By Glendon J. Buscher, Jr.
U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary
According to the site Ethnologue: Languages of the World, as of 2023, there are 7,151 languages now spoken in the world. It is said that approximately 40% of them are endangered and have fewer than 1000 speakers. However, 23 of these languages are spoken by more than half of the world’s population. Babbel Magazine claims that in addition there are 573 languages that had previously become extinct.
As of 2023, the most widely spoken language (includes not just first language speakers, but all speakers) is English with 1.5 billion speakers. Although Chinese is the language with the most first language speakers, it falls to second in terms of number of total worldwide speakers, counting 1.1 billion speakers. This is followed by Hindi at 600 million speakers and Spanish at 552million.
Unfortunately, not all the 8 billion people who live
on planet earth speak more than one of these languages, so there is clearly a
need for those who can communicate across the barrier between these languages. To
overcome this difficulty the world needs interpreters and translators.
In fulfillment of its
missions, the Coast Guard often interacts with foreign partner agencies and
international institutions. At these times the use of interpreters is often necessary.
To support the Coast Guard in these situations, the Coast Guard Auxiliary has
formed an Interpreter Corps. The Interpreter
Corps exists as a body of volunteer Auxiliarists who have stepped forward to be
on call to support and augment the interpretation and translation needs of the
Coast Guard.
According to the
Department of Homeland Security, one of the Coast Guard’s critical assets
toward fulfilling its mission lies with the Coast Guard Auxiliary Interpreter
Corps, which has over 363 volunteer interpreters, offers interpretation
services in forty-eight critical foreign
languages, and has provided over 52,000 hours of interpretation. Within each of the available language fields, the
Corps tries to identify and make available a cross section of interpreters who
are capable as needed for specific needs. The cohort of Spanish interpreters is
the largest among the number of language volunteers available to the Corps. The
Corps is always looking to recruit new interpreters.
Physician Jose Edwin
Nieves (Edwin) is a native Spanish speaker and an experienced interpreter on
the staff of the Coast Guard Auxiliary Interpreter Corps. He also serves as the Auxiliary History Division Branch Chief-Archives, as a physician for
the Department of the Army (MEDDAC), McDonald Army Medical Health Center, Fort
Eustis, VA, and as an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Eastern
Virginia Medical School. His academic interests include military mental health,
medical military history and late 19th-century Caribbean naval and maritime
history. I recently interviewed him to
get his perspective on the role of an interpreter in the modern world and
particularly on the critical skills required to serve in that role.
As Edwin pointed out, even
if a person speaks more than one language relatively fluently, it does not mean
they can be an interpreter or translator. Perhaps they can facilitate
communication in conversational or informal situations, but where precise and
accurate restating of language is required, such as in formal, diplomatic, medical,
or legal situations, formal training is needed.
Edwin stressed that interpretation
and translation are not the same process. Translation is the written documentation
of communication between a speaker of one language and a person who speaks
another language. With translation, there is time to refer to dictionaries,
glossaries, and other resources to produce an accurate recording of the speaker’s
original language. Translators must also have their work subjected to editing
and proofreading.
Interpretation, however,
is the art of listening to a message in one language and verbally and
accurately transmitting that message into a foreign language. Edwin explained that, with interpretation, an
interpreter must utilize his stored linguistic memory to verbally and either
simultaneously or nearly synchronously transmit the message across the two
languages. Sometimes, depending on the structure of the situation, the
interpretation may occur consecutively to segments of the speaker’s utterance,
usually after completion of a sentence or paragraph of speech. Edwin pointed
out that, in simultaneous situations, for a confident and experienced
interpreter there is usually only a two or three second interval between the
speaker and the interpreter’s interpretation. In consecutive situations the
time interval depends on the appropriate break in the speaker’s discourse, on
average no more than five minutes apart.
Interpreters not only have to understand the words that are being said, but also the personal, situational, and cultural context of what is being said. On the personal level, this includes the speaker’s tones, emotions, inflections, and facial cues. Since body language also comes into play, the interpreter must also be effective in communicating gestures. Edwin stated that it is always his goal to look straight at the speaker to be sure to record these cues and, like an actor, to reproduce them for the listener. The best professional interpreters have completed studies in interpretation at some specialized training institutes. Being an interpreter requires physical, mental, and intellectual stamina.
The classic type of
simultaneous interpretation occurs in the United Nations, in diplomatic
situations and international conferences, and in large assemblies and meetings.
This is where there is direct interpretation of utterance to utterance.
In his role as a physician,
Edwin has acquired critical experience as an interpreter. He has often
participated in Spanish interpretation during virtual telemedicine sessions,
where there may be short additional delays due to transmission related technical
issues. The lack of personal presence of the patient requires that the
interpreter be especially vigilant to not take his eyes off the patient. It is
important not to be distracted from observing the physical cues being given off
by the speaker. Telemedicine is an interactive situation where the physician
not only is interpreting what is being said by the patient but is also speaking
back to and questioning the patient, while perhaps recounting the conversation as
well to third parties who may be participating in the conversation. Some of his telemedicine interactions were
without video, which required additional questions from him as a physician to
compensate for the lack of physical cues.
Edwin stressed that, in all
interpretation environments, when conveying the speaker’s words back to the
listeners, one should not say “the patient/speaker said”, but one should state
the exact words uttered. Do not make assumptions or try to fill in what is
being said. If there is lack of clarity,
the interpreter should not hesitate to refer back and ask for clarification. In
any electronic communication there can be radio static, or in the case of
visual transmission, there may be pixilation or interruption of the image. Edwin
stressed that in all these communications it is necessary to be sure everyone
receives a complete and accurate understanding. You can ask for the speaker to
repeat and you can get feedback from the listeners by simply asking, “do you understand,
do you copy, do you accept this?”
Sometimes, one or more of
the participants in an interactive situation may be speaking excessively
rapidly or in an agitated state, or continuously talking without pause. This makes
interpretation and understanding more difficult. Edwin stated that all
interpretation situations should optimally be conducted in the calmest possible
manner. He stressed that you need to clearly indicate to the speaker that you
cannot understand what is being said and that there needs to be a pause until
things can calm down. As Edwin pointed
out, people have multiple roles, father, mother, friend, brother, sister, boss,
etc. Clarify that you are there to interpret, that you need to remain
emotionally calm and neutral even when everyone around is stressed. As a
physician, Edwin has trained himself to remain calm, to focus, and to act as if
he were going on stage. If there is a situation where too many people are
giving out information you should be sure to ask who is the authorized person
to give this information.
Medical interpretation,
like legal, scientific, and other highly specific fields has a particular
lexicology. Edwin as a physician has acquired that lexicon and, as an
interpreter for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, also has the necessary nautical
vocabulary. His advice is that, if an interpreter is not sufficiently familiar
with a specialized set of terms necessary for accurate communication,
assistance should be requested from another interpreter or reference made to interpretation
services available by phone. If this assistance is not convenient or available,
one should try to get the speaker to rephrase and clarify in more simple
terms. If time is not too critical,
there are glossaries of these special terms that can be consulted. The
Auxiliary Interpreter Corps has such glossaries for the most frequently needed
languages.
Recognizing that languages
change over time and that they borrow from other languages, interpreters should
work to keep current with these changes. Even among the speakers of a language
there will be differences in context, nuance, and currency of use. Some words
may become obsolete, out of current use or degraded into profane use. Often in
particularly inflected languages, use of cases, tenses, aspect can produce
subtle meanings not obvious on the surface. Spoken Chinese, a tonal language,
presents particular challenges, as pronouncing the word with the wrong tone can
result in speaking a totally incorrect word.
Young people are frequent
agents of change in a languages lexicology and their speech has often become
more cryptic. In the Coast Guard and in his dealings with partner
Spanish-speaking agencies, Edwin has often dealt with young recruits and has had
to become familiar with their ways of speaking. Edwin constantly stressed that
an interpreter’s task is to be one hundred percent accurate in passing on what
was said. To achieve this, he is constantly working to keep current with all
these aspects of the Spanish language scene.
Edwin has done research
and translation in both current and historical sources. Many of the Spanish historical sources, as is
the case with other languages, have words and concepts that have dropped out of
use, had very different meanings in the past, or are now nonexistent. In these
cases, a translator will need to consult with historical experts, glossaries,
and even comparative text analysis to understand these documents. Across the world there exist ancient scripts,
alphabets and hieroglyphic writings that now require decryption. The decryption
of the Egyptian Rosetta Stone is an example of using familiarity with one known
script to attempt to decode another. China is known for the thousands of
characters that have existed historically in its written language, although
only a few thousand are needed today. These historical documents can only be
read by someone with deep historical knowledge.
According to Edwin,
Hispanic languages can be divided into three basic groups, those of Spain,
Central and Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Among these groups there are differences in the use of the third person
plural, in directness or abstractness of speech and in the usual differences of
lexicon and cultural context. He indicated that, while you will understand
probably eighty percent of what is being said, it will be like an American
trying to understand Australian English or British or Indian English. He takes
pride in working to keep as current as possible by reading Spanish language
publications and listening to the various Spanish language videos, movies, and television.
We discussed the various Creole languages, such as Haitian Creole and the Dutch
Creole spoken in Curacao and Aruba. The
languages are based on French in the case of Haiti and Dutch in the case of
Curacao and Aruba. French and Dutch
speakers can probably understand much of what is being said, but Edwin advises
that it would be ill-advised to use French or Dutch translators to interpret
these Creoles since accuracy, not approximation is required of a translator. In
the default of Creole interpreters, if there is not an alternative means of
understanding, it is best to stand aside. This is generally true in all
interpretation situations. Many medical and legal institutions will have corps
of interpreters on call to bridge this gap.
We talked about a
situation with a person who has dementia or other condition where they may not
be able to communicate understandably.
This is a difficult situation. Edwin said that this may be due to
difficulty with articulating the language or may be one of physical language incapacity.
In this case the interpreter may need to defer to or request the help of some
else who is familiar with the person and can evaluate the person’s issues. This
may also require ascertaining if there is someone who has been designated authority
to speak for this person.
I asked about interpreter
work when a volunteer is deployed into a stressful situation on board an active
at-sea Coast Guard patrol. If a cutter has one of its own crewmembers, who is
also an interpreter, that person could be expected to be accustomed to the
stresses of service on board and could more easily respond and interpret
calmly. But what if a volunteer came on
board and could not fulfill the interpretation due to seasickness or a
situation of high situational stress? Edwin replied that normally, the
Commanding Officer would not want to take the crewmember away from their task to
do the interpreting, particularly if that task is critical to the functioning
of the ship. Probably if the stress or sickness is too much, the interpreter
should step back; the Commanding Officer should decide who can best convey the
needed information. Someone who is in command should not, however, be called
upon. The Commanding Officer has resources that can be called on through the
Interpreter Corps through remote communication.
Edwin had an occasion to
participate in an international conference with members of the Coast Guard’s
international partners. There were six meeting sessions. He was assigned to one
of them. His job was not only to interpret what was being said, but also to be
available to answer questions and/or pass questions back and forth to the
speaker. This meant he not only had to process the information correctly, but
he had to accurately frame questions and responses. He might also have had to
clarify aspects of the questions that needed to be recontextualized or
simplified. He very much enjoyed doing this.
Finally, I asked about whether people might join the Interpreter Corps if they were good only at oral interpretation or written translation, but not at both. He said yes, there is very much a need for either of these skills. There is also a great need for additional languages as well. The Interpreter Corps welcomes diversity and accommodates any volunteer who qualifies. At present the qualification requires an oral and written proficiency exam. I inquired whether someone who was severely limited in speech or in vision to the point that they could not pass either the oral or written portion of the test could be accepted.. He said that if the hearing impaired person could communicate in sign language and the visually impaired person knew Braille, that would be likely be possible, but it was unclear what would be the case if no form of physical communication or written communication was possible. Most likely, this would have to be decided by the leadership of the Corps.
