Tuesday, April 29, 2008

translating, interpreting

This month I have been able to both translate a website professionally, and interpret for a visiting soccer coach from the US. This has been such great experience!

The translation was really, really difficult. Translation is not something I want to do as a career. Although it does largely depend on the text, and I was translating business speak full of euphemisms and technical language, but at least it was German into English.

And yesterday I went to the State Sports School (of the Saarland) to help interpret for a soccer coach doing a workshop here for young girls and coaches. It was soooo challenging. It's always easiest to translate into your native language and most of the work last night was English to German. I worked with this English teacher from my school, who did most of the work. He just wanted me there to be able to take over for him every once in a while because it's really tiring work. And when the German coaches asked him questions I did all the English to German interpreting. I am going back this afternoon to do a bit more.

Interpreting is definitely more interesting to me than translating. I have so much respect for the teacher I was working with. He was really great. Partially it's also knowing how to summarize well, because you don't need to translate every word. So the coach would talk, explain a technique or drill and what it does for the soccer player, and then we would interpret. (So it wasn't simultaneous, we took turns speaking, English/German).

So I learned how to say muscle strain, guard, cones, fundamental drills, pre-season, dribbling...

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