I am hoping that I can find enough interest in both London and Singapore for a Toastmasters International Club provisionally entitled Multi-Lingual Translators' Club. London has clubs for French speakers, Spanish speakers, and German speakers.
Singapore French and Chinese Clubs
French Club
In Singapore I have attended meetings of the Francophile French-speaking club in Singapore, entirely in French. I thought I spoke fluent French. However, the rat-a-tat machine gun speed of the speakers was a challenge.
Then I was baffled by the Table Topic. (That is an impromptu speech, called a table topic because it was a originally on a subject chosen from face down cards on a table).
Chinese
I want to one Chinese club where nobody spoke English, so I had trouble even asking for directions to the toilet in the interval. (I followed one man but he was going to the telephone box. Another went to the Gents, which had a urinal, but I could not see the Ladies toilet.
Finally I found the bilingual English and Mandarin Club who members mostly speak both fluent Chinese (Mandarin) or another Chinese dialect such as Cantonese of Hokkien. Some of the speeches were entirely in Chinese, evaluated in Chinese. This made voting difficult as I could judge only by ticking the number of laughs from the audience, and the gestures and facial expressions and animals and enthusiasm.
At the time I declined to vote on the Chinese speakers. At one point the Chinese speakers were voted for separately.
At conferences you have simultaneous translation. Speakers are asked to pause after every sentence or two, at most three, to allow the translator to remember and translate that section of the speech. Usually a handout is provided with a translation of the speech.
In Delhi I translated a speech from French into English. (I think it was for a Belgian lady at a conference on international law). This took longer than you might imagine. First she rehearsed what she planned to say in front of me. I spent hours writing it down in longhand. Even if I had had a tape recorder, it would have taken longer still to type it up (I've done that with other recordings) as you keep having to rewind every two or three words to type it up and search for the next piece.) Nowadays I imagine you could do it with SIRI voice recognition which comes built in with the software package you can buy to go with an iPhone Plus, which may be built into the price, or offered at a discount.
On a second occasion I attended a motoring weekend in France, travel for journalists sponsored by a car manufacturer, which involved seeing the city and attending an afternoon of speeches describing the development of that year's new car model. This involved a lot of technical terms. Luckily many were the same in English and French.
In the first session things went well for the talk on the city, a welcome by the tourist board. A second session on cars was a real challenge.
In the interval I was able to go out and ask in advance what the next talk was about. As the speaker chatted away, I wrote down several challenging technical words she used. After that the translation was much easier, especially as I had the guest of the talk. The car had three new features, something like the speed of the engine, the choice of colour of leather, the new modern styling, more curvy, less boxy. At this point the main challenge was to translate quickly enough before the speaker started talking again, to make sure I did not miss the first sentence of the next session.
Vote of Thanks
I was also able to translate a vote of thanks from the English motoring and travel writers and photographers into French. To help amplify my vote of thanks, I added the name and title of each English journalist and what they had said. So Mr Monsieur Smith of a North Of England newspaper had praised the architecture of the city, a great family destination for tourists from the UK, and the style of the car, which many would want to buy, or hire, for business or pleasure. Mr Brown of London motoring magazine had enjoyed the generous French food and wine, which would interest his gourmet readers, and he admired the luxury of the new car, which would appeal to his discerning readers who sought something special.
I addressed everybody by name. Then I made sure to say a sentence in English first, to collect my own thoughts, and keep the English listening and not talking amongst themselves. Then the French translation.
This year I was sent an email from a French translation organisations which sells books. The newsletter outlined five reasons which you find trouble understanding spoken French, even though you can read it quite easily.
The first reason is that you don't understand common proverbs or metaphors. If that's the case, they can sell you a book. (In theory you can look things up on the internet, but it's always handy to have a book.)
A second reason is that you need technical vocabulary. So you immerse yourself in websites, films, conferences and book, as you probably do to some extent anyway, but plan your year, week, and day ahead to be constantly immersed.
If you are interested, the newsletter is from here:
https://fr.frenchtogether.com/francais-oral-problemes/
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, translator.
Singapore French and Chinese Clubs
French Club
In Singapore I have attended meetings of the Francophile French-speaking club in Singapore, entirely in French. I thought I spoke fluent French. However, the rat-a-tat machine gun speed of the speakers was a challenge.
Then I was baffled by the Table Topic. (That is an impromptu speech, called a table topic because it was a originally on a subject chosen from face down cards on a table).
Chinese
I want to one Chinese club where nobody spoke English, so I had trouble even asking for directions to the toilet in the interval. (I followed one man but he was going to the telephone box. Another went to the Gents, which had a urinal, but I could not see the Ladies toilet.
Finally I found the bilingual English and Mandarin Club who members mostly speak both fluent Chinese (Mandarin) or another Chinese dialect such as Cantonese of Hokkien. Some of the speeches were entirely in Chinese, evaluated in Chinese. This made voting difficult as I could judge only by ticking the number of laughs from the audience, and the gestures and facial expressions and animals and enthusiasm.
At the time I declined to vote on the Chinese speakers. At one point the Chinese speakers were voted for separately.
At conferences you have simultaneous translation. Speakers are asked to pause after every sentence or two, at most three, to allow the translator to remember and translate that section of the speech. Usually a handout is provided with a translation of the speech.
In Delhi I translated a speech from French into English. (I think it was for a Belgian lady at a conference on international law). This took longer than you might imagine. First she rehearsed what she planned to say in front of me. I spent hours writing it down in longhand. Even if I had had a tape recorder, it would have taken longer still to type it up (I've done that with other recordings) as you keep having to rewind every two or three words to type it up and search for the next piece.) Nowadays I imagine you could do it with SIRI voice recognition which comes built in with the software package you can buy to go with an iPhone Plus, which may be built into the price, or offered at a discount.
On a second occasion I attended a motoring weekend in France, travel for journalists sponsored by a car manufacturer, which involved seeing the city and attending an afternoon of speeches describing the development of that year's new car model. This involved a lot of technical terms. Luckily many were the same in English and French.
In the first session things went well for the talk on the city, a welcome by the tourist board. A second session on cars was a real challenge.
In the interval I was able to go out and ask in advance what the next talk was about. As the speaker chatted away, I wrote down several challenging technical words she used. After that the translation was much easier, especially as I had the guest of the talk. The car had three new features, something like the speed of the engine, the choice of colour of leather, the new modern styling, more curvy, less boxy. At this point the main challenge was to translate quickly enough before the speaker started talking again, to make sure I did not miss the first sentence of the next session.
Vote of Thanks
I was also able to translate a vote of thanks from the English motoring and travel writers and photographers into French. To help amplify my vote of thanks, I added the name and title of each English journalist and what they had said. So Mr Monsieur Smith of a North Of England newspaper had praised the architecture of the city, a great family destination for tourists from the UK, and the style of the car, which many would want to buy, or hire, for business or pleasure. Mr Brown of London motoring magazine had enjoyed the generous French food and wine, which would interest his gourmet readers, and he admired the luxury of the new car, which would appeal to his discerning readers who sought something special.
I addressed everybody by name. Then I made sure to say a sentence in English first, to collect my own thoughts, and keep the English listening and not talking amongst themselves. Then the French translation.
This year I was sent an email from a French translation organisations which sells books. The newsletter outlined five reasons which you find trouble understanding spoken French, even though you can read it quite easily.
The first reason is that you don't understand common proverbs or metaphors. If that's the case, they can sell you a book. (In theory you can look things up on the internet, but it's always handy to have a book.)
A second reason is that you need technical vocabulary. So you immerse yourself in websites, films, conferences and book, as you probably do to some extent anyway, but plan your year, week, and day ahead to be constantly immersed.
If you are interested, the newsletter is from here:
https://fr.frenchtogether.com/francais-oral-problemes/
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, translator.
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