More Than Translation: What Service Gave Me

More Than Translation: What Service Gave Me

I joined the translation committee of the Polish ACA Intergroup in 2020, within three months of entering the programme.

Looking back, I must admit that my initial motivation came largely from ego. I wasn’t particularly impressed with some of the existing translations, and my attitude was something like, “Well, I’ll show these people how to translate properly!”

Fortunately, some gentle but much-needed lessons in humility followed rather quickly.

Through our group conscience discussions, I discovered that not every idea I had was the best thing since sliced bread was invented. Sometimes I hesitated to speak up, worried that my suggestions might sound ridiculous. Gradually, however, I learned to express my opinions without insisting on being right, to listen to others, and to accept that the group might choose a different approach.

And sometimes my suggestions were welcomed enthusiastically.

I began learning something important: my voice mattered, regardless of whether things went my way. I didn’t have to be right to make a valuable contribution.

At the time, the Polish fellowship had no officially published literature, and there was considerable pressure to finish the translations because people were eagerly waiting for the books. However, as we worked through the existing material, we discovered inaccuracies that went beyond simple typos and sometimes affected the actual meaning of the text. We therefore made a conscious decision to take things more slowly, prioritising accuracy and quality over speed, even though we knew how much the literature was needed.

Despite this deliberate care, we worked at an extraordinary pace during the pandemic, sometimes meeting four times a week for two hours at a time. Those meetings became much more than translation sessions. Occasionally, we would encounter a passage that nobody entirely understood. One person would share their interpretation, someone else would relate it to their own recovery, and suddenly we were having a little ten-minute ACA meeting. We weren’t merely translating words; we were exploring their meaning together.

As a child, I had dreamed of becoming a writer. Although translating ACA literature wasn’t quite the same thing, it allowed me to reconnect with the joy of creating something.

Before recovery, I had spent much of my life chasing achievements. I would reach a goal, discover that it hadn’t made me happy, and immediately pursue something else. There was rarely any joy in the process.

One day, I thanked my fellow translators because I had realised something remarkable: I was genuinely enjoying the process of creating something, without needing to reach the finish line first.

Eventually, we published the Yellow Workbook, followed by the Big Red Book. There were frustrations, disagreements, exhausting proofreading sessions and plenty of challenges. But we got there.

Yet perhaps the greatest gift of that experience had very little to do with books.

I live in the United Kingdom, while most of my fellow translators lived in Poland. For years, we worked together online, initially knowing one another only as names on a Discord server and faces on a screen.

I became particularly close to one translator. We started working through The Laundry List Workbook together, and gradually our conversations developed into a friendship.

After four years of knowing each other remotely, we finally met in person at a Polish ACA convention, together with another member of our translation committee.

Then, several months ago, I received an invitation to his wedding. A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of attending that wedding.

I was deeply touched.

I thought back to 2020, when I had joined that committee, full of opinions about how translations ought to be done. Back then, he had been just another name on a screen. I couldn’t possibly have imagined that six years later, I would be standing there, celebrating one of the most important moments of his life.

Somewhere between debating individual words, discussing passages from the literature, working through disagreements and sharing our experiences, something far more meaningful than a completed translation had emerged.

A friendship.

And perhaps that’s one of the most beautiful things about service. We arrive thinking we’re there to accomplish a task, without knowing what else might grow from the time we spend working alongside one another.

One thing I’ve come to realise is that no matter how much I give to ACA through service, I always seem to receive even more in return. Sometimes the rewards are immediate and obvious; other times, they come in unexpected ways, through connections and experiences I could never have anticipated. It’s as though service has a way of giving back far more than I could ever put into it. And for that, I am deeply grateful.

Today, Polish ACA members have access to two officially published books that we worked so hard to produce. And that matters enormously to me.

Although I participate in recovery in both Polish and English, and personally connect more strongly in English, I understand that for many people, their inner child doesn’t speak English. They need to hear the experience, strength and hope of our fellowship in a language that reaches them.

I’ve now stepped away from the longer translation projects, allowing others the opportunity to experience what I experienced. I still help when asked, and perhaps I’ll return to translation work one day.

After all, I can’t keep all the joys of service to myself.

We often hear in recovery that we have to give it away to keep it.

Looking back at everything this journey has brought into my life, I think I’m beginning to understand just how true that is.