Those Incredible Interpreters

Interpreting is one of the most difficult linguistic skills

Post written by François Grosjean.

Have you ever sat down in an interpreter’s booth, put on the headphones and tried to interpret the incoming speech? I did when I was a young and rather naive student who thought that being bilingual meant one could interpret simultaneously. No sooner had I started that problems arrived. As I was outputting the first sentence, the second one was already coming in but I hadn’t paid enough attention to it. I remembered its beginning but not its ending. Very quickly I fell behind and I just couldn’t say anything more after a few minutes!

Many years later I still remember the scene vividly and because of it, but also because of my own research on the perception and production of speech, I have the utmost respect for interpreters and the training they have to go through to do their job well.

“The remainder of the post can be found here”, with a link to:  Psychology Today post (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201109/those-incredible-interpreters).

 

As the saying so rightly states:

It takes more than having two hands to be a good pianist.
It takes more than knowing two languages to be a good translator or interpreter.

References

Valdés, Guadalupe (2003). Expanding Definitions of Giftedness: The Case of Young Interpreters from Immigrant Communities. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Grosjean, François. Special bilinguals. Chapter 13 of Grosjean, François (2010). Bilingual: Life and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

“Life as a bilingual” posts by content area: http://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/blog_en.html(link is external)

François Grosjean’s website: www.francoisgrosjean.ch

Publicado por Meg Batalha

megbatalha@gmail.com

Tel: 55 11 99582 5899