The distinction between interpreter and translator

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Random musings, Translation.
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An ongoing debate in our industry is whether or not to push the distinction between an interpreter and a translator. We in the industry all know that interpreters talk and translators work with the written word, but people outside the industry automatically assume I am an interpreter when I say I am a translator. I have to explain to almost everyone I meet that I prefer to “sit behind my computer and find the perfect word” instead of rambling on until my point gets across (because, believe me, if I were an interpreter that would be EXACTLY what would happen – I was not blessed with the gift of off-the-cuff speaking like my interpreter colleagues…).

It certainly doesn’t help that those in television, movies and print media don’t even know the difference. We all cringe when we hear “We need a translator in here!” when a police officer on a show like Law & Order: SVU or CSI needs to interview a witness who doesn’t speak English. But it seems only a translator or interpreter even notices the difference. The most recent episode of The Good Wife is a good example of this. An ongoing storyline features America Ferrera’s character as an undocumented worker who had been brought to the States at age 2 and was working as a nanny for the political opponent of the main character’s husband. The husband’s cunning political consultant leaked the story, but has fallen for her character so he was secretly trying to get her naturalization paperwork pushed through and even saved her father from being deported the week before. This past week she was working as an intern for the main character’s law firm. She just happened to notice a mistranslation in a previous translation that gained them a decisive advantage in the deposition between an oil company and a drilling company that was owned $87 million and just happened to be nationalized by Hugo Chavez that day. She then interpreted for the team of lawyers in the deposition – and even for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela via a monitor. Her efforts won them a settlement – all as a lowly intern. What a gal!

In real life, the Jenner twins and Corinne McKay were recently featured on NPR explaining the difference between an interpreter and translator, and NPR got it wrong in a story the very next day…

It’s enough to make anyone throw their hands up in the air and stop bothering. A colleague on one of my German listservs is quite vocal about no longer bothering with clearing up the misconception. She feels it simply isn’t worth the effort. I say we still need to continue fighting the good fight, but we need to know when to inform and educate and when to simply move on and not belabor the point. As Corinne states in the comments of the aforenamed blog post, she adheres to Chris Durban’s advice of “keep it short, upbeat, don’t harass and harangue!”

The need to stress one minor point is still desperately needed though… As one of my colleagues so concisely put it “The skill and training to translate and/or interpret in one direction does not mean you can do it in the other. People unfamiliar with the work involved somehow imagine that anyone who translates German to English, for example, can obviously translate from English to German (or Chinese to English, for that matter — “it’s only a couple of sentences!”)”.