Market

Introducing consecutive interpretation in a classroom geared both at aspiring interpreters, but mostly students looking to improve their B language competence through interpreting training is an interesting challenge and vista into many issues.

One of these is the knowledge or command, and the lack of it, of one's own A language. There is a world of A language faintly understood in passive mode but hardly ready for active usage when summoned. Yesterday, a student offered the perfect example - you have to manage the blushing student and tell her as I do that it is OK to be wrong as we learn through it. We were working on a short, no note, slow interpretation of short sentences. In one of these laid the word "marché" in French. Unfortunately, I did not take note of what she came with in her native Japanese, but it was not 市場 and neither マーケット.

市場 - market - was not part of her active language although she must have picked it up daily in the news. She could not reach the word fleeting but too far away in the distance of her memory. She could not retrieve it. Reading aloud is one of the down to earth practical exercise I always recommend to students, but I do not dare suggest to university schooled grown-ups to read aloud in their native language. And yet, they, not all of them, should practice A reading aloud and shadowing as a mean to bring forward onto the table a richer set of vocabulary reading to be summoned when needed.