Getting the message

• Source: Global Times
• [15:47 June 07 2010]
• Comments

Hearing you loud and clear. Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Dawrant

By Tom Mangione

Imagine you've spent years perfecting your knowledge of a foreign language. You've put in the time and hard work to obtain an intensely difficult master's degree that hundreds apply for, but just a handful obtain. You are now attending international conferences with those holding influence in politics and business. And for all your years of preparation, of all the people in the room, you know the least about the topics being discussed. In spite of this, you're an essential part to the proceedings, continuously active, thinking on your feet, trying to amass and sift through massive amounts of information on the fly, yet after the meeting the participants will have only a vague recollection that you were even there. This is the world of conference interpreting.

Translation vs. interpretation

Conference interpretation is different to translation. According to the International Association of Conference Interpreters, "Translators work with the written word. They generally have little contact with authors and their audience, but have more time to produce a written translation. Interpreters work with speech and have to find the best wording promptly, as they are part of a communication process directed at a live audience." According to those involved, the immediate interaction between speakers and participants is what makes conference interpreting a highly strenuous job. Andrew Dawrant, chairman of Shanghai International Studies University's (SISU) Conference Interpretation Program and interpreter for the UN, the US and Canadian heads of state, as well as the CEOs of large multinational companies, told the Global Times, "This is one of the most stressful jobs you can have. Studies have been carried out measuring saliva production and heart rate while on the job and it's on the same level as air traffic controllers." Kriss Yuan, an aspiring conference interpreter in her second year at SISU's Conference Interpretation Program said, "This job is really stressful. It isn't the kind of job you can do if you're a perfectionist. There's always going to be things you don't know. You just have to keep learning."

Being knowledgeable and familiar with a wide variety of topics is essential to the job, equally as important as language ability. Audrey Su, a first year student at SISU's Conference Interpretation Program commented, "Economics and politics weren't things that I was interested in or knew about before I started the program, but I've had to learn all about them because it's essential to have that kind of knowledge for many of the jobs you'll get." Dawrant also noted, "Most of the people who come into this field haven't done their undergraduate degree in languages. They have the language skills, but they learned them on the way. This job requires you to be a well-educated lay person, versed in a wide variety of topics."

Striving to be a beginner

The process of becoming a certified, high-level interpreter requires going through a rigorous two-year master degree program. The best of these programs are highly selective, taking only 5 percent or less of all applicants. Dawrant said of SISU's program, "Each year we have 200 applicants. From this pool we'll narrow it down to 25, who come for a six-hour exam to test their language ability. Out of those, we'll take 10 or less." Yuan commented, "The test was hard. I didn't finish it. I thought for sure that I'd failed and I wouldn't get in, especially because there were people who thought that it was easy and they'd aced it. None of those people were called back though."

Once admitted, students begin to hone the skills that they will need in interpreting, practicing five to six hours a day. Exercises include reading extensively from English and Chinese publications concerned with economics and politics and performing sight translations of them. Memory and effective note taking are also important skills for interpreters, which are built up slowly as students learn to recall information in more detail. Yuan said, "The key is to note triggers that help your memory and enable you to get at the essence of the speaker's meaning. You can't translate everything word for word."