Being a student in the Department of English Interpretation and Translation totally changed my understanding of interpretation and translation. Before, like everybody does, I considered interpretation and translation as a piece of cake. In my mind, all the interpreters and translators had to do was simply to exchange vocabularies and shuffle the sentence structures into those of another language. However, I realized how ignorant I was about this field. Different with my thoughts, there were so much steps and skills to learn in this department to produce good interpretation and translation. Also, I started to be charmed by the life as an interpreter. I realized there are so many things to be a good interpreter, but especially, language, background knowledge, and passion seems to be the key quality that interpreter needs to have.
First of all, fluency in languages is one of the most important aspects to become a qualified interpreter. Interpretation is basically the process, which enables the communication between people who speak different languages without any difficulties or awkwardness. Therefore, to provide natural and high-quality interpretation, language is the fundamental ability that interpreter should possess. Fortunately, what I can enjoy and fully commit myself to is learning and being good in language. As a native Korean, I don't feel any difficulty with communicating in Korean, which is considered as one of the hardest languages to learn. Also, I've been interested and learned English for a quite a long time, which helped me to not fear and feel much difficulties in using English.
Second, background knowledge plays very significant role in high-quality interpretation. As a non-expert in specific field, understanding everything in certain field is nearly impossible. However, interpreters should briefly but clearly understand about the field with proper background knowledge. It will provide a better chance for them to make better interpretation. When I was young, I was influenced by my parents who read newspapers every morning. Their habit became my habit and I read newspapers, too. It seemed to be nothing when I was young, but now I know that habit left me a lot of knowledge in various fields. I still have a lot that I don't know about, but I'm sure that I'm going to learn as time goes by.
Last but not least, I value the passion in me the most. People might wonder why, but it's because interpreting requires ceaseless passion in whole career. Language and background knowledge are something very forgettable. It takes us short to forget, but long to recover. To become a better interpreter, we have to endure and put a lot of time and effort to improve, which can't be done without a passion. I think I am very blessed person who is passionate in learning languages and various things. I am sure this passion will bring me a success as an interpreter someday.
In conclusion, a successful interpreter needs to be fluent in languages, have broad range of knowledge, and good passion within them. Luckily, I have those powers in me to become a competent interpreter. In the future, I would like to work hard on my studies and achieve my dream.
to Jieun Choi from Ahn Sangwook
ReplyDelete1. I think you have a same idea with me. I also thought that EIT would be easy to do but it is highly demanding works than any other english-related jobs that i've been doing.
2. You want to become an interpreter as your future job. And you presented three aspects which interpreters should have:fluency in languages, background knowledge and the passion which are highly valued by you.
3. Overall, I like your writing because it is easy to read and the expressions or words you used are good. In addition, you cleary wrote your ideas in your writing.
Being a student in the Department of English Interpretation and Translation totally changed my understandings and attitude toward interpretation and translation. Before, like most of people do, I considered interpretation and translation as a piece of cake. My short understanding made me to consider the process as something very simple. To me, the process was all about to simply to exchange vocabularies and shuffle the sentence structures into those of another language. However, I realized how ignorant I was about this field. Different with my imaginations, there were so much steps and skills to learn in this department. Then, I was charmed by the life as an interpreter. I realized there are so many things to be a good interpreter, but especially, language, background knowledge, and passion seems to be the key quality that interpreter needs to have.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, fluency in languages is one of the essential aspects to become a qualified interpreter. Interpretation is basically the process that enables the communication between people who speak different languages without any difficulties or awkwardness. Therefore, to provide natural and high-quality interpretations, language is the fundamental ability that interpreter should possess. Fortunately, what I can enjoy and fully commit myself to is learning and improving my language ability. As a native Korean, I don’t feel any difficulty with communicating in Korean, which is considered as one of the hardest languages to learn. Also, I’ve been interested and learned English for a quite a long time, which helped me to not fear and feel difficulties in using English.
Second, background knowledge plays very significant role in high-quality interpretation. As a non-expert in a specific field, understanding everything about certain topic is nearly impossible. However, interpreters should briefly but clearly understand about the field with proper background knowledge that they are going to interpret. It will provide a better chance for them to produce better interpretation. When I was young, I was influenced by my parents who read newspapers every morning. Looking my parents reading newspapers, I naturally got interested in reading newspapers, too. It seemed like nothing when I was young, but now I know that habit provided a lot of knowledge in various fields. I still have a lot that I don’t know about, but I’m sure that I’m going to learn as time goes by.
Last but not least, I value the passion in me the most. People might wonder why, but it’s because interpreting requires ceaseless passion through the whole career. Language and background knowledge are very forgettable when we don’t try hard to keep it up. In other words, it takes us short to forget, but long to recover. To become a better interpreter, we have to endure and put a lot of time and effort to improve, which can’t be done without a passion. I think I am very blessed person who is passionate in learning languages and various things. I am sure this passion will bring me a success as an interpreter someday.
In conclusion, a successful interpreter needs to be fluent in languages, have broad range of knowledge, and good passion within them. Luckily, I have those powers in me to become a competent interpreter. In the future, I would like to work hard on my studies and achieve my dream.