How do professional translators do it on the fly?

Factual Questions
21

I am a professional conference interpreter, so I guess I can say something about the OP’s query. First, I am not a translator, I am an interpreter. Translators have time and dictionaries, they strive for accuracy, perfection even. We must be humbler: we strive to convey the gist. There are goob and mediocre interpreters, of course: the better ones get more details across, the bad ones give us a bad name, and everything in between. You also have good and bad days, good and bad speakers, and subjects you know more or not so much about. Professional interpreters try to inform themselves about as many details as possible before the meetings, of course.
There are several modes of interpretation, roughly: simultaneous (in the booth, with microphones, usually in a team of two or even three per language), consecutive (with a notepad, often for formal occasions, often just one per language, sometimes one interpreter does both ways, what we call a retour) and sussotage (whispering interpretation, where an interpreter sits close to a small audience and whispers in simultaneous mode.)
Most interpreters work only into their mother tongue (what we call the A language) from one or more other languages (what we call B or C languages. B languages are perhaps not mother tongue, but close, and some work into their B languages under certain conditions, eg only in consecutive. We do ot work into C languages).

Very few people are truly bilingual, it is not even a clear consensus about what that means. I, for instance, was raised bilingual Spanish/German, went to school in Spain and to university in Germany. My linguistic skills in Spanish and German are very good, but different in both languages. For instance, when I do arithmetic in my head I usually do it in Spanish, as this is the language in which I learned to multiply.
An interpreter cannot ask the speaker to repeat or to slow down (much as we would sometimes like to!): in the booth it is technically impossible (the speaker does not listen to your channel, but to the other, and not at all while speaking), in formal settings it is highly undesired. If you don’t get something, that is too bad. Interpreters must be able to be humble. Misunderstandings happen also in monolingual conversations, deal with it. If the listener has a question, it is up to him to ask.

This assumption could not be more wrong. An interpreter’s hell could be a South American politician being flowery to be translated into sober German. It could also be an elder Japanese speaker speaking English.
The most difficult thing for many interpreters are numbers. As we try to convey meaning we visualize things, but numbers are just numbers and have no meaning beyond the number. When in a booth a good colleague writes the numbers down for the colleague doing the interpreting: reading a number is easy.

It is difficult enough to get the numbers right without the conversion, but I try to. It is my way of showing off in front of my colleagues. The customers do not usually notice.

So, my meeting starts now. I have to go! Do not hesitate to ask more details if you are interested.

Ah, yes! I almost forgot: this the website of the International Organisation of Conference Interpreters
aiic.net
We are happy to assist and will try to answer any query you might have.

22

I’m aware of what “bilingual” means, which is why I phrased my remark as I did. “Truly bilingual” is indeed rare and not to be confused with having one mother tongue and later learning another language.

My son was genuinely bilingual, for a few years - he was raised speaking English and Indonesian in equal measure and once he learned how to separate the languages (as is consistent with the literature on the matter, he mixed them for a while, even though I was at pains to make it easy for hi to separate them), it was a sight to behold. Alas, he lost all his Indonesian when we left the country.

23

Yes, use it or lose it. It is a pity.

24

It wasn’t an assumption, it was a suspicion. Please be more careful :stuck_out_tongue:

Just teasing. Thanks for sharing the info, ignorance fought.

25

Well sort of. More like the idea is that the original Arabic should always be retained by everyone so there is not much room for deviation due to centuries of translation.

The Quran is also written in 7th century provincial dialect (for want of a better term) and so meanings change due to language drift in Arabic but have to remain the same in the Quran.
Which leads to translations having copious notes and “explanations” in brackets.

26

Now I realize that I have not answered OP’s question: I have described what we do but not explained how. The prerequisite is knowing the languages. You must understand what the speaker says and you must be able to express the idea in your language without wasting time or neurons on how to say it. Understanding must be very good, speaking must be automatic. You don’t have to be bilingual, in fact, it is more and more seldom the case.
It is very useful to have a broad range of interests. The more you know, the less you have to understand on the fly. Read a lot, be up to date.
Then there is the training: that was hard, and rightly so. You will have to cope with tense and unpleasant situations in your working life, parts of the training would look to the untrained eye (and felt to the pupils) like cruel harrasment. I don’t know how they teach nowadays where people are so woke (/irony), but if you can’t stand some heat in class you will not be a good interpreter.
And then: practice, practice, pratice, practice… Look at what older, more experienced colleagues do. Copy their tricks. Try not to repeat your mistakes (you will make some every day). Keep on reading. Practice, practice, practice.

27

By who? By everyone or just by people who believe that

28

Nitpick: Poid is the French word for weight; livre is the word for pound. Most confusing is that pinte is the French word for quart (and chopine for pint). Go figure.

29

The orthodox view in Islam is that all translations, no matter how faithful, are deemed to be merely ‘commentaries’ on the Book (and many commentaries have been written over the centuries) and don’t carry the same authority. For the same reason, physical book-copies of the translated Koran aren’t treated with the same respect as original-language ones.

30

For some reason I find that fascinating. It’s counter-intuitive, although I guess it shouldn’t be given my own experience - not as an interpreter (my Indonesian isn’t anywhere near good enough for that) but “interpreting myself”: While I lived in Indonesia, I only knew my phone number and address in Indonesian, as I never needed them in English. Well, almost never: once in a great while I would be asked to give my phone number to someone in English, and I found it surprisingly difficult. I would have to recite it in Indonesian out loud, listen to myself, and then move each digit over to English.

Brains are weird!

31

I was an interpreter for 15 years. I interpreted from American Sign Language to English, and the other way as well. All signed language interpreting is simultaneous interpreting. You can do it on the fly, because it’s what you do. How do baseball players hit a ball right into the hole in the outfield? How do dancers hit their mark every time? How do professional chefs make things you can’t make at home? It’s what they do.

In addition to the three years I spent learning American Sign Language (one, in an immersion environment at Gallaudet University, where I took several classes in the grammar of ASL, comparative linguistics of modalities, Deaf Culture in America, and so forth), I spent two years just learning how to be an interpreter.

The poster who said interpreters retain very little of what is said at the time they are interpreting is spot-on. I have been in a huge variety of situations, and I remember very little of anything that was ever said in any of them.

I am hyperfocused when I interpret. I’m not doing anything else. I think if someone yelled “Fire!” all I’d do is interpret the fact that this person over here had just said “fire” in a very loud voice. If someone told me to get the hell out of the building, I’d interpret “Get the hell out of the building!”

I have tried to meditate in the past, because people have said it would help my insomnia. I’ve never been able to sit down and do it intentionally-- it’s like telling me not to think about elephants; but someone I know who has been meditating every day for like, 20 years, described it for me, and I thought, “Oh, wow; that’s interpreting!”

Of course, you are processing something, but your personality is gone. You don’t stress over whether you should have picked a closer synonym, because you keep going. There’s not time to obsess over each word. It doesn’t really matter, though, because it’s not each individual word-- it’s the whole of what you say, and your facial expressions, how you string the words together-- transitions are as important as the words themselves.

But really, how much do you think about what you are saying when you are speaking extemporaneously? you don’t remember what you said verbatim, and neither do I remember everything I said verbatim when I’m interpreting.

The first time I ever did it, I felt sort of spaced out when it was over, because it took a minute to get back to me. Pretty soon, though, I didn’t have any lag time.

The best compliment you can give an interpreter is “I forgot you were there.” I’ve gotten that several times.

I had to quit interpreting when I got carpal tunnel syndrome. It was treated effectively enough that I can still hang out with my Deaf friends, but I can’t interpret anymore. It was the best job in the world, and I miss it.

32

Pardel-Lux (or anyone else who might know): In the spoken-language interpreting world, are there people known to have exceedingly rare abilities in several languages? Abilities that only a handful in the world might have? People who can perhaps not only work into their A language, but into their B, C, and D languages besides – do such people exist?

EDIT: And I also wanted to ask – are there spoken-word interpreters renowned for unusual stamina? It was said upthread that 30 minutes of near-real-time translation is about the maximum for most interpreters. But are there a very few who can go 45 minutes, an hour, 90 minutes, longer … and leave people wondering “how?!?”

33

My wife is a RN, the hospital had a translation service they used because family members who wanted to translate would edit the message from staff to make it more acceptable. The service did a complete translation with none of the unpleasant things filtered out.

34

Was only an oral language interpreter half the time (technically, signed languages are “spoken”-- all languages are spoken: someone “speaks ASL,” or “speaks British Sign Language”). But I couldn’t leave people hanging. When I’d show up for an 8 hr. job, and the second interpreter was a no-show, I was supposed to leave, but I couldn’t do it. Not with the Deaf people sitting there looking at me. That’s how I ended up with carpal tunnel syndrome.

But I interpreted from ASL into oral English-- I did both ways. The longest job I did solo was 9.5 hrs. with a 1/2 hr. lunch and two 10 minute breaks, and I interpreted, on my feet, no sitting, the whole time.

Another time, I did a 12 hr. job with another interpreter, and we switched every 1/2 hr., and got to sit. What a difference. It was two four hr. presentations followed by a little over an hour of questions each, and 1 1/2 hr. meal break, plus two other breaks.

No, we aren’t supposed to be sent for long jobs like that. They should have sent two teams for six-hour shifts.

I don’t think anyone noted my stamina, though. I think everybody just figured it was my job.

35

I’m a bit confused here. Wouldn’t numbers be the easiest things to interpret?

Japanese speaker: “I traveled 600 kilometers last week.”

English: “I traveled 600 kilometers last week.”

?

36

Quite right. I was thinking of “poids net / net weight” on containers. Thanks!

37

Not at all, that is not how the brain processes numbers. If it is only one sentence, like in your example, it should be easy, though you’d be surprised. But a normal sentence with numbers has a context you must interpret, and a number or two which are completely random from the point of view of the brain processing meaning. Let’s say:
“The three biggest ships in our fleet have a crew of 17 sailors each and catch 27 Tons every 6 hour shift on average”
That will get probably mangled if you do not expect it and are not extremely focused (or your good booth companion writes 3 - 17 - 27 - 6 on a paper). Same for dates, or the number of a law (regulation 123456, fourth paragraph, third indent, letter c, from december the 6th 1955, read at speed, because for a lawyer it is so obvious: forget it).
If the languages involved include German, where something like 96 becomes six-and-ninety, or French, where it becomes four times twenty and sixteen, it gets even more difficult.
Add to that the fact that many interpreters became interpreters after studying linguistics because they chose something that did not have any math included. Not all, of course, but many. This may have something to do with the sex ratio of our profession: I know of no other occupation that is well paid and highly regarded with such a high proportion of female and gay members.
But I also know personally two matematicians who ended up becoming interpreters. Please keep in mind that nothing I wrote is an absolute truth, it is just my experience.

38

You can work forever, no problem. Your health will suffer in the long run and you will probably sleep awfully that night, but that is your problem. The problem for your clients is that the quality of your work will drop sharply after 30 minutes, after two hours you will only say gibberish. So you don’t leave people wondering “how?” but rather wondering “how can (s)he be such a fool?”
Concerning your first question: you can work into many many languages, but I know of nobody who can do it at the required level in official meetings into more than three languages, and even three is a stretch. But there are many tourist guides who speak four or five or even more languages and do a reasonable job of interpreting in a tourist visit setting, and that is OK. It is just not what I mean when I talk about conference interpreting.

39

Congratulations! That is indeed the best compliment an interpreter get get.

I am very sorry to read that. Is remission possible?

40

That would allow me to interpret again? No. Interpreting is done.

But I can still hang out with all my Deaf friends, and tutor English at the Deaf school (well, right now, it’s either home-based, or Skype-based).

I had a series of steroid injections, and it resolved fairly well, but I was told that if it flared up again, I’d need surgery, and if I had surgery, I might be done with ASL altogether.

Actually, when I was pregnant, it flared up, but that is apparently common. A lot of women who have never had it before get it while pregnant, and then it clear up after birth. In my case it did as well. I didn’t have any pain from it, that time, though, just numbness. And I played through it. Probably shouldn’t have.

Deaf people in general don’t get carpal tunnel syndrome. But Deaf people who are teachers, professors, ministers, or have some profession that stresses their wrists in addition to their use of signed language, are at risk.

The last time I did something dumb was when I went to the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, and played for four hours. My wrists were really sore afterwards, and were sore for several days. I didn’t tell anyone. It went away. Thank goodness.