Through the years, I have come to understand different aspects of the interpreting task. Aspects of which I was completely unaware. Even though I worked as an interpreter before, these aspects only became visible to me from the moment I started to read more and more about interpreting and, specifically, medical interpreting. These aspects can easily go unseen because they can also be applied – in a way or another – to different situations of everyday life. It felt as if a lot of those things made sense only when seen from far away, from another position, from a different perspective: that of the observer.
‘What should we interpret? How should we interpret? What should we not do? What is expected of us? How should we react? How to deal when that or this happens? What aspects should we take into account when interpreting? How should we decide whether to react or mediate during interpreting sessions?’ These are, among others, just a few questions some of you may have asked yourselves when you decided to embark on the journey of interpreting – in its different and, maybe, not (positively?) acknowledged forms. I think that the list of questions is so long that the abovementioned ones are just a mockery of all those you have asked yourselves once.
However, questions are supposed to exist for the sake of finding answers. Having said that, from which of them should we start? Which question can we answer first? Even if there will not be any agreement about which to try to answer first, I think that it would make sense to start from the very beginning, as funny as it may sound.
Interestingly, thinking about the task of interpreting itself can give us some clues. If we think on all the elements (the languages, the type, the time, the parties/agents, the circumstances, the modalities, etc.) that are involved in any type of interpreting, maybe the only thing they all have in common is to reach the ultimate goal of communication between people that do not speak the same language through the reliance on a third party: the interpreter.
So, despite all the other elements, let’s focus now and for the time being on the interpreter. For sure, we know that the interpreter has to have a large general and specific knowledge on the specific topic of the interpreting session. and a high fluency in the languages they work with. Also, they have to know about the conventions of the type of interpreting they are doing, for example, the conventions of the legal or medical system of the country they are working. Extensive training and experience are not a must nor a common reality, but of great help for the task. And last, but not the least – nor the real last one – the knowledge of cultural factors. In this sense, biculturalism and bilingualism may become our greatest friends when interpreting.
But then, are we forgetting to mention something? Maybe…
Until now, we have been talking about the tools that the interpreter is expected to have or develop, or those tools that have proved to have positive (and ideal) results. Yes. But we have not talked about how interpreters internalize the message in their heads to construct, with the help of those tools, an interpreting statement. We do not know if they even use those tools when constructing the meaning of what has been said. It is maybe an unconscious activity of the brain.
Maybe we are focusing on how to use the tools after having understood a certain message or statement from any of the parties of the interpreting session. However, what can we do to understand properly and accurately the meaning of what has been said in the very first place? This is not related specifically to the interpreting flow, but to the communication flow between two parties. Maybe, if we explore and give the needed importance to this aspect of the communication, we can have a better management of how to interpret a message in our heads. Also, we would be learning how to manage those tools during the understanding process of any message and its formulation as an interpreting statement... Hopefully, this can be achieved through practice and training.
(E. C)
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