A word about translations...
Are we on the same page? Simultaneous translation is an art!
2 min read
All life is interpretation in a way.
But even more so when you are involved in interpretation and translation on a professional basis.
And constantly juggling two or more languages at the same time in your everyday work.
It’s not Lost in Translation as the film would have it, but more like Found In Translation!
Finding out more about yourself, about other people and about life as well.
One misnomer often shared by monolinguals is that bilinguals somehow have to turn on and turn off different language switches in their brains when engaging with a different language user.
As if it’s a laborious, time-consuming and even irritating part of having more than one language!
Not understanding that the two languages are always “ON” all the time, and involved in different tasks constantly in both languages at the same time- observing, speaking, listening, evaluating, finding, appreciating, learning.
One of my favourite practices of this constantly “ON” model is simultaneous translation.
Where I listen to Language 1 being spoken and translate it immediately into Language 2 for the benefit of those who don’t understand Language 1.
It’s very gratifying work as you quite often have people coming up to you at the end with a look of wonder on their faces, saying things like… “How on earth do you do that?”.
Almost as if you are some kind of verbal magician!
I explain to them that it’s a process that almost transcends conscious thought.
You just tap into the vast bilingual dictionary you have in your mind, and then you are swept along on a kind of language stream which flows and flows and flows of itself.
This stream really takes on a life of its own in a sense.
And I also somehow enter another dimension through this flow!
Research has shown that simultaneous translation is very good for the plasticity of the brain, as listening, understanding, processing and speaking at the same time engages the brain in a very unique way!
It’s said that engaging in simultaneous translation is a prime example of what’s called a networked brain.
And what more do you need in our networked society today than a networked brain?!
Open to the wonders of language and how languages interact with each other in creative ways.
As we all should be doing with each other as human beings wherever we are in the world.
Finding ourselves in new ways all the time.
Interpretation is life itself!