The Value of Context in Translation with AUSIT President Angelo Berbotto

Angelo: The habit of waiting or being patient sometimes is forgotten because we tend to jump to conclusions based on our own cultural experience, our own history. Sometimes observing, listening may help us realise this is not what they are meaning. We tend to think that the way we think is the norm, that we are the yardstick by which humanity is judged, and that if we are reacting to something, everybody should be reacting the same way. Otherwise there is something wrong with them.

Brian: Today we are talking with Angelo Berbotto, National President of AUSIT, Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators. Angelo is a solicitor practising part-time in family and immigration law based in Sydney. He is also a legal translator certified by NAATI in English into Spanish, Portuguese into English, French into English, Italian into English, and Spanish into English. In November 2022, Angelo was elected president of AUSIT. Angelo, welcome to The Native Experience.

Angelo: My pleasure.

Brian: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do, and what do you do for fun?

Angelo: I am a lawyer and a translator. I qualified in both areas at the same time, and I prioritised my legal career until COVID. Then I thought I needed a break and put all my efforts into translation. Nowadays I do half and half. For fun, I like cycling, swimming, playing tennis, and walking my dog.

Brian: If you could only speak one language for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

Angelo: That is a tough one, because being a translator means having different windows into the world. You look at the world differently through the lenses of different languages. But I suppose it would be English, because it would allow me to connect with the largest number of people. It is the lingua franca. Although language is so connected with experiences. Professionally, because I did law school here in Australia, English is activated in that regard. But for everyday things, I prefer Spanish. That is my first language.

Angelo: I have learned nine languages. I can work in five. Every time I go through that learning process, it really makes you think about what is important in different cultures or how society works. For example, in Indonesian, there is no word for brother or sister, but there is a word for younger brother, younger sister, older brother, and older sister, because what is important is the seniority rather than the gender. In other languages, like Polish, even verbs have gender. All these things make you think. I don't know whether language is a result of logic or the other way around, but it influences reasoning and how we perceive things, because we have to communicate those perceptions through language.

Brian: How do you mentally switch between all of these languages?

Angelo: I think after the third language you learn, it becomes effortless. When I want to be funny about it, I say that I am a bodybuilder. Of course I am not. But my brain is a bodybuilder for languages. You can't see it, but it is there. The brain is trained to identify patterns, to incorporate them, to pass information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

Angelo: I don't get languages confused unless I am trying to master them at the same level. For example, I have German and Polish both at B1, which is intermediate level. Sometimes I will get words confused because they have similar forms but different meanings. But when there are different levels, for example French at C2, I don't get that confused with anything.

Brian: How does speaking all these languages affect your daily life?

Angelo: I have that ability with languages, but I don't have that ability in mental arithmetic, for example. It doesn't affect my life much. I get a lot of enjoyment from going out and understanding people's private conversations when they think nobody around can understand. I also read books in their original language. And it gives me the opportunity to combine my two main interests, language and law. I work a lot as a legal translator.

Angelo: It is interesting how we look at the same legal concept from place to place. For example, succession law: how property passes from a parent to a child, whether there is a will, what the rules are, how much you can pass to your heirs or how much by law you must leave to your children or surviving spouse. It exposes you to a huge range of ways of understanding society because law is the rules that a given society has chosen to be regulated by. Some societies put more emphasis on group cohesion and family. Others put emphasis on the freedom of the individual. When you are dealing with two very different systems, it is like a jigsaw puzzle trying to find the right expression to convey an idea that in one system is very current but in the other does not formally exist.

Brian: What is your cultural background?

Angelo: I was born in Uruguay and came to Australia when I was 21. I was a student at university here and did an exchange programme with France for one year where I studied French law. Then I started working here and relocated to the UK. I applied for a scholarship and got one to study children's law in Rome, so I lived one year in Italy. Then I went back to the UK and worked there for about 10 years. I took a sabbatical and went to live in Poland for one year in Wroclaw. I like moving around. That is why I prefer being a linguist to a lawyer, because when you are a lawyer, you are mainly tied to one place.

Brian: If you could only choose one country, where would you live?

Angelo: I always prefer living where I am at the moment. Australia is a wonderful place with a lot of multiculturalism and lots of opportunities to learn from other people. There is one city in the world that I really like very much, and that is Berlin. If I have the opportunity to spend a year or two in Berlin and get my German really fluent, I would love to do that. I survived the winter in Poland, so I am prepared for whatever may happen.

Brian: Do you have tips for learning a language?

Angelo: Reading is a tool. Many people put a lot of emphasis on listening, but I fix the structures much better when I read. Nowadays it is so easy. I read books on my iPad and when I don't know a word, I just touch it and the dictionary comes up. I also handwrite words and collocations in a notebook because if you do something mechanical and physical, you are activating other parts of your brain. I don't create glossaries on the computer. I have a notebook where I write things down and from time to time go back and read what I have written. This has been especially useful for taking my languages from intermediate to advanced level.

Angelo: The other thing I do is buy a high school textbook in the target language on a subject I already know, like European history. Because you already have the context, you only pay attention to the grammar and vocabulary. You have an advantage because you can guess the meaning. I also listen to the news first in English or Spanish and then in the target language. Since the international news is the same, once you know what happened you can concentrate on identifying new expressions.

Angelo: For language learning, the main thing is creating a daily habit and doing a little bit. Language is like transferring from short-term memory to long-term memory. You cannot cram. You cannot overburden the short-term memory.

Brian: Tell us about your role at AUSIT.

Angelo: AUSIT is the Australian Institute of Translators and Interpreters. It has been going for 36 years. I was elected national president. We are about 2,000 practitioners. In Australia, when you want to be a translator, you need to pass a certification exam set by an organisation called NAATI. There are around 11,000 people with NAATI credentials in Australia, but only one fifth are members of the association. For me, the biggest challenge is to increase our ranks and persuade those 9,000 practitioners out there that we have something of value and that we need them in order to be stronger and to negotiate with government agencies and language service providers for better working conditions.

Angelo: There is something very important in translation, which is providing a message that is relevant to the communities that are going to use it. If you are translating COVID information into Spanish for the Spanish-speaking community in Australia, there will be expressions related to institutions like Centrelink and Medicare. Those expressions may not mean anything or may mean something different in another country. The word Medicare exists in the U.S., but it is something different from Medicare here. Knowing the community you are targeting is very important.

Angelo: Here in Australia, because we have NAATI, that creates a market. A translator in Mexico is unlikely to be hired to translate documents for Spanish speakers in Australia because that person would not have the context. If someone from Spain wants to have their will translated into English to lodge with a notary here, that translation must bear the seal of a NAATI certified translator. It is a guarantee that the person doing the translation understands not only the language but also the context in which the language is used.

Brian: Do you have a specific story about overcoming a cultural difference or challenge?

Angelo: As president of AUSIT and as a lawyer, I have been visiting different state capitals. Australia is a federation, so we have different states. I have been to Tasmania, South Australia, talking to lawyers about how to work with interpreters. Most of these lawyers are monolingual. It is very interesting to see their reactions to anecdotes about things that can go wrong by not giving the interpreter context.

Angelo: Sometimes an interpreter is called to court and is not told the reason. It is like arriving at the cinema 45 minutes into the film. You have to try to make sense of the plot from the images and sound, and you can make wrong assumptions because you don't know what happened before. A linguist will take certain things for granted, but for monolingual people, we have to educate them about why we need them to share information so that mistakes can be avoided. Language communication is context dependent.

Angelo: Lawyers are always concerned about confidentiality, especially in criminal cases. But they need to understand that the interpreter does not take sides. The loyalty of the interpreter is to the message. Coming halfway through the movie without being told what happened before makes their job almost impossible.

Brian: You are right. Context is a huge issue even within the same language. Personality differences mean people don't understand each other's contexts.

Angelo: In that story about cross purposes, what you mean is one thing, but what the person understands is different. The lawyers are not understanding why interpreters need more material, because they are looking at it from their own perspective: nothing about the case can go to a third party because it may undermine the outcome for my client. What interpreters are saying is, if you give me the information I need, I can come prepared.

Angelo: Imagine if the case is about somebody who had an accident on a farm because of a tractor malfunction. If you are the interpreter and you have never been on a farm and don't know the parts of a tractor, the hearing is between the insurance company and the injured person. The interpreter needs to come prepared because they don't have the luxury of time for lexical research. Dictionaries have 50,000 or 60,000 words, whereas an educated person in everyday talk uses 5,000 to 6,000. Everything under the sky has a name.

Angelo: When you are dealing with something specific like machinery or criminal activity, there is slang for everything and it is different from country to country. Spanish spoken in 20 different countries, criminal slang is different from country to country. An interpreter needs all that knowledge, but in order to come prepared, they need to know what the movie is going to be about.

Brian: How should we provide a truly native experience?

Angelo: I would say observe and listen. The habit of waiting or being patient is sometimes forgotten because we tend to jump to conclusions based on our own cultural experience. Sometimes observing and listening helps us realise this is not what they are meaning. We tend to think that the way we think is the norm. We think we are the yardstick by which humanity is judged. I think not having that knee-jerk reaction, but taking time to check if we are understanding correctly and checking whether we are wrong rather than assuming we are right.

Angelo: What I suggest is always asking, "What do you mean by that?" or "In what way?" Open-ended questions. Remember that words are like briefcases. There are lots of emotions and cultural references packed inside. We have to unpack the word. Never take a word at face value, but go behind it. The way to go behind it is by asking open-ended questions.

Angelo: Use a professional so that you don't have to worry about the language obstacle. You can leave that to somebody who has committed their life to that profession. Not everybody has a gift for languages. When you are trying to convey ideas and you don't have the words, that produces stress.

Brian: Thank you so much, Angelo. This is really great information and advice.

Angelo: One last thing. The other reason why people should use professional language services is this: if you are an American person who has some Spanish and you are going to Buenos Aires to give a presentation, your pronunciation is not yet very polished. People have to make a lot of effort to understand you, and some will just disconnect. You think that by giving your speech in Spanish you will be closer to your audience, but actually the result is the opposite.

Brian: That is a really good point. Angelo Berbotto, National President of AUSIT. Thank you so much for joining us. Remember, always strive for authenticity and embrace the power of native experiences.