Interpreting is Magic …but it does require language skills too
Interpreting can be seen as irrational sometimes. Why is that?
Because it goes fast smooth and natural. So how could it be the outcome of thousands of hours of hardwork? The same applies to music virtuosos. When Lang Lang start playing on his piano à queue the air gets thinner and the magic happens. And no one thinks even for a split second to the millions of hours rehearsals sessions and lessons he needed to take to reach that perfection.
#Interpreting is the art of playing your brain as an organic instrument. It appears to flow naturally but only because you cannot hear the clockworks ticking inside the interpreters’ brains!
Now what about automated interpreting?
Who needs a man when a robot can beat chess champions to their own game?
Let me tell you a short story that will be worth a thousand sketches. I was on an interpreting assignment in Paris recently. Getting ready to hop in my simultaneous interpreting booth and suddenly the client came up with a brand new presentation on PowerPoint. New is good. The doc itself was all polished and slick much better than the old version I have to admit but because there is a but the content too was different. The client added about 15 new slides and some of them were only available in Chinese. A good thing I had Chinese speaking interpreters in the hotel lobby ready to jump in to my rescue. Now think about it for a minute what if I only gathered a bunch of translating robots for the job? What about the last minute changes? Not to mention the research conducted using a fledgling wifi connection into the interpreting booth. What about the natural communication between professional interpreters eager to make a success of this event for the end client?
