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Speaking or preaching through a translator
- Ahead of time
- 1. Pray with your interpreter beforehand. Prayer has a way of bonding our spirits.
2. Give your translator time to think about expressing what you're going to say by taking time to go over scripture passages and main points ahead of time.
3. Let your interpreter know what you hope to communicate by giving him or her a simply worded theme sentence or phrase.
- During your presentation
- 4. Speak in complete thoughts. Grammar and syntax vary from language to language and unless you give complete thoughts, you can leave an interpreter hanging not knowing what to say.
5. Avoid complex sentences and parenthetical "rabbit trails." Translators often forget parts of complex sentences and audiences may be confused by them.
6. Realize that translators occasionally find they need to backtrack to clarify.
7. Don't recite poems. It's impossible to translate poetry "on the fly."
8. Avoid slang words and idiomatic expressions.
9. Realize that humor which depends on specific words likely will not translate well.
10. Be visual.
11. Maintain eye contact with the audience when you pause for translation rather than turning to watch your interpreter.
- Afterwards
- 12. Warmly thank your translator. Apologize for the fact that you don't know the target language. Show appreciation of the fact that generally translators expend more mental energy than do the speakers they are translating.
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Howard Culbertson, Southern Nazarene
University, 6729 NW 39th, Bethany, OK 73008 | Phone:
405-491-6693 - Fax: 405-491-6658
Copyright
© 2002 - Last Updated: March 28, 2011 | URL:
http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/trans.htm
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