10.6. Ways of Fighting Phonological Complications Caused by Accents and Dialects

There are specific slips of the native speakers’ tongue, both intentional and unintentional, which lead to the interpreter’s incorrect performance. Even fully competent native speakers of a language do not always use it “rationally”: they do not say what they mean, they omit crucial information, they conceal their true intentions, lie, exaggerate, use irony or sarcasm, speak metaphorically, etc. It’s difficult for the interpreter make sense of the utterances lacking the rational rules of conversation. But much more frequent are the complications in comprehending are caused by foreign accents and local dialects.

Phonological gaps may be caused by:

a) phonological differences between American and British English (misinterpretation might happen if the interpreter does not make this amendment quick enough to be correct), for example: I’ve bought some sweetish cheese, which sounds the same as the sentence I’ve bought some Swedish cheese due to a peculiar pronunciation of the sound “t” between two vowels in American English – it sounds like “d”. If it is perceived like this without any immediate analysis it results in an interpretation “Я купив шведського сиру”, which will be an incurable mistake on the side of the interpreter.

b) non–native accents, interfering with native language and causing phonological ambiguity, for example: I always have to struggle somehow with bad [ear ring] in this kind of halls, when pronounced with a francophone accent without pronouncing the initial “h” results in a meaningless context, total nonsense, which should make the interpreter alert and suspicious. Therefore he should know in advance what country or territory the speaker represents (in this case Quebec, Canada) and after a while to give the correct variant: “Я постійно змушений якимось чином боротись з поганою акустикою (hearing) в таких залах”. Analogous is the sentence with omitted “h” in francophone sounding: I put all my [art and and] into this activity. Here the interpreter is obviously required, apart from knowing about hidden existence of “h’s” in both words, to immediately restore the idiom “heart and hand” with it’s meaning “з ентузіазмом, з енергією”: “Я з ентузіазмом займаюсь цією справою”, otherwise nonsense is inevitable.

c) mispronunciation of sounds by non–speakers, caused by non–existence of some sounds in the phonetic system of a source language. Sounds rendered by letters “th” are incorrectly pronounced like [s, z, t, d], and eventually we hear and translate the sentence: “His [face] was strong” as “У нього було мужнє обличчя”. Correct understanding might not immediately and automatically follow even with the micro– and macro–context available as both interpretations are meaningful. Circumstances are of significant importance if, for example, this sentence sounds in the church, where much is said about “faith” anyway. The reasonable hypothesis “Він мав сильну віру” emerges after proper phonetic analysis as well. If overlapped by confused pronunciation of vowels (narrow and prolonged phonemes), and grammatical disorder, happening with foreigners, whose native language is not English, the problem of comprehension would be doubled and the gap might remain unnoticed: He swallowed that [meat]. It’s real difficult to guess that the word “myth” is meant here. The first meaning which comes to our mind is “м’ясо”, and a clumsy translation “Він проковтнув цей шматок м’яса” goes through smoothly, as the word “myth” has undergone considerable phonetic distortions.

d) Chinese, Korean, Japanese and other oriental accents are extremely difficult to understand and translate correctly, because the majority of words in any sentence may be dramatically mispronounced. The speakers replace sounds “w” by “v”, “th” by “d”, diphthong “ei” by “a”, and especially “l” by “r” (the last case is observed on a regular basis as they do not have sound “l” in their phonetic system). Here is a well known sentence, a bit common, though: “I congratulate you with a successful election”, may be pronounced with Japanese accent like this: “I congraturate you wid a successfur erection”.

e) Cockney speakers have a distinctive accent and dialect:

– instead of "Hyde Park" one will hear “Hy' Par'”, and the words “like” and “light” can be homophones

– dental fricatives are lost: [θ] becomes [f] – [mæf] “math”; [ð] becomes [v] – [bɒvə] “bother”, [dæɪ] “they”; – diphthong alterations: [eɪ]→[æɪ]: [bæɪʔ] “bait”, [əʊ]→[æʉ]: [kʰæʉʔ] “coat”, [aɪ] → [ɑɪ]: [bɑɪʔ] “bite”, [aʊ] may be [æə]: [tʰæən] “town”. The word Millwall is pronounced as [mɪowɔ:]. In Cockney /r/ is replaced with /w/: thwee instead of three, fwasty instead of frosty.

f) In Lancashire dialect and accent the words face, place, space sound like [fe:s, ple:s, spe:s]. Lack of –ing–coalescence is observed (therefore, singer rhymes with finger); words fur and fair will often be pronounced the same. Besides, the definite article reduction is observed: the is shortened to t. “Oh no”, “don't know” sounds like [o no, don’t know]. Also, the word "hole" is pronounced [hɔɪl]. "There" and "where" rhyme with "here". Words that end in –ight often change so that they end –eet. For example light, night, right, sight become leet, neet, reet, seet. “Open” sounds “oppen”, “spoken” becomes “spokken”, “broken” becomes “brokken”, etc., but these are now uncommon amongst younger generations. Traditionally, a /t/ is replaced with an /r/; e.g., "I'm gerring berrer", "a lorra laughs". Use of a “z” sound for an “s”: “bus” is pronounced “buzz”. Words such as mouth, down, about, etc., usually have an /eaw/ sound: they are pronounced as meawth, deawn, abeawt. In some areas you instead find an /a:/ sound in the same words maath, daan, abaat. The word “self” is reduced to “sen” or “sel”.

A marker of a traditional Lancashire accent is the frequent replacement of /a/ with /o/. For example, land becomes [lond] and man became [mon].

g) Baltimorese is a dialect of American English, in which:

[f] is often substituted for [θ]; [ʒ] is often substituted for [z] and, sometimes, [s]; [eɪ] becomes [i]; so bared can rhyme with leered and [aɪ], [ɔɪ], and [aʊ] become [ɔ]; choir and hire rhyme with war, aisle and boil with ball; [aɪ] becomes [a] before [ɹ]; fire is pronounced as [fɑɹ], sometimes rendered pseudophonetically as far; t's become d's, disappear entirely, or blend with other sounds in a word: “hunter” becomes “hunner”, “Baltimore” becomes “Baldimore” or “Ballimer”.

The [ɪŋ](–ing) ending of participle forms is pronounced as [in] as in "They're go–een to the store."

[ə] is often eliminated entirely from a word: "Annapolis" becomes "napliss", "cigarette" becomes "cigrette".

English is the global language of communication nowadays, spoken by 1.9 billion people worldwide of which some 350 million are native speakers. Therefore, most speakers of English are non–native, with varying degrees of linguistic competence. Accordingly, the influence of native accents on English will be an important factor in understanding and communication, as most people retain traces of their native accent when speaking a foreign language. Many interpreters face the problem when trying to understand people speaking English with heavy foreign accents. Being familiar with the main non–native accents of English is helpful in this respect.