Interpreters & translators │ Sheila Wilkin │ Fiona Evans Wilkin
Nowadays, we take it for granted when we see diplomats at UN meetings with earphones plugged into the six official UN languages – English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and Russian – so that they can understand speeches being delivered in these languages.
“It all began at Nuremberg” (Skuncke 1989)
Simultaneous interpretation is actually quite a recent invention, developed in 1945 for the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. Before this, interpreting was done consecutively, in other words, a person would talk and then wait while the interpreter translated. This marked a significant evolution in interpretation and translation services, enabling faster communication across languages.
Listening and speaking at the same time
It was Colonel Dostert, an American citizen born in France, who believed that human beings had the ability to listen in one language and speak in another at the same time. To speed up the Nuremberg trials, which had to be translated into the four languages of the countries involved (English, German, Russian, and French), he developed a system of microphones and headsets with IBM. This early interpreting equipment worked, although it wasn’t perfect since people kept tripping over the many wires that ran across the courtroom floor.
From Austrian Jewish schoolboy… to interpreter at the trials of Germany’s war criminals
After his family was thrown out of their home in Vienna in 1938, 14-year-old Siegfried Ramler traveled to London, where he spent the rest of the war. Once the war was over, and seven years after fleeing the Nazis, Sig became an interpreter at the Nuremberg trials.
With no prior training, one of his first challenges was to interpret at the pre-trial interrogations of Hans Frank, the “Butcher of Warsaw.” Frank was convicted of the murder of three million Jews and Poles.
Death by hanging
Sig was present throughout the Nuremberg trials. Ten times he translated the words “Death by hanging” into German: “Tode durch den Strang.”
Were the interpreters traumatized?
“The things we saw were shocking,” Sig said, “but they could not be translated into feelings, because we were not in a position to feel one way or another. I was 22, I just concentrated on the job.” Reference link
How is interpreting different today?
Not too much has changed in the way the actual interpreting is done. The main changes are that good interpreters are professionally trained, and modern interpreting equipment is more advanced than the original IBM equipment—it’s also wireless, so there are no more wires to trip over!
