Being wrong, and dealing with wrongness

The previous post, thank's to the initial comment, is an appropriate transition to the matter of being wrong in interpretation and what to do with wrongness. I have never read about the issue, a clever sentence to push forward how one is smarter than the next door's lad at fishing out themes the academics left in the pool, until someone tells me I was wrong.

Wrongness is a subject I have covered in my introductory courses in consecutive and communication. The students are usually not interpreters, nor aiming at professional interpretation, but interpretation is ushered in as a different angle to French as a foreign language learning. I cover the subject in a few short minutes, advocating that being wrong, falling short on the face, bumping into the wall, screwing things up is part of the fabrics of interpreting. Opening the mouth is the surest way to risking belching trash and generating shame. But turning a clam in interpretation is not an option. You've got to deliver, something.

The story says you are in the middle of the interaction, but you are in front of the stage too. I can remember being wrong last week, and another time some three weeks ago. Learning about wrongness, as everything else, starts with exposing the issue. Exposition is the beginning of anything that could come next. Exposition is not confession, it is just looking plainly but not painfully into a fact society loves to hate, and shame the other culprit of wrong doing. I invite my students to be wrong, that is, to utter something even wrong rather than nothing as so many Japanese students trained to shut up are so inclined to do. I tell them that during the course, I will demonstrate what is being wrong by blundering at times, not even on purpose. And I deliver. That's part of the trainer's training.

Without getting deeper into it, interpretation wrongness as I decipher it stems from pure misunderstanding or wrong anticipation. I remember someone telling about that interpreter being laughed at in some conference where the word "chest" in the feminine sense was used, in a medical context, a totally technical word in Japanese that does not belong to daily life. The interpreter caught off guard used "oppai" (boobies) instead of "kyobu". And this triggered that. I check not to laugh when someone blunders. Humiliation is not fun. It resonates with something personal and laughing it away doesn't feel like a cure.

One reason I don't watch TV is related with the sheer malaise at watching ice skaters and the anticipation that they might just crash and stand up again with forced gracious smile. It's just overwhelming. Word blunders do not generate such anguish but the curiosity to listen to these, gleefully, is not here at all. It doesn't teach anything nor does it feel good to click on the replay button even found oer Le Monde newspaper to relish listening until the belly is full some French minister the other day fumbling on (was it "delation"?) , to deliver "fellation". No kids reading this blog, good.

There is much similitudes between the ice skater and the fumbling interpreter, that is, dealing with shame and having to go on delivering the show.

It was an obvious decision to start reading "Being wrong" when I got notices of that new book. Which also suggests that having being wrong has a lingering aftertaste. Just started the lengthy wordy introduction. The good news is that it is not a "How to never be wrong in 7 steps" book. It might prove reading the book was the right decision.