Making Yourself Misunderstood

Communication is a minefield. Its filled with hidden dangers and trigger points and everyone is different. What sets one person off will completely disarm another. What one person finds hilarious and has to share with everyone within a 10 mile radius, another will find horrifying and will be repulsed by the person who did the sharing. There isn't even consistency within the same person, one day someone will find something tolerable and the next day, the next hour even, its too intolerable, too excruciating to bear. It’s a veritable minefield I tell you, one that would be made a little bit easier to negotiate with the aid of a translator or interpreter or two.

Even here we need to be careful, many of us, myself included, use translator and interpreter interchangeably. This I have discovered is incorrect. There is in fact a difference between the two. Translators transcribe written documents. They may be used in social situations for verbal discourse, but their speciality is the written word. Interpreters are used, therefore rather obviously, in matters of speech. They can translate some written work but it is recommended that the documents be small and not terribly convoluted. Who knew that they each had such strict guidelines for their specialities?

With the shrinking of the world as people immigrate and emigrate willy-nilly and cultures mix and match in ways that our grandparents would never have imagined, communication is even more important and even more delicate than ever before. One would need more than interpreting and translating skills to explain a love affair between an Israeli man and Palestinian woman to both sets of parents. Hutu woman, Tutsi man anyone? Anyone out there from a conservative white family tried bringing home a partner of a different colour? Try different religions. Remember the whole Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes Scientology/Catholicism debacle. Try negotiating your way out of any of those situations. See how important communication is then.

There is a flip side, there always is. The lighter side. We’ve all seen them, those funny signs in countries where they’ve tried to translate from their own languages directly into English. The Far East is usually the best but you get good ones from South America and Europe too. Take this one, which I think is Far East in origin, it’s a no smoking sign: Please unlight all lighted cigarettes before inhaling beyond this position. And this one that is from a university in China: Do not be naked and other unbehaviours. Those who consider English to be their mother tongue cannot snigger without also being able to laugh at themselves because we can come up with some prizewinners. I particularly like this one for its complete lack of irony. It’s a road sign: Caution Water On Road During Rain. Then there is this one that must have many variations the world over, found on a golf course: Any persons (except players) caught collecting golf balls on this course will be prosecuted and have their balls removed. Surely that sign is done on purpose. It cannot be done by accident. As a sign maker you would read the draft and pause, wouldn’t you? It would merit a phone call to verify, would it not? Ah well, their expense our amusement.

Making oneself understood in this world is not an easy undertaking. It’s easy to see how international conflicts arise and how they are so difficult to resolve. The burden that rests with interpreters and translators involved in international matters is not an easy one. They have to capture every nuance and tone exactly as it was said or written. As tempting as it is to take initiative and smooth things over with their own spin on things, or to try and placate with a different tone or a different word, they cannot. They have to maintain a neutral stance, not interfere and simply state things as they hear them. The same applies for translators only they may have to change words in order to keep the same context and meaning. In translating the context and meaning is vital, direct translation, as we have seen from the signs above, just doesn’t work.

Being the one translated also requires a large degree of trust in your interpreter, also in the interpreters of the other people involved in the process. If you do not believe that you or those around you are being honestly represented then the process is doomed to fail. This kind of communication is therefore very delicate and very specialised. It is best left to the professionals and not the guy down the road who once took a Spanish course over the Internet.

About the Author

Sandra wrote this article for the online marketers Romo-translations translation interpreting agency one of the biggest online translation and interpretation providers

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