fashioned photocopiers of that era. In 1991, I said, ‘I know it’s hard, but we can’t have a national body without communication that is regular with our members. Whenever we hold a committee meeting, we make decisions, the members need to know. Let’s have a regular newsletter!’
My local federal Member of Parliament at the time was Stephen Smith. I went and met him, obviously to congratulate him and introduce myself as the National President of the Institute, and tell him that I was excited about how we might be able to collaborate. He ended up allowing us to use his office for the printing and photocopying of our national newsletter. You can imagine, I was over the moon!
We also needed a national office, so we were fortunate that the National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia (NLLIA) was established around that time, with a visionary CEO, Jo Lo Bianco, who generously offered AUSIT an office to work from in Melbourne. This was essential, as a lot of our documentation was being lost with changing office bearers. It was David Connor who said to me: ‘I’m happy to help keep an eye on things. We’ll employ someone for just a few hours a week, which is all we can afford, and I’ll keep an eye on things.’ It was wonderful. Once a month, we had a meeting at that office in Melbourne. I’d come all the way from Western Australia—leave TAFE college at 3:30 or 4, catch a plane—the ‘red-eye’ special—to Melbourne, stay there Saturday until Sunday evening, come back to Perth, and start work on Monday!
The regular executive team meetings were so important because I realized that without that teamwork and communication with the committee, it just wouldn’t have worked. So, it was a fantastic thing from my point of view. It was really important. People like Barbara McGilvray and David Connor were on the committee. I mean, how blessed were we? We were able to pull together, see what we needed to do, and get on with it.
From being an organization with no regular communication when I started, by the time I finished, we had a newsletter; we had a national policy that we called Invisible Interpreters and Transparent Translators, which we launched at the NLLIA, supported by CEO Jo Lo Bianco; we had our AUSIT Code of Ethics approved nationally. This was led by one of our West Australian guys—Dr. Harry Blackmore. He worked with Terry Chesher, Barbara McGilvray, and Sandra Hale. They all contributed towards the development of our very first Code of Ethics. Because Harry was a psychiatrist, and his professional association had an excellent code of ethics, he was able to use that as a template which we could adapt and adjust to the needs of interpreters and translators. This worked really well.
During my presidency, we were selected to host the triennial FIT Congress in Melbourne in 1996. AUSIT, which when I started had really nothing except the annual AGMs and teleconferences, had become an organization that was known internationally. Also, during that time, we had our first contract from the federal Department of Immigration. We were lobbying them on a number of issues that were clearly undermining the wellbeing of interpreters and translators, and I got an actual contract for AUSIT to look at equivalency issues—language equivalency issues for languages that had limited diffusion in Australia. Therefore, we needed to look at ways we could still have people who could work in those languages.
Annamaria: That’s so difficult, because for these practitioners, it’s impossible to make a living.
Mary: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And, as we both know, the Department of Immigration had so many other things to worry about, besides interpreting and translating. Just the same, we started to have some influence. The Department saw that we could contribute, so we had our first agreement with them. That was the first time we were taken really seriously. Although we were still a small, fledgling organization, we were respected by the Department and by the Minister. The Minister would meet with me regularly to look at some of the issues, such as registration. He was willing to consider what might be able to be done. We didn’t get very far—as you know, there were various struggles, both internal and external, over government regulation of the T&I profession—but the reality is that we were being listened to and considered. AUSIT grew in those three years to have influence, and it was wonderful to see that.
Annamaria: In practical terms, how did you do that? You had your children; you had a full-time job—or was it a part-time job?
Mary: I had a full-time job. I was blessed, of course, with good people on the committee—all wonderful, sharing the burden. People like David Connor—how could you do without him? You know, in a world where technology was not necessarily in the same frame that it is now, but we still depended on technology, how would you do without someone like David Connor, who was working at Telstra and knew everything that needed to be known about how we could best leverage communication systems, and had his heart and soul in interpreting and translating?
On top of that, my husband and I, we’ve been married 50 years now. I mention that only in the spirit of saying that if... what if we didn’t know how to support each other? We probably wouldn’t have lasted. One of the things that we did is support each other. He was definitely very supportive, and took over the kids when I went away for the weekend once every four weeks for the AUSIT Committee meetings. I suppose many people are blessed with good partners, and I certainly am.
Annamaria: I understand that there are quite a number of permanent positions now, mostly for interpreters in hospitals and the like, but for big-demand languages only. From the perspective of a young professional, who happens to work in a language of lesser demand, could you give some advice on what other direction they could possibly branch out in today’s climate here in Australia?
Mary: Well, the number one thing has to be, in my view, whether you’re aligned. I always say to people, if your heart, head, and gut are aligned, you’re going to be able to take the difficult times. Because, hey, do you know anything in life that’s worth having, that isn’t going to come with some difficult times? That’s life, right? It’s not so much... you can’t say, ‘I really want to be an interpreter, translator, but because I can’t be that, I’ll put up with this other thing.’I’ve always done things that have integrated interpreting and translating with what I’ve been doing. For example, my journey started with my love of language and culture, and my love of language and culture brought me to interpreting and translating. It brought me to teaching. It brought me to managerial roles where I was in charge of languages and culture, in charge of interpreting and translating, because I had a passion for those areas. And it brought me also to the policy area. I said, ‘How can I have the right framework that supports those things that should be supported?’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen by accident. You have to push for policy changes and legislative changes to ensure things like equal opportunity, to ensure things like the right to an interpreter or translator, and so on.
Annamaria: In the past – the recent past – our competitors were human beings. Now we’re up against artificial intelligence. How do we cope with that?
Mary: It’s a big task. You’re right, but that’s where we need the passion and the commitment. Because if you’re passionate and committed, then you’ll do what needs to be done, you’ll learn enough to understand where the opportunities lie. Once you can define the problem, you can also define where the opportunities are.What if those opportunities are the things that you can contribute to, and feel that you’re giving what’s right for that time? That’s what happened to me. I do think as the world moves – AI is one area, but I suspect there are lots of things – there’s change in everything. The world of work changes so much all the time that if people cannot adapt and do something they’re really committed to, I suspect that staying in the one lane for 30 years of one’s life – which was possible perhaps, you know, 40 to 50 years ago – I don’t think is necessarily going to work in this day and age. I think there’s much more hopping about. Not in a negative way, but in a very positive way, I must say – you’ve got to be creative. You’ve got to say, ‘What, where, who am I?’ and be true to yourself. That alignment of head, heart, and gut. And at the same time, you can integrate interpreting and translating into almost anything, can’t you?
Annamaria: I’d like to end this conversation by returning to the role you’ve played most recently, and are perhaps best known for in the professional community. What are your reflections on your recent tenure on the NAATI Board of Directors?
Mary: Being on the Board for six years, I had the opportunity to do things that started as dreams – dreams which are in the notes I wrote when we brainstormed together in the early days of the AUSIT Committee. We recognized the need for improved professional development processes, improved processes for growing translating and interpreting as a credible profession. Through the NAATI certification system, we were able to do those things.Another area which I was passionate about – which, again, I was so blessed to be able to be part of during those years with NAATI – was having Aboriginal languages come in under the umbrella of interpreting and translating.I think what allowed those things to happen was not only the flexibility shown by NAATI, but also the financial situation. NAATI grew substantially, and could afford to do more for the profession – and not by charging practitioners, but because so many people who wanted to migrate to Australia were doing NAATI tests [to get points towards their application]. We could use that as an income stream to support our local professionals, which then, I think, gave us more strength as a profession. If you have a body that is struggling to survive financially – as had happened for some time with NAATI, before my time there – unfortunately, with the best intentions in the world, it’s difficult to advance. I was blessed to be part of a fantastic board with good things happening there.
Annamaria: The right person at the right time. It’s great to close our conversation with notes of satisfaction. Should we attempt a selfie to commemorate the occasion?
Mary: Let’s!
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