You can ask yourself: “why spend a relatively large amount of money on professional interpretation when a parent/neighbour/friend is bilingual and can help me?”
The answer is simple: because it is not enough to be bilingual to be an interpreter!
Just as it is not enough to know how to cook to be a chef, or to know how to draw to be a painter!
Let us first define what bilingualism is: bilingualism means mastering both languages and cultures perfectly. Few are truly bilingual because one language often takes precedence over the other, the one with which we live, the mother tongue. The interpreter, on the other hand, lives with his or her active languages every day.
Culture is also very important, an interpreter is necessarily bicultural. He will be able to guide his client so that his foreign interlocutor can understand him. You do not address an Emir, the way you do the president of a Portuguese company or an Asian interlocutor...
The interpreter is there to use the linguistic and cultural resources that will allow the message to be conveyed and understood by the other party.
The professional interpreter will be prepared for his mission. He will have studied the company, the product, the competition, the challenges. He will have researched the appropriate terminology and made glossaries.
Moreover, his ability to listen, his ability to step back and let the link be established between the various interlocutors, will make any meeting faster, more responsive and more efficient. It may also allow for reflection during his translation time.
In the case of simultaneous translation, the importance of resorting to a professional is even more obvious. Actually, the gap between the speaker and the translation is only 3 or 4 seconds. The conference interpreter is used to constantly moving from his left brain to his right brain and vice versa, to listening while speaking. It is an exercise that can be learned and not improvised.
Finally, in consecutive interpreting sessions the interpreter takes notes and conveys the speech every 10/15 minutes. A professional will never provide a sentence-by-sentence translation because it is disturbing for the listeners. This is, surprisingly, the most difficult exercise because you also have to know how to communicate.
Each meeting, seminar and conference requires a lot of preparation time. Interpretation can mean one more investment in your organization, but without it, what is really important, your message, will not be conveyed. Work with professional interpreters!
This text was not written by a native English speaker, but by a language lover. However, all our language services are always provided by native speakers.
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Since 1998 providing translation, transcription, interpretation and subtitling services, AP | Portugal Tech Language Solutions is a Portuguese translation company certified by the International Quality Standard ISO 17100, with a translation agency in Lisbon and another in Porto. Recognised internationally for its software and website localisation technology skills, SEO and consulting, it invests enthusiastically in the development of partnerships and cooperation in Luanda, Maputo, Bissau, Praia, São Tomé, as well as in Brazil and anywhere in the world where your organisation may need a partner for the African, Brazilian and European Portuguese language.