Accents

Even speakers who use their own mother tongue sometimes have local peculiarities of accent or vocabulary, for which the interpreter should be prepared. Fluent intercourse with friends of the upper classes in London, Paris or Madrid does not make it certain that one can easily follow what is said by workers’ representatives from Yorkshire or the Middle-West, from Quebec or the Jura mountain districts, from Barcelona or Peru.

Appropriate preparation can hardly be expected from a school, hut the aspirant interpreter may grasp all opportunities which offer, not only in the course of travels but also in his own town, to talk with a variety of people having the worst possible accents, so that he may grow familiar with them.

One point of detail which is not without importance is the pronunciation of Latin, which varies considerably as between different countries. The English interpreter should not only be able to recognize standard phrases such as a priori, de jure, etc. when they are pronounced as taught in Louvain or Heidelberg; he should also be able to recognize expressions far more infrequent when pronounced in a way different from his own, such as botanical or pharmaceutical names, lines of Horace or Ovid, elementary aphorisms of Roman law, etc. Were it only with this end in view, a few years of Latin would prove most valuable.

The ear should also grow accustomed to the way in which speakers from certain countries pronounce proper names. An unprepared Englishman may not recognize a Chinese name which he knows quite well, when that name is spoken by a Chinese or a Russian or a Frenchman. Fortunately, practice gives one a special sense of phonetic transposition which often helps one to guess. If this should fail, the interpreter may have to ask the speaker kindly to write down the name for him – a service which is gladly rendered.