Sylvia Tkac was born to be an Aboriginal interpreter but fell into the profession quite by accident.
"My grandmother was an interpreter," Ms Tkac said.
"She said to me, 'I need another interpreter, are you interested in interpreting?'
"I did it for the first time and I thought, 'Gee I'm fluent', because I spoke it as a child."
Kriol interpreter services are still used regularly across Australia. Interpreters hold an important role in communities for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
"A Kriol interpreter is needed in the local courts," Ms Tkac said.
"Darwin use them, (as well as) Katherine and Alice Springs — they're also used in the Supreme Court and in hospitals as well."
Ms Tkac is an Anindilyakwa Interpreter from the Groote Eylandt archipelago and is based in Darwin with the Aboriginal Interpreter Service.
She interprets for a wide range of service providers in topics such as health, education, and law at the Local, Supreme and Children's courts.
The service collaborates on recordings with other agencies and mining companies, and produces a range of aids and resources, including DVDs, animations, driving apps and video interpreting.
Ms Tkac completed a diploma in interpreting and has accreditation with the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters.
"I was living in Darwin from zero to 15, and I moved as a 15-year-old back to my community, and I had to learn (the language).
"I did speak it every now and then, but I wasn't quite fluent; I moved back home I lived there 25 years and now I'm fluent speaker."
"It's a rewarding feeling; it's so great that they can understand "
The service is vital to the 80 per cent of Aboriginal people in Australia who speak Aboriginal English or Kriol, which has been recognised as a language since the 1970s.
"You want to get the right message across," Ms Tkac said.
"They do have high legal words and — as a Kriol interpreter — you think, 'How can I explain this by meaning-based interpreting?'."
"That is why we need interpreters like Kriol. It doesn't matter what language; a lot of people speak a lot of Kriol nowadays."
What is Kriol?
Kriol interpreter services are still used regularly across Australia.
Interpreters hold an important role in communities for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
As Ms Tkac explains, Kriol is "a language that was formed because of colonisation".
"Children were taken away from their homelands, and were put into missions," she said.
"(From there) it started to spread through the community, so they used to communicate with each other"
Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan has appeared in online videos during the coronavirus pandemic, alongside a Kriol interpreter to send targeted health messages to remote Aboriginal communities.
Some of the comments about the Premier's video highlight the misconceptions about Kriol and Aboriginal English amongst wider Australia.
Remarks ranged from "WA premier deploys Indigenous aide to translate English into English" to "I didn't know I spoke Aboriginal English" and "This is really funny. To what language is she translating?"
In the Northern Territory, ABC Darwin produces a news bulletin spoken in Kriol.
In 1982, the ABC produced a story showing early recordings of Aboriginal interpreter services in Arnhem Land.
Early interpreter Eric Roberts told a reporter that Aboriginal people had decided there was a need for a language widely used as a medium among speakers of other languages.
"They wanted a lingua franca, such as Kriol — a lot of people call it Pidgin English — but it was a language that they communicated with one another," Mr Roberts said.
"And we ourselves now, my age level, we regard it as our mother tongue."
