A Message from the Messenger

Greetings!

My name is Augusto Lenzuen, I'm a certified Portuguese, Spanish and English conference interpreter in Brazil and this article is an attempt to disseminate information among public speakers and event organizers about how they can help improve the quality of their lecture's or event's simultaneous translation. In my experience, many of the difficult situations we face in our daily life could be mitigated or prevented with a little more awareness about what we do and how challenging it can be, especially if we're not given the tools to perform well.

First of all, I'd like to start by describing a little bit to everyone what a month in the life of a conference interpreter might look like. In the past 3 weeks, I worked in the launch of the Global Carbon Market in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then flew to Salvador to translate the International Symposium of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, then returned to Rio for the Unitas 2022 FPC with the Brazilian Navy. In less than 4 weeks, I needed to learn enough in three languages about topics such as sustainability, agriculture and livestock farming, green energy sources, chemistry, law and international regulations, the inner workings of the human eye, types of eye surgery, keratoconus, glaucoma, types of lenses, different technologies and procedures, military acronyms (such as SMEE or CTOC), meteorology, oceanography, military vehicles, military ranks in different countries, etc.. This is just a general list, without getting even remotely close to the amount of information we need to process in order to do our job well. And I haven't even mentioned the online events, which we can have three on the same day, each with a different topic.

Now that you're a little more familiar with our routine, I'd like to present to you the four banes of any conference interpreter:

1- Specific Terminology.

2- Numbers / Lists.

3- Accents.

4- Fast Speakers.

Let us discuss each of these items individually, shall we?

1- Specific Terminology: Most public speakers spend a long time studying and preparing their presentations to the best of their ability, and the content which they present is generally top notch. But, as this is a globalized world and not everybody speaks the same language, it falls to us the interpreters to relay the message to at least part of the audience. We absolutely understand that the quality of our work will impact the perceived quality of their presentation, and we take it very seriously. However, as they say in Poker: "you can only play the hand you're dealt." While they may have devoted their entire life to their research, and may be speaking to an audience of equally skilled individuals in their field of choice, for the interpreters, it is probably the first time or one of the very few times they will have seen all of the related terminology, acronyms, data analysis, etc..

So, what's the first thing they can do to help? Well, they could send a preliminary version of their presentation (if they haven't had time to finish it yet) to the organizers roughly a month before the event for the interpreters to research vocabulary, terminology, and even watch videos or read articles to get familiarized with the topic. This would be to ensure that when they go on stage, unseen behind the booth, but equally responsible for the audience's response to the lecture, there's a professional that has been given all the tools to do a great job!

Also, it's important to note that in 90% of the cases, simultaneous translation is one of the last or even the last service to be hired when an event is being planned, which makes all of the above impossible. At least in my experience, for most jobs I end up doing, I'm called about a week to two days before the event. There have been cases, though rare, when I was hired the night before at 11pm for an event the next day at 7am. Of course most of those are due to unforeseen circumstances, like another interpreter getting sick and being unable to attend. But sadly even more unlikely is a situation where I was hired two months before and got all the materials I needed to prepare for an event.

2- Numbers / Lists: On this item, I'd like to discuss numbers, especially when they're spoken quickly and in succession. Let me clarify that when I say numbers, I don't mean simple numbers, like four. Please allow me the opportunity to switch briefly to Portuguese so I can illustrate this topic with a real example that happened to me a few days ago in an online event. They were discussing the possibility of approving a federal law regulating sports betting, which right now is in legal limbo in Brazil. The speaker in question said the following (numbers are there just to illustrate, not factual) : "O tópico foi abordado no parágrafo 7o, inciso 4o do artigo 218 da Constitui??o Brasileira, e discutido novamente na lei 13756 de 1944, onde ficou definido ... (This topic was discussed in Paragraph 7, subparagraph 4 of article 218 in the Brazilian Federal Constitution, and then debated further in law number 13756 from 1944, where it was established that..)". I'd like to point out that the above sentence was spoken in less than 5 seconds.

Also on item 2, how many times have you said something along the lines of: These are the five pillars of our organization, and then listed and briefly described them one by one? That may be of little issue if the translation is simultaneous in a booth, but if it's a consecutive translation on stage, then you should probably remember that the person responsible for relaying your message to the people in the audience who don't speak your language has no idea what these pillars are and can't take notes because they're on stage. This particular situation happened to me, and I remembered four out of the five listed pillars along with the associated explanation for each, which is an 80% success rate, but I hesitated for a minute, because I couldn't remember the last one. Fortunately one of the English-speaking audience members sitting in the front row came to my rescue and screamed the fifth, saving me from utter embarrassment. But since the point of this article is to try to better inform public speakers so that the quality of our work can actually reflect the quality of theirs, please allow me to suggest something: If you're going to list a series of items for consecutive translation, it's probably best to stop just before the first item, let the interpreter translate the bit leading up to the list, and then name and explain one at a time, then stop at the end of each item for the interpreter to translate. This will greatly improve the quality of the message and prevent many potential issues. Please know that if you don't do that, most of the times, you won't even know whether they forgot an item or not, as you don't speak the language they're translating you into, and the error might go unnoticed.

3- Accents: Accents are a fascinating part of linguistics, and being both a teacher and a translator, I have tremendous appreciation for how difficult it is for some people to rewire their subconscious associations between letters and sounds in order to at least partially emulate native speakers of a foreign language so they can be understood. But, even if you're unable to do that which is required to reduce your accent, it's important for you to realize that the way you pronounce certain words is quite different from the way a native speaker would pronounce them. This may not be as problematic if the people who are translating you share your nationality, as they too will have the same associations as you, and will likely understand you. However, if you're an Egyptian guest giving a lecture in English at a convention Germany, you'll most likely be translated by Germans, who don't share your same associations between letters and sounds. I have heard the word (pronounced lo:nz) in English to represent the word lens (pronounced lenz), as well as General Einsenhower's name (pronounced aizenhauarr) being pronounced (i:zi:nioveh). I know this is subconscious and very hard to change, but if you're aware that you have an accent, please speak a bit more slowly so we can have enough time to process the phonetic differences between our two native languages. This leads us to the final item in this article.

4- Fast Speakers: I'd like to start by saying that this section is not an attempt of mine to have an easier day at the office, and if you'd indulge me, I believe by the end of it, you'll come to agree with me. Now, to the topic at hand:

When you speak fast and there's somebody translating what you say into another language, a few phenomena will invariably occur:

- The interpreter will not have enough time to come up with elegant linguistic solutions that would make you look more eloquent to your audience. They'll most likely say the first thing that comes to mind, which is typically the simplest form of articulation.

- The interpreter will have to edit out parts of your discourse, because they won't have enough time to process all the information you're providing. If there's a good professional behind the booth, you'll most likely still make sense to the share of your audience that's understanding you through translation, but still, things will be left out as a result of an accelerated pace when speaking. This is especially true from English to Portuguese, as English is a more economical language in terms of the number of words needed to articulate an idea. As an example: "The shell element's local coordinate system" in Portuguese becomes: "O sistema local de coordenadas do elemento de casca". This may not seem much, but it's a 33% increase in the number of words needed to say the same thing (going from 6 to 9 words).

- The interpreter will not have able time to process significant grammatical differences between the languages, which might lead to them translating something from Portuguese to English like this: "O sistema local de coordenadas do elemento de casca" becoming: "The local system of coordinates of the element of shell". This happens mostly from English to Portuguese due to the different word order required when pairing nouns and their respective adjectives. Between Spanish and Portuguese, the grammatical differences are less significant, but you might still hear a "male noun" being used as "female" when they differ in gender between the languages. For Anglo-saxons who might be confused and wondering, nouns in Latin languages such as Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, have gender (a pencil is a he, and a pen is a she).

- Many numbers might be confused, mistaken or simply omitted from speech, leading to a number that is supposed to support a point doing exactly the opposite, such as: "a 40% decrease in revenue is catastrophic, as you might be arguing, but a 14% decrease might not be as significant", and some of these numbers might be accidentally swapped if you're speaking too quickly. If you're trying to establish a chronological order of events, but say the years too quickly, you might get something like this: "This event happened in 1854, followed by this other event in 1856, which then caused this final event in 1860" becoming: "This event happened in 1864, followed by this other event in 1956, which then caused this final event in 1850". I'm aware this is a bit of an exaggeration, but the point still remains.

To conclude the bit about speaking fast, I'd like to add that it worsens all of the previously mentioned issues, and is probably the only one you can actually control over the course of your presentation. If speaking quickly may cause many potential mishaps, the opposite is also true. Speaking slowly and articulately may allow us the time to process numbers, accents, specific jargon, and the like.

And so we come to the end of the article, and what have we learned? Well, what I intended for you to learn was that behind the booth, there's somebody who nearly as much as you wants your presentation to be successful and will do anything in their power to make sure it is. However, this person also needs the appropriate tools to perform well, and you too can contribute to the quality of their work much in the same way they do to yours.

Even though I'm just the messenger, together we are stronger! May our events be filled with unforgettable moments and enthralled audiences! Over and out.