The EU expansion and the open borders policy brought about the need for unity and understanding. The labor market is now more accessible to young people than ever. There is an increasing need for professionals that can bring together business partners from a linguistic point of view. Interpreters have a crucial role in this type of situations, because they often make the difference between success and failure in the relationship between two companies. Therefore, there are some useful things that interpreters should know before starting their career or even to improve their job.
First and foremost, the quality of services provided to customers. This is the most important and, very often, the only business card of an interpreter. Many speech defects, tics or other pronunciation defects can be corrected by daily repetition during an interpreter’s career. Specialists in this sort of problems can definitely help. Most languages have a variety of sounds that an interpreter must be capable of reproducing. Repetition is useful in improving language flexibility.
Another aspect that is just as important in an interpreter’s career is stress resistance. Public speech is not for everybody. The more an interpreter does it, the more comfortable they get. The ability to translate and reproduce any information becomes useless when palms are sweaty, the throat gets dry and stammering occurs. That is why interpreters must become experts in several things: they must have very good language and stress management skills. To master a foreign language can be relatively easy, on a case by case basis, but managing stress requires a more thorough approach.
Public speech is something common for actors; thus, the methods used by actors to eliminate stress can also prove useful for interpreters. Just as an actor plays a role, interpreters should focus on their job and disregard the public. If they make mistakes, they should not become fixated on them. The best thing is to correct them and move on. Efficiency is more important than embarrassment!
To conclude, even though stress is the biggest enemy of an interpreter, there are always ways of managing and eliminating it.
