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.