Live English->German TV Interpretation: Scary

Now that Judy has started her court interpreter certification and Dagmar is working on her advanced conference interpreting degree, we've been thinking a lot about interpretation. Specifically, about how much of a challenge it is, and about the different high-pressure environments that we would not want to work in. One of them is live television -- think Miss Universe, award ceremonies, press conferences, etc. These jobs are best reserved for highly experienced simultaneous interpreters with nerves of steel. We've been honing our interpretation skills with the help of web 2.0, have been interpreting a lot of YouTube videos and have watched hundreds of outstanding interpretations. Our hats are off to our colleagues who can remain cool as cucumbers in front of a live television audience.

However, a few days ago, our colleague Giuseppina Gatta sent us a video about an interpretation that, well, wasn't good. It is English->German and features LaToya Jackson accepting an award in Dresden, Germany, on behalf of her late brother Michael. Again, this is a very tough job, but it doesn't seem as if the translator's interpreting skills are quite up to par. See for yourselves...





3 comments:

pennifer on January 25, 2010 at 9:01 PM said...

Wow. That's not even paraphrasing. I wonder what happened there?

Luisa on January 27, 2010 at 11:04 PM said...

Hi, i was just passing by and saw the video... i agree that the interpreter in this case might not have done a great job, but i think you can't deny she's not been the ideal speaker: that was WAY TOO FAST! i think that was pretty unconsiderate of her...

Jessica on February 1, 2010 at 3:38 PM said...

Ooh, that was a bit hard to watch! I wonder what happened? It almost seemed like the interpreter didn't show up and they grabbed this guy thirty seconds before and said "YOU DO IT!"

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