Optical Reader app: translation of words

¡Hello!

Today I want to talk you about an app that I have discovered recently in my mobile phone: Optical Reader. This app allows you to capture text and scan QR codes through the viewfinder of the camera.

The reason to explain you how it works, it is because the app includes an option, in which you can activate dictionaries and choose the source language and the target language. If the app detects a word, it will translate it. In the next video you will see it clearly:

However, the app don't detect the sentences, the syntax or the combination of words, but every word separately. In the following video, I show you the fragment of a instructions manual in English, in which appears the term “power cord”, that it will be translated “cable de alimentación” in Spanish. For this example, I show you another option that the program offers: a screen capture of the text, in which all the words are detected and translated.

If we suppose that a person who don't understand English uses this app, he could think that, if we join the translation of both words, “power cord” means “cuerda de poder” (in English can be something like “power string”, literally). The word “cord” in Spanish has several meanings and this fact complicate the effectiveness. Maybe it will be easy to realize that in Spanish this translation is not correct, but if the language combination were different, maybe we don't knew what is the real meaning.

All this kind of apps can be very useful, but we must distinguish what is its real function. Optical Reader translates word, but don't make translations.

Interpretation (II): relay

Good afternoon!

Today I'm going to talk about the relay interpretation. This type of interpretation is used when there isn't an interpreter who can translate from the source language into the target language.

For example, we suppose that there is a conference in Germany, where a Japanese company wants to sell its products. The speaker only speaks Japanese, the audience only understand German and it is not possible the intervention of an interpreter with the language combination Japanese-German. In this case, it could participate two interpreters: the first one could make an interpretation from Japanese into English, and the second one could make another interpretation from English into German. In this example, the relay language is English.

In this type of interpretation it is important to consider that is not a direct interpretation from the original speech, but is an interpretation of the relay language interpretation.

Interpretation (I): liaison

If you like science fiction and you have seen the Star Wars films, you will know who's the character in the picture.

It's C-3PO, a protocol robot who claims to know more than 6 million forms of communication. In the films he's an interpreter between characters who speak different languages of the galaxy.

And that's what I'm going to talk about today. The interpretation is oral translation and there are different types: sight translation, whispered intepretation, relay, simultaneous interpretation, consecutive interpretation and liaison interpreting. It's the last one which makes C-3PO in Star Wars, and I had also the opportunity to practise this type of interpretation in the practice for the university.

Liaison interpreting is a modality that involves oral translation between two or more people who don't speak the same language. It's usually the translation of conversations, short fragments are translated into one language (it can be the mother tongue of the interpreter or direct translation) and into the foreign language (inverse translation). In my case, I did my practices in a hospital with a large number of foreign patients, so I translated the patient's symptoms to the doctor in Spanish, and the questions and answers of him, or treatments, among other things, to the patient in another language, in English or German.

In this type of translation, the interpreter has a essencial role, because he's between two people who don't understand and he should give them voice. It's a task that requires, not only knowledge of the languages that are speaking, but of the subject, because the interpreter must transmit the conversation in the proper way, in order that nobody had a lack of information.

The interpretation is not easy, as if it was installed in the brain and we already could be interpreters (as in the case of C-3PO). It requires a lot of practice, concentration, sensitivity and knowledge of the subject.