Interpreting for People’s Health Movement
By Iffat Antara Jahan
In August 2018, I got a call from the vice-president of People’s Health Movement (PHM). I had no experience in simultaneous interpretation (although what I did not know was just the term), so I declined. I said that I would forward them the details of professionals if I found any. However, the vice-president insisted that I join two days later and bring few recruits. When she said there will be professional training and practice sessions over the following two months, I agreed to join the meeting and tried to find some participants through Facebook.
After a briefing of the event, we moved onto the interpretation-related discussion and we had our first training. Only three of us had actual interpretation experience (though none could join the team due to other responsibilities at the same event). Susana then began with a technical introduction. That is when I first learned the terms whisper, consecutive and simultaneous interpretation and to my utmost fear, our job was to do simultaneous. We learned that English will be the pivot language and there will be interpretation in 3 languages – Bangla, French and Spanish. The Bangladesh team would do Bangla to English and English to Bangla, with the French and Spanish interpreters using our Bangla to English interpretation as relay when required. From the discussion within the PHA committee, I realized that listeners would hear the interpretation through FM radio on mobile phones.
After the presentation, Susana started the practice session. First, we simultaneously interpreted a few words in Bangla that Susana spoke in English. Later, we practiced simultaneous interpretation in groups with PHA 4-related documents such as official letters, PHA 4 brochures etc. Each team had 4 members – one “speaker” who read aloud the document/training material in the source language, one “listener,” and 2 interpreters alternating back and forth. We practiced for almost an hour.
After the practice we shared how we felt; most of us said we were confident and with a bit more practice, we could do the job easily. Truthfully, I was not feeling confident at all and decided to quit at once. But then something else happened. The committee was discussing the appointment of a coordinator for the Bangladesh team as at least 12 to 15 interpreters were foreseen for the event and they asked me to take on the responsibility of coordinator. I agreed thinking that if I could not do the interpretation, I could contribute as a coordinator. The same day we prepared a list of potential interpreters and shared it by email. We decided to meet the interpreters every month to practice, build a glossary, and continue communication through email. Susana had another interpreters’ training at Gonoshasthya University, Savar. There were 10 more people who agreed to work as solidarity interpreters.
Six weeks before the event, we had a meeting with 14 potential interpreters (13 volunteers and 1 professional). We provided them the PHM Charter, PHA brochures and PHA booklet prior to the meeting as training material. We started by repeating the exercises from the previous training. Next, we read the PHA Charter on a large screen and identified key words from it such as – human rights, declaration etc. After the training, we prepared a Google Doc with those glossaries where interpreters of Bengali, French and Spanish translated the terms into their own language. Interpreters were not too enthusiastic to give input at first, but after motivating them almost everyone contributed. Well, “motivating” is not exactly the correct word; I had to scold them once or twice!
Zia, a SASI member and conference interpreting trainer, provided a precise module and directions on how to conduct exercises. It was very helpful; without it I would not have been able to facilitate the intermediate trainings. She suggested using videos of speeches (for example at seminars) and/or easy write-ups rather than the PHM Charter, which is a constitutional document with heavy words. After the training, all the participants said it was really great; they could interpret better, their practice was more fruitful and they felt more confident.
