If you involved in short term mission, eventually you will yourself in front of an audience working with translators. A great translator can make your job look easy, but a person who has never worked with a translator can make things difficult for the audience.
9 Keys to Working with Translators
Here are some thoughts from my translator Stephana in Haiti of what it takes to do a fantastic job, or skip the video and read the tips below.
Translation is a skill that is difficult to master. Some translators are exceptional, while others will make your job harder. Much more than simply knowing the words, the best translators share the unspoken dialogue as well.
Stephano gave some great ideas from a translators perspective in the video above.
If you ever find yourself working with translators, here are the critical keys you need to communicate effectively.
1. Speak clearly
The best thing about working with translators is that you have time. You have to pause after every sentence. Use that time to plan what you will say next.
Take the time. It will help you lay out your thoughts so they are simple to understand.
2. Speak a little more slowly than usual
When you are working with translators, both of you are actively speaking, listening, observing the audience and preparing the next thought. Take some time to do this.
Tempo is always a tool for great communicators. Don’t be afraid to pause along the way.
3. Don’t yell
Contrary to popular practice, increasing your volume does not help a person understand what you are saying.
Your translator should echo both your meaning as well as your tone and pacing. So if you yell, your translator will yell. Do you want your audience to remember the volume or the content?
4. If you want to stay out of hot water, be careful of idioms.
A translator may need to go to great lengths to understand the ins and outs of your turn of phrase.
Idioms rarely translate. A pun or verbal joke that works well in your language, usually won’t work in another. Keep your language interesting but be cautious of too many ‘sayings’.
5. Keep it short.
A long run-on sentence is difficult to translate as the meaning will get lost while you are talking (and the translator is trying to pay attention), take a breath, pause, and shorten your speech.
Your speech will be twice as long with the two of you speaking. You may need to shorten what you were planning to say.
Speak your point. Speak it short.
6. Be careful of repetition.
If you normally repeat for emphasis, remember some listeners in the room understand both the translator as well as you. They are already hearing the message repeated. When you repeat a phrase, it can get tedious.
When you repeat a phrase, it will get tedious.
7. Keep a flow going.
Once your translator begins to understand your pattern, you will begin to speak more simultaneously. Your pace will begin to flow with your translator.
Don’t get flustered if they begin to speak even as you are finishing your sentence. This is a natural progression when you are working with translators that know what they are doing.
8. Allow for responses.
When you are being translated, it gives you more time to think about what you will say next. It is easy to keep planning your next sentence. As you listen to your translator it will feel like you are in a conversation.
Remember your translator is not the one you are having a conversation with. Pay attention to the person you are actually speaking to, do they need you to stop speaking so they can respond?
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Finally. If you have never found yourself working with translators, consider this last pro tip option:
9. Practice ahead of time
You don’t need to find an audience and a foreign language to practice. If you are a team leader play this team training game with someone from your team.
Have a participant come up to share a story or testimony. Act as the interpreter.
Simply rephrase their words. Interpret from English into English.
If they speak too long … Skip some of what they say.
Misunderstand idiom.
Throw in strange “explanations” of the cultural significance of their body language.
Your team will love it, and learn valuable information about working with translators.
Have you ever needed to translate? Do you have other tips you could share?