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Hearing

A good interpreter must have remarkably acute hearing. If he has not, and nothing can be done about it, he had better turn to another trade, just as a painter who loses his eyesight. But good hearing is far from being enough.

Two different cases must be considered: either the interpreter is seated among the Conference members, preferably opposite the Chairman or at his side, or he is isolated from them, for instance in a cabin.

First case. When the interpreter comes info the room, the very first thing which he must do is to make sure that he has been assigned a seat from which he can satisfactorily hear the speeches which he will have to translate. If such is not the case, he must firmly request that the mistake should be remedied; in this matter, precedence is irrelevant.

If nevertheless the interpreter cannot distinctly hear a member who speaks too low or without sufficient clarity, he must immediately move to another place which is more satisfactory.

Despite all precautions, the interpreter may still miss some words or phrases which are not unimportant; in this case he is entitled to ask the speaker to repeat them, either immediately, which often avoids long explanations in order to make the speaker understand and remember exactly what is referred to, or at the end of the speech if an interruption is likely to irritate either the speaker or the Assembly.

It often happens, however, that something later in the same speech may enable the interpreter to guess what he had missed, either because the speaker repeats or sums up, which is not infrequent, or because the context makes it sufficiently clear. This latter case happens often, particularly when the interpreter is not sure whether he has missed a negative particle. It can also happen that another member of the interpreting team may have understood, and may write the required information on a piece of paper.

Second case. The first thing which the interpreter should do is to make sure that his phones are connected and that the various switches are in the required position.

The interpreter should have no hesitation in interrupting the debate if he cannot hear properly, either because he is no longer connected, or because the transmission is poor, or because the speaker turns away from the microphone, or for any other reason.

In the case of telephonic simultaneous interpretation, when the interpreter sits in his glass cage, he is unfortunately not able to ask the speaker to repeat. The only thing he can do then is to fill the gap by saying something as vague as possible, or by repeating in a slightly different form what he has just said – and hope that the speaker will himself provide the audience with the information they missed, by repeating himself later. Should the interpreter feel that the passage omitted is very important and that its absence may make it difficult to understand what follows, he may say through his microphone that there is something he did not understand and therefore did not translate. It may chance that the Chairman is listening to this particular interpreter, and in such a case he may do whatever he thinks fit.

Incidentally, to hear is not merely to understand all the words which are spoken. It is also necessary to follow the variations of the intonation and to observe the gestures which may sometimes considerably qualify the meaning of the actual words. The interpreter should also guard against the Southerner’s exaggeration as well as against the English habit of understatement.