Transcriber: Claire Ghyselen Reviewer: eric vautier (Portuguese) Hello, it is a pleasure to talk to you in Portuguese. (Portuguese) The last flower of Latium, uncultivated and beautiful. Can we start?
Well, good, what a surprise! But I know that feeling, I know that look. And it tells me that I have, just by greeting you in my own language, alienated 90 percent of the room.
So, I have no choice but to try and struggle in English, right? Which I can do. I have been trained enough in English.
I know enough of the language to actually get through the day. And I’ll do my best. But it is a shame, because what you just heard me saying is how I really sound.
The thing you heard me say in Portuguese, that’s how I really sound. More importantly, that’s who I really am. Our language and identity, they go hand in hand.
When we speak a different language, we say only the things that we can. In the course of the presentation, I might run into, depending on how the conversation goes, I might run into a corner where I don’t have either the vocabulary or the idiom to actually communicate as spontaneously as you would in English. But I will do my best.
Now, language and identity go together. “I am I and my circumstances”, as Ortega y Gasset used to say. So, my circumstances dictate how I operate in the world, the choices that I make, the things that are important to me.
And it also dictates my language. Because my language is the result of how the wind blows in Brazil, the sound it makes. The sound of the sand, when it’s hot, makes under my feet, it squeaks, right?
I am the product of the birds I heard growing up, the wildlife that was around me at that time. There might be colors I have never seen. If I’m a Tuareg growing in Sahara, I may not have a word for green.
But I may have 15 different terms for snow if I come from Alaska or Greenland. So, when I speak a different language, I am also a different persona. So, you are not getting the true me, you are getting another version of me today.
Hopefully, one that makes some sense. Now, the problem when you have to communicate in a language that is not your own, is that. .
. we have this human urge to communicate, it’s an instinct in all of us. But language is not: it has to be learned.
In fact, language is an invention, a human invention. Language is not just something that occurs to us. If it were like that, we all would speak the same language, like dogs, right?
A dog doesn’t bark differently in Japan than it does in Brazil. And you don’t see dogs arguing to say: “Well, sorry, I don’t, I don’t know if I totally understand what you mean, can you tell me again? ” They can’t combine barks in different ways and make that a language.
They have a code, but they all use the same code. We are totally different animals. Japanese people speak and arguably think in a completely different way than Brazilian people do.
So how do you ensure that you can still make meaningful conversations between, say, somebody from France and somebody from England, in such a way that you allow the person to speak French and communicate freely while allowing everybody else in this room to understand what’s meant in English? That’s where the interpreters come in. That is where the skilled communicators come in who totally understand French without necessarily even speaking it, but who know exactly how the wind sounds in Bath.
They can tell you that in a language that I wouldn’t be able to use if I were doing it. So in the next . .
. Interpreters are the real interconnection artists behind the scene which ties again beautifully into the theme of this conference. So in the next ten minutes, what I intend to do is bring you backstage, into the interpretation booth and show you a little bit how that’s done.
So I am going to reveal a few little known secrets of this world, which is usually hidden from view. You don’t see the interpreters, you hear their voices. So I’ll try to break that into you.
I’m going to start with a story, so you know where it comes from. The story takes us back to 1934, when an interpreter made history by rendering into French an important speech made in Nuremberg. 500 miles away in Paris, listeners were amazed to hear the message in their own language, just as those words were being pronounced in German.
The interpreter was a gentleman called André Kaminker. The speaker was Adolf Hitler. Simultaneous interpretation had been invented.
A decade later, that method was again perfected, and again in Nuremberg, as people tried to, well, the West, tried to bring closure to the senseless war that Hitler had started, [22] Nazi officials charged with a variety of crimes of unspeakable cruelty were brought to justice in what would go down in history as the first war crimes trial of modern times. Now, as prosecutors, judges, counselors prepared for this historic trial, a practical problem arose: every piece of testimony, every evidence brought before the Court would have to be translated from its original language into another three. And again.
. . the way in which it had been done up until that point was to do it consecutively, meaning I speak, and I pause, and I give you the floor as the interpreter standing by my side.
And you repeat in a different language what’s said. However, in Nuremberg, doing that that way would prove very difficult because, imagine for a minute, I, the prosecutor, ask you a question and it takes me two minutes, then I have to stop and somebody has to put that into German - it takes two minutes - and then French and then Russian, so six minutes go by. And when the defendants actually reply, the same process goes on and on, indefinitely.
So it would prove extremely tedious. But more importantly, it would be very risky. Because it was very easy at that point for the Nazis to say: “Why are we even on trial?
We are being tried for crimes that are not qualified as crimes. There is no legislation to actually try us. ” And because they were kind of good at propaganda, there was also the fear that they might, you know, garner some sympathy for their predicament, and get away with it.
So the trial had to go faster and a new system had to be attempted. So IBM had been experimenting with what they called back then a simultaneous telephonic system, and they provided the equipment to be pilot-tested free of charge. So that took care of the hardware issue.
But you still needed interpreters. And the interpreters back then, the renowned celebrity interpreters, they all opposed the new system, they said: “This cannot be done. This will render any interpreter crazy, and I don’t look good in that aquarium.
” That’s what they said. So the job actually fell to the students who were coming out of the University of Geneva and who did not have a reputation to live up to, were not trained in the new technique, but the prospect of a 10-month contract was too appealing to say no to. They said: “Hey, we’ll give it a try, sure.
” And then on November 20th, 1945, mind you, this is 76 years ago, today. So I’m speaking to you at the anniversary of this important date. Exactly.
So the trial was called to order and Justice Jackson, the main prosecutor, the Chief Prosecutor, aware of the grave responsibility on his shoulders, chose his opening remarks very wisely. And here I want to get the quote really right. He said : “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored for it cannot survive their being repeated.
” So, with a powerful speech, because Hitler had started it, with all that firey speech, with a fiery, important, impactful speech, he set the tone. And at that point, any hope for a Nazi comeback was kind of shattered. also because the system now was coupled with a translation method that was a lot faster.
In fact, at that point, Hermann Göring, the highest ranking official on trial, who spoke enough English is said to have remarked: “This is a very effective system, but it will shorten my life. ” Anyway. In the 76 years since the Nuremberg trial, interpretation became something we take for granted.
We see interpreters everywhere, we hear about them, and they even made it to the big screen in Hollywood, right? And by the way, guys, I hate to disappoint you that we don’t all look like that. I’m sorry.
But we are mostly women and I want to give a shout out to the women here. This is one profession in the world where women are really super represented. They are the ones doing the job, actually.
Anyway, so, interpreters continue to do this and now I want you to put yourselves in those shoes and give it a try, right? Because when you look at interpretation from a distance, it looks like magic, right? But when you look at it up close, it looks like madness.
So let’s say I lock you up in a room with a colleague and I turn the lights off and give you a microphone ; it’s on. And you have a sheet of paper in front of you, and you're supposed to now repeat other people's ideas in a different language. And you have no control over what they're going to say, what the intent is, what the rhythm is, what the tone is, what the logic is.
To make matters worse, you are far away from the speaker. You cannot interrupt him or her. You cannot say: “Can you please say that again?
” Or, you know, rib the person and ask for clarification. And on top of that, you have to look over to your colleague and make sense of a speechless conversation, where, by way of gestures and head nods, and so on, you correct, you kind of indicate that this is not the right thing. So you kind of help one another that way, but it's all in another code.
Plus, you have to keep track not just of what other people are saying, but you have to keep your own sentences in a bank of memory somewhere, because people will open a parenthetical remark in subjunctive tense, and they go all over the place, and you need to somehow find it back: “How did I say that five minutes ago, so I can actually close it? ” So there’s a lot going on, it’s many different minds going all over the place. But again, we’ve become accustomed to this.
But yet there’s this sense of amazement that persists at interpreters doing a job that was once thought impossible. And now is where I try to show you a little bit of how the sausage is made. So how is it done?
Is it doable? Everybody says it can be learned. So, how is it done?
It’s all in the training. How they start training the students, is that they shadow speakers: they listen to speakers in English and repeat what they’re saying in English. with the same speed, and they increase the speed, and they play with it.
In time, they start paraphrasing. So where they said: “good”, they say: “excellent”. It is still in the same language, so they are still playing.
They’re starting to reformulate, but it’s still in the same semantic universe. And in time they start introducing a new language and they train over and over. But the most important thing in interpretation is not.
. . the biggest challenge is not linguistic, it's emotional.
You can be the best translator in the world, have all the equivalents in your mind and so on. But if when, you know, in the moment there, when it gets really hot, and the pressure is on, you draw a blank, all that knowledge is gone. So interpreters need to keep aplomb in the face of chaos.
Again, remember you have no idea what people are going to say, and they might pull out a passage from the Bible. They might read from, you know, Shakespeare, whatever they want. So it's kind of complicated.
So the way they bring their nerves under control, is by anticipating what they can and preparing. So they will read voraciously about the subject matter. They will try to review any past videos on the topic, and they will look for glossaries, put together their own glossaries, etc.
They will do whatever they can. And, thank God, interpreters don’t work alone. So it’s really reassuring to have a colleague by your side.
These days, they are not by your side because we’re doing this remotely because of the pandemic, but they can still collaborate and there are many things they can do to support one another. So while one is busy just interpreting incoming speech, the other one is kind of looking after information, preparing the next speech and doing things like that. And that’s it, so you can now go and be interpreters.
That’s how the sausage is made, right? It’s simple, indeed, but it’s not easy. Especially when you fall into it like I did.
In this picture here, taken 30 years ago - and you recognize at least one person in this picture - and if you’re looking for me in the picture, look for the beautiful fit guy with a lot of hair. I can assure you, that’s me, ok? Thirty years and maybe ten kilos ago.
Now, as an interpreter, I can’t allow myself to leave things hanging. So I feel I must bring you back to that courtroom to at least tell you what happened. So bear with me, and with this, we are going to wrap up.
So the Nuremberg trial proceeded for another ten months. Of the [22] accused, three only were acquitted, seven were sent to jail and twelve were hanged. They were sentenced to death.
In his summation to the Court, Justice Jackson said something very interesting, which is on record. He said: “The future will never have to wonder, or question with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. Future and history will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say.
” Indeed, whatever could be said, they were allowed to say, it was said and heard in four different languages, thanks to the men and women who dared challenge conventional wisdom and take the hot seat behind that glass, in the far-off year of 1945. ” Now, as Margaret Atwood once famously noted: “War is also what happens when language fails. ” Interpreters of all people are aware of that, and they work incessantly behind the scenes to make sure it never does.
Thank you very much.
