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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: InterpretingWritten by Alethea and Athena Nibley Many apologies to everyone who may have been looking forward to a column last week. Right up until the day we were supposed to write it, we were dealing with some personal issues, and then on the day it was actually due, we ended up going to Disneyland. I know, I know, what kind of lame, lazy slackers skip out on their responsibilities to go to Disneyland, right? Well, we'll have you know that we skipped school to go to Disneyland many times. Actually only once a year, and I really would not recommend falling behind in school to go to Disneyland. But anyway, a friend of ours, who lives in Japan and only visits the United States about once a year, was going to be at Disneyland that day, and we wanted to be able to spend time with him. And the reason I bring that all up is because now I can write a column on interpreting! See? There's a method to my madness. Usually, anyway. ...Okay, sometimes. Right. Interpreting. Here's a little factoid that most people may or may not realize, but only pay attention to if they're in some sort of language-switching business: translating refers to changing one language into another in writing. Interpreting refers to doing it with speech only. So if you're watching subtitled anime, chances are somebody translated the script (which would have been written). But if you're watching anime in Japanese without subtitles, and your friend who knows Japanese is telling you what they're saying, then your friend is interpreting. And let me tell you, interpreting takes a lot more confidence, and a different kind of skill. See, when you're translating, you can take as much time as you want, looking up every word in a dictionary, cross-referencing to make absolutely sure you're getting the right nuance, etc. etc. But when you're interpreting, it's best to do it all on the spot, or else you have people standing there waiting around, and there's a possibility that by the time you've looked up the word in the dictionary, nobody even remembers what you were talking about. Of course, there are electronic pocket dictionaries that probably help speed up the process, but none of us had one of those, so we got to try interpreting without it. Our friend has an iPhone, and we'd imagine there's a J<->E dictionary app, but he couldn't use the internet on his phone, because it was a Japanese one and... we don't know why, but it just couldn't get internet. So when you're interpreting, you have to get creative. We were going through the Sleeping Beauty's Castle walkthrough, where it has all the scenes illustrating the story (the Disneyland version is a little too Maleficentric, if you ask us; I mean, Maleficent's a great villain and all, but some of us want to see the scene where Philip and Aurora met), and since our friend wasn't familiar with the fairy tale, we got to explain everything. That brings up an interesting question, come to think of it. The descriptions of the scenes are all written down, and we said the Japanese outloud... so originally it was text, which would make it translation, but we were speaking, which would make it interpreting... hmm... Anyway, that was when we realized we didn't know the Japanese word for “spinning wheel.” It was easy to work around it, though, because we were able to say “the machine that makes thread,” and our friend supplied “itomakiki.” The lesson to be learned here is one we read in a book at our college bookstore a few years ago--you can double your fluency by learning ways to explain the words you don't know. Tadah! Fortunately, we were in a very low-pressure situation where it was okay to mess up. So for anyone wanting to learn to really speak Japanese, we would definitely recommend finding a friend you can talk to. Of course, that can be risky, too. Athena and I don't practice speaking Japanese with each other for two reasons. First and foremost, English is much easier, and we are lazy. But second, we're afraid we'll end up training mistakes into each other, since we don't really have anybody around to correct us. But anyway, back to interpreting and the kind of brain power it requires. As I said, we were lucky to be in a low-pressure situation, where we had time to talk things out if anybody got confused. But when we were in Japan, we went to church with a relative, and it was his job to interpret the meeting into English for those in the congregation who didn't know Japanese. It was crazy to listen to, because someone would start talking and just seconds later he'd be repeating it in English into a microphone, which would play into the headphones of the people who needed interpretation. So he was listening in one language and speaking in another at the same time! That must take an incredible amount of concentration. It was pretty amazing. It would be neat to be able to do that one day, but for now, we enjoy taking our time translating manga. |
29 September 2009 22 September 2009 16 September 2009 15 September 2009 9 September 2009
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