·By Linran YU
Talk to Them, Not to Me
Where you look decides who the room thinks you are speaking to.
In a meeting a while ago, the client spoke to me for most of an hour. He turned toward me, made his points to me, watched my face while he spoke in Chinese. Then I turned to the American across the table and said it all again in English.
The American heard every word, and was addressed by nobody.
Afterwards I told my client what I tell everyone: look at the person you are speaking to. You do not have to look at me. I am still there, and the words still get across.
An interpreter is a channel, not a party
Words are the part I can carry across. Your eyes, your face and your attention are not. Those only reach the other person if you point them at the other person.
So look at them. Not at me.
The same mistake on a date
A gentleman once told me about a date he had been on. The woman spoke no English, and had brought another lady along to interpret.
By the end of the evening his date was angry. She complained that he had spent the whole date flirting with her friend.
I asked why she would say that. He said his date had not liked him speaking to her friend, but that she herself spoke no English, so he had to speak to the one who could interpret. His date was the one who had brought the interpreter along.
I told him he was supposed to look at his date while he was speaking to her. The interpreter is a channel, a tool for getting the words across. When you aim your attention at the tool, you miss the person you meant to reach.
Say “you”, not “tell her”
The other habit is the phrasing. Tell her I think the proposal is strong. Ask him whether he can ship by June.
Interpreters render it in the first person anyway, so it arrives as I think and can you, and all the instruction did was make the sentence longer.
Say it to them, in the words you would use if there were no language barrier between you. That version interprets best, because it is a real sentence and not a message being handed over.
Keep looking while it is being interpreted
This is the part people get wrong even after they fix the first part.
They speak to their counterpart, then turn away while the interpretation happens, check a phone, look at notes. But that stretch is when the other person is actually receiving what was said, and they are watching the speaker’s face while they hear it.
Stay with them. Twenty seconds of looking like you meant it is worth more than the sentence was.
What I do about it from my side
I do not interrupt, and I do not join in. I step in only when I feel something needs it: a remark that did not land the way it was meant to, or a point that needs a little context before it can be understood.
People do pay attention to me, and they should. I am the only way they can understand each other in that room. The question is never whether I am noticed. It is who they are speaking to while I work. That is the whole job: to be the phone line two people talk on, and not to stand in front of either of them.