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My name is *** Fleming and I was an interpreter with the European Commission
-- the SCIC -- for some 35 years
until I retired recently
and i used to work into English
I've been asked to talk about the subject,
'What is interpreting?', so here it goes.
As I see it, interpreting is the art
of enabling communication
between people of different mother tongues.
Now, one could do it another way, rather than using interpreting.
One could ask everyone to write down their ideas on paper,
have those ideas translated
and then get everyone to read them,
but that wouldn't make for a very scintillating exchange of views.
We could also ask everyone to speak their own version
of international English.
It might work,
but it could also be excruciatingly painful.
When people need and want
to speak their own language in meetings
because they want to express their ideas clearly
and when the rest of the audience
don't understand that language, that is when you need an interpreter,
preferably a professional interpreter.
Now, to perform this service
professional conference interpreters
obviously need to have
certain skills and certain types of knowledge
which most of the people at this multilingual meeting will not have.
For example they have to learn
the languages that they're interpreting from.
And they also have to know
the technique of consecutive and simultaneous interpreting.
Very briefly, just to define the two terms,
consecutive interpretation is done by the interpreter
in the same room as the speaker
after the speaker has finished speaking,
whereas simultaneous is delivered by interpreters
sitting in booths
and is delivered at the same time
as the speaker is still talking.
Now, these skills and knowledge
can be acquired over the course time, in the case of languages,
and can also be acquired
during an interpreting training course,
when it comes to learning consecutive and simultaneous, of course.
They are important - I would say even essential - skills
for an interpreter,
but I would see them more as the tools of the trade
rather than the essence of interpreting.
Now, we said just now that interpreting was the art
of enabling communication between
people of different mother tongues;
and for me, the key to
successful interpretation is good communication skills
with a large amount of detective work thrown in.
Now let me explain.
To communicate successfully
- and here I'm not just talking about interpreters, but anyone -
you need to have, first of all,
something to say:
a point or a series of points
or ideas that you wish to get across to somebody else.
Secondly, you will preferably have put a bit of order into these ideas
so that when it comes to expressing them you can express them clearly and logically.
Normally, you would not need to think in advance about what words
you intend to use to convey these ideas:
provided the ideas are clear up here [points at head]
then the words to express them should come naturally.
Any mother-tongue speaker
can find a way of expressing things naturally
without having to think in advance about which words
he or she is going to use.
Fourthly, good interpretation
also requires
consideration for the needs of your listeners,
particularly when it comes to the way you
deliver the message.
You have to speak at the right pace for your audience,
you have to speak in the right register,
you have to articulate
and not mumble,
you have to bring out the important points and put in pauses
in the right places,
and also you have to try and establish eye contact,
to look at your audience
rather than at your feet.
It also, finally, helps to have a good knowledge of your subject,
in other words, to know what you were talking about,
and the experts at the meetings we go to usually do.
So let's come back to our interpreter
and find out how he or she would score
on this list of communication indicators.
First of all, something to say:
well, the interpreter
actually has nothing to say at this meeting,
at least, not his own ideas.
The people in the meeting aren't interested in what the interpreter
thinks or has to say,
and therefore the interpreter has to get these ideas from someone else:
he has to get them from the delegates in the meeting.
And that's where the detective work comes in.
But that detective work starts even earlier;
it starts before the meeting.
A good detective, after all, has to do his homework.
If he's investigating a case in
a context unfamiliar to him
- let's say, in an -
oh, I don't know, an old people's home, or an Orient Express -
he has to find out
what makes these places tick.
A good detective is also a good listener:
he really wants to know what people
think and feel
and he needs to know what their real intentions and motives are.
So, back to our interpreter. The good interpreter, then,
with or without his Sherlock Holmes hat on,
will need to do as much prior research as possible into the meeting
if he is to have a decent chance of understanding what the experts
there are saying,
and if he is to sound - at least sound - as if he knows what he's talking about.
He will also have to listen very hard to what each and every
individual speaker is saying,
because
he has to get his ideas from his speakers: these are the borrowed ideas that he needs to
convey to the audience.
And we'd better get them right
if we want to do justice to the speaker.
So we have to listen,
we have to figure out what the speaker's ideas are,
and how he's setting them out.
So: listen,
understand,
analyse,
even get inside the speaker's mind. That's what the interpreter has to do.
Also, a large dose of empathy helps,
and a certain amount of curiosity.
Curiosity is important because the interpreter should want to know
what the speaker is thinking.
Also, working out what sort of attitude the speaker has is important.
Knowing which country he represents can also help here,
but also spotting what sort of character he has:
whether he's arrogant
or tolerant,
impatient,
amusing
or just plain dour.
So that's the detective work,
and it can be great fun.
Next comes the communication part,
and very often it is going on at the same time,
because most of what we do is simultaneous interpretation.
So, going back to our recipe for successful communication,
we interpreters should have something to say now, if we've been listening,
if we've listened hard to the delegates.
So, we've understood the message
and we can therefore
get some ideas across.
Also, if we've *** up on the subject beforehand,
we should be even more confident.
I mean, knowing that Spain's favorite fish, "merluza",
is "hake" in English - and not cod -
may look like a minor detail,
but it's certainly not for somebody representing
the largest fishing fleet in Europe.
We should also be able to set these ideas out clearly,
in another language, naturally
- usually our mother tongue, since we have mastery of that language.
And, of course, we shall
pay special attention to our listeners' needs.
We shall deploy all our skills of communication
putting in intonation and stress where it's needed
bringing out the most important points,
putting in pauses,
just to make sure that these speakers' ideas come across
in an easily digestible form.
And we mustn't forget that very often our listeners
aren't even listening to their own language.
In my case, working into English, very often I was working for people who
didn't even have English as their mother tongue.
So we really have to make an effort,
we have to go out of our way
to pitch the level of our language at a level that is understandable,
to think of our audience.
So there you have it: the professional interpreter does indeed have to have
specialized knowledge, knowledge of languages and also technical skills,
but above all,
he or she has to be a communicator
and a detective
rolled into one.
Ideally, our aim
should be to smooth communication
in international meetings
to such an extent that the delegates
no longer realize that they're listening to interpretation.
If we can achieve that,
we know that we're doing our job well. Thank you.
Transcript courtesy of AIB, Agrupación de Intérpretes de Barcelona.