Practice Makes Perfect
B & A Continues its Monthly Mentoring Meetings Educational Series for Language Interpreters

“I was interpreting a dispute between an electric company representative and a Russian-speaking customer. When the rep declined the consumer’s request to lower his monthly bill, the Russian gentleman said, ‘Well, a goose and a pig will never be friends,’ meaning people with different interests will never agree with each other. How was I supposed to interpret this? I didn’t think the rep would take kindly the mentioning of a pig, so I just conveyed the meaning without direct translation,” – Liana, an interpreter between Russian and English languages, told this story to her fellow interpreters at one of the Monthly Mentoring Meetings conducted by translation agency Bromberg & Associates. May’s topic was “Paremiology for Linguists: Interpreting Proverbs and Idioms.”

Relaying proverbs and idiomatic expressions from one language into another is one of the many challenges interpreters face. Usually, interpreters beg their clients not to use idioms because they don’t translate well and bring general confusion into communication. Very few remember to comply, and it is no surprise. Idioms, proverbs, clichés, slogans, and catch phrases are the very substance of the language that epitomizes a unique way of how people think and organize the reality.

So what should the interpreter, who is called upon to convey these messages instantaneously do? The best case scenario is to come up with an identical proverb in the target language. Paremiologists, the scientists who study proverbs, found proverbs, such as, The apple never falls far from the tree or Strike the iron while it is hot, exist in more than fifty languages. However, many proverbs don’t have a direct or a remote equivalent in other languages. One of our favorite sayings, Monday morning quarterback, may not be understood even by people living in English-speaking countries other than the U.S.

To meet the challenge, the interpreter needs to expand his knowledge of the proverbs in his working languages. Finding corresponding proverbs and idiomatic expressions should become a part of the interpreter’s professional development routine along with building specialized terminology glossaries. One head is good, but two are better, thought folks at Bromberg & Associates inviting their contract interpreters to participate in the seminar of paremiology. Interpreters of Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese and Mandarin languages got together a few weeks ago to learn, share stories, and exercise their proverbial wit. In this case, too many cooks didn’t spoil the broth, in this linguistic kitchen.

Monthly Mentoring Meetings are professional educational meetings designed by Bromberg & Associates to assist interpreters and translators on how to handle the many different challenges of interpretation in Southeast Michigan.