IW 176: InterpreTips: Think, Think, Think - How Do We Do It?

Think a thought. Thought a think.

How do we do such a phenomenal thing as thinking during our work.?

I try something different in this episode. I take you for a walk outside while I talk. Listen to the sounds of the southside of Prague while I discuss our interpreting thought process and the skills we need to do so.

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Transcript

IW 176: InterpreTips: Think, Think, Think - How Do We Do It?

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[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS]

00:00:02 Tim [ONLY TIM SPEAKS IN THIS EPISODE]

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Wherever you are, this is the Interpreter's Workshop podcast. I'm Tim Curry, your host. Here we talk everything sign language interpreting the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs, the sideways of interpreting. If you're a student, a new interpreter, experienced interpreter, this is the place for you. If you want to know more, go to interpretersworkshop.com.

00:00:28

Let's start talking... interpreting.

[ROCK INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

00:00:34 

And now the quotes of the day by Winnie the Pooh.

00:00:39

“Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.”

00:00:45

And…

00:00:47

“Sometimes you have to rethink the things you thought you thought through.”

00:00:53

Today I go on a little journey to think about things we've thought through before.

00:00:59

This episode is a little different than others. I'm not sitting behind this microphone in front of a computer, but rather well, you'll see. Let me know whether or not you like this episode in this format. I'm not going to edit the audio as much as I normally do because I want you to experience this as I go for a walk outside.

00:01:22

That's right. Today I'm going to think about things and how we think about them and how that applies to interpreting. So today I walk the walk, and I talk the talk.

00:01:36

Let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:01:42

Well, here I am.

00:01:44

I'm up on a balcony high up.

00:01:48

Overlooking part of Prague, watching a tram go by, making the noise down the tracks, cars left and right, trucks hauling things, looking out over some forest.

00:02:02

Seeing hay bales in a field that are ready, ready for the winter.

00:02:08

A large soccer field, as opposed to a small soccer field. Kids practicing playing, getting ready for those big games.

00:02:17

And I even see a small basketball court teenagers playing having fun in this beautiful fall weather. Ah, you can smell the humidity in the air. It smells like rain. We've had some.

00:02:32

And I think there's going to be some again, real soon.

00:02:37

People in coats walking around.

00:02:40

Cars in parking lots.

00:02:42

So many things, so many colors of the trees, but most of the trees, the, the leaves are down. They've fallen, which is why Americans call it fall instead of autumn.

00:02:57

Yeah, this is life.

00:02:59

All kinds of things to see. Taking the breath of fresh air.

00:03:04

Beautiful things to think about.

00:03:06

Why am I talking about this stuff?

00:03:09

What is going on with this interpreter's brain? Well, why don't we take a walk together outside?

00:03:18

Think about what we're thinking about. Now that was very profound.

00:03:24

It's a conundrum, a puzzle, something to think about.

00:03:28

“How we think.” Come on, let's take a walk.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:03:37

So, let's get started. [sounds of wind]

00:03:39

Here I am walking down the sidewalk with beautiful yellow leaved trees.

00:03:47

A lot of the leaves are on the ground.

00:03:50

It’s quiet here at the back of this older apartment complex built quite a long time ago in an era when people weren't quite as free. But let's not talk about that now. Walking through the leaves, it's a beautiful time.

00:04:12

I just walked down several flights of stairs.

00:04:16

So, you can probably hear that in my breath excuse the pauses once in a while when I actually try to take in breath and continue breathing as I walk the beautiful wind in my face. Now, as I've turned the corner, you can start to hear the traffic. [strong wind sounds]

00:04:33

I wonder why cars headlights go off when you have a blinker on. On these modern newfangled cars, haven't figured that one out yet.

00:04:48

Maybe it's easier to see the blinker with the white light off.

00:04:53

It is daytime and, in this country, we do have to have our lights on all the time, unless, of course, we're parked in the engines off. [traffic sounds]

00:05:05

Funny how your mind goes from different topics to different topics. I never know exactly where my thoughts will go.

00:05:15

Or actually where they come from, sometimes every car has its own unique sound that's interesting to me.

00:05:24

And the trams on the tracks.

00:05:27

Going by, as I'm walking down the sidewalk, (sorry, pavement for those of you in the UK) next to this rather busy road here on the South side of Prague.

00:05:44

Not many buildings here. You're probably wondering. Still, why is he talking about all of this stuff and just what he thinks in general? Well, let's think about that. [Ha!] See what I did there?

00:06:01

“Thinking.”

00:06:03

As interpreters, we tend to think we have to know what people mean, how they think, why they think it's really hard to read people's minds. [car passing]

00:06:17

Especially when they're driving at 50 kilometers an hour right beside you. But we do get some clues and some hints.

00:06:25

That we train ourselves in, we practice being aware of what we're seeing and with practice, with experience, with time as we take this journey, we start to see those clues quicker and without even thinking of them.

00:06:43

We just notice them. It's part of being socially aware of our surroundings and how people interact. [cars passing by]

00:06:53

Not everybody can do it.

00:06:56

Some can do it better than others. [wind blowing] That's why we always say interpreters are very flexible, adaptable. We change quickly our idea, our thoughts, our perspective on what something is and what something means and what somebody thinks or means when they say certain things. [cars passing]

00:07:18

Ah, it's really a good, good smell after a rain. I forgot what that's called now. There is a word for it. Picor, I believe. I can't remember that. Look it up. [car speeding fast] Whoa. Somebody's going fast.

00:07:35

Yeah, I didn't catch what he was thinking except…

00:07:38

“Please don't let there be a policeman there. Please don't let there be a policeman there.” I think that's what it was going through his head.

00:07:45

Or maybe I'm just feeling from my own feelings.

00:07:50

The trouble is we can never truly know what someone's thinking or what they truly mean.

00:07:56

I know I get it wrong maaaany times in my life.

00:08:01

Even when you think you know someone very well, you don't always know what they mean. Your child, your spouse, your sibling, your parents.

00:08:12

It's not always clear. And then we have a whole class of persons called politicians. Yeah. Secrets upon secrets, layers upon layers everywhere. So how can we even do our job?

00:08:29

With all of these thoughts, meanings, racing bias left and right, trying to train ourselves in the capture of all those clues and hints to give us what we think they might mean, maybe, right now. Well for me, what all these skills and all this training does…

00:08:50

Hello tram. [tram goes by, cars pass]

00:08:52

All of our skill development comes at a price and the price is we realize we know less and less of what we think we know.

00:09:03

And when that realization comes around, we stop working on those skills of under trying to understand and know the meaning, and we start working on the skills that help us fix our interpretation to match the meaning that we continually see developing. It's that skill that takes time and experience – because we need not only train those skills, but we need to train the skills that we think in all reality, don't help us too much because it's always going to change.

00:09:34

We have to train those skills and the skills of fixing it, changing the direction of our interpretation. We need both. We need experience, skill development, and the realization and understanding that we have to be adaptable.

00:09:52

That's where knowing our languages as fluently as we can, the cultures connected to those languages and then the experience of so many different situations. [cars passing by]

00:10:05

All of that tied together gives us the more or, well, let me say that again. It gives us a better way of adapting and switching the interpretation to make more sense to match the meaning better.

00:10:24

It doesn't mean going back and erasing everything that we've just done but rather finding a way to make the interpretation we, we created, pivot or act as though it's turning towards the true meaning, like it always was and always has been going that way.

00:10:45

That takes skill.

00:10:48

And in the middle of all of that, we're adding information that we forgot to add in, or we've been holding because we didn't have time to put it in.

00:10:57

And now, because we realize that the meaning is different, now we understand even better what that information that we left out means. And so, we add it in to help the full meaning of the interpretation to come to fruition, to succeed in what the speaker actually wanted.

00:11:17

So as all these thoughts are racing this way and that next to me now, I realize that as interpreters we really know how to focus and concentrate.

00:11:30

We do this every time without even thinking about it, because we have all of those skills combined of experience, fluency in the languages and understanding how to adapt but on top of it all, realizing we're not perfect, that we don't really get it.

00:11:54

And now let me play devil's advocate, maybe realizing we do get it, because that's the whole point, right? We know that we don't know.

00:12:03

Which means we get it.

00:12:07

Because what we're getting, what we're understanding is that we don't know.

00:12:12

And therefore, we always have to test it. Try it.

00:12:15

Adapt it. Separate out what is not important.

00:12:21

And put together what is important.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:12:24

So, what do you think? Does it matter? Did you think a thought? Did you thought what you thought? Is that what you thought? Stop thinking. Just click on the links and Buy Me A Coffee. Throw money at it. It'll go away. Oh wait. Maybe I won't. Well, thank you for supporting me. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

I'm taking a little break inside… [cars drive by]

00:12:46

Wow, those are loud cars.

00:12:50

I'm taking a little break inside a bus stop.

00:12:54

So, the wind is not quite as strong, but the sounds from the vehicles are. [car speeds by]

00:13:03

OK, let's go... Let's go… ble-ble-blble [messes up what he is saying]

00:13:06

OK, let's go back the way we came.

00:13:10

That's what it is. We get it. We get that we don't get it, which means we do get it. Do you get it?

00:13:16

Do you know what I'm thinking?

00:13:18

Well, I just told you what I'm thinking. I hope. And I hope it actually is clear.

00:13:25

Because…

00:13:26

We are superheroes, or we can be. The better we are at this, the more experience we have, the more realization we have. When we stop worrying about the details.

00:13:39

Focus on what really matters, getting it, which means we're always working to improve ourselves. Learning from every experience.

00:13:51

Every fast-moving thought that's going by loudly trying to change our focus, trying to distract us with loudness, information we don't need, the colors of the cars, the vans, the motorcycles, the crazy drivers, the fast, the slow.

00:14:12

All those distractions [cars passing] we can quickly rule them out of the meaning, even though we can still talk about them and see them and, and know that they're there.

00:14:25

Because that is more extra, more extra?

00:14:30

Maybe, maybe even just extra information that at the moment we don't know is important.

00:14:39

So, what we do is we hold that information until that…

00:14:42

…until that interpretation is done, when we have more time to think about those distractions, that information all on the outside of the core information, and we can analyze it to see, is that information actually relevant?

00:15:00

Was I dismissing it correctly or incorrectly? [cars driving by]

00:15:05

That's a good power to have.

00:15:07

Being able to see all of that stuff, think about those distractions, but still push them away until you have more time and energy to analyze them to see if they actually are valuable to the meaning.

00:15:25

Well, I hope you enjoyed this walk with me. I hope your journey as an interpreter is healthy, as this walk is.

00:15:34

Smells as bright and… [tram wheels squealing softly on the tracks] as wonderful as the tram zooming by very few barriers to the smooth journey that you have (and I'm going to try to stop the metaphors now, the similes, because they just don't work sometimes).

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:15:56

This has been a good walk.

00:16:00

Because while I'm talking through the thoughts that I've had, not sitting behind the computer at the microphone with one topic on the paper to talk about, but instead I'm using “The Walking” for two different things, one to give you the thoughts that I've been thinking about, about thinking and what we think of thinking. Uff. And for my own self-care, taking time to get out, walk and see the world.

00:16:36

[car zooms by] Hear the world, feel the world, smell the world. Thanks for coming along.

00:16:42

Until next week, keep calm. Keep thinking about interpreting. I'll see you next week.

00:16:50

Take care now.

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:17:27]