HANOI UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

ASSIGNMENT COVER

Unit: TRANSLATION & INTERPRETING THEORY

Lecturers: Hoàng Thị Anh & Nguyễn Linh Chi

Class: 4A-18

Student ID: 1807010306

Student: Lê Thùy Trang
Tel: 0345624740

E-mail: [email protected]

Due date: 4/2/2020 Date of submission: 4/2/2020

Signature of student:

Hanoi - 2021
INTERPRETING

1 What is Interpreting? How many interpreting modes are there? Specify some
situations of interpreting assignment, and state main qualities required accordingly.

Interpreting is a communication process which refers to the spoken or signed translation

modalities (Gile, 2018). Interpreters will reproduce information and ideas from one language to
another one by means of speaking. interpreting which are consecutive interpreting and
simultaneous interpreting are the two modes of interpretation.

Consecutive interpreting is the mode that makes up conference interpreting. It happens

when an interpreter will reproduce the same message of speech after someone has finished
speaking. The length of speech may last from a minute to 20 minutes and the interpreter will rely
on notes, memory and general knowledge to recreate their version of the original with an
accurate meaning. There are many situations where consecutive survives and will continue to
survive. There are three typical following situations. The first situation is ceremonial speeches.
For example, you may have to interpret for the opening of a cultural event held at a center like
the British Council. The second situation is in meetings without equipment. It is the case that you
will sit alongside with the speakers and interpret in consecutive. Sometimes it might be because
of lacking interpreting facilities. The third situation is liaison interpreting. It happens when a
group of professionals, business people or technical experts, who lacks knowledge of other
languages and culture, will make trips abroad (Thu & Bao, 1997).

On the other hand, simultaneous interpreting is the process by which the interpreter will
create his/her speech when the speaker is speaking with a lag of a few seconds in length.
According to Heberb (1952), simultaneous interpretation included “whispered interpretation”, by
which the interpreters will sit next to delegate in meetings to whisper the interpretation;
“telephonic simultaneous”, whereby the interpreters will sit in a booth, hear the original through
earphones and speak their interpretation through microphones; and “sight translation”, whereby
the interpreters will read aloud a written text source language into target language (as cited in
Mikkelson & Jourdenais (2018)). Although consecutive accounts for only 7% of conference
interpreting today, you still need to learn consecutive before starting simultaneous (Neff, 2014).
Because consecutive interpreting is the foundation of simultaneous interpreting, you will have to
spend most of the time learning consecutive.

Consequently, to be good at interpreting, there are some main required qualities. First and
foremost, you need to be proficient in both source language and target language in order to
convey ideas naturally and accurately. Secondly, you are required to practice public speaking
skills. It is necessary for an interpreter to have a clear voice and smooth style of delivery (Thu &
Bao, 1997). Thirdly, to become an interpreter, a person needs to have memory skills to recall
information easily. Fourthly, note-taking skills also play an important role in interpreting,
especially consecutive interpreting. It will help you to reformulate sentences logically.
Furthermore, if you forget small details in the chunk of information, note is a helpful tool at that
time. Fifthly, interpreting is a quick process and there is not much time for you to think carefully
before speaking; therefore, you need to be quick-witted to cope with the situation. Lastly, the
interpreters must equip for themselves background knowledge of the culture of the two
languages and the topic they are going to interpret.

To put it in a nutshell, though you are doing consecutive interpreting assignments or

simultaneous one, you need to equip for yourself necessary skills to become professional
interpreter.

2 Indicate causes which lead to common problems that interpreters usually encounter
at stages of Peter Newmark’s interpreting process model, then describe solutions/coping
tactics to handle them. Use some examples to illustrate your opinion.

Interpreting is an oral translation of spoken discourse from one language to another.

However, there are some common problems that interpreters usually encounter at stages of the
interpreting process model. From that on, some specific solutions are mentioned to deal with
problems.

The first problem is dealing with a strong accent. Accent is the way in which people in a
particular area, country or social group pronounce words. Nowadays, English has been prevalent
and has become an international language. The extent of using English has increased and
affected all aspects of life from being a common language in communication, free trade, tourism,
science to culture. Because of that, non-native speakers have brought their official language
accents in speaking English. Gile (2001) stated that speakers who pronounce English with a non-
standard accent are regarded as the most challenging problem that an interpreter may encounter
(as cited in Issa, 2016). Therefore, there are some solutions to deal with this problem. Firstly,
you should stay calm, try to manage as much as possible, use the knowledge of the topic to
understand what the speaker is saying. If the accent is too strong and you are not able to
understand, you can ask your booth partner if he/she can be responsible for this part. Secondly,
you should have a proper preparation by meeting speakers before the interpreting assignment.
For example, you can discuss with them a little bit to familiarize yourself with their accent or
you can ask them to speak slowly. If the speaker is Arabic, Indian, or Japanese that I find the
accent extremely challenging. I will dig into YouTube to get used to those accents before
interpreting assignments. Thirdly, you could pay attention to the speaker’s lips, face and facial
expression to understand the essence of the speech.

The second challenge is the noise during interpreting assignments. Gerver (2002)
declared that noise has a great impact on the capacity of interpreted speech and there are more
mistakes when interpreting in a noisy environment (as cited in Issa, 2016). Interpreters may
encounter this problem because of technical issues. Perhaps the sound transmits unclearly
through your microphone. In the conference, people discuss loudly to each other and the quality
of soundproof is bad; therefore, you will have trouble listening and understanding the speaker’s
speech. As a result, some strategies are mentioned to resolve the problem. First and foremost,
before the start of interpreting tasks, the interpreters have to check the audio system, headsets
and microphones, and make sure that the noise suppression system is equipped. Next, you need
to put yourself in high level of concentration to try to catch the main ideas. If the problem
becomes too serious and you are missing keywords and information, you could pause and
apologize to the audience. For instance, I could say “I am sorry, we are facing a technical
problem” and then seek the assistance of technical engineers.

The third problem is note-taking problems. It happens a lot with trainee-interpreters.

They often write every single word of the text they heard and it is impossible. Consequently,
they are likely to miss information because sometimes they cannot catch up with the speed of the
speaker. In addition, they might encounter this problem because they note information
illogically. When they look back, they do not know what they have written. Another reason for
this is a lack of understanding of the source speech and their notes are affected. They can miss
keywords or important details and then miss the main idea of the sentences. For example, the
interpreters might write numbers incorrectly from 50% into 15%. To improve the problem, you
should write keywords but not every single word of the text. You should be creative in inventing
your own note-taking system such as abbreviations, symbols or small doodles which you can
easily understand and remember information. Besides, it is quicker if you take notes vertically.

The fourth challenge during interpreting assignments is dealing with jokes and humor
expressions. Humor sometimes can put people at ease in tense situations. Also, many speakers
want to use humor as a method to attract attention from the audience. The interpreters may have
to express the humorous elements and the cultural meaning of the joke in order to make the
listeners understand, enjoy and appreciate the joke. It is extremely challenging because they
contain cultural features and require interpreters to have good knowledge of the cultural
differences of both the source and target languages. Moreover, the culture of one language
sometimes does not match with the other. Therefore, to cope with a joke, an interpreter should
try his/her best to obtain more knowledge of proverbs, idioms and jokes in both source and target
language to choose the best cultural equivalence in the target language. Otherwise, you should be
attentive to the aim of the joke to convey a bottom line of the speech. In the situation that there is
no similarity of the joke between the two languages, you could interpret the general meaning and
cultural aspect of the joke or humor and then tell the listeners that “the speaker is telling a joke,
please laugh”.

In conclusion, interpreters face up to many challenges in interpreting speeches and have

to apply some solutions that have been shown above. Thus, a person has to try his/her best to
practice enough required skills to deal with dilemmas during interpreting assignments.

TRANSLATION
3. Analyze the main differences between Semantic and Communicative methods of
Translation. Illustrate your points with examples.

“Translation is rendering a written text into another language in the way that the author
intended the text” (Bao & Thu, 1997). There are different approaches to translation including
semantic and communicative translation. Communicative translation attempts to reproduce
contextual meaning of the original which is familiar with the target reader. Meanwhile, semantic
translation will reproduce the exact meaning of the original (Newmark. 1982). And there are
three main differences between the two methods.

The first criterion to differentiate the two methods is the focus. Semantic translation
remains within the source language culture and only helps target text readers with connotation if
they are a crucial part of the message. It is always adherent to its original and the loyalty to the
source text is secure; therefore, the loss of meaning happens. On the contrary, communicative
translation will create a product which is subjective. In that case, the interpreters solely focus on
the second reader and are willing to transfer foreign elements into the target language culture. the
translator in communicative translation can reproduce the target text which may be better than
the source text. He/she can make changes if necessary but still respect the form of the source
language. He/she can improve or formulate the logic, replace clumsy with elegant, remove
repetition or ambiguous detail and symbolize dialects. For example, the translation of “Each bird
loves to hear himself sing” to “Mỗi con chim đều yêu tiếng hót của mình” makes people feel it is
a normal sentence and has no special meaning. Instead, it could be translated in a communicative
method as “Mèo khen mèo dài đuôi”. This sentence contains culture and the possible method is
to apply communicative translation to make it sound Vietnamese as well as to conform with the
original version.

The second criterion is the form of target language. In semantic translation, the target text
is likely to overtranslate and be more complex, awkward, detailed and concentrated. However, a
communicative translation tends to undertranslate and be smoother, simpler, clearer, more direct,
more conventional (Newmark, 1982). For example, the original sentence is “Coral reefs fringing
the Okinawan islands just like a necklace can be seen only in warm and very clear water.” And
the Vietnamese version in semantic method is “Những rặng san hô bao quanh vùng đảo Okinawa
giống như một chiếc vòng cổ có thể được nhìn thấy trong làn nước ấm áp trong suốt.” In this
case, the equivalence effect is secure but it is too detailed and complicated. It makes people
confused and hard to understand. Nonetheless, a more valid method would be “Những rặng san
hô quanh các đảo Okinawan như một chiếc vòng cổ trong làn nước ấm và trong.” This version is
translated by communicative method.

The third criterion is text categories. Semantic translation is usually used for
autobiographies, any important statement, texts of original expression, private correspondence,
any personal effusion and drama. Meanwhile, text categories of communicative translation
include formative texts, most non-literary writing, journalism, reports, scientific and
technological writing, non-personal correspondence, public notices and popular fiction.

In conclusion, semantic and communicative translation are the two main methods used in
translation. Thus, it is the interpreter who should choose where to put more semantic method or
where to put more communicative method.
 REFERENCE

Daniel,G. (2018). Simultaneous Interpreting. in CHAN, Sin-wai (ed). 2018. An

Encyclopedia of Practical

Issa, S. (2016). Challenges Facing Conference and Television Interpreters. In Fulfilment of the
Requirement for the Master of Philosophy in Applied Language Studies

Mikkelson, H., & Jourdenais, R. (2018). The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting (Routledge
Handbooks in Applied Linguistics) (1st ed.). USA: Routledge.

Newmark, P. (1982). Approaches to Translation. Pergamon Press.

Neff, J. (2014) AIIC Statistics: Summary of the 2012 Report. Online. Available: http://aiic.

net/p/6878.

Seeber, K. (2015). Simultaneous Interpreting. Translation and Interpreting. Hong Kong: The
Chinese University Press. 531-561.

Bao, B. T. & Thu, D. X. (1997). Translation & Interpretation Course.