Chinese Whispers

Categories: community, words, translation

Date: 18 August 2008 13:27:41

In the comments on my Geblogstag post, Steve, of "30 going on 13" fame wrote the following:

"Speaking of the Olympics and translation... I didn't catch the opening ceremony, but overheard a bit of it on a big screen round the corner from my office as I left work yesterday. Some important dignitary was introduced, and began speaking in Chinese; then a few seconds later, Huw Edwards, who was commentating on the ceremony, started telling us what the Chinese dignitary was saying. Which left me wondering...
a) Is Huw Edwards secretly very fluent in Chinese?
b) Does the BBC employ a very fast translator who can instantaneously prompt Huw with an English version of events? or
c) Do you think the BBC already knew what the Chinese fella was going to say?

I suspect it's the last one, but I'd love it to be the first."

Well, I suppose it could even be a combination of all three.... but I suspect that the authorities had already released a translation of the official opening speech (if that's what it was). It is possible that the BBC had a simultaneous interpreter as in option (b) - there must be quite a party going on over there in Beijing for linguists at the moment.

I take my hat off to simultaneous interpreters. I honestly have no idea how they manage to listen to the speaker in one language and give the interpretation in another language and listen to the next sentence in the first language all at the same time.

I was once asked to (thankfully, informally) interpret a meeting which was held in German. There were half a dozen English speakers there. The German speaker launched off......with a subordinate clause [hold that in your head for later] and another [hold that as well] followed by the subject [great, now we can get going] auxillary verb [bit more progress] quick meander off into another clause [hold on to that...]. I was hanging on to all this information unable to use it for the time being when Bob the Aussie (for, gentle readers, it was he) interrupted my concentration with his impatient..."Come on, come on, what's he saying?". I had to tell him that I didn't know. Not that I didn't understand the German, for I did, but Bob, bless him, had just talked all over the main verb which I had been waiting for and which comes at the end of the sentence. And I'd missed the beginning of the next sentence... so we were somewhat handicapped....

To give non-German speakers an idea of the challenge... the sentence above in German would be something like: "Not that I the German not understand did, for I did, but Bob, bless him, all over the main verb for which I waiting had been and which at the end of the sentence comes just talked had."

True pedants will know that "but" introduces a main clause in German and so this is not an *entirely* authentic example but it gives you the general idea.

Bob the Aussie was of German and Austrian parentage and should really better known have!