We asked our trainers Matthew Perret, Phil Smith and Alan Rodger what their thoughts were regarding clients’ expectations, difficulties for interpreters and some good advice. We hope you enjoy their answers!
Form your experience as an interpreter, what do clients expect from a retour into EN?
Matthew:
Not to be distracted by the delivery (the same is true of all interpretation, of course, but an interpreter working into "B" runs the risk of unintentionally creating additional distractions). Non-expert consumers of our services will often refer to "good English" or "foreign accent", and interpreters themselves often give a high priority to "vocabulary" and "pronunciation"- but in my experience, INTONATION is often the key factor: the expected pattern linked to meaning can make all the difference between comprehension and incomprehension (or misunderstanding), for the customer.
Phil:
Clients expect to be able to follow without effort, they want a clear and lively performance and they want to feel they can trust the interpreter.
Alan:
I believe that the differences between “retour” and mother-tongue interpretation can be exaggerated, as most of the same hazards are present, in differing degrees, in both. As to what clients expect, I wish I knew! The EN channel has such a diversity of clients, and so little feedback, that you can only guess.
Do you have any other thoughts or advice for our readers?
Matthew:
For me, adding passive English was far more traumatic than adding active Spanish! In all retour combinations, deep analysis and detective work from the original is a major challenge: it's easy to fall into the trap of listening to our mother tongue in passive mode.
Phil:
Use clear language; do not succumb to the temptation to translate too much. Don’t overreach ⎻ do not try to be too clever in your B, don’t overdo the idiomatic expressions; speak clearly and feel free to break up a long-winded speaker into shorter sentences; don’t forget that you can use a verb when the source languages has used a noun.
Alan:
Good "retour", like all good interpretation, needs humility, transparency and clarity, and the greatest of these is clarity.
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