I don’t like consecutive.
There, I said it.
To be clear, the object of my scorn is not the short, turn-taking, consecutive you find in dialogues in the court or healthcare settings. That kind of interpreting work has always seemed perfectly enjoyable to me. When I was a community interpreter, I did it for many years and always felt I served my clients well.
Instead, there is an icy corner of my heart reserved for consecutive in the conference setting. The kind where you take notes for a good chunk of a speech — five minutes or more — and then take the podium alongside the original speaker, with all eyes in the room on you. That’s the object of my dislike.
I can’t be blamed for my feelings. In most corners of the conference interpreting market in Canada, there is little call for consecutive interpreting. Clients simply don’t like that it doubles their meeting time. This means that interpreters in this market rarely have the opportunity to perfect their consecutive skill set.
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. I was taught consecutive by conference interpreters who did not do all that much of it. I then became a conference interpreter who does not do all that much of it either.
But now that I have publicly admitted to my innermost thoughts on consecutive, I have another confession to make. I think that learning to do a proper consecutive is a key part of conference interpreter training. This is firstly because it is still required in other professional markets (have a look at this video on accreditation testing for the European Institutions, where consecutive plays a prominent role. It is also because consecutive lays the groundwork for almost all aspects of interpreting, and this groundwork can be further built upon during simultaneous.
But how do you teach consecutive when your own training and experience don’t point the way? Without the right baggage, how do you know how to guide student development? How do you develop a clear sense of the milestones that students have to reach on their path to professionalism?
As in all things, I take my cues from my students. Over the last year, I’ve watched their breakthroughs. What follows is a short distillation of the tools they used to get where they needed to go.
Park and Bark
Few of us feel comfortable speaking in public. And most time, consecutive is VERY public. In Simo, we have the safety of our booths, but consec means that we’re front and centre, the focus of everyone’s attention. It’snerve-wracking. Often, students respond to the stress by moving their bodies a great deal. I saw one student shift his weight so often from hip to hip, it looked like he was doing the cha-cha. Another made the same circular gesture with his hand over and over. I thought he was imitating a windmill. A third held her notepad solow, it made it seem as though she was nodding off when she looked at her notes.
The problem with each of these issues is that they distract your clients. They make it look like you’re in “fight or flight mode”, or perhaps that you’re about to pass out! As a workaround, my students have come up with a checklist of sorts:
Plant your feet firmly, shoulder width for greateststability, ankles and knees together if you think your legs might shake; Grip your notepad with both hands firmly, tuck yourelbows into your ribs if you think your hands mightshake; Gesture with your hands only to stress a point —gesture too often, and it becomes a distraction; Hold your notepad at chest height — like singers hold their sheet music — so you can look down withoutcompacting your vocal apparatus.
When it comes to the physical parts of consec, there is no better teacher than the video camera. Many of my students put the “park and bark” strategy firmly in place after seeing themselves on video. Follow their lead, and you’ll have a solid physical stance for your consecutive performance.
Treat Consec Like Simo
When developing their skills for simo, some of my students used a basic technique that served them in good stead. They concentrated on just getting out one short sentence after another, using Danica Seleskovitch‘s “salami technique” (a.k.a., “saucissonage”). To show you how this works, here’s a sentence from a simo with text my students did this week. “Finally, I am aware — as I’m sure you are aware — of the fact that the minister has indicated, in a letter he sent to the committee of the house, that he may be open to some amendments dealing with the limitation period, as well as the threshold to initiate investigations.”
This sentence was carved up into several smaller sentences. I’m aware of a final point. I’m sure you are too. The minister wrote a letter to the committee of the House. In it, he said that he may be open to some amendments. These would deal with the limitation period. They would also deal with the threshold to initiate investigations.
The nice thing about this technique is that it works for consecutive as well. I’ve seen students use it very successfully in their development.
Other tips for simo — like pausing in between sentences (rather than in the middle of them) — also work with consec. Of course, it’s not great if a professional interpreter pauses after every sentence. But students can do this in the early days as a way of managing the act of alternating between their notes and connecting with the audience. As time goes on, you simply reduce the delays between sentences and speed up the delivery overall.
Take Time to Connect
For the public-speaking phobic among us, truly communicating with the audience can be the hardest part of consecutive. Some of us fall to pieces when we have to look audience members in the eye. And yet, if we don’t establish a connection, we won’t give a strong performance.
My students started by compromising with themselves. When they first took the stage, they forced themselves to lift their heads up, make eye contact with their clients, and even flash a bit of a smile. They then allowed themselves to bury their noses in their notes, if they could not initially manage more of a connection than this to start.
Also, I borrowed a page (pun intended) from the techniques of a colleague of mine. Every time students had to turn the page in their notepad, I had them look up at the audience and smile. Once again, most of them then needed to make their notes their main focus after that.
However, over time, these little compromises did their job. Students got into the habit of making a connection with their audience at ritualized points in their consecutives (at the beginning, with the turn of every page, and at the end, to,o after saying “Thank you”). Gradually, they were able to coax themselves to lift their noses out of their notes and spend most of their time truly communicating their message.
Of course, writing large notes and not being afraid to use a lot of pages in their notepads also had an effect. These tricks meant that students could decipher their notes at a glance, and that they could spend more time with their heads up and looking forward.
Each of these three techniques worked a bit like training wheels for my students. At a certain point in their development, they were able to cast them off, or at least not follow them slavishly. But while the students were learning the ropes, the techniques helped them feel more stable and feel like they could manage consecutive days better overall.