How a Good Interpreter Manages to Learn How to Multi-task

Interpreters and translators are often faced with similar challenges, but interpreters must be better multi-taskers in their job. They have to listen and speak to more than one other person at the same time. But how do they do it?

The reality is that we all do that very same thing a lot of the time, but not necessarily in multiple languages. How often have you found yourself dutifully listening to someone talking to you but find yourself perking up your ears to another conversation going on at the same time? Or finding yourself in a lively group of people all talking at once. It’s not that managing multiple conversations at the same time is particularly easy, but it can be done. Like anything in life, if you have the incentive, then you can learn to get better. It’s the same with the multi-tasking interpreter.

In a way, even the German English translator must multi-task to some extent. It all depends on how fluent they are in both languages or whether they have to consciously think in the language they are translating into. The interpreter must listen and talk at the same time, in more than one language, so this is definitely a more difficult task, but not necessarily any more difficult than the example given at the beginning of this article. Think of the multiple conversation scenario. The brain has to cope with what could be very different messages being converted at the same time, while the interpreter only has to convert a single message, albeit in two or more different languages.

Professionals who choose a career in English German translation or interpreting generally go through a period of training. That doesn’t make a perfect interpreter, but it certainly sets them up on the path to being a good multi-tasker. One of the ways interpreters are trained is to first listen to a variety of recordings, audio as well as video. These should be varied and not just regular news style recordings, but the sort of more disjointed speech that many people use when they are talking. The next step is to ‘shadow’ what is being spoken by repeating the words out loud. Then, the same speech should be repeated, but using paraphrasing, making it more natural and understandable to whoever might be listening. The last step is to repeat the latter, but in another language.

German English translators have the luxury of time on their side and aim for accuracy in their translations. Interpreters do not have the time to be meticulous in their delivery, but have to get the gist across as well as they can!

The Police Need Translators and Interpreters Too

The amount of money that police in one of Britain's counties is paying out for translation services has become a controversial topic with local politicians claiming that the money could be better spent on tackling important local crime issues, like rural crime.

Lincolnshire is a large county in the Midlands of England. One might wonder, like one of the candidates vying for election as the county's Police and Crime Commissioner, Marc Jones, why the police in this largely rural county might need to spend over $500,000 on translating services.  These are not German translators or French translators but mostly translators who can interpret and translate languages spoken by some of Britain's most recent immigrants including those from Eritrea, Somalia and the Philippines.

When contacted by media representatives, a spokeswoman from the Lincolnshire Police, Deputy Chief Constable, Heather Roach, said that the county had become more diverse over the last decade and there was a need to be able to communicate with victims, offenders and witnesses who could not speak or understand English well enough. She went on to say that the police force regretted the amount of money being spent but thought that it was unavoidable in this era.

Marc Jones had made the comment about the expense of translating and interpreting services being astronomical and suggested that he might set different priorities if he won the position of Police and Crime Commissioner. He said that the Lincolnshire force had already overspent far too much on legal help to remove a former Police Commissioner.

Presumably, whatever Mr. Jones thinks about one specific government agency, this trend towards an increasing need for translation and interpretation services in many areas of life is something being experienced all over Europe where there has been a surge in immigration recently. Germany is one of those European nations that has chosen to take in many immigrants during the Syrian Civil War crisis and it can only be guessed how many German translation services will be asked to provide help to communicate with these immigrants.