22.6. Typical Mistakes in the Process of Interpretation

Phonetics in interpretation is as “clothing, by which one is met”, no matter whether you like it or not. When interpreting into native language special attention should be paid to correct stress and pronunciation, intonation, declamation, ability to make pauses in logically substantiated places. It is also connected with the ability to show your interpretation to the best advantage, to make a pleasant impression upon the audience.

Specialists unanimously claim that “self-recording” is the best way to improve interpretation presentation and develop the skills of oratorical art (declamation) and speaking in public, to decrease the so called “fear of microphone” and just to learn handling the equipment (so called booth techniques) for synchronous interpretation.

Audio-recording and listening to one’s own interpretation (or at least one’s own voice) is not very pleasant but extremely useful “kind of fish fat (cod liver oil) in childhood – disgusting, but necessary for growth and development” as Linn Wisson says.

When interpreting into English one should pay primary attention to the quality of sounds and their combinations, especially combinations of vowels, absent in Ukrainian and having important word distinguishing functions. At the first stage one should accurately articulate “dangerous” sounds, even exaggerating their longitude or depth of a pair of vowels in order to avoid funny and even quite indecent situations.

Typical errors:

work ≠ walk, war ≠ were, word ≠ ward;

calm ≠ come, staff ≠ stuff;

leave ≠ live, teen ≠ tin;

scene ≠ sin, sheep ≠ ship, sheet ≠ shit, beach ≠ bitch, etc.

e.g. London is offering visitors an astonishing variety of sins (instead of scenes).

Consonants arose less problems for us, but one should pay attention to so called consonant “joints” (clothes, is this, this thing, etc.) not to confuse [v] and [w] and in general try not to slur sounds, observe phrase stress – every meaningful word – to stress and too much accelerate the tempo, but on the contrary, to speak accurately, rhythmically, observing measure (or rather choosing the rhythm of speaking depending on the communication situation and speaking style of the client).

Remember: your interpretation is not “thoughts aloud”, not half-product, but a finished product, fully ready for immediate use – like instant coffee where boiling water is the original; spilling coffee powder – interpreting process and the nice, hot sweet fresh coffee – the result of interpreting. Let it be consumed and thoroughly enjoyed!

Grammar should be taken care of in interpreting. For deeper understanding the differences of verb system in English and Ukrainian let us use the Simplified English Verb System Chart:

The English verb has two components: time (real) and aspect (characteristic of the action, expressed by the verb).

The crossing of the time and aspect lines form the Tense – conditional grammatical “time” e.g. Future Simple, Past Continuous, present Perfect, etc.

Aspect characterizes whether the action expresses a fact (short action), prolonged action or resultative action.

• – Tenses are most frequently used in interpreting process.

Aspect

Future					Real Time
Present	Present Simple			Present Perfect
Past	Past Simple

↓ ↓ | ↓

Simple/ Continuous/ | Perfect

Indefinite Progressive | shows

shows fact shows process | result

↓

Combined Tense: Perfect Continuous Synergy of result and process