Id – thanks for the clarification. I think you are right. I could go through and correct but I think I’ll just leave it as is … but I will keep your comment on the subject in mind.

I was surprised at how good Google Translate did – some time ago it used to put out a somewhat jumbled result with some words not being quite right.

This time around it seemed to be spot on – I went through and checked various things and was very impressed with what it did.

Returned missionaries are, in my experience, almost universally not good at translating on the fly. It’s just too hard. Like you mentioned, the speaker will continue to talk while the translator is reciting the translation. Good translators seem to be able to handle that, at least to some extent — I have no idea how. Returned missionaries generally can’t. The only ones I’ve seen who can have had years after their missions of speaking their mission language. E.g. they married one who natively speaks their mission language and speak it at home, or they have been living in their non-native country for a long while, like a Japanese person living in the U.S. (Though even these qualifications don’t on their own mean a person will be a good translator.)

I attend a Japanese ward in the U.S., while I don’t speak Japanese, so I get to listen to translators every week. It is important for the speaker to provide a copy of their talk, if possible. I gave a talk that wasn’t quite finished, and after I started winging my conclusion I looked over at the translators, who looked confused and were scrambling. ;) Another recommendation is to have two translators. They can spell each other by alternating speakers, and the non-active translator is free to look up scripture quotes quickly for the active one.

I’ve also noticed that jokes don’t translate. Either the joke ends up being one of the bits that aren’t translated (it’s really hard to translate everything), or the joke is too difficult to translate, or the joke just doesn’t translate into a different language. And it makes me sad when everyone else is laughing but I don’t know why. :P

Our ward is blessed with a small number of great translators, and some more good ones. It really is an amazing and impressive skill.

Yes! This post is spot on. In a ward I lived in, we had a few deaf families and we used 2 interpreters per meeting to give proper rest to each. Everyone was told when a talk was assigned to come to the meeting with a copy typed out for the interpreters. On the rare occasion someone didn’t have it written out, everyone in the congregation glared at them. It was considered very rude to not have it prepared for the interpreters. Even visiting stake leaders knew the rule.
Of course, Fast and Testimony meetings were always the nightmare meetings. No way to prepare, and so often times the interpreters would just shrug and give up if someone was talking too fast, slurring words or reading from the scriptures. The attitude was it was the speakers loss because the deaf couldn’t enjoy what was being said.

I would guess that Google Translate has different quality of results with different languages. I can only speak for Spanish – but truly, it was pretty impressive how it turned out this one talk that I plugged into it.

I had a guy in Brazil use GT to send an email to our support staff several years ago. He was talking about “private encryption” algorithms and “criptografia privada” was translated as “toilet encryption.” Privada is the word for both “private” and “toilet” for obvious reasons. We all got a good laugh at that.

I just double checked and GT has been fixed, at least in this instance.

On the original topic: I also really like having the interpreter stand with the speaker and take turns at the mic when there are only going to be two languages represented in the audience. It cuts down on the length of the talk, but is more respectful of everyone in the audience.

What I would want is closed captioning. That would be best.

As a missionary, I interpreted a couple of times in Zone Conference for a missionary who spoke only French. maybe it had to do with the MP’s delivery, but I found it not to be super difficult. Other occasions, I was interpreting a French speaker in to English and it was much more difficult.

I have done quite a bit of interpretation in a professional environment. I can tell you, as the interpreter, that the quality of translation from non-native language to native language is significantly greater than the inverse. It takes much less effort to comprehend a non-native language and then express the idea in a native tongue than the inverse.

I attended a series of very heated union meetings where people spoke English, French and the local tribal language but only a minority spoke all three. When people are truly invested in knowing everything being said, the level of understanding is much higher than it was in our routine, weekly training meetings. I think some of it depends on the effort of the listener also.

We have attended Church in areas where I have had to interpret from French to English for my wife, which is very easy because we understand each other’s visual cues and the like, even though my language skills are not quite at native speaker level. Interpreting for my wife is easier than for someone I don’t know or to a group.

My wife grew up in a bilingual environment and speaks two languages at native level. When we attend Church at her childhood branch, it is much more difficult for her to translate to English for me because her second other native tongue does not use western thought patterns, sentence structures or grammar (one my argue that I don’t either, but anywho). She has “retread” talks given in one language or the other too, and generally she just starts from scratch rather than to try an translate word for word. In contrast, for her it is easier to translate from German (her mission language) to English than from her native language to English, even though her proficiency in German is much lower.

As a former High Councilman who had to speak in Wards with interpreters for the deaf and in a branch where my talk in English had to be interpreted into Spanish I found it much easier to have a deaf interpreter. They were almost always close to professional, the Spanish interpreters were usually missionaries whose language skills ranged from outstanding to mediocre. What complicated speaking in the branch was that when they had few Spanish speakers present they did simultaneous translation using earphones, if many, they stood beside me. I would prepare my talks full length, but designate possible places to shorten my talk and tell the Elder next to me when I was making a cut.

The greatest bit of such sequential translation I have ever seen was in the Yokohama Japan Ward which had excellent translators as every bit of the 3 hour block was bi-linqual. Gary Masuda, a Japanese-American (raised in California but working for the US Navy in Japan) spoke as an Area Authority, along with Elder Kikuchi from the 70. Bro. Masuda spoke extempore and did his own simultaneous translation: Japanese, English. Elder Kikuchi said it was the most amazing bit of translation he had ever seen and said he did not believe he could even come close. The Bishop translated his Japanese into English for him.