S2E1 – Isabelle Weiss: left-handed

Our Season 2 has arrived! In the first episode, we have the pleasure and honour to chat to our very own Isabelle Weiss, the founder of Alpha CRC, who has 40 years of professional experience translating millions of words from English into French and German.

As a left-handed person herself, Isabelle talks about her first encounter with prejudice and stereotyping. In Switzerland where she grew up, there was a strict law which required everyone to write with the right hand, so she had to endure lots of hits with the cane on the left hand because it was seen as the “bad hand”. Isabelle tells us her heartfelt story of how she has been looked at as an oddity and put in many different categories to her disadvantage and how her emancipation and rebelliousness turned out to be the driving force behind setting up Alpha CRC. It is a story of extraordinary resilience and entrepreneurship, interlinked with the word “left-handed”.

While exploring the different connotations of the word “left-handed”, Paul and Isabelle touch hot topics like “Is there a danger that comes with giving people labels?”, “Can categorising people contribute to excluding them? “ and “How the removing of categories such as male and female and embracing unisex and neutral labels pose challenges for translators?”

Following the interview with Isabelle, Yuliya and Sonia investigate the etymological roots of the word “left-handed” while revealing interesting associations with the word in their native languages- Bulgarian and Spanish.

The widespread negativity about left-handed people is also imprinted in the arts and culture as we hear from our producer Yuliya who highlights some of the books and TV shows that have embraced the left-handedness’ theme as well as some of the most famous people in history that are left-handed.  As a bonus, at the end of the show we pull some of the most fascinating facts that you didn’t know about left-handed people. 

 

Hosts: Paul Mangell, Yuliya Stancheva

Guest Host: Sonia Arroyo

Producer/Writer: Yuliya Stancheva

Sound design: Alpha Studios

Sound engineers: Gerard Rodriguez and Mikosh Nanasi

Art design: David Stanley

Vocals: Stancho Stanchev

Guest: Isabelle Weiss, Alpha CRC Founder