Is anyone using CL through a translator?

[Angela]

An interesting question, posed by an attendee on a CL training day I ran last week. She deals mostly with foriegn contacts, sees the immense value of clean, but wonders what would happen if ian interpretor was repeating her question in the contact's own language.

Anyone any feedback or suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Angela

[phil]

I have seen James and Penny working with clients via an interpreter in training demonstrations in France and Italy. In the France supervision week in July, if James or Penny are supervising a French language clean language session, they have a 'murmuring translation' from an assistant and they occasionally do live sessions in French, again with an interpreter.

Some points that occur to me:


· Top of the list and absolutely vital is:
- the interpreter understand clean principles,
- have a clear brief to stay as clean as possible and
- know the agreed clean question translation for the language in play (or have written down - e.g. the molecule sheet).

We saw an example once where the client gave a shortish answer and the interpreter gave a considerably longer response which contained the interpreter's 'interpretations' of the client's answer.

To be pedantic, while I have used the word interpreter in this reply, in fact in 'clean' we would really want someone who tranlsates as verbatim as possible, rather than someone who interprets and reframes what the client has said.
(In the translation world, a translator is a writer who translates books, an interpreter is one who does live spoken translation on-the-fly)

· The physical positioning of the interpreter is a factor to add to the 'where would you like to be?' routine - for example, the interpreter could end up inadvertently occupying a space that is important to the client, so the client should place them and perhaps the positioning should be checked after a few minutes.

· The interpreter should be mother-tongue in the language of the client. I have tried interpreting for James and Penny into French and while my French is pretty okay, the extra processing required to take someone ELSE's question in English and translate it into a foreign language on-the-fly was much harder than working in that foreign language myself and was too much for my skills.

· Sometimes clients can't speak English very well yet can understand it considerably better, especially when the facilitator is staying clean, since the facilitator is really only asking the questions and repeating back the client's words.

If the situation is mirrored for the facilitator, one could have the interesting experience of both client and facilitator speaking in their own language and listening in another. Hmm - perhaps that's what we're all doing all the time! I haven't done this, quite, though when we are all in Normandy, the languages seem to swap quite often in conversation as people try to make their points.

· Another thing to consider is simultaneous translation or in pauses? That is, does the interpreter speak at the same time as the person they are translating or wait for them to pause then give their translation? Professional sim.tran. as it's called, is done from sound proof booths where the interpreter can talk as loudly as they like. In a small room, two people talking simultaneously can be very hard to follow.

· Don't underestimate the effort required in live translation; the professionals often insist on swapping with someone else as often as every 20 or even 15 minutes. However I have seen someone do it all day for 6 hours - they were very tired at the end though.

Having said all that, working clean means you can still be surprisingly effective even if you don't know the other person's language well. You just ask about the bits you DID hear and it's surprising what they'll get out of it. I hope that was helpful.

[super_yacht@hotmail.com]

Hi Phil, Angela,
Steve is presently running a course in Barcelona. Holigral uses translators on the course and the same ones have translated the manuals. There are 3 translators, they have all done the first 20 days training with Steve.
The first issue he came up against was tranlating the essence of the sentence rather than just matching the words. Possible he thinks because they are all fluent spanish speakers and we have taken time working with them to understanding each word of a sentence.

For example:
´What do you know´ could be translated as either.
Y q sabes tu? or Y tu, q sabes? the former being more correct.

Steve is hoping to work in Portugal, Switerzland, Italy and France this year. Time and Translating allowing

John Farrell

[phil]

The clean language questions (and an article) have been translated into Spanish by Pedro Henriquez and a couple of others. The questions are available here (http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/translation-Spanish.html) at Penny and James site.

Re questions and knowing and word order, here's the CL 'how do you know' question:

- ABSTRACT CONCEPT
"And how do you know [abstract concept]?"
-- CONCEPTO ABSTRACTO
"¿Y cómo tu sabes (que) [concepto abstracto]?"


... so I wonder if it also possible to say in space lingo:

"And what do you know from here about [that]?"
"¿Y qué tu sabes de aquí acerca de [esto] ?"

...which is similar to your translators' version:

"¿Y qué sabes tu de aquí acerca de [esto] ?"

... as both permit a fairly neutral delivery, with no one word necessarily emphasised, whereas...

"And you, what do you know from here about [that]?"
"¿Y tu, qué sabes de aquí acerca de [esto] ?"


... seems to focus on the 'you'.

There seems to be many ways of asking - for me the different versions (and how they are stressed when spoken) highlight where the question is being directed: at the 'you' the 'what' or the 'know'. I guess another interesting one to experiment with would be

"And, from here, what do you know about [that]?"
"¿Y, de aquí, qué tu sabes acerca de [esto] ?"

It would be great if you could send us versions of the clean language and clean space and other questions to add to/update our translations for the cleanlanguage.co.uk site.

All the countries Steve is visiting have Clean Language questions posted at www.cleanlanguage.co.uk (http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk) (there are Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese versions - though I am updating them today as part of the new site so have a look tomorrow)

However there aren't any Clean Space questions translated (except maybe French) so if you can send us any that would be a great contribution to the oeuvre.

[Steve Saunders]

Hi Phil
Rosa Oliveras has now translated all clean questions including space and emergence into Spanish and I think also into Catalan.

I will provide the information to you ASAP.

cheers

Steven

[phil]

In the 6-day training we did in Moscow recently, Marian Way and I used interpreters extensively. We did demos and trained the group and supervised exercises, all through our interpreters (we had one each). It seemed to work well overall.



Things I remember about the experience and tips for others considering using a translator for training or facilitating using David Grove's Clean Language:

I recommend you brief your interpreter on the unusually stringent requirements for accuracy that working Clean requires, before you start your session/training. We had the interpreters arrive half-an-hour before any participants on the first day so that we could give them a list of the questions and demonstrate their use with the client's words.
Explain the need to give the facilitator the client's words as verbatim as possible, without paraphrasing or reframing or changing the metaphors. This can be very tricky, as different cultures often spawn different metaphors*. Our translators understood that aspect very well. Sometimes they would give the literal translation then briefly explain to us that this was a metaphor of that culture.
For me, working through a translator meant that I was less able to pick up on nuances in what people said. I had to work with what appeared significant to the interpreter, who of course, being a different person to me, picked up on different things to me. This is no criticism of them.
In CL sessions, losing the verbal nuances meant I put more attention on the client's non-verbal comms and worked more in the space in and around the client. This reminded me once again of how much richness there is in this area.
Try to get your interpreters to stay clean non-verbally as well as verbally. During the filming of one session, we became distracted by the interpreter unconsciously 'conducting' as they translated the client's words. The interpreter has to attempt to be even more Clean than a facilitator. Professional translators are used to this generally.
We gave both interpreters a half-hour CL session to thank them and for them to get a sense of the process from a client's perspective. We worked in English, of course!
Marian and I found it useful to agree to interrupt the other when presenting if they got carried away and forgot the need to pause for interpretation.
Translation is a critical part of any traing or facilitation. It's also a very intensive job. Make sure you have, as we did, professionals doing just that job and no other. Thanks, Yuri!
Phil

* If you speak, say, French and have heard an interview on TV news where they fade in the English translation a few seconds after the person has started speaking in French, you may have noticed that they often translate the overall sense of what's being said, rather than giving a literal translation. I think this is for editorial reasons (fitting the linguistic style of the programme, brevity, etc) and because the focus is on content rather than process.