Kató Lomb
Kató Lomb (8 February 1909 – 9 June 2003) was a Hungarian interpreter, translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world.[1] Originally educated in chemistry and physics, her interest soon led her to languages. Native in Hungarian, she could interpret fluently in nine or ten languages (in four, without preparation), translated technical literature, and read belles-lettres in six languages. She understood journalism in a further 11 languages. She stated that she worked professionally with 16 languages (Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Ukrainian), which she learnt from self-study due to her interest in them.
Learning method and principles
Lomb’s guiding principle was interest: The word, coming from Latin interesse (originally meaning “to be between”), has a double meaning, referring to the material profit or the mental attraction, together: motivation. She wrote, “This means that I can answer these questions: How much am I interested in it? What do I want with it? What does it mean for me? What good is it for me?” She didn’t believe in natural “language talent”. She tended to express the language skill and its fruitfulness with a fraction, with motivation in the numerator (as well as invested time—although, as she wrote, “If there is true motivation, one can pinch off some ten minutes a day even with the busiest job”), and inhibition in the denominator (the fear of starting to speak, of being clumsy, of being laughed at). In her conviction, the stronger the motivation, and the more one could put aside inhibition, the sooner one could possess a language.
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