Tag Archives for community interpreting

Every word counts

I regularly write short columns for the Swedish journal “Språktidningen“. Recently, I wrote a column on how much every word counts, especially in asylum interviews and asylum hearings. I wrote:

Imagine that you are interpreting a first interview for an asylum seeker. The man says in French: Je suis allé au Port Nouveau” – you interpret: ‘I went to Port Nouveau’, since you have learned that the verb “aller” in French is equivalent to the Swedish term “go”. Later in the interview it becomes clear that the man has walked by foot to the Port Nouveau. The migrations officer becomes suspicious: “How exactly did you go to Port Nouveau? Before you just said that you went there, but now you say that you walked. What did you really do?” Immigration Services assesses whether people are telling the truth. It is important that you suddenly just change your story. With a bit of luck, this small incident is quickly solved, but what if it doesn’t? What if your interpreting is a contributing factor to that the man not assessed as credible.

A more light-hearted but not less clumsy example happened to me when I interpreted at a meeting where the English term “piracy” unexpectedly came up. Since piracy in the term of copying products and brands illegally was most in vogue at the time, I understood and interpreted it to its Swedish equivalent. Then “we” started discussing different ways of fighting this and I followed, until the speaker started talking about the use of different countries’ corvettes (small warship). Strange, to stop piracy with corvettes, I thought, before I realized that “we” talked about the Gulf of Aden and pirates at sea, a totally different term in Swedish.

The interpreter must therefore be alert to any ambiguous words. However, making a mistake is most likely not a question of life and death, as long as you clearly recognize that the mistake is yours and gives the correct translation.

My examples in the column is as I said definitely not an issue of life and death. But when I read this article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet I got a scary example of how important it may be. The article reads:

“The interpreter […] did not understand what I said,” says Ali Taleb. The statement that he had a cameraman with him when he filmed “Night of Baghdad”, is such a misunderstanding, because he often had camera man with him. But “Night of Baghdad”, he filmed himself. And the statement of a cameraman or not is now being used as evidence that Ali Taleb changed his story. The statement about the camera man gets completely out of proportion, says Clara Klintbo Skilje.

I couldn’t have given a better example myself of how important every word is.

Day 11 My colleagues

In a comment to my post on my best colleague, Translatology wrote: “In my experience, not enough emphasis is placed on teamwork in interpreter training”. I very much agree with him on this. I would once again like to put forward my colleagues. I am blessed with working in a very open and welcoming environment.

When I studied to take the court interpreting certification for the second time (which I embarrassingly enough have failed twice and still not passed), one of my colleagues suggested that we study together, and for several months we met regularly to discuss terminology and the topic.

Your colleagues are also the ones you can debrief to. They are under the same secrecy as you are, they have most likely been in more or less similar situations. They may even know the agency or the client in particular.

Usually, when I come to the booth my colleagues share word lists and knowledge with me. And they write notes when I’m not sure of the terminology. For me as a freelance often working with staff interpreters it’s worth a fortune. I do prepare, but I will never (at least not with my current level of working-days) get up to their terminological ease. I cannot compare to them who work every day in the same environment and regularly at the same meetings. I do not aim to be compared with them either of course, but I am truly grateful that they share their knowledge so generously.

Another golden rule among freelancers is the referral. I refer jobs to you and you refer jobs to me. It’s very discouraging to refer lots of missions to a colleague and you never get anything back. On a more professional level I find it more correct to answer a potential client that “I’m unfortunately already booked on the date in question, but please contact my colleague so and so”, rather than just a plain no.

So, as a colleague: Share your knowledge, be supportive, take some time to listen, remember to distribute jobs, make sure the work runs smoothly on the team, and remember: What goes around comes around.

This post is part of a list, 30 days of interpreting. You can view the whole list here.

Day 10 This is what I bring to the booth

1) My computer – under the best circumstances I have my USB-modem or Internet access in the booth. If not, it’s OK. I still have a lot of word lists on my computer.

2) My little black note book – I have an address book that I use as notebook. I keep my entries according to topic (agriculture, economy, European Works Council etc.) and each topic is in alphabetical order.

3) Pen (or rather lots of pens, pencils and markers but that’s just because I like it) and paper – most of the time the organisers provide pen and paper, but just in case…

4) A book to read when I do not interpret – If you work in a booth you work in teams of two or three, this means that there are periods when you don’t interpret. When you don’t interpret you have to be attentive of course and help your colleagues, but still there are periods when it’s good to have a book. It’s good if it’s not to captivating though, it has happened that I missed “my cue”, because I was too absorbed in my book. My colleagues quickly reminded me of course, but it’s nevertheless very embarrassing.

5) Coffee – tons (or rather liters of coffee, I’m a real addict….

As you can see, I usually carry round lots of weight. I do like the snails, I carry my home on the back. You may have noticed that I do not bring dictionaries. I used to, before the lap top era. Now I only do it occasionally, in meetings with very specialized terminology.

The only difference in my packing if I do a community interpreting is that I cannot read my book in the meeting and I do not bring coffee. Otherwise, the I carry around the same stuff.

This post is part of a list, 30 days of interpreting. You can view the whole list here.

Machine interpreting, will we ever get there?

For an interpreter, just as for a translator it is almost humiliating to suggest that a machine will ever be able to do your job, just as well as you do it. I guess many skilled worker have felt the same during the whole era of industrialization and digitalization. Computer Aided Interpreting is a different thing, it is already here. Bringing your computer and you internet key to the mission in order to use dictionaries or search the internet is a habit for many of my colleagues, both community and conference interpreters. But suggesting that you could actually put a computer in my place and that would be just as good is hard to swallow. Luckily, although many argue the difference, it will take some time before we get there. As Nataly Kelly says in an article in TCWorld: “Unfettered bidirectional speech-to-speech communication is still the Holy Grail in the automation space.”

A recent study made by Milam Aiken et. al. is reported in Translation Journal, an on line journal on translation. They claim that in their test between Korean and English there were a lot of errors but the result was still acceptable. The problem with their report is that they don’t qualify “acceptable”. Acceptable to whom, and does acceptable mean understandable?

The reason I believe that it will take some time to develop this is first of all the problems that machine translation tools has. I don’t deny that they are a very good tool, especially the ones you pay for (haven’t we all had a lot of fun with Google Translate?), but hardly as a human translator, especially when it comes to smaller or rarer languages.

Secondly, the problems with speech recognition software, OK, they are getting a lot better, especially for English, but just think about how difficult it is speaking to a speech recognition software over the phone: “Did you say “too”?”, “No, two”, “I don’t understand, did you mean “not”, and so forth. My own experience of these services is that in the end the computer decides for you and you get information that you do not want.

And finally, a gentleman points out on Proz that: “almost nobody, including most interpreters, really know how human interpretation functions. Thus, until now nobody has thought of modeling into a computer engine and replicate the mental processes applied and the information used by human interpreters (which, by the way, are only half-explored). This a huge task, but POSSIBLE.” I mean that this translator has not read the interpreting studies literature very well, there are not many interpreting researchers around but MANY of them have tried to model the mental process. Actually, the modeling of the mental process is the “shibboleth” of the interpreting studies research. See for instance, Moser-Mercer, Seleskovitch, Gile or Setton on that issue. The problem is that it is, just as the gentleman said, a huge task, but also a very difficult task.

So, I’m sure that people will continue to improve computer software and make wonderful tools for interpreters and translators, but I’m still not convinced that they will completely replace the interpreters.

Day 07 My best colleague

First of all you have to define best. The one who is the best interpreter or the one who is the best supporter?
There are some really awesome conference interpreters out there. Interpreters who interpret so that you have the impression to listen directly to the speaker. And on top of that every single nuance or word is there. But if you are a splendid interpreter and does not help your colleagues your excellence is reduced to half. When you work in a booth, you are a team, and the team is not stronger than its weakest links as the defense guys like to put it. The listeners get the impression from one booth, not from individual interpreters. Therefore you need to act as part of the team, help your colleagues with terminology, be attentive to figures, help to find the right power point page and so on.

In community interpreting, you are not surrounded by colleagues. But your best colleagues are those who keep in touch, who are there to debrief, who supports you against interpreting agencies and so forth. As I have said earlier, interestingly enough the public service interpreting client seems to be more interested in an interpreter who is personal rather than neutral. Although that may not be desirable for other reasons (the interpreters social health among other things).

I have not met Erik Camayd-Freixas, but from what I have read about him it is a colleague I admire very much.

So, my best colleague is not a definition of how well somebody interprets (every professional interpreter have to live up to a certain standard of course), but rather how the interpreter acts as a colleague and a fellow human being. I have a colleague who is an excellent interpreter, a very warm person, extremely professional as a team member, and on top of that has energy left to be a committed teacher and mentor. I think that is my best colleague.

This post is part of a list, 30 days of interpreting. You can see the whole list here.

Sociaal tolken in Flanders and Belgium

Through the Flemish news from De Redactie, I got the good news that the demand for public service interpreters “Sociaal tolken” is increasing in Flanders. Last year it was 43000 events compared to this years 50000. The figures seem fairly low to me, but I suppose it reflects the fact that although Belgium is the home of conference interpreting, community interpreting is not quite there yet. So, it is good news in the perspective that authorities are actually acknowledging the need for organising, training and providing community interpreters.

The Redactie also tells us that the interpreters are trained for the task, through role plays and other techniques. I looked up the training and found information from the Vlaams minderheden centrum here, and from the Centrale ondersteuningscel voor sociaal tolken en vertalen. The latter seems to be a special unit for community interpreting and translation at the Flemish centre for minorities.

For the French speaking community I can only find information about how to start working as a social interpreter, but not anything about training. Maybe somebody can enlighten me on this.

I have said in an earlier post that the use of community interpreting is not very well established in Belgium, I still believe that, but clearly after my research since yesterday, I have to admit that Belgium or at least Flanders makes progress in the area.

Day 06 A Day at Work

A day at work differs a lot if you are on a community mission or conference mission. Your community interpreting day will typically start with you gathering all your dictionaries and word lists (not too much though you will carry it around for the whole day), you will absolutely need a pen and your note pad (actually it may be better to have all that packed up the day before), you also need to know where you are going, names and possible contact numbers (sometimes places can be difficult to get in to). Once you’re ready off to, for instance, the court house.

If you’re lucky it’s a day long hearing and you don’t have to move around that much, otherwise you’re out of the court house after an hour usually (that’s fairly average for shorter law suits or cases, a witness hearing may be even shorter at least where I work), after that you’re off to a midwife for a pregnancy check-up. After the pregnancy check-up you hopefully have time for some lunch and then you’re off to the migration board for an information meeting for newly arrived refugees.

Usually there is little time to prepare, you are lucky if you get a file from the court. For medical appointments you usually just know the name of the person who booked you. Regular meetings at for instance the migration board are good, because usually you do them more than once and will know in general how they are done. You have very little contact with your colleagues, simply because as a community interpreter you rarely work in teams. This also means that you are pretty much on your own for terminology and so forth.

For a conference interpreting mission the day at work starts already a couple of days before your job. Longer before if you are not familiar with the topic, maybe just the afternoon or evening before if this is a routine job. When you start preparing you surf the internet, your read up on the topic, you make word lists and so forth.

The evening before you check all the practical details; where are you going, how long does it take you to get there (if you’re working out of town or out of the country you may be traveling the evening before), do you have your contract, dictionaries, power point etc. If the meeting is very specialized the speakers are usually kind enough to send you their power points.

You get to the meeting at least 30 minutes before you start. An interpreter is NEVER late. In my 15 years of interpreting I have never been late for a private market meeting. I have been late to meetings at different institutions a couple of times, mainly due to flight problems (snow, strike and so forth), it is of course just as inadmissible to be late to an institution, but usually they have a back up team of interpreters so it’s a little less damaging. On the private market you can ruin the whole meeting.

As you get to your meeting you take out all your aids, i.e. dictionaries, word lists, computer, note pad and pen. Pen is also a no, no to forget. You say hello to you colleagues, check last minute changes, have a coffee and… you’re on air.

In the booth you take turns with your colleagues, 15-30 minutes at a time. When you’re not on air, you have to maintain a certain level of concentration as you may need to help your colleague with different things such as; technical mishaps (the sound disappearing is a nightmare), terminology, difficulties to catch names, get the right page in a power point or document and so forth.

At lunch you just want a calm moment and a chat with your colleagues, sometimes it’s good to check terminology with your delegate. No interpreter loves to continue interpreting during lunch conversations and speeches, if interpreting is needed during lunch it is wise to provide extra time for interpreters to recover. You cannot be a top performer all day without proper resting time.

The afternoon you’re back in the booth with basically the same tasks as in the morning. Don’t forget to bring a cup of coffee to the booth for the grave yard slot, you know the first speaker after lunch when everyone is tired.

After a day of interpreting be it community of conference you are worn out. Of course you develop stamina after years in the business, but the fact is that it is a very demanding task where you have to stay alert and concentrate intensely for long periods of time. So what you are longing for after a day of interpreting is a bit of rest and… silence.

This post is part of a list, 30 days of interpreting. You can see the whole list here.

Interpreting certification Norwegian

If you work as a community or liaison interpreter and you live in a country that has a certification exam you absolutely want to take that if it is given in you language. To be a certified interpreter gives you a professional label and it is of course a quality label. You have actually proven that you meet a certain professional standard.

Most exams are criticized for different reasons depending on the exam. The main reason for this is that interpreting is notoriously difficult to measure and test. But no matter whether the test is a 100 % apt or not it is still testing your skills and having passed it is a perfect way of promoting yourself.

In Norway the next certification exam this time is given for Bulgarian, Sorani and German. More information here.

Thank you Anne Birgitta for the tip.

Positive experience when interpreting for a friend

I have so far mostly whined about interpreting for friends. But today I had a very positive experience. It started as soon as I introduced myself (of course I mentioned that I earned my living interpreting, not just helping out on this single occasion), the doctor was positively surprised and said that she had never experienced that kind of luxury.

After some 20 minutes of translation, the doctor realized (AND told me!) that she had not fully understood exactly how my friend experienced the different symptoms, and that that was an important piece of information for the diagnosis! What can I say? WHY isn’t it compulsory for all authorities in all European countries to make use of the service of public service interpreters.

More on interpreting for friends

I have once again had my fair share of interpreting for friends in different situations. The network of public service interpreters and the habit of using such interpreters is not very well established in Belgium. Of course I’ll interpret when my friends ask me to, but it is a very interesting contrast to my every day interpreting job.

As a public service interpreter in Sweden I am called to, for instance, a clinic when a doctor needs my services in a consultation. Simply the fact that the clinic books me makes me more neutral in the clinic’s eyes, this is strengthened by the fact that I have the same ethnical background as most of the personel.

However, when interpreting for my friends, I arrive to the clinic with my friend/the patient, I have the same ethnical background as the patient. I have, in the eyes of the doctor, the same status as the patient’s husband, or sister or any other accompanying family member. The fact that I loose my official role also affects the interpreting. I wrote in an earlier blogpost that it’s more difficult to use the neutral interpreting “I” when you have a non-professional relationship with your client (e.g. interpreting for a friend), and when the other user of your interpreting service, in this case the doctor, does not perceive you as “a professional interpreter” because of your relationship to the patient; it’s very difficult to keep that neutral distance and professional tone.

Naturally, I should (and I do) struggle to keep my professional voice and I need to point out to the participants that I am a professional and imparital interpreter. However, this is so much easier when there is an existing service for public service interpreters, and when you are booked by the authority not by the patient or your friend.