When my friend Schorsch called me a few weekends ago and said, “I have a huge favor to ask of you. I’m interpreting at a conference in a few weeks—”, my heart dropped to my feet because I knew what was coming next: “—and I was wondering if you wanted to interpret at it with me.”

Here’s the thing: I am a translator, not an interpreter. Though the distinction isn’t clear to most people outside of the industry, there is a vast difference between these two occupations—it’s the difference between sitting on your own in front a computer with your documents and dictionaries, pondering grammar and shades of meaning and carefully crafting beautiful written sentences (translator), and sitting in a booth at a conference wearing sticky headphones, listening to a stream of words pour into your ears in one language and simultaneously rattling out a semantically equivalent stream of words into a microphone in another language (interpreter). The former job is supremely suited to quiet, bookish folk such as myself. The latter is a job for an adrenaline junkie.

Schorsch and I had chatted about interpreting on numerous occasions, and though he maintained that it was an exciting and fun thing to do, I always said that I was pretty sure I wasn’t cut out for such a high-stress, fast-moving job (actually, I always said that the idea terrified me). However, I also always admitted that I was kind of intrigued by interpreting, so when Schorsch suddenly found himself without an interpreting partner for a three-day conference that was just two and a half weeks away, he picked up the phone and, as a last resort, called me.

My instinctive first response was “no way.” I’ve had no training as an interpreter, my German listening comprehension isn’t what it once was, and the thought of those headphones and that microphone filled me with utter dread. But as the phone call went on and Schorsch told me that the conference was being hosted by the Bergen-Belsen memorial and that he was utterly confident I was up to the task, I felt myself weakening. I realized that if I had ever wanted to try my hand at interpreting, this was a good opportunity to do so. I also realized that if I said no, it would only be because I was afraid, and I knew I would hate myself if I turned down an interesting professional challenge just because I was scared.

And so it was that I found myself in a conference room in Hanover several days ago, with headphones on my head and a microphone in my hand, feverishly interpreting presentations at the 2nd International Bergen-Belsen Conference.

In the two short weeks between accepting the job and going to the conference, I spent nearly every waking moment reading about conference interpreting, sight-translating documents (that is, reading a document and translating it out loud on the fly—bloody difficult) and attempting to interpret German podcasts and videos online (even more bloody difficult). I also bored everyone around me by droning on and on about how hard it all was and how nervous I was, and I continuously swayed between thinking everything might be okay and thinking everything was going to be a complete disaster.

In the end, it was a bit of both. The first presentation of the first day was basically my nightmare scenario: an extremely abstract and tortuously academic paper delivered at such a breakneck pace that I had a hard time understanding it let alone interpreting it in real time. As I hunched over the microphone and listened to sentences slip by one after the other without being able to articulate a single coherent sentence myself, all I could think was, “I. Am. In. Hell.”

Schorsch—who struggled with that presentation himself after I gave up and thrust the microphone at him in desperation—assured me afterwards that that was really the worst I could expect. And it’s true that while there were many more times during the conference when I felt completely overwhelmed and out of my depth, there were also some times when I sat with the headphones and the microphone, and German words flowed into my ears and English words flowed out of my mouth, and instead of thinking I was in hell, I was thinking, “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!” And that was rather awesome.

The first and last days of the conference were held at a venue in Hanover, but the middle day took place out at the Bergen-Belsen memorial itself, and that was by far the highlight of the event (if visiting a former concentration camp can be called a “highlight”). I again felt a rush of excitement and pride when I walked into the documentation center and saw the permanent exhibition in all of its bilingual glory. The presentations that day went really well, and Schorsch and I got to interpret a tour through the POW section of the exhibition, which I quite enjoyed. At the end of the day, the director of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation publicly thanked us for our translations and all of the conference attendees applauded, which embarrassed and delighted me in equal measure. And as we unwound over a few beers back in Hanover that night, Schorsch said, “The next time I get an interpreting job, I’m going to call you again. We make a good team.” And I couldn’t really argue.

This interpreting gig was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done professionally. It caused me a huge amount of stress, I wasn’t entirely pleased with my performance, and there were several points at which it took all my willpower not to tear off the headphones and just run away. I feel immeasurably more comfortable sitting at my cozy, quiet desk with my dictionaries than I do sitting with a microphone grasped in my sweaty paws. But when I take a step back, I have to acknowledge that I think I’ve “leveled up” both professionally and personally: I conquered (or at least managed to live with) my fear, and I got to experience a whole new aspect of the language industry.

And if I do get another call from Schorsch, I’ll dither and panic and wring my hands—and then I’ll probably find myself reaching for the headphones and microphone all over again.