Six second-year interpretation students in Spanish program perform the art of interpretation at Fall Forum on one of the most important challenges of our time: Water.

Martina Kinkle, Erin Teske, Alison Woods, Mariano De Anton, Deepti Limaye, & Omkar Kalaskar (from left to right)

Spanish interpreters are constantly challenged:

Taking out the fluff. Formal speeches in Spanish tend to use more flowery language, whereas English is generally more succinct. When interpreting, this can make your job easier, because you can interpret a message using fewer words, or more difficult, since it might take more effort to actually decipher the speaker’s message.

Careful with those false cognates! Spanish and English share many words that are spelled and pronounced similarly, but which have very different meanings. For example, if you say you’re ’embarazada’, it actually means you’re pregnant, not embarrassed. Although this is a very basic example, false cognates can be tricky in more formal discourse as well.

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