Gaps in perception of oral discourse and ways of filling them in interpreting

Another potential group of “gap-makers” makes up words borrowed from other languages and used in the Ukrainian discourse as they sound (or are written) in these languages. The main source of such “borrowings” is, of course, the Russian language due to its close historical ties with Ukrainian, as well as because Ukraine is a multinational state, where Russian is widely spoken in the Southand East of Ukraine, Kyiv included. Intheory and in accordance with the AHC requirements to holding international conferences speakers should by all means avoid using words from languages, other than the announced official language/languages of the conference. It means that if the source speakers speak Ukrainian, they should not use Russian, English, German or, for instance, Polish words and expressions. The same holds true for speakers, who speak Russian orany otherlanguage for which interpretation is provided at the conference. However, in practice this is not always the case. Quite often, especially at bilateral negotiations, round tables, press conferences, interviews and talk shows interpreters may hear from, for instance, Ukrainian speakers something like: “Вы знаете, я сейчас скажу это на русском языке ”, which would require а very quick “switch” of the language code ofthe interpreterand maybe regarded as interpretation in the environment of complicated communication, this time - multilingual. If the interpreter knows (or at least has some understanding) of such “third” language - then the interpretation is performed successfully. However, imagine that the interpreter doesn’t know the “third” intervening language. The result would be obvious — interpretation wilJ fail and the message of the speaker will not be brought to the target audience. Here are some of the examples, which you will most probably hear on the phonograms and which the author of this book encountered in his interpretation practice: *так сказать instead of так би мовити', *ue питання стоїть на повестке дня instead ої па порядку денному, *паііатаобшин instead of палата громад; * на протязі року instead of протягом року, * оружейный плутоній instead ofзбройний плутоній; знаєш що, мамо, * Warszawa w porownaniu z Kiiowom — to iak mala wioska (from Polish) instead of Варшава у порівнянні з Києвом — це як маленьке село', в Америці дуже багато *іиеровиів instead of акціонерів', ходімо до *сітінг руми instead of до вітальні', the Gongadze family were not recognised as *[a partie civile (from French) instead of the Gongadze family were not recognised as a civil plaintiff (or as the aggrieved side or as a damaged side — родина Гонгадзе не була визнана громадським позивачем; потерпілою стороню; стороною, яка зазнала шкоди).

 

We may continue giving more examples, however it seems better to quote the late English rock guitarist of the Beatles George Harrison (born 25.02.1943, died from cancer 29.11.2001): “I look at the world and 1 see that it’s turning, while my guitargently weeps. With every mistake we must surely be learning, still my guitar gently weeps”.

 

Grammatical “gaps” which maybe caused by:

a) morphological errors, such as misuse of tenses, mood forms, case forms, the use of double (even triple) negation etc. Such gaps seldom occur in “educated discourse” and are usually filled in without great difficulty due to the grammatical redundancy of speech. Thus, yesterday is enough to understand that the reference is to the past, so the Past Indefinite Tense (especially the use of “irregular” forms of verbs with reference to the past) gradually fades away in modern colloquial English, for example:

There is now no you and me, no not more (Afro-American talk); Yesterday I come home and I see that she is_not there (West Midlands talk, Britain);

b) the use of syntactical structures with the reverse word order, which often occurs with the speakers of synthetic languages like Ukrainian and Russian. This may cause a serious problem first of all for simultaneous interpreters, who interpret into English, because they have either to wait for the subject group of the utterance to be pronounced by the speaker (this results in pauses in interpretation often filled in by the “pause filler” sounds -err..., — erm..., etc) or render the utterance word for word (which may mislead the target listeners), for example:

 

З інвестиційними компаніями роботу проводить розташована у Києві Комісія з пінних паперів та фондової біржі, списки підприємств, що приватизуються, складає Фонд державного майна.

7.3 Ways of filling in the “gaps” in interpreting

 

As it was mentioned above, “gaps" caused by objective factors are beyond

 

interpreter’s control. However, certain recommendations can be made on how

 

to minimise the negative impact of such gaps upon the result of interpreting:

 

a) always write down numerals longer than 12; make use of interpreter’s note-taking techniques, such as special symbols and abbreviations;

 

b) always try to write down proper names of people and geographical names in whatever language you prefer (either the source or the target language);

 

c) if you hear something like Як щойно сказала Галина Іванівна та підкреашв Юрій Федорович... and you don’t know the surnames of the persons mentioned, say in English something like As the previous speaker (our colleague) has just mentioned... because patronymics usually mean nothing to the speakers of English;

 

d) always request lists of participants of the conference (seminar, meeting) and lists (glossaries) of basic subject field terms, abbreviations, acronyms, professional jargon, etc from your employer. You may also get this information from the agenda of the conference and from background materials (dictionaries, booklets, reports, protocols, transparencies, Microsoft PowerPoint presentation slides, diagrams, charts, business cards or from the Internet):

 

e) try to talk to the presenters (speakers) before the conference starts and discuss peculiar words, abbreviations and notions with them;

 

f) take your personal subject field glossaries — you may need them in some “critical” situations;

 

g) in extreme cases don’t hesitate to ask the speaker to repeat what has just been said - it’s better to apologize and clarify the matter than to mislead youraudience by wrong translation (however, this recommendation is good only for consecutive interpreting);

 

h) if the SL oral messages lack coherence and are syntactically disorganised, try to renderthe essence by giving the main idea in your translation (however, this recommendation is good only for consecutive interpreting);

 

і) if you perform simultaneous interpreting try to help your partner by writing down numerals, names and other difficult (precision lexicon) words for him/her to see;

 

j) always be “tuned into” the context because, even if you miss, mishear or misunderstand something, it is the cohesion of the utterance that will help you. Lexical cohesion is provided by repetition links between words and bonds between sentences [Hoey 1991; Максімов 2006: 22-40]. It connects words within a sentence and sentences with each other and creates a “web” in oral and written discourse. Elements of this web are quite helpful if there is a need to fill in the “gap”, for example:

 

Israel and [?...] initiated a peace treaty ending their 46 years state of war Kim Hussein and Israeli Prime-Minister Rabin signed the treaty in Amman on Monday.

 

EuroNews, http://www.euronews.net

 

In this example it is quite easy to restore the missing name of the second state (which is Jordan) from the names of its former leader (King Hussein, who ruled Jordan from 1952 until 1999; the peace treaty was signed in 1994) and its capital (the city of Amman);

 

A strike by airport personnel in Norway grounded most domestic and [?...] flights on Wednesday. More than 30 thousand passengers were affected by the [?...] which is on-going.

 

EuroNews, httn://www. euronews. net In this example it is possible to restore the missing words from the context because the first word (international) is a logical antonym of the previous word (domestic) and the second one (stoppage) is a logical synonym of the word strike;

 

Мені [?...п.. —ana І була можливість виступити. Я не зміг сказати жодного слова, щоб якось прояснити ситуацію.

 

In this example the interpreter has to choose between надана and не дана. However, the second utterance is a clear argument in favour of не дана.

 

k) constantly improve your professional skills and cultural competence. In fact, constant learning is a lifetime process for all professional interpreters — it never stops throughout your interpretation career. Professional interpreters must know surnames and names of major political leaders of the international community, be well-informed of recent political and economic developments, always be “tuned” to set phrases and other “words of the day” which are often referred to as “pat phrases” [Jones 1998: 127-128] and it goes without saying that they have to know as many subject field words as possible.