Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Guest posts


Corinne McKay

Guest post: Join the educational interpreting movement!

This is a guest post by Giovanna Carriero-Contreras and Dr. Holly Silvestri. See below for their bios.

Join the educational interpreting movement!

Spoken-language interpreters have worked in K-12 school settings in the United States for many decades, often invisible to the greater profession. It’s time to give them a big shoutout. The job translators do is equally as complex, but here we are focusing on spoken-language interpreters. Our signed language colleagues are ahead of us. They have a national code of ethics and organizations that provide professional development as well as certification tests in place.

Interpreters in K-12 schools interpret challenging conversations in often uncharted settings.  Today, they may interpret during parent-teacher conferences, a call to a student’s home, at meetings with school career counselors and parents needing assistance with college applications and student aid, or at disciplinary meetings between parents, students and vice principal, or even expulsion hearings with attorneys present.

Tomorrow, they may be interpreting at all sorts of meetings required by the special education system including multiple providers and family members, or at large public meetings, such as school board meetings, graduations, press conferences, and during emergency situations.

Before the pandemic, they generally interpreted face to face wherever needed:  in the teacher’s classroom, the counselor’s or principal’s office, the gym, the cafeteria, sometimes in the corridors, or at the parents’ home.

They interpret sitting down, standing up, in a corner of the room, up on the stage, by the presenter, by the parent, on the floor crouched next to a child being assessed by a specialist or across the room.

Depending on the situation, educational interpreters interpret in consecutive or simultaneous mode. They may also jump across interpreting modes if need be, while negotiating decisions based on who speaks, what they say, and how they say it. When barriers to communication arise, they engage in decision-making processes that call for deep critical thinking skills. They also engage in the sight translation of often complex legal or medical documents, such as parental rights and responsibilities, disciplinary hearing outcomes and the results of psychological evaluations.

Truly, the assignments they cover as educational interpreters require them to use the entire gamut of interpreting skills and beyond. When the pandemic hit, they suddenly became much more visible members of the educational team and the profession in general. That visibility was long overdue as they broke through language access and technological barriers.

Thanks to conversations sparked around the country, interpreters in educational settings agree that there is a need for specific, professional trainings to competently address all the challenges posed by the complexities of the system in which they work.

Shifting the paradigm

The time has come to do something to shift this paradigm for the beter and change the way educational interpreting is perceived.

As educational interpreters, we feel the responsibility to serve communities that otherwise would be left in the lurch. But that does not mean that we cannot advocate for better conditions, better trainings, proper credentials, and fair career paths.   

During these unprecedented challenging times, we have seen an extraordinary amount of information sharing, free workshops and free videos that have enabled us to see how much our job would benefit from better trainings and more resources available to us. We have also seen an increased interest in what we do by the press and the public. For all these reasons and more, the time is right to bring educational interpreters into the fold and claim what we need to do our work best, in an ethical way that conforms to best practices in the field.

But what are the best practices in our field? Few other interpreting specializations demand such a fully developed skill set starting with a solid understanding of interpreter ethics and protocols across the field. And yet, educational interpreting has only recently begun to formalize as a specialization. There are conversations that focus on setting the hallmarks of professionalization and aim at reaching a national consensus on the role of the interpreter, ethics and standards of practice that reflect the full scope of what we do, sufficient training programs that target the unique settings we work in, national organizations that oversee the field, and some kind of basic public understanding that the expertise required to do the job does, in fact, require education and training.

Many school districts across the country have built up credible structures to support language access services in their schools. Several states have created codes of ethics, training programs and academic certificate courses. In the fall of 2019, a new organization, the Interpreting and Translation in Education (ITE) Workgroup launched a national effort to lay the groundwork to create national ethics and standards.

The process to be as inclusive as possible is slower, but it has been very rewarding. Here are some of the efforts led by some of the ITE Workgroup committees: the Job Task Analysis (JTA) Committee has been working hard at compiling a large collection of job descriptions of spoken and signed interpreters and/or translators in educational settings in all 50 states with the purpose of listing all the tasks asked of these positions.

Our Ethics Committee is working on not just the review of existing ethics and standards but in understanding which ethics and standards apply best to educational settings and how to navigate between the often hybrid community-legal nature of the sessions that interpreters navigating. They launched a call to educational interpreters and translators to share ethics related issues they experience to be considered in the creation of national code of ethics that specifically addresses the realities we work within. Each of these efforts is a critical milestone in beginning the process of turning a “setting” into a true specialization.

How do we take advantage of this moment?

Medical interpreters paved the way for us during the 1990s and 2000s on their journey to certification. By researching the history of that journey, several lessons become clear. Over the past thirty years, despite and often because of the bumps along the way, healthcare interpreting has become greater than the sum of its parts and now enjoys a broad coalition of stakeholders committed to the overall goal of making language access real in healthcare while also supporting the professionalization of those who provide the language bridge. We are walking in their footsteps hoping to accomplish similar goals.

The stakes are also high for the millions of immigrant families who need language access to participate fully in decisions about their children’s education. Without interpreters, translators, and all of the other resources required to make meaningful language access possible, limited English-speaking families are at great risk of being left behind. A preponderance of evidence from researchers has found that students with involved parents earn higher grades, enroll in more challenging academic programs, have better attendance, stronger social skills and better behavior. This was found to be true regardless of income or background. Research has also found that schools with strong community support perform better overall and have lower dropout rates and higher-quality educational programs. Additionally, at-risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug use, violence and other anti-social behaviors decrease as parent involvement in education increases.

Now is the time for educational interpreters to get involved with local and national efforts to professionalize the field. Now is the time for sister interpreting associations, (both leadership and stakeholders) to support these efforts as well.  Right now, too much is being asked of interpreters who do not yet have access to adequate training, acceptable working conditions and pay. Let’s help educational interpreting achieve a national presence and infrastructure so that the absolutely essential role interpreters play does not come at the cost of the very people who provide that access. Join the movement. Join us and help us reach out to as many districts and interpreters as possible.

For additional information on educational interpreters & translators, visit the below organizations:

 ITE Workgroup: www.iteworkgroup.org

Orange County Department of Education, Interpreters and Translators Conference in educational settings: https://ocde.us/EducationalServices/toast/InterpretationAndTranslation/Pages/ITC-2021.aspx

Giovanna Carriero-Contreras, is a national and international speaker, Trainer of Trainers and co-author of The Community Interpreter®, and The Medical Interpreter textbooks. She is the CEO and co-founder of Cesco Linguistic Services and is involved in the development of professional standards at the ASTM as a member, and at the ISO as the Chief of U.S. Delegation. Currently, she is co-authoring two additional textbooks for professional interpreters, continues her advocacy to raise the bar of the interpreting profession and is a founding member of the ITE Workgroup.

Dr. Holly Silvestri is the Senior Coordinator of Translation, Training, and Curriculum at the National Center for Interpretation at the University of Arizona. She has been an educational interpreter for over 10 years and is also the Chief Executive Officer of Linguistic Connections, LLC. She has taught in the degree program for Spanish translation and interpreting at the University of Arizona. She is also a founding member of the ITE Workgroup. Currently, she is working on a book with other co-authors that is designed as an advanced training textbook and workbook for interpreters in school settings. Her working languages are Spanish, English, and French.


Corinne McKay

Guest post: It’s never too late to follow your passion

This is a guest post by Joseph J. Welch, a lawyer, financial planner, and now — at age 63– a Master’s in Translation Student. See the end of this post for Joe’s full bio and contact information.

Follow your passion, and you’ll never work a day in your life

It’s never too late to change careers. We’ve all heard stories: The 45-year-old computer programmer who went to med school and began a practice in her early 50’s. The 52-year-old executive who got laid off and started a business doing what he’d always wanted to do. And many more. People change careers for all sorts of reasons. Their values shift. Their work-life balance gets off kilter. They have money issues, family considerations, or too much stress. Perhaps they’re forced into it due to a layoff at a mature age, like the 52-year-old above. Or maybe they just don’t have any passion for what they’re doing.

My reason was the latter, combined with the fact that I’d left another passion behind years ago. When I was 19 (I’m 63 now), I was given the opportunity to spend the summer studying French at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. I excelled and absolutely loved it. I went back to college that fall and later was given an opportunity to go to the University of Caen, in Normandy, for a spring semester abroad. I jumped at it and earned a certificate in French language. Not only did I love it, but I decided I was going to earn my living using French. My goal was to become a simultaneous interpreter at the UN – “Interprète simultané aux Nations Unis,” is what I would tell people. It was all about the French language.

I was going to stay in France, not only for the summer, but to finish college. I enrolled in French literature at a French University. The goal was to further perfect my language skills and ultimately go to the University of Geneva for their interpreter training program. That was the plan, but…back home, they did not approve. I was encouraged to aim higher, to become the one being interpreted, to become the diplomat. I succumbed to the pressure and that fateful decision sent me in a different direction, and off my track.

The interpreter, or the one being interpreted?

I came home from France, finished my degree, and once I graduated, I was “strongly encouraged” to change my “total” French language focus to an international focus, a diplomacy focus. I met with the Consul General at the French consulate in Boston to discuss, in French, what course of study I should follow at a French university to get into international relations. He advised me to pursue law, so in the fall, I went to the University of Strasbourg to study law. After that first year, I returned home for the summer. No one could understand what I would do with a French law degree and why I would go back. People thought I should go to law school in Québec, which is closer to home and French speaking. I applied to Laval (civil law degree only – all in French) and McGill (civil law and common law degrees and 90% in English). I was accepted to both. But again, no one could understand what I would do with just a Québec civil law degree. I was ultimately persuaded that living in Montréal and going to McGill would give me the best of both worlds: plenty of French all around me and I’d graduate with both a civil law degree and a common law degree, the latter allowing me to sit for the bar exam and practice law in Massachusetts. After all, McGill did in fact offer an environment that was bilingual and bijuridical (a word coined by me).

I was now pretty far from my original plan to become a simultaneous interpreter at the UN. I have to admit that I am embarrassed that I let myself become so completely influenced by those around me. Part of the reason I am telling this story is say to younger generations, “Don’t be swayed by what others want you to do, or to be. Follow your passion.” And to parents, including myself, “Let your kids figure it out.” You’ll both be better off in the end.

The passion never dies!

I never lost my passion for French. I managed to keep it alive for many years. I joined French-speaking organizations. I borrowed materials from what was then the French Library in Boston. I recorded and listened to French radio stations on cassette tapes. I later subscribed to French audio publications. I sent my kids to the Ecole Bilingue de Boston. I tutored French. I went on interviews for a job in Geneva and then later for one in France. We did a one-month home exchange in Aix-en-Provence. I convinced my wife to become part of a program where teenage French kids lived with us for a few weeks at a time during the summer, and she taught them English. I tried to move the family to France. I even interviewed with the CIA in a totally nondescript office building in Boston, an interview which took place entirely in French. And during all that time, I accumulated various French-English dictionaries, lexicons, phonology tapes, vocabulary exercises and other French language materials and recordings, all with the intent of practicing and perfecting that level of French that I had attained. I refused to let French go.

Deep down, I always knew that I had happened into a law career that wasn’t a good fit. But I had invested time and money in becoming a lawyer and told myself that, “Surely you can make this work.” I knew I needed a change but couldn’t see or admit the consequences of having left my passion behind. I went from law, to selling legal technology, to financial planning. With all those jobs, I always tried to see the French angle. “Do they have French clients?” I would wonder. “Maybe a subsidiary in France that I could work my way into.”

Destiny calls…via an e-mail from ProZ!

I got close to seeing things clearly around 2007. I was between jobs and took a few online translations classes at NYU. I joined the ATA and ProZ and just as I was starting to get projects, I received a fantastic job offer selling technology to law firms that I simply couldn’t refuse, from a financial perspective, and for my family’s sake. I dropped my membership in the ATA and unsubscribed from ProZ emails. For many years, a few ProZ emails would still trickle in, and I would delete them.

Thirteen years later, in early July of 2020, when I was a financial planner and still not totally thrilled with my work life, I received one such ProZ email. I hovered on it but did not delete it. The next day, I opened it and read it, but still did not delete it. This cycle continued until one day, I opened the email and had a Proustian-like experience. My memories as a 19-year-old kid in France wanting to become a simultaneous interpreter came rushing into my head. Staring at the email, I thought, “You’ve been pushing your family to do these French things. You recently tried to convince your eldest to do the same program in Caen that you had done….” And suddenly light dawned on Marblehead. “I’m the one who has a passion for French. I’m the one who wants to travel to France…I’m the one who needs a job involving French. Why not translation?” Being 63, I thought the option that would give me more time to think would be the better one. Interpretation, requiring quick thinking on my feet, will have to come later.

Back to school at age 63

The next few days involved frantic research on whether I could do this, was I too old, did I have any credibility, could I make money, were there any programs or courses I could take? A colleague advised me that since I did not have any professional translation experience, a Master’s or a certificate program might be a good idea.

Now, finally, 40 some odd years later, I’ve taken the bull by the horns and made the decision to change careers. I’ve come full circle to that point I was at in Caen in 1978. Well, sort of, I’m not 19 anymore. I’ve just finished up my first semester at Kent State University in their two-year online Master’s in Translation program. It’s an excellent foundational course of studies which has kept me quite busy learning strategies and technology, gaining confidence and credibility and removing any kind of imposter syndrome that I might have.

I plan to launch my French to English legal translation practice in the very near future. As an optimist, I have to say that I am in an ideal position. I’m coming back to a point where I was 40 years ago with a wealth of knowledge, education, experience and wisdom.

Interpretation will come at a later point. One thing at a time!

I am coming full circle. I’m doing it. You can, too!

Joseph J. Welch holds a bachelor’s degree in French, from Salem State University, an LL.B. and a B.C.L. (common law and civil law degrees) from McGill University, and an MBA from Suffolk University. He attended the University of Strasbourg (law) as well as the Universities of Caen and Genève and is currently enrolled in the Master’s in Translation program at Kent State University. Joe began his career practicing law, then selling technology to law firms and finally working as a Certified Financial Planner ®. He originally hails from historic Salem, Massachusetts and currently lives in Manchester-by-the-Sea with his lovely wife, his two beautiful daughters, and the cutest four-month-old grandson you’ve ever seen. He plans on launching his French to English legal translation practice in 2021. Joe can be reached at joewelch@joewelch.com.


Corinne McKay

Guest post: Finding direct clients through direct marketing

This is a guest post by German to English translator Sarah Silva. Sarah lives in the UK and specializes in chemistry translations; she became a translator after a first career working with paper, flooring and pharmaceutical coating manufacturers. This post is based on Sarah’s own experience developing and implementing a direct marketing campaign, and she’s also teaching a course on this topic for Training for Translators, starting April 5, 2021.

A Direct Marketing Campaign to Grow Your Translation Business – It’s All in the Follow Up

Many of us have tried marketing to win new clients, by email or post. But if we’re honest, few of us really follow up effectively, if at all. You may regard the follow-up process with narrowed eyes and gritted teeth, resisting it all the way. After all, it feels hard and you don’t want to appear pushy or annoy potential clients. I was the same, I didn’t want to bother people. I dabbled with sending out letters or postcards to potential direct clients and never followed up. Funnily enough, I got zero new clients this way.

The first time I tried a different approach was in 2015. After making a new contact at a trade show I sent a considered and unsolicited proposal for collaboration and actually followed up when they didn’t respond. Not once but twice. They didn’t love my first idea, but it opened up a conversation about what they did need and we’ve been working together regularly on editing and translation projects for the past few years. Now, finding clients at trade shows wasn’t a very scalable approach given that I live in the UK and my clients are based in Germany. Regular travel was a non-starter due to family commitments so I promptly forgot this ever happened. Until I started learning more about using direct mail as part of a marketing strategy and Chet Holmes’ Dream 100 campaign – where you contact 100 people you want to work with and keep following up.

How I carry out direct marketing campaigns

My kind of direct marketing campaign targets a small list of potential clients so you can personalise everything you send and build a relationship. Starting with a small list is also an ideal way to fit your marketing around your busy schedule. I use a mix of the following methods, contacting people every two to four weeks:

  • Direct mail: physical packages and postcards
  • Online: email, connecting on social media
  • ‘Live’ conversations: in person at trade fairs/conferences or via telephone/video calls

Why you should try it

You get a better response than with email. According to Litmus email analytics, 51 % of readers delete your emails within 2 seconds (and that only refers to the emails that get opened).
The GDPR makes contacting new clients harder. Sending your first piece of marketing by post gets around that issue.
Potential clients don’t know you exist. Inbound marketing is great, but many of my new contacts aren’t on social media and don’t realise that specialist translators (I’m in the chemical field) exist. So they don’t look. They commonly use a local translation agency and if they’re disappointed with the results they’ll take their translations in-house if they can – this is especially the case for translations into English.
You’ll gain fantastic insights into your target market from talking with new contacts that you can use across your business.

How my first campaign went

In 2018 I ran a direct marketing campaign to 25 potential clients and got an 8 % response rate to my initial contact by post. This is higher than the 4.9 % average rate quoted by the Direct Marketing Association but in hard numbers, was just two people. I then sent a follow-up Christmas postcard – not a great time of year to get hold of people – and a follow-up email in January, which boosted my overall response rate to 44 %. After a trade show visit to meet some of these contacts in person, I increased the number of new contacts I’d made and spoken with from my list to 52 %.

Show me the money

I know what you’re thinking: Contacts are good but are they paying clients?
From this first campaign, not yet. However, four contacts have promised work when they next need an English translation, and one has mentioned a specific project he wants to work with me on. Another wants to test me out when they next need a specialist chemistry text translated but will stick with their chosen agency for general translations.
It’s a long-term strategy and my German chemical market is ultra conservative so I know it’ll take time. One of my mistakes was to target smaller companies thinking they would be more likely to work with individual translators, but I found they didn’t have the regular work I’d love.
From my new campaign (I’m at stage 2) to an even smaller list of 10 potential clients, I’ve had two responses so far and one contact is now a client. That one client has already covered the costs of both campaigns and I’m confident of more new collaborations.

Update March 2021: I’ve now secured three clients from that campaign, one of whom came to me 18 months after my initial approach as a result of regular follow-up

Top tips for a successful direct marketing campaign

You need to be persistent. Not pushy persistent, but follow up with people, even if they don’t respond. Keep in mind that only about 2 % of people are ready to buy when you contact them so keeping in touch means you’ll be the person they think of when they are ready for translation. And let’s face it, people are busy and translation is often an afterthought.
Consider your schedule and timing. Will your campaign coincide with industry events? I do like a challenge, but marketing over holiday periods isn’t always a good idea!
Be helpful and useful, even entertaining. You can have a lot of fun and be imaginative with your marketing so that people look forward to hearing from you.
Consider this a long-term strategy. My best clients are those who are cautious and consider the finer details of a business partnership. But once they make their decision, they’re loyal.
To make the most of your campaign and encourage you to be consistent and persistent in your follow up (because it’ll take less time), I’d suggest selecting a highly targeted but fairly small list. You can add a personal touch, handwrite postcards, even spend a little more than you could with a larger list, all factors that can boost your success rate.

Direct marketing with consistent follow-up isn’t easy, but it’s not as hard as you might think. And it’s a fantastic way of getting in front of clients you want to work with, who you wouldn’t otherwise meet. It’s growing my business and I’d love for you to benefit from this strategy too.

For more tips from Sarah, download her free PDF guide to direct marketing for freelance translators.


Corinne McKay

Guest post: Working as a genealogy translator

This is a guest post by German to English genealogy translator Katie Schober. Originally from St. Louis–with German ancestry–Katie earned a BA and an MA in German and was a Fulbright fellow in Austria. She now lives and works on the road as a digital nomad, with her Austrian husband. Regular readers may remember Katie from the Speaking of Translation podcast episode Life as a digital nomad. Following that interview, we received a number of inquiries from listeners who wondered about Katie’s work as a genealogy translator, so here you go! Katie’s professional website is SK Translations, through which she also writes and teaches about deciphering old German handwriting, researching German genealogy, and other related topics.

So…what do you do?

“What do you do?” is a normal conversation starter in America. My answer to that question, however, is not your average reply. Whenever I tell people about my line of work, I usually get one of three responses:

1. “Um, what is that?”
2. “Oh, ok…” – (moving on to the next person) – “What do you do?”
3. “Wow, that must be amazing! How cool! What kind of documents do you get to translate?”

You can guess which response is my favorite.

So what do I do? I’m a German to English genealogy translator. In case your response is similar to answer number one above, I’ll briefly explain what that means. I translate historical documents such as birth certificates, marriage records, death certificates, letters, and diaries to help people find their German ancestors. And I absolutely love it.

Getting started as a genealogy translator

To be honest, I came into the genealogy field completely by accident. My translation business got its start in 2015, after I had worked a brief stint as a project manager at a small translation company in Boston. Realizing that I was constantly jealous of all the translators to whom I was assigning projects, I decided it was time to translate full-time myself. And after seven long months as a project manager, that’s exactly what I set out to do.

In the first few months of building my business, I advertised myself as a general German-English translator. Sure, there were fields I loved (history, tourism, culture), but surely it would be better to be able to translate everything, right? Not so much. As any translation expert will tell you, specialization is key. Luckily, my specialization found me.

As the months went on, I began to get a few requests to translate old German letters – letters that my clients had found in their basement or attic, written by their grandparents or great-grandparents in a language they could no longer read. As an avid history enthusiast, I was beyond excited to get these requests – to me, they seemed much more fun than what I’d been translating thus far. But when I looked at the letters, my heart dropped – they were written in the old German script, a completely different type of handwriting than the writing we use today. This old script, known in German as Kurrentschrift, was taught in Germany until the mid-twentieth century, when the Latin script, our version of cursive, was introduced in the schools. Today, therefore, it is only the very oldest generation in Germany who can still read this type of handwriting. “Well, if most Germans can’t read it,” I thought to myself back then, “how in the world am I supposed to?”

But since I love history and wanted to be able to read those faded old documents, I set about learning the script. Through books, video tutorials, and a bit of help from my Austrian husband’s grandmother, I slowly stumbled my way through those elegant “e’s” and “h’s”. The better I got, the faster I became, and I soon realized how much I loved discovering the stories of people’s ancestors. I began to advertise to genealogy groups across the country, and slowly but surely, SK Translations: German-English Genealogy Translations was born.

Old German handwriting…from beginner to expert

Today, four years later, I can now read the script with no problem (if you happen to be learning it, I promise it is just like any other skill – the more you practice, the easier it gets). It helps that I work with it every day – from eighteenth century church records to lengthy letters between Germany and America in the post-World War years, I’ve seen many different types of documents. The oldest translation I’ve done to date is a newspaper announcement from 1533, in which the municipal council of Nuremberg ordered villagers to stop selling their eggs, cheese, lard, pigeons, etc. to my client’s ancestor, as he was reselling those farm products at a higher price and causing prices everywhere to rise. Sixteenth century drama at its finest!

My favorite translations, however, are the letters and diaries of my clients’ ancestors. Through these personal writings, you really feel like you get to know the authors themselves – and sometimes, you get really involved in their stories! I once translated an early-twentieth-century diary of a young German wife who was on her way to visit her husband, stationed in Thailand. After being on her own for a year in Germany, the diary’s young author traveled by ship from Germany down to Spain, through the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and finally to Bangkok itself. On almost every page of her diary, in addition to writing of the activities and food on the ship (butter was a luxury, I learned), she wrote and wrote of how much she missed her husband, and how excited she was to finally be able to see him after a year apart. As I made my way through the hundred pages, my anticipation of the reunion grew and grew – so you can imagine how disappointed I was when the diary ended right before the ship docked in Bangkok. We had come so far, and now no juicy details of the reunion?! Extremely unfair.

What I love most about my job, however, is getting to hear my clients’ responses when they see the words of their ancestors for the first time. Whether it’s learning that a woman cried tears of joy as she read the words of her grandmother whom she never got to meet, or that a man now has the name and address of his great-grandfather’s home in Germany and can finally plan a trip to see his ancestral town, being a part of my clients’ family journeys means the world to me. So even though my response to “What do you do?” may not be completely normal, I am always able to answer the question with pride and happiness, as I can honestly say that I love my job.


Corinne McKay

Guest post: From pig launchers to ball machines; specialization, terminology, and technology

This is a guest post by Zilin Cui, a Chinese-English-Spanish conference interpreter and translator who I met at the recent Monterey Forum at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey. This post is based on her presentation at the 1st International New York-Nanjing Forum on Translation “Translation in the New Context” in May, 2019.

Pig launchers?

We all hear about the importance of specialization for interpreters and translators, but when we are given an assignment on short notice, how do we become quickly conversant in a new field within the time we have available before the assignment?

I had this challenge recently as I was preparing for a simultaneous interpretation assignment. Having received no preparation materials I decided to study the product catalogue of a company that the delegation would visit the next day. I ran across the term “pig launcher.” Unprompted, Google Translate gave me the literal equivalent in Chinese, 猪发射器, which conjures up a mental image of a slingshot launching pigs into the air, Angry Birds style.

Jokes aside, it got me thinking about two questions: first, how does one find the correct equivalent of a term when technology isn’t much help for a highly specialized field? Second and a larger question, how does one produce accurate, coherent and idiomatic interpretation without much context? Ideally, interpretation is about understanding the meaning behind an idea and re-expressing it in a different language, but that only works if one already understands the concept in the source and target languages. When there is no system of knowledge from which to retrieve the equivalent, finding the term is like looking for a place without a map. In this post I’ll talk about the pitfalls of some approaches I tried and the importance of building this “map” in order to improve interpreting performance.

Interpreter preparation: word lists, or something else?

When I first became an interpreter back in Chile, I thought of preparation as compiling word lists. Boy was I wrong. There I was, interpreting a ministerial meeting, and I found myself at a loss for words when the subscretario—the undersecretary—showed up instead of the minister himself. Twenty three-year-old me did not even factor in that possibility. Not knowing the term, too afraid to look it up right then and there and too embarrassed to ask, I went the literal route and said something in Chinese to the equivalent of “deputy secretary,” but the word I chose for secretary meant secretary of an office and not a cabinet minister. Seeing the Chinese delegation getting visibly annoyed, I just wanted to crawl in a hole. Oops!

The pitfall with word lists is that one cannot prepare for what one does not know, which is an even bigger problem with unfamiliar fields, which brings me to the importance of techniques. One big difference I noticed between a novice like me and experienced interpreters who are a delight to listen to is that they sound as if they were delivering their own speeches when interpreting: calm, coherent, engaging and in control, whereas I could sound rushed and nervous, churning out pieces of information that did not seem to be interconnected. While some of this difference has to do with experience, a lot of it can be overcome with techniques, which, at their core, are about a proactive approach to prioritization, as it is impossible to preserve 100% of the message in simultaneous interpretation. Ranging from the most well-known “salami technique” to less common, language-specific ones, techniques help the interpreter focus on the idea and not the words, and on primary ideas over secondary ideas so that interpreters are not led by the nose on a wild goose chase but rather, analyze the message and put it into their own words to produce idiomatic and natural renderings that are easily understood by the listener. Armed with a variety of techniques thanks to my Master’s studies at the Monterey Institute, I thought I would be ready for any new field…but not so fast!

From word lists to strategies

I realized—once back on the interpreting market—that more important than terms and techniques are strategies. Strategies are about developing the conceptual maps I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, about developing a cognitive framework in the source and target languages to know exactly where certain terms fit, how they relate to each other and come together in a narrative that makes sense. Going back to my pig launcher example: it is a piece of equipment used in pipelines, which are part of the midstream oil and gas industry. I found it to be much more helpful to take the time to understand the larger picture before going after the term itself. I found myself imagining teaching a five-year-old about the topic, using my curiosity to guide the process of building the cognitive map of the field. I came up with a list of questions whose answers were essential for drawing the map: what is the midstream sector? What, then, are the upstream and downstream sectors? What are the activities involved in the midstream sector? Who are the biggest players? What are the biggest trends and challenges? Once I was able to gather all this information I also became familiar with how industry insiders talk about these issues, which gets me closer to sounding almost like an expert to a room where I was the only outsider.

And how might technology fit into this three-step framework? The answer is, in every way. For terminology, collaborative tools like Google Sheets allow booth partners to split the workload by inputting into the same worksheet at the same time, and terminology extraction tools can cut down the manual work and the time involved. For techniques, YouTube is a treasure trove of resources when it comes to finding speeches given by the same speaker and testing out techniques to adapt to the particulars of the situation. In the fortunate event that interpreters are given presentations or even speeches beforehand, electronic tools make it easy to mark up the text for use as a visual aid. For strategies, with the wealth of information available at our fingertips, gone are the long hours spent at the library, because interpreters can access parallel texts written by experts in their native language as well as online courses for “dummies”—a personal favorite—to learn everything one needs to know to become conversant in a new field within the limited amount of time available to prepare for most interpreting assignments.

Pig launcher, or ball machine?

Thanks to my three-step methodology, I found the correct term in Chinese for “pig launchers,” 清管器发射筒, or literally, launching chute for a pipeline-cleaning device. Imagine my surprise when I used that term and heard a delegate whisper, “got it, the 发球器 (literally, a ball machine).” As it turns out, the cleaning device is a rubber ball with a diameter slightly larger than that of the pipeline. The ball is shot into the pipeline at high pressure from a chute and gathers dust and impurities as it moves through the pipeline. The ball is called a “pig” in English due to the oinky noises it makes. Who would have thought that pigs and balls would end up being equivalents in this scenario! I tried a reverse search with 发球器, and all I found was entries and images of tennis ball machines and not rubber pigs.

That led me to think about expanding my methodology. I realized that beyond terms, techniques and strategies, the human factor is always essential in any interpretation. While I found the correct term through my own research, hearing from the practitioner brought me into the jargon. Talking to people—speakers, delegates or clients when appropriate—not only helps one clarify highly specialized terms but also builds rapport. With rapport, clients may see interpretation as more of a collaborative effort to which they can contribute for their own benefit. At best, rapport and knowledge of the demanding process of interpretation can turn clients into allies, instead of the passive consumers or critics, which they may be.

Nevertheless, the human factor goes beyond that: even with the correct terminology, the perfect techniques and effective strategies, one can still produce an inadequate interpretation if they miss the intention of the speaker or fail to convey the emotions essential to the message. Jonathan Downie of the podcast Troublesome Terps put it this way, “When I started out, I thought interpreting was language skills with people attached. Now I am convinced it’s people skills with language attached.” Words are but a means to communication. Faced with the onslaught of technology, be it neural machine translation or natural language processing, what we can do as human interpreters is not to attempt to work like walking dictionaries or interpretation bots. In the end, what sets us apart will be how we use technology tools in a broad sense to enhance and expand what we do uniquely as humans—gauging intentions, engaging with listeners, using our situational awareness to adjust our approach real-time, honing our skills to process human speech input. This is not always straightforward, as the words chosen do not always correspond with what they mean; but this will allow us to carry on our legacy and future-proof our profession.