How Interpreters Work?I. UnderstandingA. About words and expressions—【T1】

How Interpreters Work
    Good morning. Today I’d like to give you a brief introduction to an interpreter’s work. Generally speaking, an interpreter has to fulfill three stages during his work: the understanding of the speaker’s original message, the memorization of a speech and the re-expression of the same content in another language, with the help of some notes the interpreter writes down upon hearing the original message.
    The first stage is the understanding. The understanding we refer to here is not of words but of ideas, since an interpreter has to convey concepts. But what happens if an interpreter doesn’t know one word or an expression that he or she hears in a speech?
    First of all we can underline that an interpreter can understand a speaker’s meaning without actually understanding every single word and expression used. There are other occasions, however, where (1)a word is too important to be left out. If the interpreter does not know a key word, there can be problems. But after hearing the whole speech, he or she should be able to deduce the meaning of it from the context, given the numbers of clues they have.
    Moreover, interpreters cannot be expected to be encyclopedic dictionaries, and they must accept that there are times when they do not know a word or an idiomatic expression. In a situation of direct contact with the delegates, (2)the interpreter must admit his or her ignorance and, if necessary, clarify the question with the delegates. On the other hand, the interpreter does not have the right to guess at meanings in order to hide a normally possible, even if embarrassing, situation.
    Furthermore, in order to understand meaning without knowing all the lexical items, (3)and to be able to deduce from context, interpreters must in any case have a thorough knowledge of their working languages. (4)In order to understand the ideas of a speech, an interpreter needs to get familiar with different kinds of texts. They can present logical arguments showing both points of view on a question before arriving at a synthetic conclusion, (5)they can be a sequence of logical deductions leading to ’an obvious conclusion according to the speaker’s point of view, and they may simply be descriptive, focusing on an event, a scene or a situation.
    (6)What follows is the identification of the main ideas. In order to understand a message, an interpreter has to identify the main ideas and give them their proper relevance in the interpretation. And, owing to the intrinsic difficulty of a speech or to the speaker’s speed, he or she might be forced to omit one or more elements of the original. It is clear that if the interpreter doesn’t translate some details, the interpretation will not be perfect but still adequate, whereas, if he or she misses out significant points of the discourse, the result will be a seriously flawed performance.
Indeed, interpreters should be capable of providing a summary of a speech, since delegates often don’t want a detailed interpretation but only an exhaustive and precise summary of what has been said.
    What’s going on next in understanding phase is the analysis of links of the main ideas. A speech is not only a sequence of ideas, but also a series of ideas related to one another in a particular way. (7)Ideas may be linked by logical consequences, logical causes, put together without cause-effect relations, and may also be expressed by a series of opposing concepts.
    The second stage of interpreting is the memorization of a speech. (8)The objective is to create a telegraphic version of the discourse, and to link its different parts through its semantic-logical connections. We have different means to remember a speech. One possibility is that of internally visualizing the content of a speech and creating images in one’s mind. Specifically speaking, an interpreter needs to concentrate on deas, not on single words, (9)connect the main ideas to a series of numbers, and then concentrate on the links among the main ideas so as to reproduce the structure of the speech as a kind of skeleton.
    (10)The third stage of interpreting is re-expression. After understanding, analyzing and memorizing, interpreters have to re-express the speech they have just heard. It must be clear that they are not required to give an academically perfect translation. Their role is to make sure the speaker is understood by the audience so real interpreters have to continue to work on their working languages, including their mother tongue, with the aim of keeping them rich, lively, effective and up-to-date. Therefore, they must be informed about the latest national or international events with the purpose of learning new terminology and also of grabbing the spirit of the era we’re living in. To this end, it is possible to suggest the following advice:
    First, (11)constantly enrich one’s general vocabulary and style, through regular reading of a broad range of well-written publications in all working languages; Second, follow the press in one’s native language too, which is of particular importance for interpreters living abroad; Third, (12)watch television, see movies, go to the theatre and listen to songs in their original language.
    To sum up, it’s true that an interpreter’s work involves only three basic processes, i.e., understanding, memorization and re-expression. Interpreting is a profession that is all about communication. In order to communicate well, interpreters have to "make their own speech" (13)based on the speeches they interpret, and (14)their speech must be faithful to the original and as accurate as possible in the above three processes. (15)They should take advantage of all the possible resources available in their working languages in order to reach an effective, clear and elegant level of performance.