“If you’re not able to communicate interculturally, your job as a translator and interpreter will be affected, which is why you can’t separate language from culture. You just can’t.”

The MICAT is now in its third year, and along with the Postgraduate Diploma and Postgraduate Certificate in Intercultural Communication and Applied Translation, was recently professionally endorsed by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters Ltd (NAATI).

Earlier this year, the New Zealand Government announced that anybody who wishes to work as an interpreter must be NAATI certified by 2024. “This is momentous, as we are able to bring academic knowledge, training, and learning to address the needs of professionals and of society,” says Marco.

“New Zealand is a multi-ethnic, multilingual, multicultural society, but that isn’t necessarily reflected in the courts, or the hospitals. So there is great need to apply translation to real-life scenarios. COVID-19 is teaching us many lessons.”

Marco is involved in the implementation of the Government’s new rules.

“Our survival as academics comes down to us remaining relevant. The pursuit of relevance is crucial. I feel lucky to work in a capital city university. We are right here where the government, the embassies, and international businesses are.”

Intercultural communication classes aren’t always big, but they are deep, and Marco and his students have good relationships. “Most of the classes I teach are at postgraduate level, taught in dual delivery, and they are all in two-hour blocks, but we rarely talk for less than three hours. This type of engagement is the best possible feedback I could get, and it shows we are touching on something that matters.”

Marco hears from past students regularly, and he enjoys watching their careers. “It’s such a pleasure to be able to contribute to the development of lives. It’s an honour and a big responsibility. It’s the best reward to see students come through, and go on to make a difference.”

He enjoys passing on opportunities to his students, too, as he did recently when he arranged more than 20 translations into different languages of a poem written by Bill Shipsey to commemorate 60 years of Amnesty International. “When you start out as a translator, you’re longing for a ‘ground zero’ to start out from. You need experience to get other jobs. I can give my students and alumni those opportunities.”

Marco believes that to evolve, we need to engage with students and ensure they are taken along a learning journey. He enjoys supervising doctoral students, and has supervised doctorates covering language in all its forms: traditional tattooing, website data, even martial arts.

Another branch of Marco’s practice is writing poetry and editing literary translation publications. For Dante’s 700th anniversary in 2021, he published a classical Italian translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy with graphical interface replacing all instances of the word ‘ant’ with drawings of ants by Ant Sang. “My genuine belief is that Dante is the greatest poet ever. He was a poet, a citizen, a politician, a scientist.”

He also published More Favourable Waters: Aotearoa’s poets reflect on Dante’s Purgatory. “We selected 33 poets to reflect on Dante’s Purgatory, and it’s a fun book to read, and sold out the first print run, but the most rewarding thing was how they enjoyed writing and discovering Dante.”

There is more to come, with a series of other publications on the horizon.

“Translating and interpreting is intercultural communication in action,” says Marco.

And he is proof of that.