How is transcription work affecting my interpreting?

This is a question I recently asked myself after working on some transcription projects when I noticed a change (for the better) in my listening skills during interpreting.

Theory has it: according to María Teresa Sánchez Nieto (ed.) “the interpreter’s target text quality is determined by the interpreter’s capacity management skills and concentration”(1) and I am wondering if the work I’ve done transcribing word for word every utterance (without removing the um’s and er’s and self-corrections) has helped me to listen better and thus improve my capacity management skills.

I’m not writing this article to suggest that everyone who wants to improve their interpreting should begin transcribing as well or that I now have nothing to work on as an interpreter. However, I do think it is interesting that I personally noticed an improvement in my interpreting. So after asking myself this, I decided to conduct some very brief research (there’s probably a PhD that could be written on this topic but I’ll pass the baton on to someone else for that one)…

There seems to be evidence that professional transcriptionists have “honed their listening skills”(2) with experience and this can only be a positive thing for an interpreter. I’m finding that having had to write out every single thing has made me hear the way in which a person speaks so much more clearly. For example when a person stumbles over their words and restarts their sentence multiple times, rephrases their sentence halfway through, uses “like” or “you know” frequently and incorrectly, or when in a conversation the person talks over the other or constantly shows agreement with “hms” and “yeahs”. This means that when I’ve had to interpret a very fast, complicated speaker I’ve been able to rely more on my listening skills and do more self-monitoring in order to make sure that my spoken English is as clean, concise and precise as possible.

But there is something else: I think that transcribing has also improved the way in which I speak!

For the transcription projects I’ve been working on part-time, I have been asked not to correct the speakers’ grammar, just like the students in the Appalachian project (3). Firstly this is extremely tough for a linguist, as you would not believe the mistakes that your Average Jo makes when talking. Secondly, however this has made me notice just how many fillers or little “um’s” and useless words creep into our everyday language. When interpreting, I tend to go into “interpreting mode” and do my utmost to avoid using any of these fillers to try to have the best and cleanest English possible. Now I feel I have become hyper-aware of any errors and I’m assuming I’ve become rather irritating to live with as I now can’t stop correctly people!

What do you think? Do you have any experience transcribing, and if so has it improved your interpreting? Is there any other non-interpreting activity that you’ve found helpful to practice your skills?

(1) Sánchez Nieto, M. T. ed. 2014. Corpus-based Translation and Interpreting Studies. Germany: Frank & Timme GmbH. p.113.

(2) Powers, W.R. 2005. Transcription Techniques for the Spoken Word. U.S.A.: AltaMira Press. p.28.

(3) Ritchie, D.A. 2014. Doing Oral History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.60.