Interpreting word for word

The view that word for word interpreting is possible is not uncommon. This is probably because people think that translation (interpreting is oral translation) is the process of changing the sound of one word for the sound of that word in another language. Pretty much like speaking pig Latin. Just move the first consonant of a word to the end and add the suffix –ay. So “pig Latin” translated becomes “igpay atinlay”.

However, interpreting from one language into another is a much more complex thing. As one example, a word for word attempt to translate a text could make English speakers sound completely trigger happy, and not just when translating a press release from the American National Rifle Association. In English we are happy to shoot at everything. In bars - tequila shots; in clinics - flu shots; on sports fields -penalty shots. Fans go crazy when they see celebrities shot on location. In broad daylight, tourists take shots of everything in sight with gusto. Even when we are not sure if it is the right thing to do, people encourage you to “just give it a shot, mate!”

However, this ballistic impression of the English language is only a problem if we believe that words by themselves carry meaning. Meaning has to be constructed by the people taking part in an exchange. That’s why interpreters need knowledge of the real world to be able to create meaning out of the words a speaker says. A computer program cannot determine which of these two sentences is correct: “the pen is in the box” and “the box is in the pen”. Actually, neither could we if we didn’t know that the exchange is not about a writing device but about a place to keep livestock.

Moreover, words are not a direct representation of reality. Spanish speakers use the same word to refer to the traces of ink on a personal letter written in a nicely shaped round hand, a University degree in Gothic black lettering, or the chicken scratches of a doctor’s prescription. Despite the fact that from age five my parents made me skip many football matches to slave at my desk learning to write “proper”, up until university my teachers complained about my horrible “caligrafía”. To an English speaker “horrible calligraphy” is an oxymoron. But to a Spanish speaker if it is written by hand it is “caligrafía”. Not that they cannot appreciate the different aesthetic effects in different writing styles. It is just that Spanish doesn’t have direct equivalents for the words “calligraphy”, “penmanship” or even “script”. If pushed to be specific, I could translate these terms as “caligrafía artística” (artistic calligraphy), “buena letra” (good lettering) and “sistema de escritura” (writing system). And this specificity shatters the illusion of the viability of word for word translation.

Each culture views reality in a particular way. Consequently, the language a culture uses reflects this cultural view of the universe. As the Latin American poet Jose Antonio Ramos Sucre said “a language is the universe translated into that language”. Languages don’t translate the universe using the same words. Not only do they differ in the sounds they use to refer to the universe, but also in the concepts they use to express the universe. So a word for word match is serendipity.