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Mental Agility
MENTAL AGILITY AND IMPROVISATION
SHORT-TERM MEMORY: our short-term memory is where most information processing takes place. It is where we try to give meaning to what we see and what we hear, converting this information into something significant, filling the blanks with elements from long-term memory. At this stage, information is held for 15 to 30 seconds, more than enough for it to be reused.
To reduce memory problems, you might take notes during the interpretations. Names, numbers and dates should be written down, since they are very difficult, if not impossible, to retain, particularly when there are several of these elements grouped together. The same applies to complicated technical terms and for all information that is new to the interpreter, these should be written down in order to be analysed and understood.
If you don’t know a word, just try to find a description with words you do know. For example, a ‘civil servant’ could be described as ‘someone who works for a state’s administration’.
If you don’t know a word you could also just use something opposite. Instead of a ‘civil servant’, you could say ‘someone who doesn’t work in the private sector’. Most of the time people will understand what you mean soon enough.
If you don’t know a word you could use a more general or more specific word. For example, if you can’t think of the word ‘car’ you could say ‘means of transport’ or ‘vehicle’. Or you could go more specific and say the brand of the car (‘Ferrari’).
Assess how important the word you want to interpret really is to your story. If you want to say: ‘Yesterday, I went to the cinema by car. It was a great movie’, is ‘by car’ really important? If not, leave it out so you can continue the conversation.
You could use improvisation if you understand the meaning a word but can’t remember the translation. Sometimes, though, you won’t even understand the word and have absolutely no clue about what it could mean.
So how do you react when you don’t understand a word during a conversation in a foreign language? Do you panic? Do you start looking so hard for the right translation that the rest of the conversation becomes background noise? A good interpreter will stay calm, keep listening and try to make sense of the word. How? By using two things: context, and their memory.
Interpretation puts enormous stress on the brain’s working capacity. After all, you’re listening to what a speaker has to say in a foreign language, trying to understand, translating and speaking in your mother tongue – all at the same time. The obvious result at the beginning is a cognitive overload, and, quite often, miserable failure. So do not give up!
You’ll need to learn to listen for ideas and for structure. In every sentence or paragraph, grasp the main idea (sometimes just one word) and you’ll be fine. Then go after the structure.
One of the first things you learn as an interpreter is to pay extreme attention to conjunctions (like AND, BUT, ALTHOUGH, HOWEVER,…). These mark events and twists in a text and are important for structure and for following the story. Interpreters call this ‘analytic listening’. Write these structure words down along with one keyword per idea, and you’ll be amazed how much you remember after listening.
You must make an extreme effort to imagine the segment you hear as vividly as possible. That includes mainly visualisation, auditory experiences or feelings. The more senses you use the better.
