Problems of interpreting in the tourism sector: Interaction with Veena Krishnamurthy
Executive Summar by Deepasri
Ravi Kumar commences the segment by thanking Veena for a wonderful presentation on the problems of interpreting in the tourism sector. He mentions how challenging it is for any newcomer to the field to cope with the language, cope with situations, new tourists, and new knowledge; all at the same time happening simultaneously. The person who does not give up survives and those who give up never come back into interpreting activity at all. So linguists should understand this.
He mentions that a lot of points come to the picture, especially the one related to training programs specifically for interpretation. Unfortunately, except for one or two universities, there are not enough facilities available, there aren’t many labs, and there is a scarcity of trainers. Thus in spite of being from a language background, people are not able to take up interpretation as a profession. People end up doing a lot of experiments that result in unprofessional behaviour and creates a bad impression of the language profession and the interpreter’s’ community. So keeping this scenario in mind Ravi Kumar refers to the session to be very informative and helpful in that aspect.
Then he opens the floor for an interactive session with Veena so that people can put forward their questions on the topic. He adds that people might not be from interpretation background but later through Modlingua Youtube Channel and community learning program he would like to share some videos on the same. He also mentions that recently they had done a successful training program on interpretation for Zee News. Now they have ten highly trained interpreters trained by him; which had been a good project for him. He would like to put up those videos on the channel but that would take time.
The first question comes from Ms. Jaya, German Trainer. She emphasizes the category where the interpreter is a local one and the tourist comes from another culture. She says that while interpreting they never translate the word, they keep it as it is; for example ‘Chapati’ and as it has its cultural meaning in India so it is not possible to translate it into an English word or in any other language. Jaya asks in this case what kind of interpretation or translation should an interpreter look for. Veena suggests retaining the word in the native language and explaining the process of its preparation or drawing reference of a similar substance from the tourist’s culture so that he is able to relate to it. So the understanding of the substance would come to the interpreter’s rescue. So the tour guide might not have mentioned that but the interpreter would need to give that explanation. If the interpreter does not have a knowledge regarding that substance he could liken it to something relatable to the tourist, like a pizza base.
Gargi comes up with the next question where she enquires if the visitors would show some cooperation to the interpreter who gets stuck somewhere so that he does not feel hopeless. Veena says that these situations are very unpredictable; normally tourists are very sweet, they do not generally want to trouble the interpreter they just want to know the culture. This is not like simultaneous interpretation where one must have his background information about the topic; one cannot get away with saying something that is not correct. But in the case of consecutive interpretation, one has time and people are generally friendly. Veena shares one experience where she had done an interpretation for an adoption process for which she had to do a lot of reading and background preparation. She had a relevant technical dictionary to make sure that she had her technical terms correct. Apart from this preparation, there was the human side where she had to communicate on the social side, where things were familiar but there were things that she didn’t know but people were cooperating and they gave her the time to look it up in case she did not get something. So even though each person is different mostly they are cooperating.
Gargi also asks that if during simultaneous conference interpretation one does not get a word then what should be done. Veena replies that generally there are people who take terms, so probably the interpreter could quickly ask the person next to him or mostly the context is given to the interpreter beforehand and he needs to do his homework completely well in case of simultaneous interpretation. In case of consecutive background information is not available beforehand and it throws up unexpected challenges for the interpreter.
Another man asks how an interpreter with deal with a batch where there isn’t just one particular culture group with one interpreter, but there is a multi-cultural group from multiple language backgrounds. Veena shares that what she has seen is that when there is a big group, divisions into subgroups are made on the basis of language. So each group goes with the interpreter of that particular language. So if there is a multi-linguistic group with just one guide, they need to have a common language otherwise it is going to be quite challenging. There the interpreter should be able to set the expectations and tell them that this is something he is not prepared for and tell them that they should be ready for a scenario where he might not be able to explain certain things in some other language. For an instance, if one is doing an interpretation of a group there is one German, one Italian and one Portuguese and there is a German interpreter. In that case, it would not be possible for the German interpreter to know Italian or Portuguese, nor will it be possible for him to research in the given time and become a linguist overnight with a B2, C1 level proficiency. So the interpreter would have to clarify that he would interpret in the language he is supposed to and for the rest, he might be interpreting in a common language such as English.
He further enquires if there could be courses on tourism interpretation in the association of institutes and the help of the Ministry. Veena states that when one talks about the Ministry it gets centered around Delhi, which is the biggest challenge. If it could be done in different states and different regions so that people would get all the information around India and they are able to interpret wherever they are. She hopes they soon some way is found out to deal with this huge challenge in India.
Swastika enquires if cultural emersion is the sole way to develop language proficiency. Veena mentions that cultural emersion teaches you about the culture, behavioural patterns, but a language is the means to explain and communicate with another person so a combination of both is required.
Nicoletta shares that everything in the session was totally clear to her and she could relate to the problems discussed in there because they had been called for guiding some groups. For instance in Sardinia, which is very different from other Italian regions, she had to explain in details what certain words meant. She thanks Veena and expresses her delight to be able to participate in the session.
In end, Ravi Kumar recalls his experience as a tourist guide during his undergraduate course. Every interaction with a new tourist was a new learning experience for him. He narrates a story of an elderly lady from Spain who had visited India earlier and had hired a taxi driver at that time to take her around and play a guide’s part as well. He had taken her to various places and after seven days she realized that the taxi driver was cheating her, by taking her to shop and taking commissions and persuading her into spending more. She went back to her country with a very bad notion.
So the next time she visited India she has to carry that fear and prejudice with her. When she interacted with Ravi she assumed he was the same kind person who would also cheat her. So it took him seven painful days to convince her that he would not cheat her, So Ravi questions Veena to suggest how newcomers can deal with such prejudices. Veena utters that it had never happened to her personally but she has heard about these kinds of scenarios from other people. What she suggested was to tell the tourist that no two people are the alike, not even the tourists that are coming to visit and just because one had cheated them before does not mean the next one will do the same. Plus on accredited interpreter will hold more credibility compared to a non-accredited one.
Ishan enquires about career opportunities after masters in interpretation. Veena suggests that one needs to equip themselves in the language in which they will be interpreting and it is also important to check if one knows the other language equally well. Since English is one of the most important languages through which one interprets it is also necessary to test if one is equally good at English as well. After bilingual proficiency, it is important to get certified in interpretation. Once these are done there will be plenty of opportunities.
With that final question, the interactive session closes and Veena concludes by mentioning that this is one of the most interesting professions and one gets to meet so many different kinds of people and every person gives you a unique experience which is a different one every day. One gets to discover their culture, another person’s culture and then when they go to a third place the multilingual aspect comes in and that makes it a wonderful experience. Of course, it has its challenges but if one sticks on they go higher and higher. Then She thanks Ravi Kumar and everyone else for their patience and the lovely opportunity of speaking in front of everyone.
