Even though I’m relatively new to the field of interpreting, I’ve gathered a few tips over the past few years: some from school, some from real life. Here are a few things that I like to focus on when I’m interpreting:
-Before any conference, I still get pretty nervous. What helps me the most in calming my nerves, is preparation. The more I know about the conference, the speakers, their bios, their presentations, handouts… the more I feel in control of the situation. As soon as you book a job, always ask the organizers for an agenda, speaker bios, and their presentations. It might take them a while to get back to you, which is why it is essential to ask for these as soon as possible. Clients need to know that preparation is a huge part of our job and that it can greatly affect the quality of our interpretation.
-I always prepare a glossary, either using the materials provided by the client or if no materials are provided, I just do my own research to create one. If the conference is on tractors for instance, I will open Google and type “tractors + glossary”. This will give me a monolingual glossary which I can then translate and enter into my own document. Continue reading
