I didn't intend to be a translator all my life at the undergraduate stage. In fact, at that time, I didn't know what I was going to do in the future. Just follow the teacher in class and follow your feelings after class.
So I sorted out the following two aspects according to what I have done in the past that is beneficial to the later interpretation and what preparations I should make for "looking back" after interpreting in Mr. Six:
one
Learn French well
First of all, follow the teacher and lay a solid foundation. I didn't teach myself French when I was an undergraduate, and it was already very heavy to complete the task according to the requirements of teachers in various French classes. We should also set aside time to study other courses, such as public courses, foreign languages, foreign languages, computers and so on.
Students with a zero starting point must establish a solid language foundation in the first and second grades and thoroughly understand and remember the texts, vocabulary and grammar points in the textbook.
Secondly, when I was studying French in the lower grades, one of the practices that was directly beneficial to interpretation was reading aloud. I read aloud for 40 minutes every day, first there is displacement, then there is text. It should be from Grade One to Grade Two, because I remember reading French Book Four of Teacher Ma aloud. I began to work as a part-time tour guide after the second grade, and the opportunity to speak French soared, so I didn't read much.
Reading aloud at that time helped me form a sense of French language and a muscle memory of speaking French. Today, many blurted out expressions benefit from reading aloud at that time.
two
Learn Chinese well
Everyone who talks about how to translate well will emphasize learning Chinese well. Here I want to emphasize two aspects:
1, bilingual thinking, quick response.
From the perspective of good interpretation, learning Chinese well is to establish bilingual thinking first. When we learn English and French for the first time, the teacher always asks for "thinking in a foreign language", that is, "thinking in a foreign language", instead of always thinking about how to speak Chinese.
However, if you want to be an interpreter, you should think about how to use both foreign languages and Chinese. It is very important to establish the conditional reflex of Chinese-foreign equivalent translation.
I began to learn English from 10 grade, so I folded the middle of the book into a line, wrote English on the left and corresponding Chinese on the right, then spoke Chinese on the left and English on the right, and practiced it repeatedly, forming conditional translation. Later, I learned French in this way, until now. This kind of conditioned reflex is first at the lexical level, then at the expression level, the whole sentence or even the whole paragraph. This practice was later found to be very helpful to interpretation, saving the time and energy of on-site interpretation.
2. Which field of Chinese is used most by professional translators?
The answer is Chinese and foreign official discourse. Then there are the fields and occupations involved in the theme of each meeting. Because no matter what the theme of the meeting, there will be politicians making political speeches in front, followed by professional discussions and exchanges. It is impossible to learn Chinese in all fields and majors at the undergraduate stage (in fact, at all stages of life), so if you want to prepare for future interpretation at the undergraduate stage, you must start with official discourse.
First, read more high-level speeches of China and France. Some speeches by state leaders will be written in Chinese and French on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Not much. Four-year-old undergraduates will read ten Chinese and French speeches intensively, and your translation level will go up a big step. That's why I often share the speeches of Chinese and French leaders and ambassadors on WeChat official account and Weibo, and break up the fragmented and colorful analysis, because this is the common sense and daily life of translators.
The second is to learn politics well. It is also important to treat politics as a Chinese class and speak beautiful Chinese when interpreting in the future.
The third is to treat all Chinese public courses and elective courses as Chinese courses. When I was an undergraduate, there was "College Chinese" in the public course of Beijing Foreign Studies University, introducing famous works and writing. I don't know if there is such a course now. If not, you will have to read some famous articles yourself.
The fourth is to develop the habit of reading newspapers and listening to news. Reading newspapers is a sharp weapon to improve Chinese level, logical analysis ability and knowledge. Don't read newspapers that are too deep and shallow. For example, Beijing Youth Daily in Beijing has a moderate depth. If the importance of reading newspapers lies in the construction of ideological level, then listening to news has direct benefits to interpretation itself, and listening to a lot of words can make statements.
Fifth, we can accumulate some French translations of ancient poems, proverbs, idioms and allusions, famous sayings and aphorisms, and slogans of the times. Although these contents do not often appear in interpretation, they are often the finishing touch of a speech. If translated beautifully, it is easy to give extra points to interpreters.
three
Learn English well
Needless to say.
four
Listen to a lecture on sharing interpretation experience.
Read interpretation experience and share articles.
When I was an undergraduate, the school and the department never organized a lecture to share professional interpretation experience, nor did I read relevant articles. The teacher who went out to interpret only gave some experience in class, which was very unsystematic. So after graduation, I groped for many years and took many detours.
Now the undergraduate course has great advantages. There are many articles on WeChat official account and Weibo sharing their interpretation experience, including ten rules and eight notices, as well as records and feelings of pure interpretation work. Most of them were written by English interpreters, and I also wrote a lot. The spirit, laws and practices extracted from such articles, including the lectures on professional translation mentioned below, are common in both Britain and France.
Listening to the experience sharing lectures or short courses of professional translators is essentially no different from reading the experience sharing articles of professional translators. The only difference is that you can talk face to face with the speaker in the Q&A session to solve some personal puzzles in your heart.
Students who want to learn interpretation will see these articles and listen to these lectures at the undergraduate stage, which will be of great help to understand the interpretation industry and the profession of interpreters, learn the technical operation and various routines of interpretation, judge whether they are suitable for interpretation, and solve some of their puzzles and doubts. If you listen more, you can reach the level of self-study, at least you can avoid detours.
five
Listen to professional translators or teachers' interpretations.
This is summarized through review. When I was an undergraduate, I didn't have the conditions to listen to the explanations of my predecessors. Nowadays, young people have a lot of opportunities to listen to professional interpreters or their own teachers, such as online, participating in various French activities, listening to French lectures, internships in various units and so on. There is also the Chinese-English interpretation of several translators from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the press conference during the two sessions every year. You can have a lot of emotional experiences when you listen. For future reading and interpreting majors, it will get twice the result with half the effort to quickly understand the theories, ideas and skills introduced by teachers.
six
Participate in interpretation practice
Although this is the last one, it is the most efficient. Listening to others' interpretation is completely different from doing it yourself. The advantage of participating in interpretation practice is that you will know where your gap is and what you need to work hard in at once, and at the same time you can start to summarize the rules of interpretation work. This is more effective than the previous five points, and they are all direct.
For example, I didn't have a chance to be a formal translator. I went to Africa to be a translator for the director the day after graduation, and I met the minister the next day. When I was interpreting for the first time, I immediately found my own problems and had an intuitive understanding of all aspects of interpretation:
-first, diplomatic etiquette and fixed terms have not been learned well (in fact, the teacher has not taught them);
Second, I suddenly realized the importance of preparation before translation. Because although the diplomatic greetings were rough at first, the topic of our project later turned to ok, because the official documents and historical archives of our project had been sorted out before going abroad.
Third, you don't have to take so many notes, or even don't take notes. The premise is that you know everything about this project. This perceptual knowledge directly subverts my understanding of translation notes. At that time, like many people now, I thought that translation notes should be taken as shorthand.
-Fourth, don't be too flustered psychologically. Because I am the youngest person in this group, I have the right to make mistakes, and everyone takes care of me.
Therefore, on the basis of one or two interpretation exercises, I can immediately feel what I need to continue to practice, sum up some rules for doing interpretation well, and understand how to adjust my psychology. It can be seen how helpful the practice of real knife and real gun is to correctly understand interpretation.
seven
Expand your knowledge as much as possible.
This is a cliche, there is no need to write more.
abstract
If you want to learn interpretation in the future, you can complete the required courses at the undergraduate level.