Money talks
The truth needs no interpretation, so said Nicole Kidman in 2005 Hollywood blockbuster The Interpreter. For Chinese interpreters, one of the most appealing truths about their profession is a salary of up to 30,000 yuan ($ 3,900) a month. But not everybody can earn such a serious income.
"Only those with a real mastery of languages and who can also work well when they are not prepared in advance can make very big money," said Jiang Xiaolin, general manager of Yuanpei Translation, language service supplier to the Beijing Olympics. He said one of the reasons for the high salaries was because of a major shortage of interpreters.
The 2008 Games is bringing ample opportunities for interpreters and according to Ma Long, from the language service department of Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Games (BOCOG), more than 1,300 interpreters are needed for the event.
An interpreter working at a Nanjing meeting. Though with appealing salary of up to 30,000 yuan a month, interpretation is a challenging work. Yang Xi |
Major demand for interpreting began two decades ago when reforms and opening up policies promoted profound international exchanges between China and other countries. Tourism, academic seminars, business conferences and commercial negotiations also began to thrive and all these industries needed interpreters.
According to Jiang, about 5,000 international conferences are being held every year in Beijing alone. Every conference needs at least two interpreters, so 10,000 interpreting services are needed in Beijing alone.
There are an estimated 60,000 professional translators operating across China, but Jiang believes there are only about 200 who really excel. The worldwide association of conference interpreters (AIIC) has 2,822 members globally and only 22 are working in China (12 in Beijing and 10 in Shanghai).
Because of demand, interpreters are paid well. Simultaneous or consecutive interpreters can earn about 30,000 yuan ($3,900) a month, while those accompanying touring parties or conference staff earn about 5,000 yuan ($ 650) a month.
But Cao Jianxin, professor of Nanjing University who has nearly 30-year experience of interpreting, reminds people the job is anything but easy.
He said an interpreter must be a master of both languages.
"Even if you have translated A Dream of Red Mansions (a famous Chinese classical novel) into English, it does not mean you can work as a quality interpreter," he said. "One should be both physically and mentally prepared."
Cao said an international conference usually employs two interpreters who take turns to translate, because they have to completely focus on the speeches and transfer them into another language in seconds.
This is very challenging when the two languages, such as Chinese and English, have different grammar, and very different idioms.
For example, when an American businessman is addressing a Chinese audience and uses the phrase "our customers ran away like a cat on a hot tin roof", the interpreter has to reword the phrase. The translation in Chinese could be "our customers ran away like ants on a hot pot". And this cultural translation takes place in seconds.
A wandering mind is a disaster. Usually one interpreter has to take a break after 15 minutes because of the high level of concentration, and his partner will then resume.
In his early days of being an interpreter, Cao had to translate a conference three days in a row because there were too few qualified interpreters then. He had to drink one cup of tea after another during the break to sustain his energy.
Cao, who holds a master's degree from the University of London and has been teaching translation at university for about 20 years, says simultaneous interpreting is a tough task. He remembers one of his colleagues being fired because there were too many long pauses during a meeting. "You can do nothing when you run into something you don't know," he said. "Don't know is don't know."
Zhu Li, an interpreter of BOCOG, says reputation is critical.
"Even if your performance is good the last nine times, one bad presentation can lead to a disaster for your career," she says. "You have to have a straight-A record."
Interpreters should work like machines without any personal feelings, Zhu added.
Even if the speaker makes mistakes, interpreters should translate as the original words. Sometimes interpreters even have to be the scapegoats for the mistakes.
"Interpretation is a process of continuous learning," added Liu Qian, staff of Translators Association of China.
Usually simultaneous interpreters have to spend one week preparing for a job and must keep updating their knowledge all the time.
Although the work is intense, most professionals only interpret five days a month, while the rest month is taken up in preparation. Salaries are paid by an hourly or daily rate.
"People see how much we earn," Cao says. "However, most outsiders know little about how demanding."
Prompted by the demand, China sees a thriving of interpretation training institutes in recent years.
Beijing Foreign Studies University established a graduate institute of interpretation and translation in 1994, which has evolved out of a translation course co-hosted by the UN in 1980.
Shanghai International Studies University set up a similar graduate school in 2003. University of International Business and Trade in Beijing also started its own interpretation courses in 2006 in cooperation with EU.
But according to Cao, who has been part-time teaching in a training institute for about five years, the quality of these schools needs improvement.
"The biggest problem is the faculty," he said. "Most teachers have no interpretation experience. If you never had the experience of working in that small room of interpreters, how would you tell your students what to do if one day they were in it?"
Even in the training institutes of the established universities, the shortage of quality interpretation teachers is still a problem.
Beijing Foreign Studies University is known as the best foreign-language teaching institution in China. Every year only one in 15 applicants pass the entrance examination.
Wan Li, a teacher of the school, said the average teacher's age was 27. Most of them work as trainers right after they graduate from the very university. Wan believed, however, their experience of interpreting in their college days might help them to be qualified for teaching.
Jiang of Yuanpei Translation said they made it a point that they would hire only those with rich experience for their training class, but he found only six of them.
Most interpretation training institutes, as Cao and Jiang agreed, were unable to hire experienced interpreters as teachers.
"When a really good interpreter can earn more than 30,000 yuan every month, why should he stay in a training institute which can provide only 5,000 yuan a month?" Jiang said.
Practice is the key. But the unwritten rule in the industry is, popular are those with rich experience and good reputation.
For those new graduates, even if they are bestowed with the certificates issued by the best foreign language teaching institutes, it's not that easy to find a chance to prove their ability.
But Liu Qian seems more optimistic than others.
"The market is there, still huge, but only so few talents here," he said.
"So you will have chances if you try really hard to find them.
"The important thing is, how to make use of the chances to build your own reputation."
(China Daily 06/05/2007 page18)
