Just completed a 2-day interpretation assignment today.
Yesterday was crazy. Imagine 7 people talking non-stop during a meeting. Can’t they put themselves in the interpreter’s shoes and think, or at least cut down on unproductive talk? Moreover, they expect interpretation or translation is about translating every single word. They think interpreters are machines?!
The job of an interpreter is way under-estimated. I’ve met some people who constantly use interpreters so they’re nice, know what to expect, and how to respond such as pausing or slicing their speech into chunks etc. But generally, it’s still so under-estimated and people think it’s just about replacing every single word to the target language! Since it’s a seminar, they expect me to translate every sentence that the speaker utters. Definitely, they won’t agree with me if I say “I’ll only translate the essential stuff” because they’ll be sure to think, “just translate everything and we’ll decide on what’s essential, not you!”
Today, as usual, a guy kept talking non-stop about nonsensical stuff. In the end I got fed up and summarised his 5 min talk into one sentence. I wasn’t doing anything wrong since that is the gist of his speech. I could see that the Japanese guests were tired of him too. Come on, does he think that he’ll be able to get his message across if he does not give the interpreter a chance to translate! He needs to understand that he’s not doing sales with me!
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Haha, you’re right! Just switch places with me for one day.
Nonetheless, I still love my job despite the complaints :p
manz, the guy should try interpreting for once, and he’ll know he is being an ass-hole!
aniwae, even if you don’t translate the entire thing, they won’t know right, it’ll prob sound shorter but just tell them you’ve summarized for them…