3. 13.3. Undesirable Situations of Two-way Interpretation. Interpretation Pitfalls and Traps – How to Avoid Them

The most intolerable situation in interpretation is sinister and painful silence of an interpreter, when after a speaker finished his sentence instead of confident and quick reaction a long pause follows. Everybody focuses their eyes on a poor interpreter and all of them feel uncomfortable.

This situation is typical of all inexperienced interpreters, especially at the beginning of the talks or a speech, when the interpreter has not accustomed himself to the situation, has not “switched on” yet, got lost, did not understand much because of excitement, could not write down or remember the main thoughts and fell into a stupor.

How to avoid such a situation and correct it?

Variants of behavior of a sender of information (Principal):

a) “warming-up”, i.e. before a serious talk the sides exchange greetings and general phrases, small talk or polite conversation on general topics: weather, trip, hotel, first impressions – it allows interpreter to get quiet, get accustomed, get familiar with the individual manner of speech of a speaker, his pronunciation, etc.;

b) to acquaint the interpreter , at least before the very beginning of the talks or speech with the topic, and if possible, to give him the materials of the speech (copies, theses) in order to support the interpreter psychologically.

Variants of behavior of the interpreter:

a) before talks or speech to study the materials on the topic, read corresponding literature, get comfortable with terms;

b) if possible it’s useful to communicate with the client, “get him talking”, get interested in the topic and issues, which will be discussed at the talks or touched at the speech;

c) try to get information about members of the delegation/group, names, positions, extremely important to get acquainted with brochures, telling about the activity of the firm or company, that will be participating in the talks. Usually these docs contain corresponding terms, information about history and current situation of the company, give much information extremely useful in interpretation. You will feel much better, more confident and quieter having assimilated and swallowed it all.

If the interpreter did not manage to avoid unpleasant situation, next variants of his behavior can be proposed:

a) using key words to improvise and say something which does not contradict and is appropriate for any case, trying to correct the interpretation on the way;

b) having apologized to ask to repeat, referring to noise or some other distracting objective factors (this variant is less desirable);

c) to show no sign that something incorrect happened and keep on working, and then to correct blunder, false step during conversation or speech.

Sure, the most preferable are variants “a” and “c”. In such circumstances the behavior of a sender of information plays an important role, too.

Variants of behavior of a sender of information (Principal):

a) having understood that interpretation “skids, slips”, as if nothing happened to repeat the previous phrase, adding a new one, which given the interpreter the opportunity “to save face”, and having corrected the mistake to return to normal;

b) turn everything into a joke, to encourage the interpreter, quietly, more clearly and slowly to repeat the spoken again.

Variants of behavior of the interpreter:

The interpreter should have in store a number of introductory words and phrases, which could fill the “pause of misunderstanding”, so that to say something general, appropriate for all situations.

As a rule, the interpreter really very quickly gets adapted and then the interpretation process goes more or less smoothly. But the unpleasant impression can remain!

Distortion of information is also quite undesirable but spread situation which takes place, when everything is translated glibly and clearly, but precisely the wrong way round, i.e. information was entirely distorted and confused: plus turned in minus. It happens when the basic information is misinterpreted, understood incorrectly.

Variants of behavior of a sender of information (Principal):

In the next portion to repeat the misinterpreted phrases and the distorted PI, which presents special danger – dates, numbers, names of persons, names of firms, geographical names, etc., so that the interpreter could correct himself.

Variants of behavior of the interpreter:

To keep on working and take the opportunity to gently supplement or correct himself with apology. If this mess, misunderstanding is resolved on its own automatically, to make a show that nothing happened.

Serious loss of information and/or insufficient information transfer (less than 80%) during interpretation makes it inadequate.

Variants of the client’s behavior:

If he understands the language, client should repeat the things omitted by the interpreter at the very beginning of the next phrase, relying on his professionalism.

Variants of the interpreter’s behavior:

To compensate the losses in course of interpretation, when there is a good opportunity, without focusing attention upon this fact.

Confused articulation or tongue-tie frequently happens with fresh interpreters, when the text in terms of information is rendered adequately, but is very lame in form. Interpretation is clumsy and rough, tongue-tied with superfluous words and pauses among phrases, distorted grammatical constructions, confused cases, endings, etc. Surely, in translation into foreign language all this coarseness does not “grate on the nerves” so much.

This defect is absolutely curable – experience and practice result in high language skills, beautiful, correct and clear expression of thoughts.

Personal factor is a subjective factor, which should not be neglected anyway, as all these individual peculiarities – insufficient skill to behave in public, careless manner of speaking, undue familiarity, redundant gestures, or, on the contrary, constraint, bad articulation, too low, or visa versa, excessively loud – effect dramatically the quality of interpretation. These shortcomings can be corrected by way of painstaking training, work with mirror, video-tape recorder. Anyway, it is just necessary to watch your own speech manner, appearance, behavior, learning to speak and behave in public, without being afraid of microphone and big audience. Definite artistry is very helpful in doing interpretation.

Questions for discussion:

1. What are the constituents of precision information?

2. What are the constituents of the basis information?

3. How do we render precision information?

4. What kind of undesirable situations may an interpreter come across in two-way interpretation?

5. How can we avoid interpretation traps?

Practical assignments:

Give oral translation of the following texts: