The caudate nucleus

November 23, 2014 2:06 PM

What goes on in the brains of simultaneous interpreters. Miles told me about an agricultural meeting at which delegates discussed frozen bull’s semen; a French interpreter translated this as “matelot congelés”, or ‘deep-frozen sailors’. (via)

I ask him if he would have predicted that the caudate would be involved in simultaneous interpretation. He says that at first he wouldn’t have. “The caudate is involved in the intentionality of an action, in its goal-directedness. Not so much in carrying it out but in why you’re doing it.” Then he thought about what interpreters do. Computers translate by rote, often with risible results. Humans have to think about meaning and intent. “The interpreter must actually try to identify what the message is and translate that,” says Parkinson. He agrees that the involvement of the caudate makes sense.

posted by spamandkimchi (12 comments total)

... an agricultural meeting at which delegates discussed frozen bull’s semen; a French interpreter translated this as ...

If you're giving a talk on a specialized subject that will be simultaneously translated, it's a good idea to meet with the interpreters (plural, they swap out every twenty minutes) beforehand and go over some of the concepts and terminology.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:10 PM on November 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

Mod note: Several comments about browser idiosyncracies deleted, just starting us off fresh.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:19 PM on November 23, 2014

I've done simultaneous translations, and they are exhausting. But you can get "in the zone", so that helps. It's also almost possible to predict what the speaker is going to say sometimes, and that removes a lot of cognitive load.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:34 PM on November 23, 2014

I've worked in conferences where five languages were in use and the translators had to be capable of covering every combination of English, Spanish, French, Japanese and Mandarin. Amazing stuff.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 3:55 PM on November 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you're from outside Iowa, and you want your English translated to Iowan I am your man.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:03 PM on November 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

I have read about a UN delegate from one of the French-speaking African countries making an impassioned speech in the General Assembly taking the developed world's nations to task for a persistent patronizing view of Africa. He was at pains to stress that this was not the primitive superstitious land that some of them clearly imagined, but a rapidly developing continent making huge strides in communication, medicine and education. He ended his speech with a ringing declaration that, "Africa does not build altars to the gods," -- "L'Afrique n'érige pas les autels aux dieux."

This, alas, the French-to-English interpreter heard as the homophonous, "L'Afrique n'érige pas les hôtels odieux," and confidently said, "Africa does not build bad hotels."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:23 PM on November 23, 2014 [40 favorites]

I can't see the phrase "simultaneous interpreter" without immediately thinking of the character in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, even though I haven't read it in almost 30 years. The brain is weird, man.

Interesting article!
posted by onlyconnect at 9:18 PM on November 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am a simultaneous interpreter. At multi-language conferences, there is in most cases a 'core' language, generally English, which acts as the hub. If the speaker speaks in French, for instance, and somebody is listening to the Italian channel, they are hearing something that has been translated from French to English by one interpreter, then English to Italian by another one.

It is a widespread experience among us that it is quite possible not to be giving close attention to what you are translating. It is also the most brain-intensive activity I know of: interpreters generally tend to do 20 minutes max at a stretch then take a 20-minute break (hence working in pairs). On the few occasions when I did up to 3 hours alone, I was very near fainting by the end of it.

The most annoying thing about it is it can be quite hard to stop. The job's over, you walk out into the street, trying to relax your throbbing brain... and you find yourself translating every sign, every sentence that passes your ear... You need somewhere silent and devoid of writing to sit for a good ten minutes before the module finally fades out.
posted by holist at 9:21 PM on November 23, 2014 [29 favorites]

Onlyconnect, that's exactly what I thought of. And balalaika music ha.
posted by discopolo at 11:37 PM on November 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am not an interpreter but I am trilingual and translating (even not simultaneously) is exhausting. I remember being the middleman for an hour of a Farsi/Spanish conversation (my second and third languages) and at the end of it I needed to lay down.

I'm always curious what language other polylingual speakers, especially interpreters, think in. I think in a mix of all three languages, but depends on who I'm with and what I'm thinking about.

One of the things I understand least is how people who speak many languages manage to keep from mixing them up while speaking, especially languages that are similar.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:18 PM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

One of the things I understand least is how people who speak many languages manage to keep from mixing them up while speaking, especially languages that are similar.

The bilingual brain supposedly does things in parallel, and sort things out at the end:

"To maintain the relative balance between two languages, the bilingual brain relies on executive functions, a regulatory system of general cognitive abilities that includes processes such as attention and inhibition. Because both of a bilingual person’s language systems are always active and competing, that person uses these control mechanisms every time she or he speaks or listens. This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions."

(at least that usually works, the word "skyfall" means "heavy downpour" in Swedish, but I didn't remember that until I walked out from the movie, and it was raining...)
posted by effbot at 3:40 PM on November 24, 2014

Seconding BuddhaInABucket on translation being exhausting. I've done interpreting (consecutive only) on a few occasions, and my main takeaway from it was that (a) it was very, very different from the translation that I did on a day-to-day basis, and (b) the qualities that make me a good translator (particularly my willingness to argue with myself and my near-obsessive editing) make me a bad interpreter.

cjorgensen's comment about translating English into Iowan is actually pretty on-point -- and chances are very good that nobody here except a trained interpreter would be able to do simultaneous English-Iowan interpreting. One of the basic techniques for training interpreters is "shadowing" -- listening to the radio in your native language and repeating exactly what people are saying while they're saying it. Try it some time: it's surprisingly hard to do.
posted by bokane at 4:00 PM on November 24, 2014