Sprache und Wissen symposium
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Between Ear & Mouth
Berlin 2016

Terézia Mora, a fiction writer and translator, moderated an hour’s conversation with Lilian Astrid Geese and Günther Orth, both interpreters, on the craft of Simultaneous Interpretation. I found this symposium while quickly scanning through the offerings of Sprache und Wissen, and I had smushed the concept of interpretation into my understanding of translation and therefore was surprised by the track of the talk.

There were two interpreters in a booth above me, activating exactly what the talk was about by interpreting the German into English. English speakers like me wore headphones that received the English at a very slight delay to the German, laughing/responding seconds behind the direct listeners. Clearly, the talk was highlighting the job and it seemed, or maybe I was projecting, that the interpreters would stumble when they were translating concepts that discussed THEM doing their job. That task would be mind bending, finding yourself the subject of your interpretation has to be a brain twister.

Orth described the process as the act interpreting the concepts from the speech into images that form a whole from the original language, a conceptual image, and interpreting that back into language. Spoken word–>concept image–>spoken word. Spoken language is semi-automatic and the interpreter can rely on that mode, with no time to process or pick apart the concepts while benefitting from the entire sensuous experience of the conversation in real time, atmosphere and tension.

Top left is the interpreters booth. With a clear view of speakers, screens and some audience for interpretation of the entire atmosphere.