[EYE ON ENGLISH (7)] Lee offers advice for aspiring interpreters
This is the seventh installment of a series of interviews with experts in English education aimed at offering tips, trends and information related to English learning and teaching in Korea. — Ed.
By Yang Sung-jin
Lee Soh-hee, professor of Seoul University of Foreign Studies, said graduate students majoring in interpretation and translation are deeply anxious to improve their English competence during summer vacation, but hard work would pay off more than short cuts.
“I totally understand my students who want to move to a next level as fast as possible, especially during the summer break, but whatever they do, they have to devote plenty of time and energy, which cannot be possibly done in just two months,” Lee said.
Lee, who is teaching at the university’s Korean-English Interpretation and Translation Department, said the outcome might be smaller than one expects, but that’s the way interpretation works.
“People are talking about 10,000 hours of training to become an expert in a specific field, and I agree that we need to invest an enormous amount of time to sharpen our skills to stay ahead in the competition, which is getting tougher for interpreters in recent years,” Lee said.
A growing number of people fluent in English are working in various fields, using their professional knowledge, and full-time interpreters are finding it hard to catch up with the trends unless they arm themselves with latest information and necessary background knowledge to mediate between two different languages.
“There are now many fluent speakers of English here, and graduate students studying interpretation or those who want to enter the interpretation graduate school should consider the fact that they might fall behind quickly unless they truly excel in what they do,” Lee said.
Lee said she does not consider herself as “foreign-educated interpreter.” Born in Korea, she briefly lived in Britain when she was an elementary school student, but the experience did not give her what others call “native speaker” status.
For instance, when she was in the United States as an exchange student, she could not speak English very much, even failing to answer about where she would have lunch. “My roommate later told me that she thought I was unable to speak English at all,” Lee said.
Her career started when she was a senior at college, getting a part-time job at a domestic consulting firm in Seoul. After graduation, she worked as an interpreter for the consulting company, an experience that boosted her competence and changed her life once and for all.
“For about one year, I was given a chance to speak both English and Korean as much as I could, and this turned out to be a valuable training for me to step up as an interpreter,” Lee said.
Lee belatedly noticed her aptitude in interpretation and enrolled in an interpretation graduation school to get more systematic training.
“When I was attending classes at the graduate school, I found it very exciting to learn about interpretation techniques, because many of the tips were directly related to what I did as a novice interpreter,” Lee said.
Lee, who is also working as a conference interpreter besides her duty as a professor, said interpretation students should be aware that what they do is to deliver other people’s message effectively.
“Interpreters have the privilege to engage deeply in what other people talk about because they have to understand not only the gist but also all the details at a deeper level than other audience,” Lee said.
Lee stressed that students should make efforts to understand that interpretation belongs to the broader category of storytelling. “A speaker can throw in countless details and facts, but if an interpreter gets the broader picture, or the key idea behind storytelling, other details naturally fall into place. Figures and small details, therefore, are secondary and you have to capture storytelling,” Lee said.
The question is how to improve one’s ability to grasp the ideas in the context of storytelling. Lee said the answer lies in extensive reading. “Our direct experiences are limited, but we can go beyond the limit by reading a lot, I mean, reading everything you encounter, including even an advertisement banner on the street,” Lee said.
Those who want to improve English in general could use training methods practiced at the interpretation graduate school, she said. Sight translation is a case in point. “Pick an office document or a newspaper article, and translate sentences into English in simple and concise sentences,” Lee said.
The key technique in sight translation is to produce short English sentences, instead of complicated and long ones. “The more you practice turning Korean sentences into short English sentences, the faster you can do it, and it is very important to get faster,” she said.
Lee also recommended interview articles in English newspapers and magazines. “Interview articles are based on what people actually say, so it’s effective to train one’s speaking ability using the scripts, and interview articles are more interesting than other straight news,” she said.
(insight@heraldm.com)
2009.07.02
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