Business & legal

  matters with France

Interpreters / translators corner

Interpreter or translator

For most people it would appear that there is little difference between an interpreter and a translator. One interprets spoken words and the other translates written words. However, the differences in how the job is carried out, the pressures, requirements, skills and talents are many.

This should make it evident how hard the task of the interpreter really is:

s/he needs to be translating the sentence into the target language while simultaneously listening to and understanding what's coming next!.

You can experience the difficulty of the task even if you are monolingual: just try paraphrasing someone's speech with a half-sentence delay, making sure you understand the next sentence while paraphrasing the previous one. Not an easy task! (have you tried it whilst watching TV News? Of course you did...how did you fare?)

Why is it that we still hear around us, including in TV news broadcast from any corner of the world or in programmes on property purchase in foreign lands, the word "using our translator" when it really should be

"using our interpreter"?

Should a TV presenter say we have our correspondent on line with his translator or interpreter. Which one is correct?  Interpreter of course.

It is not the right way to say it but we still come across in some interpreting assignment venues:

" Can you translate this for me, tell him/her I am an Independent X  and I will be in charge of his/her case...."

A translator translates a document, an interpreter conveys  verbal words said by one person (i.e. interprets) to the other.

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So what does an interpreter do? Or, what is the difference between a translator and an interpreter?

My response is:

The differences in the training, in skills, and talents needed for each job are vast. The translator has the luxury to perform his/her task at home in his/her pyjamas if s/he so wishes, with access to encyclopaedias and specialist reference materials to write (at his/her leisure) and produce a written document in a specified time in the future.

Whilst, in contrast, the interpreter has to listen to one person in one language (sometimes to two different languages at the same time) to understand the meaning and to convey the message rendered into another language to the other party THERE AND THEN.  All this is done on the spot, without any reference material, delivered simultaneously and whilst standing on his/her feet!   

On a final note, both interpreters and translators are working under difficult conditions as their profession is far from an organised and recognised one.

The real challenge for both profession is the “client education,” and the adherence to a quality guideline for freelancers (and Quality assurance for Translation Agencies such as EN 15038).

Only under these conditions can the profile and usefulness of he role of translators and interpreters be appreciated in the same as that of a truly professional service provider. When a client requires the services of an accountant or that of a lawyer, he/she is expected to receive a professional service at an appropriate level of fees commensurate with the quality of service. The same should be expected when using the services of an interpreter or a translator.

I inherited from my previous career in sales management the Total Quality Management principle which I adopted and apply it now in my new profession as a freelance translator-interpreter. I will endeavour to offer a quality job at an appropriate price and will never slave for an undercut price to align myself with the price offered by those not qualified or not applying the same ethos principle.  The lesson learnt is that if I meet client expectation I gain a loyal client.

Client will come back not the job produced.