9. 15.9. Constituents of Training Interpretation

skills and experience

learning training

theory practice

Mutual enrichment and supplement of theoretical and practical knowledge in the process of learning interpretation skills are shown on the diagram.

10. 15.10. Constituents of Real Interpretation and Ways of Achieving Adequacy

adequacy

skills intuition

knowledge experience

Knowledge (skills), received in the process of training interpretation, turn into experience when they are regularly and consistently applied in practice. Experience in its turn promotes the appearance and development of intuition (language feeling) working in the regime of “autopilot” in the process of interpretation.

11. 15.11. Subtypes of Professional Interpretation

Professional interpretation can be official – both oral and written. The first is performed during talks, conferences, summit meetings, when the interpreter has special authority to do so; the second is a finished and thoroughly polished translation (usually the translation of official documents), edited and compared and collated by both sides so that both texts – original and translation were authentic and had equal judicial power.

Official interpretation is performed by a person, having corresponding authorities and having necessary knowledge and skills.

Non-official interpretation may be aimed at giving the interpretation variant very close to adequate, which is possible in given circumstances.

E.g.: you’re unexpectedly invited to the prosecutor’s to help with interpreting of the indictment or the first acquaintance of the suspect with the case. You often have neither dictionaries, nor possibility to get a detailed consultation, or time to do so. Therefore, you notify in advance the official persons, that your interpretation will be unofficial, and prepare the translation from the sheet, leaving out or translating descriptively the terms unknown to you. Then, as a rule, in the presence of the criminal investigator or attorney you read the translation of the indictment to a suspected foreigner, also informing him, that your translation is unofficial, if necessary answering his questions or clarifications. Later on the indictment is translated in a written form with observing all corresponding formalities and becomes an official document, attached to investigation records.

Questions for discussion:

1. What are two stages of the interpretation process?

2. How do we extract the meaningful units?

3. What are the prerequisites of satisfactory interpretation?

4. Speak on the types of noises.

5. Speak on quess and intuition.

6. Why should we see the speaker?

7. What does the “automatism of synthesis” mean?

8. Why is the so called “complicated speech” simplier for interpretation?

9. What are the constituents of interpretation typology?

10. What are the constituents of training and real interpretation?

11. What is the difference between official and non-official interpretation?

Practical assignments

1. Give English/Ukrainian interpretation on sight of the following trext: The Price of Progress

The US was only able to remove the influence of oligarchs by expanding the government’s powers and supporting the middle class during the Great Depression

In his America's 60 Families, a 1937 expose on super-rich, Ferdinand Lundberg wrote that "The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth... These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments, has gradually taken form since the Civil War." This was as if he was describing the current situation in Ukraine.

The United States developed rapidly over the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, gradually moving to world leadership, at the same time with a corrupt political system. Back in the 1930s, when Mr. Lundberg was working on his book, the era of plutocracy was running out in America. The New Deal of the legendary President Roosevelt significantly restricted the influence of big business on government. However, the American middle class began a progressive movement to struggle for honest government even earlier at the end of the 19th century.

Uprising against the political Machine

Progressive reforms in the United States were supported by teachers, doctors, lawyers, priests, farmers, and small and medium entrepreneurs, all socially proactive categories who demanded that corruption be removed from the government. They struggled to revive traditional principles of American life which had been taken over by the omnipotent trusts and begun to threaten the interests of the middle classes.

Progressive-oriented people also promoted reforms, especially the implementation of new scientific methods in education, medicine, theology and many other sectors. Yet, we are most interested in their political and economic demands.

The Progressive Movement viewed the political machines running the entire country as their key enemy. They were most powerful in large cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and so on. These machines had a strict hierarchy with a boss on top, who controlled local business leaders, elected and non- elected officials. They provided high voter turnouts in support of their bosses' political force. In turn, the winning party awarded the supporters with positions, public contracts and other privileges. This scheme was a vicious circle.

The most well-known political machine was Tammany Hall, a New York-based organisation of the Democratic Party which controlled nominations and patronage in Manhattan from 1854 to 1934. Among other steps, Tammany Hall assisted immigrants who were disciplined voters to rise up the ladder in America's politics. Political machines needed only slightly more votes than their competitors to win seats for their bosses, and it was mainly Irish immigrants who benefitted from this. Later immigrants, including Ukrainians, could barely expect any beneficial cooperation with these machines.

First, reform-oriented voters demanded that corrupt politicians be fired. They were supported by muckraking journalists who revealed examples of political corruption in their investigations. Very soon, however, it became clear that replacing certain individuals was insufficient because only by changing the entire system could these bosses be over-ruled. Oregon was the pilot project of these reformers. In 1902, local voters were allowed to pass laws and amendments to the state constitution through referendums, followed in 1908 by the right to recall elected officials. Oregon pioneered direct election of Senators, which was preceded by election by legislators, and primaries, elections within a party that allowed party members to decide their candidate for the presidency.

New deal reforms proved that governments could find solutions to crisis situations

These innovations quickly flooded the country resulting in Amendment XVII to the constitution which established in 1913 the direct election of US Senators by a popular vote in 1913 and Amendment XIX in 1920 prohibiting any US citizen be denied the right to vote based on sex. Yet, not all the reforms were successful. In 1920, Amendment XVIII prohibited the production, sale and transportation of liquor in America. Many advocates of reform supported this initiative as they believed bars and saloons to be one component of the political machine. The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, proved inef­fective as liquor was either produced illegally or smuggled into the US; Amendment XVIII was abolished in 1930.

Progressing to a new strategy

The American middle class that emerged in the late 19th century treated with equal suspicion the big business elites and radical worker and farmer movements. Therefore, supporters of reform demanded that the government should implement market regulations to guarantee free competition and a free business environment. In 1887, the US Congress adopted legislation to regulate railway transportation, followed in 1890 by the Antitrust Act, although both were rarely enforced for a long period of time. Real progressive economic reforms began with Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat President who with Amendment XVI passed a moderate income tax and created the Federal Reserve System.

However, in the early 1920s the potential of the Progressive Movement eroded, even though the United States was still deep in appalling social inequalities. The country had no social security, a system which had already been put in place in many European countries. The Republican administration opposed initiatives to raise taxes to support social programmes, sticking to a policy of non-interference in the economy. The Great Depression of 1929- 1933 changed everything. Unemployment soared from 4% to 25%, while industrial output fell by one third and prices plummeted by 20%. Despite an excess of food supplies, people would occasionally starve to death. The country needed to be rescued from the crisis and Mr. Roosevelt instituted the New Deal soon after he was elected President in 1933.

President Roosevelt submitted nearly 70 draft bills to Congress to save the banking system and rehabilitate the main sector of the economy, all of which were immediately adopted. The number of banks was reduced by 4,000; many unemployed received jobs at publically-funded projects; and the social security system was introduced. The President openly experimented in seeking to find a cure for the country's economic ailments. Even though, some of his initiatives did not succeed, the New- Deal reforms proved that governments could find solutions to crisis situations. The Federal Government turned into an arbitrage in future conflicts between various social classes and groups.

By the end of the 1930s, American big business had lost its om­nipotence. It faced competition from a powerful workers' movement, farmers and consumers who were now protected by numerous public institutions. Many experts doubt that Mr. Roosevelt's achievements were completely behind a revival of the American economy in the years up to World War II. At the same time, it was his New Deal that laid the basis in the 1950s for a sustained economic boom in the US that improved living standards both for the middle class, and the poorest groups in society. Last but not least, Mr. Roosevelt inspired Lyndon Johnson to implement social reforms in the 1960s aimed at building a Great Society where there would be no poor people.

UKRAINIAN WEEK №5(17) JUNE 2011