Be an Interpreter – A Life-time Reader

by BIS / 2020.11.20 Friday / Published in news & event

What is Interpretation? How’s it different from Translation?

What’s life like to be an interpreter?

I’m bilingual, does that mean I’m already an interpreter?

On November 18th, all these questions were answered by Ms. Xie, an interpreter as well as a teacher from the school of Foreign Languages, Jiangnan University. As a part of our Book Week, Ms. Xie was invited to share her experience as an interpreter.

Translation and Interpretation

Ms. Xie first gave students the basic introduction to interpretation by differentiate it from translation. She also gave an example of her translation work: Handbook of Public Prevention of COVID-19 translated from English to Chinese for Wuxi municipal government.

Consecutive Interpretation and Simultaneous Interpretation

Ms. Xie went on with two typical types of interpretation, i.e. consecutive interpretation and simultaneous interpretation.

Two bilingual students were invited to the stage for a trial consecutive interpretation. Both students speak fluent English and Chinese, yet when it came to professional interpretation, they still found it so difficult!

While for simultaneous interpretation, students had the opportunity to listen to the clips from a real conference situation as an interpreter would have faced. The voice clips showed that professional interpreters often deal with difficulties of blurred source voices, equipment problems and emotional stresses. They have to maintain professionalism whilst consecutively thinking and speaking in different languages.

How to be an Interpreter

“It takes more than words to interpret.”

The path to a career life as an interpreter is definitely not easy. it takes years of experience, skill, discipline and hard work. Being an interpreter, one have to keep learning knowledge from all domains to better understand the source language and deliver it in target language.

“Reading makes a full man.”

Therefore, reading is extremely important for interpreters, in addition to language abilities. To be an interpreter means to be an encyclopedia-like talent.

In this Book Week, we are proud to have Ms. Xie on campus and hope all students will be a life-time reader.

About Ms. Yu Xie

A teacher from Jiangnan University who teaches subjects of “Skills and Practice of Interpretation”, “Consecutive Interpretation”, “Simultaneously Interpretation”, etc. Her subjects and projects were awarded by the universities frequently.

She has published textbooks of “Practical Tutorial of English Interpretation”, “Research in Modern Theory and Practice” and essays on CSSCI and core journals of foreign languages.

She’s rich in interpretation experiences. She used to be the interpreter for Director of State General Administration of Sport, Nobel laureate in chemistry, President of the World Taekwondo Federation, Former Chief Economist of The Soros Foundation, Chairman of UN ICOMOS and the father of international creative economics, etc.

She led a team to translate the Handbook of Public Prevention of COVID-19 in March 2020, supporting the prevention work for expats in Wuxi.