#bipolartrainee

Sweet Tower of Babel!!! My very first ask! Let’s see how I do:

We must treat speeches like a long piece of salami that we have to chop up so it is nice and digestable.

MEANING: When you’re interpreting a speech, more often than not you will hear long, long sentences, whether because the speaker has inserted 50 subordinate clauses or maybe he or she likes to drone on and on before reaching a specific point. As interpreters, it is our job to analize, shorten and perhaps even simplify these sentences as we are delivering them.

Dominating the salami technique, like all aspects of interpreting, requires practice; personally, I found that trying to simplify sentences first in my own mother tongue was very usefull in getting the hang of salami-ing. More than reading about it (which couldn’t hurt), an interpreting student must always find ways to root out unnecesary repetitions and re-organize words and clauses as well as learning to adjust the décalage in order to keep it as smooth as possible for clients to understand.