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Sight Interpreting 1. What Is Sight Interpreting?

Sight interpreting is a job where interpreters are often asked to read and translate documents aloud in real-time, such as contracts or legal documents in business meetings or court settings. This requires the interpreter to carefully review the document in advance and request additional time if needed. Sight interpreting can occur in conference interpreting when speakers provide a written text for interpreters to work from, either in advance or at the event. It allows interpreters to work directly from the text when listening is difficult. There are different modes of sight interpreting, including sight translation where the interpreter verbally translates a written text, and a hybrid where the interpreter both listens to the speaker and reads the text simultaneously.

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211 views

Sight Interpreting 1. What Is Sight Interpreting?

Sight interpreting is a job where interpreters are often asked to read and translate documents aloud in real-time, such as contracts or legal documents in business meetings or court settings. This requires the interpreter to carefully review the document in advance and request additional time if needed. Sight interpreting can occur in conference interpreting when speakers provide a written text for interpreters to work from, either in advance or at the event. It allows interpreters to work directly from the text when listening is difficult. There are different modes of sight interpreting, including sight translation where the interpreter verbally translates a written text, and a hybrid where the interpreter both listens to the speaker and reads the text simultaneously.

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rizqika fd
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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SIGHT INTERPRETING

1. What Is Sight Interpreting?


Sight Inerpreting is a job wich the interpreters are often asked to read and translate
document aloud. usually sight interpreting is required in two occasion which are 1) a
business meeting (contracts, guidebook,manual,etc) 2) a court setting (legal document). In
interpreting the document, the interpreters needs more time to persue the document in
detail and in this case the interpreters should request that time.
2. How to Interpreting?
Most obviously, it shows the interpreters listening on one side and speaking on the
other, which totally ignores sign language. Hence the alternative, equally over-simplified
model shown above. For the moment, however, let's focus on some less-known variants in
the media employed.
First, written input instead of voice input. This affects interpreters at all levels, from
Expert to Natural (once they can read of course). I've told elsewhere the story of how one
of my earliest encounters with Natural Translation was overhearing a young girl in a post
office in Ottawa interpreting an English official form into Portuguese for her father. This
hybrid of written translating and interpreting has a traditional name, sight translation, and
it's a common exercise in translator training schools. It's good practice these days for
dictating translations, whether to a secretary or to a computer. At a more advanced level,
Expert Court Interpreters, for example, are often handed documents in court and required
to give a verbal translation of them on the spot. What's less apparent is that there's a good
deal of sight translation in conference interpreting. It happens because many speakers
are in fact reading aloud from a prepared text and make a copy of it available to the
interpreters, sometimes in advance. If the paper is very technical or the presenter has poor
elocution or the acoustics are bad, it may be easier to interpret from the written text than
by listening.
An extreme case of 'sight translation' in conference interpreting is when the speaker
provides a prepared translation and the interpreter just has to read it out. In Canada,
ministers' speeches are usually translated in advance for fast distribution to the press, etc.
When a minister was scheduled for a meeting where I was to interpret, I used to hang
around the entrance to the venue to catch his or her entourage as they entered, and – if I
was lucky – grab a copy of the prepared official translation from one the aides.
It happens too at the United Nations occasionally, due to a curious provision in the rules
for the General Assembly. Whereas speakers must normally address the UN in one of its
official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish), there's an
exception whereby heads of state may address the General Assembly in their own
language whatever it may be. But there's also a proviso: if the head of state chooses a non-
official language, then his or her delegation must provide the UN interpreters with a
prepared translation into one of the official languages. (Muammar Gaddafi once threw the
UN Arabic interpreters into a loop by speaking in Arabic, but in his own Libyan dialect
instead of the Standard Arabic normally spoken at conferences and without providing a
translation.
Then there is yet another mode of input, known in some professional circles as sight
interpreting and not to be confused with sight translation (though if you google sight
interpreting vs sight translation you'll see that many people are in fact confused). In this
mode the interpreter both listens to the speaker and reads from the printed text at the same
time. A reminder of it came in a remark in a recent email I received from Andrew Owen, a
veteran sign-language church interpreter

REFERENCES

Mail Foreign Service. 'I just can't take it any more'... Gaddafi's translator 'collapsed
with exhaustion' during his UN rant. Mail Online, 25 September 2009 .
https://prezi.com/pd4hvxu75q4x/what-is-sight-interpreting/ sight interpreting, diakses
pada 19 April 2018 pukul 20.15

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