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Topic 12: levels and components of interpretation. Interpreter’s challenges. Conference interpreting
We are bound in two ways: to our mother tongue and to the mother tongue of the text we are translating.
Martin Heidegger
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12.1. Communication during Two-way Interpretation
The process of communication during interpretation can be represented in the following way:
Interpreter
?
S RR
Sender (source) Recipient (receiver) of information
Explanation of the diagram:
At the level S – R/R – S communication:
• is absent
a) when none of two sides know foreign language to any extent;
b) when both sides are reluctant to use foreign (not native) language for political/ideological reasons;
• is extremely difficult – in case when poor knowledge of foreign language takes place, as well as deep intercultural differences and different levels of competence and education;
• is difficult – when insufficient knowledge of foreign language, presence of psychological barrier in its application, takes place;
• is undesirable – when both sides know language, but the use of interpretation is preferable by the protocol or tactical considerations (saving time);
• is one-way – when passive knowledge of language is sufficient enough for understanding. Interpretation is made into foreign language.
In all situations enumerated above, the process of communication proceeds with the help or directly through the interpreter.
Interpretation can be represented as a process of instant and sometimes subconscious determination of relevant concepts (base points) in the text in source language, and their interpretation into the language of translation within one statement.
Interpretation process possesses the same typical characteristics as a speech activity in general; therefore it is a type of indirect bilingual communication activity.
Misunderstanding inter-text connections, providing logical consistency or succession and interrelation of specific text portions, as well as the violation of text integrity result in the most serious mistakes. Especially cause-and-effect relations often cause difficulties in interpretation, when cause and effect trade places and sense accents shift.
Intercultural differences cause serious problems. Knowing traditions, customs and mentality of the country whose language is studied is one of the major problems of interpretation. (Стефания Фол „Эти странные американцы“. М.: Эгмонт Россия Лтд, 1999). While intercultural differences may represent a serious interpretation problem, knowledge of culture and regional geography (страноведение) must an integral part of interpreter’s thesaurus. (Линн Виссон „Русские проблемы в английской речи. Слова и фразы в контексте двух культур“, М.: Р.Валент, 2003).
Biased ideas about stylistic peculiarities of this or that genre may generate stylistically inadequate text in the language of translation, that especially unpleasant to ear when translating into our native language.
Insufficient wielding universal translation note taking (універсальний перекладацький скоропис) in particular, inability to fix cohesion is the source of distortions and incorrectness in translation, which decreases and degrades its adequacy and adversely affects the utterance design.
Just because the so called precision information has very week semantic connection with communication situation, the mechanism of probabilistic prediction in consecutive interpretation very rarely gives desired effect; its results being multiple mistakes in numerals, first of all when interpreting from foreign language into native.