Simultaneous x Consecutive Interpreting

What is, first of all, interpreting?

Interpreting is orally, or sign-wise through body language, expressing the translation of a person’s/group’s speech to another person or group. 

This translation may be from any type of language into any other type, say from English into English or from sign language into oral language.

What is the difference between interpreting and translating?

When we translate the discourse of a source, be it human or not, we need to express the result of the decodification (we could not find this word in our dictionaries, even though we have found it on several websites, such as (Maria-Dimitra & Anastasia, 2009)) and codification processes we have been through in writing. When we interpret, we need to express those results orally or through body language instead.

This way, reading a text to another person is a synonym for interpreting it.

However, when we talk about professional interpreter and aid of an interpreter, we are referring to more than that: We are referring to the professional who not only interprets a translation by expressing that via body gesture or oral discourse, but who also got the material that generates the contents of their body gestures or speech in the same way (body gestures or oral discourse) from the person/group who is trying to communicate something. 

The interpreter has to then be at least an extraordinary translator, an extraordinary communicator, and an extraordinary listener/observer to succeed in their profession, what means that the set of skills that are necessary for a person to be a good professional interpreter is at least different from the set of skills that are necessary for a person to be a good professional translator.

The basic professional activities of the translator seem to demand, for instance, way more administrative and physical work than those of the interpreter. Whilst the translator must worry a lot about lines that are not fully used (insertion of stop marks, for instance) in order to have a claim on being reliable, the interpreter has to worry a lot about senses that are not fully grasped, or not entirely unique.

The skills used by these professionals are very distinct in what comes to the top levels of the Bloom’s Taxonomy, but may actually coincide in what comes to the bottom ones.

The load of work belonging to the bottom levels of the pyramid of Bloom is extraordinary for those who translate professionally.

For those who interpret professionally, however, extraordinary will be the load of work belonging to the top levels of this pyramid instead.

Having systems in place to manage all their routine activities is a necessity for both types of professional.

Deadlines is a concern that belongs to the translator with almost exclusivity.

There is some piece of the work in interpreting that will involve those (for instance voice-overs). However, the activities of the translator all depend on that.

Ownership, care, and handling of paper lexicons during duty is a concern that belongs exclusively to translators.

The differences between skills set and mental usage maps are definitely topics that need to be discussed formally in a separate piece, so that we will reserve these topics for future articles.

In what comes to simultaneous interpreting, and this is part of the topic that we have selected for this post, we must say that the sigmatoid (the symbols that make the word considered on their own, all together) simultaneous appears in the expression in its ordinary sense, so that simultaneous means at the same time (Merriam-Webster, 2013).

This is actually a modality of interpreting in which the professional interpreter will interpret the message they get from the person/group trying to communicate as it is conveyed. That means that the interpreter will, for instance, whisper the result of their processes of decodification and codification into the ear of the person/group trying to receive the message.

For this modality to be considered to be in place, the interpreter must convey the message in almost real time to the group/person who is receiving it.

If we call the origin of the message source and the receptor of the message sink (terms we borrow from Algebra (Boston, p. 31, 2012)), then we can say that the modality is being applied if the sink is receiving the message expressed by the source with a maximum delay of about forty seconds.

Consecutive interpreting, on the other hand, is a much more relaxed and perfect way of interpreting. One could also say that it is a much more reasonable way of doing that. In this modality, the interpreter may take notes and think for some time, say think about the best way to convey the message to the receptor, or even  think about what the own message is.

One can tell, simply by understanding the main characteristics of both modalities, that simultaneous interpreting has a much higher rate of mistake than consecutive interpreting.

For a court, where the words matter quite a lot, we would obviously ethically recommend that consecutive interpreting be used instead of simultaneous.

References

Maria-Dimitra, B., & Anastasia, G. (2009). Retrieved December 31 2013 from Maria-Dimitra et al

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. (2013). Simultaneous. Retrieved December 31 2013 from simultaneous, Merriam-Webster

Boston, N. (2012). Applications of Algebra to Communications, Control, and Signal Processing. ISBN-10: 1461438624.

Please help the SPTIA help our professional class by doing one of its courses:

Ethical Codes for Translators and Interpreters - Certificate 

Translation: Techniques and Technicalities - Certificate

Localisms versus accuracy

Finding an equivalent in another language is sometimes the same as entering one of Tom Cruise’s movies from the series Mission Impossible in the body of Tom Cruise without leaving the Watchers’ World.

Finding perfect, or close-to-perfect, matches is something so difficult that we think that only those linguists who have lived in the Country of their target language could possibly be attempting to translate or interpret into it.

Ideally, linguists would know the culture of both the target and source countries.

Sometimes, however, knowing the culture of both the target and source countries is not enough, since the linguist would actually have to know the culture of the specific location that they are targeting to do a good job (see our previous article with PROz: cacetinho and pao privado, for instance).

We believe that English is English everywhere, is it not? If a people declare officially that they speak English, they must speak English, right?

The problem is actually the corruption of the language in the specific location we target.

For instance, the English of England would be at least sometimes completely different from the English of Australia.

We look in the dictionary (Longman’s) and we see that a Registry Office is a local government building in Britain where you can get married, and where births, marriages, and deaths are officially recorded (Pearson Education, 2005).

In Australia, we have the Office of Births, Deaths, and Marriages instead.

In Brazil, there are places where we can get married and record our signatures for posterior certification. These places are called cartorios and we have to pay fees to get our documents certified by them. We cannot get our documents certified in any other place.

In Portugal, all public officers and solicitors, for instance, can certify our documents, and we have to pay a fee for that ((7Graus, 2011-2013) and (Ordem dos notarios, 2007)).

Still in Portugal, if we want to get married, we can do that in a conservatoria (7Graus, 2011-2013b).

In Australia, certification of documents is free, and any judge of peace can do that for us (Attorney-General’s, 2013). Because becoming a judge of peace is not that hard (Attorney-General’s, 2013), we can find them in several places, including banks and libraries.

In England, we can get our documents certified for free, but we may also have to pay: All depends on who we go for (BritishExpats.com, 1999-2010).

We then understand that translating and interpreting, in this case, has to imply possessing detailed knowledge of the standard systems of all these so different countries, even with the pair being always the same.

We could then blame the lexicons and say that they are incomplete or not properly built.

It might be that including cartorio in the dictionary would not be much trouble, even if we had to list all the cultural equivalents, say for each and every Country that speaks English or Portuguese... .

However, when we look at expressions of the type bowel movements, we notice that only deep understanding and knowledge of both cultures could do the trick.

We can actually find bowel movements, precisely like that, in a few dictionaries. Longman, for instance, states that bowel movements is the act of getting rid of solid waste from your body.

Well, excrement is as solid as mucus at least sometimes, so that Longman’s explanation is at least incomplete. If you think that secretions are different from waste, then think of vomit, for instance, since vomit contains solid elements at least sometimes and has body waste as one of its synonyms (Collins, 2002).

For a person from another culture to understand that what we refer to is the solid waste from our intestine after reading Longman’s definition of bowel movements, they perhaps would have to check the definitions of bowel and movements.

Still to the side of criticizing the definition of bowel movements of one of the best dictionaries ever written, in terms of the English language, the Longman Dictionary, is the following remark: Our excrement does not need to be solid and, at least sometimes, it will be a sort of liquid, especially if we have diarrhea.

We could interpret the just-mentioned expression as movimentos do intestino by means of literal interpretation. This would be understood at the other end, but perhaps only after a certain amount of repetitions.

Ideally, we would simply use the local expression for such a thing, that is, what a doctor from Brazil, for instance, would be saying in place of bowel movements in the same sort of situation. We would then say digestao.

Some purists would then argue that this is an incorrect choice of terms because we have the word digestion in English and, if the doctor wanted to talk about that, they would have said digestion.

Notwithstanding, we have to know the culture of the Country where we work and the difference between interpreting and translating.

In Brazil, the amount of people that would acknowledge a movement of their own bowel is, pushing it, probably something like five percent.

Of course they should be able to understand any question of the sort how are your bowel movements going? but it is very likely that they do not.

We can then imagine that people in Australia, for instance, are so superior in all that they worry quite a lot about their own health: They worry to the point of monitoring, on a daily basis, or at least on a frequent basis, the movements of their own intestines.

Well, congratulations to them. They would then be able to answer such a question with oh, yesterday I accompanied the movements of my bowel and the contractions were exactly the same, in pattern, that I saw it making when I was five or something like that.

In a place like Brazil, however, the maximum that the local standards of intelligence and observation would allow for is: Yes, I am going to the toilet as usual.

There is then no point in agreeing with the purists and saying bowel movements in Portuguese (movimentos do intestino) when serving someone in the quality of professional interpreter. We should, in this particular case, sacrifice detailing in the name of information and communication.

If the doctor really meant it, and that is rarely the case, this also in Australia, then they will reword that question in a way to make communication possible.

If we are serving someone in the quality of professional translator, however, we should probably say movimentos do intestino and make a note on the cultural differences involved (footnote).

We should not use movimentos peristalticos, which is the most we could be hearing in Brazil for this one. The reason for this advice is that we have the word peristaltic in the English language and this word has not appeared in our original expression.

We then notice that the work of the linguist is, most of the time, happening inside the upper levels of the Bloom’s scale (Overbaugh, 2011), that is, inside Evaluation, Synthesis, and Analysis. Only rarely does it happen inside the lower levels (Application, Comprehension, and Knowledge).

A good linguist therefore has to be a person who has at least an inquisitive mind, since remaining in the lowest levels of the scale will lead to a large probability of increase in difficulty of communication amongst people.

References:

Pearson Education Limited. (2005). LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English. ISBN: 1-405806737

7Graus. (2011-2013). Onde Autenticar Documentos? Retrieved July 13 2013 from http://www.online24.pt/onde-autenticar-documentos/

Ordem dos notarios. (2007). Termos de autenticacao. Retrieved July 13 2013 from http://www.notarios.pt/OrdemNotarios/PT/PrecisoNotario/TermosAutenticacao/

7Graus. (2011-2013b). Casamento pelo Registo Civil em Portugal. Retrieved July 13 2013 from http://www.online24.pt/casamento-pelo-registo-civil-em-portugal/

Attorney-General’s Department of Australia. (2013). How to become a Justice of the Peace. Retrieved July 13 2013 from http://www.agd.sa.gov.au/government/about-us/department/justice-peace-services/how-become-justice-peace

BritishExpats.com. (1999-2010). Certified Documents. Retrieved July 13 2013 from http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=296012

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. (1995, 2002). Vomit. Retrieved December 25 2013 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vomit

Overbaugh, R. C. (2011). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Retrieved July 13 2013 from http://ww2.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm