Saturday, March 6, 2010

Dealing with average talkers in business liaison interpreting

One day you start getting interested in your job from a more intellectual point of view. You are on a quest for articulation. Out of shame of not being allowed to state with assurance that you graduated from some interpreting school (you didn't, as most any one), that you have a stable and recognized position in society as a professional, you look for books, still not Youtube. And you start reading the classics that make you feel even worse, because they exemplify simultaneous as the technic you must master in order to qualify as a fully cooked interpreter. Otherwise, you are just a pure ad hoc sham. Oh yes, there is that Australian book on liaison interpreting so hard to get a copy of you relish like the Bible, although lately, and in contrast with your own accumulated experience on the battle field, you dare challenge a little.

You read on despite the dread now crawling on you that you might have missed a major spot in your life. You devoutly but with a certain malaise convene that in booths veritas est. And out of the booth, out of the beautiful meeting rooms with famous people, you are missing the boat. And you don't want to be associated with your brothers and sisters attending to sporsmen with no conversation at some Olympic games.

You read on and understand that you must break down in the blink of an eye the discourse delivered by that one side, to pass it on to that other side. But after years of doing it or trying, you feel even more uneasy with the discrepancies of what they tell in the books - the research paper you have tried an swallow - with your own accumulating experience. You look for comrades to share but unfortunately you are in Japan, and sharing among interpreters is like reciting love poems among soldiers of fortune. (Mostly) no one is listening, let alone participating in a conversation. Monologues rule.

Once you have accumulated so many books - well, not so many because there aren't that many books about interpreting - you feel that note taking technics are good to learn, but they don't fit. Where in the book they take as a matter of fact real well constructed discourse as the basis of the trade, you know your own clients seldom read up discourses and seldom are able in the long run to carry on with a logical, well constructed discourse. You have to deal with communication inconstitencies more than often.

You can't remember having read anything like "Interpreting poorly articulated discourses".

One day you start reading about community interpreting and awkwardly feel that some descriptions of natural interactions almost qualify to those cases where you have to deal with business customers who are simply bad at talking, bad at delivering a logical, well constructed presentation and discourse. It's not that they are bad and deserve contempt. It's just that dealing too many times with that fact calls for analysis in terms of actions (don't tell them to speak better) and strategies, that is, how to cope as a service provider of interpretation.

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