NOTIZIE DAL MONDO DELLA TRADUZIONE

Under the best of conditions, the call would have been hard work. It was very long, and it was full of service dates, claim numbers, diagnostic codes; proper nouns for providers, medical centers, streets, small towns whose pronunciations borrowed from both languages; and quasi-legal insurance terminology. But with a rough start, poor sound quality, and a week of stored-up interpreter bitterness, it was exhausting. What was especially hard to want to bother about were the little pleasantries that surround requests for repetition and the clever turns of phrase that suggest developing rapport between the caller and the insurance company rep. The only thing that made it tolerable was knowing my shift would probably be over when the call ended.

Melissa Murrell, an interpreter who owns Deep South Language Services in Montgomery, said businesses related to education, medical and legal industries have continually added bilingual workers or contracted with interpreters throughout the Southeast over the last several years.
According to the bureau, the demand is expected to be strong for several languages, including French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, and other Middle Eastern and Asian languages. Murrell said it is essential interpreters and translators be properly trained in order for businesses to avoid liability that could arise from speech barriers and misinterpretations. She is partnering with the Small Business Development Center at Troy University to host an introductory interpreter training course at Troy University Dothan on Oct. 2 and 3 that helps workers understand the difference between interpreting and being bilingual.

With the coverage in Die Welt the acute shortage of qualified interpreters in Germany has reached national headlines. The need for qualified interpreters is most pronounced for Arabic, Tigrinya (Eritrea’s official language), and Somali, according to Monika Eingrieber, who is the Vice-President of Germany’s Federal Association of Interpreters and Translators (BDÜ). The article, which German-language translation and interpretation portal Uepo calls “well-researched and accurate reporting” lists six central problems plaguing the interpretation efforts by German authorities