Interpreting·
A business luncheon. I was there with a Chinese executive who had recently moved to the United States and was still learning English. We were seated on one side of the table.
Across from us, an American guest asked him where he lived. He said Pasadena. The guest then said, in the friendly way people talk about neighborhoods, that those of them without much money live in South Pasadena, and the wealthy live in Pasadena.
My client said, “Yes.”
He said it warmly, the way you agree with someone you like.
I saw it land. The other man’s smile stayed on his face and stopped meaning anything. He had just made a joke about not having much money, and the man across the table had agreed with him, pleasantly, without hesitating, in front of everyone.
Nobody said a word. Nothing had to be said.
So I said to him, loud enough for the rest of the table, that my client had just moved to the States and was studying English at the community college.
That was all it took. The guest understood immediately, and the table moved on. Nobody had to be told that the yes was a misunderstanding. Everyone worked it out on their own, and nobody had to be corrected in front of anyone: not my client, and not the man who had made the joke.
That is usually the better repair. Correction makes one person wrong. Context makes the moment make sense.
What “yes” was doing
He was not agreeing that he was wealthy. He was doing what almost everyone does in a second language: keeping the conversation going, showing he was following, being pleasant. But a joke like that invites a joke back, and the one thing it cannot survive is agreement. Nobody meant any harm, which is exactly why nobody would have fixed it.
The risk is at lunch, not in the meeting
In the meeting, everything runs through the interpreter, both sides speak carefully, and the important sentences get said twice.
At the table before and after, people wander off into weather, schools, traffic, neighborhoods, money. The interpreter is eating. The client is being sociable in a language he is still assembling. Almost every misunderstanding I have had to repair started in that half hour.
The job is the impression, not the sentences
A machine can turn one language into another, and it does it well enough for most sentences at a lunch table.
What it cannot do is notice that a friendly remark has a hook in it, or that the person beside you just agreed to something he did not understand. That takes a person who is watching both sides at once and who knows what each one will take away.
Nobody remembers who translated a sentence correctly. They remember what they concluded about your company over lunch.