reporters

A friend of mine was a simultaneous translator at the UN. The one-way rule, into your native language, is the way they run. She did Russian-English primarily and French-English when needed. She also traveled to UN conferences on scientific topics and boned up on the appropriate vocabulary ahead of time.

She taught simultaneous translation and said that she could tell very quickly which students were likely to succeed. The attrition rate was very high.

As for me, even consecutive translation was exhausting. It's all short-term memory and at the end of the job I rarely remembered any specific content, only general subject matter.

I was informally, as a helpful (I hope) bystander, in a two-step situation in Russia where one person spoke Russian and the other spoke French. I spoke both, but all my translation got mentally mediated through English, since I don't seem to have any neural pathways directly between Russian and French. I was wiped out very quickly.

I've been on the other side, as the English-speaker working with a translator. (Not as a reporter, but mainly in meetings with visiting dignitaries.) I would hazard that most people have no idea how to work with a translator, because they do it so seldom. I found that when I spoke in short paragraphs, it often caught the translators by surprise, since they were so used to people who reeled off half of a book before stopping. I learned to brief staff before any meeting involving a translator, to help them understand what to do.

We had a group once who brought their own translator. Unfortunately, he was a German-English translator. Why unfortunately? Because it was a group of Italians. One of the Italians spoke German. Everything was first translated into German, then into Italian. And back.

None of us spoke Italian, but we tried to come up with as much German as possible, to shorten the time. Even our primitive Spanish was better than waiting all that time.

I once attended a small science conference between Russia and the US. The US State Dept. provided simultaneous translators. I was impressed.

Since the conference was pretty small, I could see the translators in their sound-proof booth. I hadn't really thought about it before, but they only worked in one direction. For instance, Russian to English, but never English to Russian, although they obviously were fluent in both languages. For this conference, they also had to have a good knowledge of scientific terms. Once in a while they would "break the window" and ask for an explanation of a term.

They always had this absolutely intense, concentrated look on their faces while translating. I've only seen that kind of intensity in two other situations--Secret Service officers guarding a presidential candidate and Seeing Eye dogs on duty. Each translator only worked for 15-20 minutes. When not translating, they'd sit at the back of the booth, looking exhausted.

I spoke at a conference in Warsaw. Presentations could be in English or Polish. Two booths at the back held English -> Polish and Polish -> English simlutaneous translators, to which delegates listed through headphones if necessary.

I speak basic Polish, not enough for a full presentation. I practised my opening paragraph (thank the organisers, great honour to be here, blah blagh)- over and over - in Polish with some very patient local colleagues, until I had it more or less correct. I started presenting in Polish, five minutes later apologising (still in Polish) that for the technical part I would have to switch into English. At this point a kerfuffle broke out in the booth, as the English->Polish translator had nipped out for a cigarette and was nowhere to be found.

one thing i find particularly frustrating when travelling is when you ask someone if they speak english and say yes, but then find out that they don't. anyway, you have no choice but to talk to this person as noone else is around. and say it is ten o clock in the morning and you want to know what time the next bus departs for Y.

that person then says 'three hour' or 'three o clock' but you know from experience ,that they don't really know the difference between 'in three hours' and 'at three o clock' and then you are stuck, because it is 10am, and there is no way for you to find out if the bus departs in three hours, which would be at 1pm or at three o'clock, which would be in 5 hours...

paper and pencil? 24-hour clock notation? c'mon, it's not that difficult.

I just finished an extremely interesting book about translation called Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos, who is a professional translator as well as a professor at Princeton.

The book is about translation, but there is some information about simultaneous interpreting. He says that of those who get into a interpreting course, between half and 2/3 drop out because it is just too difficult and strenuous. And 20 minutes is indeed the length of time they work at the UN or the EU conferences.

Interestingly, Bellos also mentions that it is becoming more difficult to find interpreters because the generation of people displaced by WW2, who moved around several countries and learned the languages in all of them, has decreased. And also that English-speaking countries (US and UK particularly) don't teach languages as much as they used to.

#16 - "English-speaking countries (US and UK particularly) don't teach languages as much as they used to. "

This is a big problem in Australia, too. Not only high schools, but also universities have been cutting back on language courses for many years, in spite of more than one government report criticizing this trend.

As for me, even consecutive translation was exhausting. It's all short-term memory and at the end of the job I rarely remembered any specific content, only general subject matter.

I've seen translators taking notes to help with that.

I can't remember now where I read it, but someone interviewed a simultaneous translator who said that he more or less visualized the spoken words as a sort of ticker tape through his brain. If he got behind, he could rewind the tape and catch up.

At this point a kerfuffle broke out in the booth, as the English->Polish translator had nipped out for a cigarette and was nowhere to be found.

My US/Russia conference was really US/USSR. There was one speaker for whom the into-English translator seemed to be having problems. When the speaker returned for a second time, there was a plaintive "What language will he be using?" from the translator booth.

Turned out the guy had been speaking in Serbian, which one of the translators sort of knew, but it was difficult. The speaker got the hint and switched to Russian.

That's true; you'd be pretty annoying as a tour interpreter if you are telling people to stand still so you can write it all down.

nutrax - note-taking is helpful if people are staying put, but if they/we're walking around, taking a tour of a facility, or a neighborhood, etc., there's no opportunity.