Numbers in simultaneous interpretation - how do you deal with them?

Parrot wrote:

Hi Alexandra,

I just saw this thread while revising topics. Sorry if this comes late, but from the very title of your post, you seem to have a mathematically-challenged mind. (The symptoms: one mentally freezes when a number comes into the discourse. In early language learning, this can manifest itself as an extraordinary effort in repeating one's own telephone or social security number in the second language, as one does not do the retrieval directly in it, let alone sums and equations). This is why writing the number down is so important. Don't laugh, but it may even help to practice with dictation and direct calculation.

I'm a doodler like polyglot, so the multi-tasking doesn't bother me, but I'm also mathematically-challenged. Nonetheless, this is a job I don't leave to partners because: 1.) what others write doesn't stay as fixed in my mind as what I write; and 2.) I usually also express certain relationships in my notes that the other person can pass up.

Hope it helps.

Ceci

FarkasAndras wrote:

They have all been mentioned before, but really there is nothing else you can do (apart from practicing and perhaps asking the speakers to supply you with their notes so you can just read the numbers out).

1. Just stay reasonably close to the speaker and rattle them off as you hear them. I stay close to the speaker anyway, and I don't have a problem with numbers so this is what I do.

2. Write them down. It sounds strange but it works, most people find it easier this way.

3. Have your boothmate note them down for you. Again, lots of people do this, especially pairs who work together regularly. Not a lot of people do this with any regularity in the Hungarian booth at the EU, but if you specifically ask your colleagues to help you out this way they will oblige I'm sure.

Alexandra Goldburt wrote:

There are some exceptions, some sentences where numbers are logically connected to what came before. And when it happens, it is not that difficult. For example:

“The defendant is ordered to pay a fine of $500 plus penalty assessment of $400 plus victim restitution of $1000 for a total of $1900” is relatively easy.

On the other hand, something like “When the police arrived at 1372 23rd St., they found three vehicles: a 1989 Pontiac Firebird, license number A-39112; a 1993 Toyota Celica, license number GBD-9982, and a 1965 Ford Falcon, license number 995CNN”.

The second example is from ACEBO’s “Interpreter’s Edge”. It took me a long time to get it right…

Having said this, I thing that “practice with dictation and direct calculation” that you suggest might indeed help. Can you please elaborate on that?

Thanks,

Alexandra

... and working out effective ways of representing relationships between numbers, if equations are not in question. For instance: (Patent number) "1046 vs. 547" in a patent case; enumerations of license numbers, as you pointed out; even a balance sheet or a stock market report. Get someone to find such texts and to read them out to you for practice (it's fun looking at a balance sheet as drawn up by an interpreter). Play them back in source and target. It's one way of reinforcing visualization, where auditive memory may fail.

Eventually, you get to a point where the associative connections become more direct and you are more able to retrieve them.

Your topic called my attention because I once considered note-taking unimportant, but found myself obliged to resort to it precisely in the case of numbers. I guessed we had the same problem, except for the fact that I AM mathematically challenged and had to play back equations and calculations (the linking bits) as well.

I have no problems with people and titles. In fact, during chuchotage, I initially draw up a seating plan to pass on to my clients to facilitate their comprehension of what is being said.

In court, before the onset of proceedings, I ask permission from the judge to sit at a desk close to the speakers, where I take down notes for what corresponds to the "recitals" or presentation of the case. I only stand up after that to deliver, and then I can remain standing, since the rest of the statements usually do not pose any problems. But the first onslaught of dates, times and events are usually longer and more complicated blocks of speech to which I have not been given previous access and come in "cold turkey" (not so in patent cases when working for clients in civil suits and I can ask for confidential material if working for one of the parties).

The result is, that in the booth, I usually end up being the partner taking down the notes, if only for contingency purposes.