So… Where does Ocean Inspiration come into all of this?
I can hardly believe it’s been two full years since the kickoff of English in the Caribbean for Interpreters, the first course Ocean Inspiration set up from scratch. It’s January again and, even though the third run of this thrilling adventure will have to wait, I feel quite emotional as I recollect the long road that led me to it.
My Newsletter dated April 20, 2020,, described the yearning for a fresh start which led me to the Caribbean. January 2017 was when I first arrived in Barbados with a strong urge to start some professional project… not really knowing what kind yet.
Just like you might have as you read this newsletter, I fell in love with the Caribbean Sea from day one.
Just like you, I was amused by the bus rides, dumbfounded by the dress code, fascinated by the Carnival.
Just like you, I slowly discovered that the cultural and human dimension hiding beneath the picture postcard was far more complex then met the eye. Just like you, embracing a different culture helped me discover my own difference.
After ten trips helped me soak up everything Barbadian and meet more and more people, the purpose of my professional project became crystal clear: I wanted to give others an opportunity to discover the richness of this fine culture and experience more than sightseeing and beachcombing.
A course in Caribbean English and Culture… tailor-made for interpreters, people who are relentlessly drawn to other cultures and eager to hone their linguistic skills, no matter how fluent they are… That’s what I wanted to offer.
Deciding how the course would be dispensed, and through which channels, didn’t happen overnight. It was thanks to a chain of helpful encounters, from Caroline to Liz, then Nathalie, Janelle and Hélène, that I finally met Dr Stacy Denny, Head of the Centre for English Language Learning (CELL) at the Barbados campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). From the word go, this superb academician was keen to be part of my project! Just like me, “my dear Stacy” (as I now call her) sees language classes, first and foremost, as a human adventure.
After a long process of intense immersion and deep thinking, the first stone of the new course, English in the Caribbean for Interpreters, was laid in March 2018: UWI, upon presentation of a substantial application dossier, gave us its stamp of approval for a 2-week course.
Phase Two of the adventure was on! Everything had to be created from scratch: the guiding principle for the course, a selection of topics, a timetable and, above all, qualified lecturers. Once again, Stacy was instrumental in convincing several top scholars from the UWI to give up some of their spare time and share their passion for the history and culture of their region with this intriguing breed of professionals. I am also indebted to my friend and colleague Sandra Hamilton, from the UWI Jamaican campus who generously pitched in and quenched interpreters’ natural thirst for terminology.
Then came the practical aspects: budgeting, cultural visits to illustrate the various topics, extra-curricular activities, transportation and, last but not least, accommodation! Come high season, any rental in Barbados is prohibitively expensive. I can’t begin to tell you how many places Stacy, her assistant Sherryann and yours truly checked out in hopes of negotiating an affordable rent.
The time had finally come to advertise the course. I knew it would be no small feat to turn my layman’s enthusiasm into promotional material. And I couldn’t have done it without Danielle Libine’s top-notch online training module, Accélérer 3 (currently known as). My heartfelt thanks also go to the many other kind souls who made ipossible: my good friend Junior helped me design flyers, my translator and interpreter friends co-wrote advertisements, AIIC (Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence) published them. And above all, we needed a website, which my friend Patrick kindly volunteered to set up (‘What was I thinking’, he may wonder now)… Would it be called The Yellow Hat, Out of the Blue, Indigo and Beyond, English by the Sea? Many ideas came and went, until one day I thought: Ocean Inspiration is what it’s all about! Let us be inspired and push back our boundaries as we swim in the Caribbean Sea and into the ocean. Three months on, www.oceaninspiration.ch came into being, and one year later, Ocean Inspiration Sàrl was registered with Swiss authorities.
I’d be lying if I said the whole process had been a bed of roses, but we were rewarded for those month-long efforts on January 7, 2019, when the first group of interpreters arrived in Barbados for "The English in the Caribbean for interpreters" program, followed by a second run a year later. Each session resulted in countless discoveries, passionate debates and beautiful friendships!
To quote one of the participants: we left feeling richer and already hoping we'd be reliving this exceptional experience before too long.
Discover the highlights of both sessions
Translated by Edna Setton
January 27, 2021