Professional Interrupter

I have been called a "professional interrupter" many times during my career. Working with an interpreter must be frustrating at times, even though interpreters are de facto facilitating communication.

Our job is to be as unobtrusive and accurate as possible. However, there are circumstances when it is necessary for the interpreter to intervene.

1. Asking for repetition.

Interpreter may ask you to repeat information because they have not heard it or failed to take a note of a quoted date or a number.  This is usually caused by unexpected noise, parties speaking too fast or speaking over each other or a momentary lapse of concentration.

2. Asking for clarification.

Interpreter may be unfamiliar with a term or a phrase used and may require a clarification. Most interpreters specialise in certain areas, but it is impossible to be familiar with jargon in all subjects. As an HR translation specialist I can interpret for clients working across many industries, e.g. pharmaceutical, automotive, construction, etc. and work-specific terminology varies greatly.

3. Requesting that either party slows down or pauses to enable accurate interpretation.

Interpreters have a well-developed phonological loop, but we are not machines.

Interpreting is a highly skilled job - we need time to process the information from one language to another, memorising the input while processing it at the same time.

4. Alerting parties to a possible misunderstanding.

Like in any other conversation, parties could mishear or misunderstand something. In addition, in a conversation between parties from different cultures there is a possibility of missing a cultural inference, and it's interpreter's duty to alert of such risk.

5. Preventing parties from interrupting the interpreting process to allow interpreter to finish.

Interpreter has to always be allowed to finish interpreting. Otherwise the information given could be lost, potentially leading to a misunderstanding. Only one party should speak at a time.

6. Raising concerns about risk of harm to the interpreter or any other party.

7. Alerting parties to the practical interference to the process, such as external noise or the need for one of the parties to speak louder.

8. Requesting a comfort break.

Interpreting requires a lot of concentration and it is a tiring process. More on that subject in my earlier blog post: "Doing tiredness justice".

Interpreters enable and manage conversation flow within the linguistic and cultural context. Intervention allows us to do our job properly. We are not machines; we are much better than machines.