EDU: "WORKING AS AN INTERPRETER: YOU THOUGHT WORDS WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT? THINK AGAIN!"

EDUCATION: THE SECRET OF BEING AN INTERPRETER

Torniamo a scrivere per il blog dopo tanto tempo! Oggi in questo articolo analizzeremo un testo completamente in inglese a cura del Council Of Europe che può essere adatto anche per la consecutiva (la tecnica che prevede la presa di note e in un secondo tempo la resa nella lingua di arrivo) in cui si parla proprio di come si lavora nell'interpretariato. 

La traduzione a cura del sottoscritto sarà pubblicata in un secondo momento, potete nel frattempo esercitarvi voi stessi. Buona lettura!

Primo piano di Anna Ford, interprete e giornalista di cui si parla nel testo

Working as an interpreter: you thought words were the most important? Think again!

I’m Anna Ford, I’m an interpreter here working at the European Council.

Our purpose is to try to ensure that the heads of state and government understand each other as well in 23 languages as they would normally speaking to each other in their own language.

Even before we come into the booth we have a system whereby we obtain information, background information for evey meeting online and it’s very important that we are put in the same position as delegates, so we have the same information. But here this is the file we get for the European Council and when we come into the booth we come in early so that we can prepare it, we can read through the letter from the president, the agenda here and then we have all detailed documents as we work our way through the file so that gives us the vocabulary, that gives us the background, but of course this is not the most important thing.

The most important thing about interpreting is not the words, it’s not the language itself: it’s the message, it’s the spirit of what’s being put across so it’s not a matter of a machine, it’s not a matter of a translation (that she’s written and takes a long time) – we have to be able to listen, understand process and produce it in our own language and then convey that message, but we have to do it in a very very short period of time in just some kind of nanosecond, we have to do all those processes in our head.

Right amusingly, somebody come into the booth the other day and said: “I really admire what you do but of course you have the script running along the screen in front of you” – as they really believe that we had the script. No, it’s totally improvised – everything that said in this room we can interpret live and it’s actually much more exciting than when people read speeches.