14.3. Literary language norm

The interpreter should possess literary language norm and feel comfortable in this linguistic space, sure in the necessity of coming out of its borders (in case when it is necessary to convey jargon, argot, non-standard expressions, etc.), still doing it very cautiously, with extra-linguistic situation, context, peculiarities of audience, and first of all moral and ethical norms and communication situation taken into account.

14.4. External culture of speech in the process of interpretation

The interpreter should be in control of his speech in any situation, maintaining the following norms:

• Confident, quiet behavior without fidgeting (метушливість, похапливість) and nervousness.

• Distinct articulation, correct tone (тональність), mellow voice timbre (тембр), speech rhythm and dynamism (without unnecessary pauses and sounds).

• Correct intonation of completeness, especially in the end of utterance, without leaving the sensation or feeling of reticence (недомовка, замовчування) and concealment of information.

Many specialists are sure that the training of an interpreter should be started from active teaching native language and teachers should keep on doing so till the very end of the course, in parallel with teaching foreign language.

Culture of language is enriched at the account of many factors, including reading books of various epochs and authors. But it is enough to read much! The interpreter should imagine himself in the place of as many personages as possible, whose speech he will have to translate, and be able to see himself in the place of the authors of those works, which translations will be ordered for him. Plunge into immense ocean of modern native language and learn to feel confident in it. Then it will be easier for you to detect a modern literary norm and become its carrier.

14.5. Some recommendations

1. Don’t allow yourself to use gestures, make yourself finish the formulations commenced, learn to express feelings and emotions in words. The weak points, disability to speak correctly in a difficult situation, in the first turn, will be revealed at once. The interpreter is a specialist of active speaking in both languages in the situation of increased difficulty, where there is inequality of partners (without knowing language, they are unequal by definition).

2. Having seen your faults and gaps, try to get rid of confused articulation or tongue-tie, begin to train yourselves – this is already a professional approach to work with native language. All language genres should be under your control. Don’t avoid the possibilities, which life gives you. Tell your close more about things seen, read, retell the interesting newspaper materials. Pronounce the toasts and greeting speeches to your close ones and friends. Write letters – both personal and business letters. Try yourselves in a writer’s genre: write stories, memoirs, essays and sketches. All journalist genres will prove useful to you, too, and stand in good stead: reportage, informational brief article, satirical article, essay and feuilleton. Try to read all the press and periodicals, which fall into your hands, but it is better to read strong reliable editions with proper language.

3. Learn your native language as a foreign one! Study on an everyday basis a new text (marriage announcement, sportive information about football match, instruction to an iron). Soon you will notice how your language will be enriched and how your confidence will grow. “Try to find captious, faultfinding, controllers: if your relatives and friends become your first listeners it will even entertain them and develop at the same time” Alekseeva I. says.

Watch TV attentively, including satellite programs. Let the trained voice and language of the TV and radio program presenter serve as a model or standard for you. Work actively over the material: you may take notes, write down frequent figures of speech, and create a topical card file.

4. “Shadow repetition” of the speech of the Ukrainian radio or television announcer will become a subsidiary exercise in mastering the mechanism of simultaneous interpretation.

One more specific reason why intensive mastering native language is so much necessary for the interpreter. It’s easier for the interpreter to interpret into foreign language than into native one: the active vocabulary of foreign language often appears broader than that of the native. It seems paradoxical: the knowledge of native language is always more fundamental, comprehension of language is keener and deeper, hence the interpretation should be more diverse, variable, nevertheless, if the greater part of this knowledge exists in a passive stock, it complicates the process of choosing and slows the interpretation down – this is the so called the redundancy ballast or dead weight, which complicates the resolving of the task of adequate interpretation. From this it follows that the interpreter needs his native language in active form – the interpreter should understand it and strive to achieve this goal.