In the booth

CARLOS EDUARDO NARANJO ORTIZ 

I want to begin with some background. I was born here in Colombia, Medellin to be more precise, but my parents relocated to the United States when I was eight months old. Hence my studies were all in English. I grew up mainly in Queens, New York. This gave me an opportunity to come in contact with a diverse amount of people and cultures, not to mention accents and dialects. I had my first contact with translation when I was in high school and I did some translation for immigration courts as a favor to a friend. My studies were in the area of psychology. I obtained a bachelors degree, three specializations and finally a PhD, I practiced psychology for a little over six years. In the course of those studies as you can well imagine I had many different jobs. This in part has been a great advantage in my career as an interpreter and translator. I lived everywhere from New York to Hawaii. I worked as a busboy, taxi driver, truck driver, waiter, bartender and a long list of other jobs. In October 2002 I traveled to Medellín, Colombia for an extended vacation. I planned to stay between 2 to 3 months and it's been almost 12 years. Suffice to say I'll be staying in Colombia, for the foreseeable future. Now in the time that I've been living in Colombia, I've worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, academic director, translator and interpreter currently I'm the director at www.tooeasyenglish.com, I teach a course called common law in Universidad de Medellín, I train and certify teachers in TEFL / TESOL as well as working as a translator and interpreter.

Today I want to take some time and share some experience and tips with you that I hope will be of help. I've been fortunate enough to work as a translator, interpreter for the past 20 years. In that time I've had more than my share of uncomfortable learning experiences, so I want to take a look at working as a simultaneous interpreter or simultaneous interpretation from the booth and perhaps some things it can mean done to make the experience more pleasant.

I break this up into three sections, pre-, during and post, the idea is to be as comfortable prepared and at ease as possible. Our jobs are not easy; it is not anyone who can do what we do. First off to do what we do requires a degree of ego. This is necessary. There are many people who are uncomfortable speaking in front of other people. If you're interpreting it is quite possible that 5,000, 50,000 or 100,000 people or more could be hearing your voice so stage fright really isn't an option. I am not saying this to scare anyone, quite the contrary. The only way you will ever know is once you try and quite honestly it isn’t all that scary. I would love to call as many of you as possible colleagues.

Pre-interpretation: my first tip may sound a bit rudimentary but you would be surprised how difficult it can be to obtain information before hand from many companies and event organizers. So whenever possible try to speak with the speaker or speakers of the event, the more background information you have the easier your job will be.

I suggest you get familiar with an NDA none in particular but it would be good that you understand what a non-disclosure agreement is. Many companies and international speakers may require you to sign one, nothing unusual there. This is the age of intellectual property, so it's quite common for people to want to protect their information. Notwithstanding, in many cases, your best help is going to be Internet. Before Google we actually had to go to libraries look things up in Encyclopedias or specific journals, and other reference material so be very thankful for the Internet and the instant access you can have to unlimited forms of information. The first thing you want to do is find out as much as possible about the speaker, the topic and its specific forum. You should be able to find past information and possibly even video. YouTube is much more useful than you can imagine. You may not be able to find exact videos but you can definitely find videos on the topic. If you're fortunate, there are companies and speakers which will provide sufficient information to make your job easier. Now, whether or not you have been able to get information before the date of the event, it is always good to try and speak personally with the person or people that you'll be interpreting for during the event. I'm old school, which means I'm in the habit of carrying a notebook and a pen or pencil, we are in the digital age. Yes I have a tablet, I have a smart phone but sometimes it feels more comfortable for me to actually write. Make sure you show up early try and talk to the organizers of the event. Find out if you can talk to the speakers before hand, normally all you have to say is you want to make sure that everything runs smoothly. Most people cannot argue with you if you say that. Remember all of this just makes your job that much easier, and that much better. Always try to ask the speakers if there's any particular jargon vocabulary or expressions that they use that perhaps are not common within that field. If possible try to get them to tell you a little about what they're going to present and if they are going to use any type of video, audio, PowerPoint presentation, or similar if you can see it before hand, or have a copy for the booth. Now if you asked for copy, obviously you should have your laptop, tablet or other media device. I'm old-fashioned, but I do like to take advantage of technology. So depending on the interpretation, topic or event, I usually have at least my iPhone, on other occasions I'll have my tablet or my laptop and remember, I have more than 20 years of experience and it's never a dull day when I have to look something up. So I prefer to have access to online tools whenever possible. I want to recommend a few online tools that are free. Among them are some dictionaries you've probably used your fair share of Google, but besides this, you have word reference at www.wordreference.com, or Linguee at www.linguee.es. Both of these are extremely good dictionaries. Word reference has specialized dictionaries in medicine and law, and Linguee is extremely good because it gives you the words in context, in Spanish and English. Another quick suggestion, I'm not one for making glossaries, but I have met and worked with other interpreters who do and find it very useful. If you want to do this begin with one field and make glossaries for each event or translation you work and then create your master glossary.  Try it, you should find out what's good for you. Not everything I'm going to suggest or recommend might work for you, nothing wrong with that. It only means you have to find a different way.

During:  Now, once you're in the booth you definitely want to think about comfort, especially if you are going to work a full day. If necessary, make checklist. Now, I would definitely suggest your laptop or tablet or even both. If you have smart phone and in some occasions you may want to consider mobile Internet. Unfortunately not everywhere in the world has good internet service but Colombia has more than its fair share; you may want to consider a mobile internet device.

If you're working more than two hours, you will be working with another interpreter now I want to give you a few simple and common sense tips. Most interpretation booths can be called close quarters you most likely be working in intervals of 20 or 30 min. This depends on you and your colleague whoever that may be. I've been fortunate enough to work with more than one quality interpreter and I can tell you that I know from each and everyone I was able learn and take away something new. So, my first suggestion, always be open to learn from the people you work with and not just the interpreter. The more you know about your job and the tools used for your job the more valuable you are as a professional. Everyone on your work group is capable of teaching you something or imparting some gem of wisdom, some people’s perspective can be very surprising and insightful.

Let's take a minute and look at some of the tools that you may want to use while working interpretation. First, your laptop personally, I've noticed a preference in interpreters for Mac. I myself have used Mac for a long time and I am comfortable with it but I also use PC. So obviously it doesn't make a difference but a laptop is invaluable in the booth. I also mentioned using a tablet on most occasions. I prefer to leave my laptop at home. Another tool you may want to think about investing in is a good headset. Not everyone is comfortable wearing the typical headsets for a full 8 hours and comfort is one key factor in our job. Personally, I've been using a Plantronics headset that I bought from Amazon for a little over $20 and they been spectacular. This is a headset designed for use in games like Call of Duty. Here it's up to your taste but you can find a good headset for just over $20 literally, but you may want to invest a little more. It's up to you.

Once you've settled in get to know who you're working with. If it's someone you already know better. If not, take a little time and get to know each other first thing you want to see how you want to work, as I said most interpreters like to switch off every 20 or 30 min., it's up to you and the person you're working with to decide what's best. Make sure to do all of this well before you get started, it may sound rhetorical, but make sure to use the bathroom before you get started as well. Now, I would suggest you have something to drink in the booth, interpreting is thirsty work. Anything you drink, make sure it's at room temperature. You don't want anything ice cold. Personally, I like to have a nice coffee and a glass of water but again that's up to you. Okay, now that you are comfortable. Make sure you have your dictionaries open and any other reference tools you might be using, PowerPoint or others for your interpretation.

Like I said I'm old-fashioned. So I like to have a notebook and pen just in case the speakers use any vocabulary or terminology that's new to me so I'll jot it down for future reference. During your off intervals, make sure to look up and reference all the terminology and vocabulary you wrote down. Here's another suggestion. If you find that the event is challenging, stay tuned in and work on improving in those topics. The main reason I'm an interpreter is I truly love learning something new almost every time I work. Hopefully this is your main motivation. Otherwise, our job can become very tedious.

Make sure you take breaks during your off time get up, get out of the booth, walk around, maybe use the bathroom but you definitely want to get out of the booth for at least a couple of minutes between shifts. As I said before, if you find the event or the topics to be interesting or challenging stick around, you don't need to be in the booth to listen. A lot of these tips or suggestions may seem very simple. If so, then applying them shouldn't be too hard. At least I hope not.

Post interpretation: once your job interpreting is over. It doesn't mean you're done, if you did write down terminology vocabulary or anything else, this is when we're going to make use of it. One way to become a better interpreter is to do follow-up, especially after a difficult interpretation. Now I'm not telling you to sit down and beat your head against books right after you finish but a day or two after would be good. If you really enjoy a topic or find something interesting, read up on it, study it, take courses, or even Google it. Most interpreters begin in one area or field and eventually branch out to more. Then you have individuals like me. I started like I told you with immigration interpretation, legal work, family law and similar. Then, simply because I was bilingual people usually asked me what something meant or what the translation was. So I took advantage of this and got better at it. Unlike many of you here, I'm practically 100% self-taught, I haven't taken any university courses, diplomas or otherwise in translation or interpretation. Most of my ability comes from experience, which means trial and error, crash and burn in many cases, although never enough to discourage me from continuing.

I guess what I'm trying to say, Post interpretation is to help us improve and reinforce our ability. Unfortunately, many of the areas and fields that are popular today are hard to find courses in Colombia but the Internet, as always, is a viable option. One page that I can recommend is Canvas at www.canvas.net, you can find courses on just about every topic and the best part about 90% are free or require the purchase of an e-book, usually at a fairly low cost. Besides this webpage, there are many others, you just need to look. Of course, you also have the option of studying other areas, I'm originally a psychologist, but before that I studied six semesters of Marine biology. Make you wonder, doesn't it. Now I work with English and Spanish, teaching, training, translating and interpreting because I love doing it. I teach as an alternative so I have continuous exposure and practice with the language.

Besides studying and preparing on topics and fields that you want to improve or learn more about, you may want to consider using other tools to improve your intonation, pronunciation, pitch and tone. One tool I can suggest which I currently use is from Nuance called Dragon naturally speaking, which is available for PC and Mac. This is voice recognition software and in our line of work it can be used for various purposes. Unfortunately, it isn't free software, but it isn't outrageously expensive, about $200 and you would need to get a USB microphone. Now the first thing that you can do with this kind of software, not necessarily Dragon, is improve your speaking voice. Interpretation isn't only about interpreting the correct terms and context. We also need to worry about our voices and how we sound to our listeners. We aren’t so different from a radio personality or host, the more appealing our voice the easier it will be to find work. So one way we can improve is by finding text in the target language, we wish to improve and reading this text using the software and you’ll be surprised how much this can actually help. Or if you wish simply record yourself reading a chosen text and listen to yourself to evaluate your own ability.

Another use that is also quite beneficial for many interpreters such as me who also do written translation, in the past year I started using Dragon to do my written translations. The first benefit was that I went from approximately 10 or 12 pages a day to 30 or 50 pages a day. Quite an increase, wouldn’t you say. The main reason I switched to doing dictation was time and the volume of work that I've been getting. An additional benefit that I noticed is that it has also helped me modulate my voice to a better degree; the dictation program shows me where I have an inconsistency in some part of my modulation.

Another suggestion I can make, is to try and expose yourself to as much of the languages as you can by watching TV, listening to radio, reading or any other way. English and Spanish, each have many accents and dialects, I was fortunate to grow up in a city where I had contact with many of those accents and dialects. Once again thanks to the Internet you don't have to grow up in New York, Sydney, London, San Francisco, or any other cosmopolitan city. You simply need access to the Internet and you can get news from everywhere in the world. Here I want to make a few suggestions as well, there are web pages such as NPR at www.npr.org,  Reuters at www.reuters.org or AP press at www.ap.org to name a few. The best part about these three and pages like them is that you can hear accents from all over the world. And since this is real news, it means real people and real accents. The only way we can improve at anything is by practicing and mistakes.

Taking this a bit further there is a final form of practice, combining the dictation with the listening, find a podcast, video or similar format and listen and translate at the same time. One huge difference only you are going to hear what you produce, no pressure, no audience and an opportunity to practice translating any speaker and topic you wish. One thing I have noticed many people believe what we do as interpreters is extremely difficult, I don’t. Although I do believe it takes preparation and to do it well a love or passion for what we do.

Many of you are students and compared to me very young, so take advantage if you speak two languages, learn a third. If you're just getting started, find your niche, find your place to start and see where you can go from there. Try and take on fields and areas that interest and engage you, otherwise you may find it very hard. Don't wait till you graduate start trying to get some experience, if you get a chance to work in the booth do it. It won't kill you, and more than likely you'll like it. You don't have to jump in and work all day, start looking for agencies if you want try for an internship, check in your University, use social networks like LinkedIn, FaceBook, or even twitter. The best thing you can do is start now, everything now is networks and the best thing you can do is start looking for those networks.

Last piece of advice, look into getting certified as an official translator – interpreter, nationally and internationally. There many different certification bodies which one is right for you depends on where you plan to work, this is something you might want to take a little time to research.

I'd like to take a little time now. If there are any questions or doubts that you would like to pose.

(10 min. for questions?)

Finally, I'd like to thank all of you here students, professionals, colleagues, institutions and organizations, and most especially the organizers of the event for having invited me and given me the opportunity to be here with you today. I hope what I was able to share will be of use or at least give you a perspective from in the booth. Thank you very much.