Author: Kamoliddin Islomov

One of the definitions of the word “culture” given in the dictionaries goes as follows: “culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts”[1]. Indeed, every nation conceives the world form different perspective. In our daily life we follow certain rules while we socialize, behave ourselves and even when we eat. These “invisible” rules vary from nation to nation. These rules are not made up within a year or a decade, it took centuries to form up and to become an ineluctable part of our life.

Considering culture in the framework of interpreting we come to the conclusion that any speaker consequently, led by human nature, is driven by the culture. The impact of the latest can be seen in behaviour, gestures, the way of speech delivery and the language.

As we know culture is also reflected in the language. When addressing speeches to the audience orators not only convince listeners of what they deliver but also represent their culture, proven experience gathered through centuries. We may easily come across in any speech at least a small tint of culture to which the orator belongs.

If you listen to a Russian speaker, you can notice that the speech is full of patriotic feelings and commitments, if you listen to an Uzbek speaker’s statements then you may find out the huge respect to ancestors’ achievements.

In this speech we would like to dwell on Russian and Uzbek speakers in the light of common behaviour of the speakers.

The behavior of Uzbek orator changes according to the styles of speech. For instance, if there is a congratulatory speech you might hear the common clichés like “Sizga sihat-salomatlik, oilaviy baxt, ishingizga rivoj va muvaffaqiyatlar tilayman!”. Clichés of this sort sometimes may cause interpreter to get distracted from the main idea. However, we should not forget that interpreters’ main target is the “idea” of any statement which must be delivered distinctly. Furthermore, Uzbek speakers seem to inadvertently make their speech long using ornate expressions, long and convoluted sentences whereas they could have conveyed the essence of their message through pair of short sentences. Of course we do not want to restrict them to express themselves in an impressive way. It is their discretion to decide how to write and deliver speech as they are orators whose aim is, as was mentioned above, to convince the audience.

As for the behavior of Russian speakers they tend to be serious from the very outset and try first to pay tribute to “ceremonial functions”. Still in the middle of their speeches very often a frivolous joke or funny saying can clear the air. They also like to address the acquaintances during the speeches with phrases like “Ну вот, Иван Петрович подтвердит…”, “Мы с Лидией Васильевной прошли огонь, воду и медные трубы…она не обманет”.

Russian speakers usually feel free to use critical comments, but having learnt well the experience of Russian poets and novelists of the past consciously or not try to use masked hints, comparisons as in fables and so on.

Usually, when an Uzbek orator criticizes something in his speech he is not straightforward as western speakers, instead you hear subtle criticism in the form of proverbs, metaphors, sarcasm, irony etc. for instance: “Qarang-a, oramizda shunday “aqilli” insonlar bor ekanda”, or “Bir balosi bo‘lmasa shudgorda quyruq na qilur”. It is of greatest importance for the interpreter to be able to feel this kind of wrapped criticism and get the gist of it across to the audience without doing violence to the meaning.

Gestures as we know can give us up to 30% of the information the person wants to share. In the framework of usual conversation people listen to the words and sentences which are subject to be subconsciously analyzed by the interlocutors.  Intonation, pauses, emotions and facial expression provide them with additional information. As for interpreters, they do it consciously and try to get as much information as they can from any auxiliary source. The Russians do not use gestures much. (The biggest exception is Vladimir Zhirinovsky).

The last point to be thoroughly considered is the language and the way of its delivery.

It is a rare thing to see an Uzbek orator to be excessively emotional. “Evenly-tempered”, “serious” this is the common definition given to most of them. Another feature to be mentioned here is deviation from the speech structure which consequently make this type of delivery long and excessive. For instance, they might use an example to leave an indelible impression but then they tend to focus on that too much which can cause listeners to get confused.

The Russians use proverbs, sayings and phrases from novels, fables, popular Russian films, poetry, sweeping comparisons etc. Interpreter should be ready to interpret combinations of the following kind: “Никогда не зарекайся” or «Сначала деньги, потом стулья»

For example, a couple of months ago I had been engaged into simultaneous interpreting of a serious international round-table held in Tashkent. There were experts and specialists from a big number of different countries. There were several specialists from the Russian Federation. While interpreting them I stumbled across some difficulties connected with their way of expressing themselves. One of the Russian experts suddenly while delivering the speech decided to compare using the phrase: “Вот попробуйте сломать карандаш о колено? Ну, вот так же и в данной ситуации”. It was difficult to understand whether he meant easiness or a complication of the process. Of course, in this case a great help comes from the background knowledge and the context which accompany a statement of this sort.

Proverbs, quotes of the greatest poets of the East are widely used by Uzbek orators as a tool for easy delivery of the content of the speech. Proverbs are not only used in speeches but also in everyday life: “Bu masalani hal qilishdan oldin yetti o‘lchab bir kesish kerak”, “Yugurganniki emas, buyurganniki”.

We would like to reiterate that cultural awareness paves the way for the successful interpretation. It helps to discharge the duty of the interpreter as a bridge between cultures.

Maybe Culture is not seen but is very well felt. Not knowing the cultural intricacies means to become vulnerable to the unexpected outcomes during the interpretation.

Thus continuous enrichment of cultural background, doing justice to cultural values provides the desired accomplishment of interpreters’ job.

Norkuvatov Sanjar

Raximova Sitora

[1]Source: www.livescience.com

Every language is unique in itself and requires a specific approach while processing speeches for interpreting. Uzbek has been developing through centuries enriching its vocabulary by borrowing as well as contributing to the glossaries of other languages. It goes without saying that the whole structure of the Uzbek language is based on the experience, history and culture of the nation. Latest developments in Uzbekistan, its achievements and present position in the world have turned simultaneous interpreting from Uzbek into English into a topical issue.

Through years Training Center for Interpreters of the University of World Economy and Diplomacy has been training interpreters most of whom were oriented to translate from English into Russian or from Russian into English. It was done not only due to certain traditional acceptations, there were a number of other reasons influencing this state of affairs. A common stereotype, a myth which reigned supreme within that period of time consisted in the idea which claimed that interpreting from Uzbek into English in simultaneous mode presented an insurmountable difficulty. It was considered that the main reason for this issue was Uzbek language sentence structure, its syntax. As we all know very well, a verb in Uzbek language comes at the end of the sentence and has a fixed position, whereas in English it directly comes after the subject as you can see it in the following example:

“Men kecha maktabga bordim” while in English the verb comes right after the subject: “I went to school yesterday”.

It’s clear that to interpret a speech delivered in Uzbek and keep an appropriate pace seems to be rather difficult.  We should also take into account the fact that Uzbek speakers not rarely tend to switch into longish ornamental expression of ideas which also requires certain processing to make it clear to the English speaking people.

We have tried different approaches to overcome the problem under investigation. Not once we experienced setbacks while trying to interpret from Uzbek into English. The main drawback we used to encounter was the fact that the interpreter had to wait till the end of the sentence to hear the verb. It would require him to make a long pause so that he could give the correct translation. However, while working in simultaneous mode there is no time to wait for the end of the sentence as there is a threat that you can seriously leg behind the orator and miss his other ideas. At the same time, falling behind the orator exerts strong pressure on the interpreter and he can enter into race with him and that can result in mechanical translation which makes interpreting loose and inconvenient to listen to.

Continuous discussions of this problem in the course of our classes, seminars and roundtables brought us to the following solution: we had to find the way to be able to bridge the gap between the verb we had been pending for and the pause which inevitably aroused in this situation. In the hope to tackle this problem, we tried to apply various approaches while experimenting and exercising in the booth. In order to avoid pauses we started slipping in neutral words and sentences into speeches under interpreting. As for the standard interpretation tools, like reformulation, generalization compression and others, we tried to as much as possible adapt them to our needs. One of the methods which helped us a lot was application of anticipation. We’ll try to demonstrate our approach in the following example.

“Mamlakatimizning barcha hududi kabi poytaxtimizda ham sanoatni jadal rivojlantirish, kichik biznes va xususiy tadbirkorlikni qo‘llab-quvvatlash borasida keng ko‘lamli ishlar amalga oshirilmoqda”

If we had not heard this sentence clearly or had to wait to listen to its final part, we would have used a neutral sentence at the beginning of it so that we could have extra time to listen to the remaining part of the sentence to reformulate it. Here is the translated version:

“It goes without saying (neutral sentence) entrepreneurship and small businesses are steadily developing all over the country (reformulated sentence)”.

If we happen to interpret a speaker whose rate of delivery is too high, we can use generalization and compression. Changing the sentences from active voice into passive – is also helpful when interpreting from Uzbek into English.

As we have mentioned above, anticipation, as a tool, proved to be rather efficient too. While anticipating we pronounce a verb before we actually hear it relying on our background knowledge and overall meaning of the sentence. In the following example we’ll try to show how we use anticipation to help us interpret from Uzbek into English.

“2017-2021-yillarda mamlakatimizning iqtisodiy, siyosiy, ijtimoiy barqarorligini, fuqarolik jamiyatining har bir bo‘g‘inini, avvalombor, oila institutini, shuningdek, yoshlarga oid davlat siyosatini…(Notice,  we haven’t heard the verb yet)”

“During 2017-2021 we should reinforce (anticipated verb) our policy to provide economic, political and social development of the country. At the same time, we should fuel growth into social institutions such as family institution and provide a good youth policy. (reformulated passage)

As you can see, it is possible to anticipate the verb with the help of background knowledge or making conclusion from the key words of the source language sentence such as “iqtisodiy, siyosiy, ijtimoiy barqarorlik”, “davlat siyosati”. What usually comes to our minds when we hear the word “policy”? We usually say “reinforce policy”, “implement or carry out policy” etc. If we keep abreast of the recent developments, we should be aware of the fact that in 2017-2021 the government of Uzbekistan is planning to “Reinforcing its policy” in different areas. So, in this sentence the word “Reinforce” seems to be appropriate to use.

Now that we have acquired a thorough grasp of what Uzbek-English interpreting is, we are looking for the ways to upgrade it. While practicing simultaneous interpreting we face many challenges and issues to be taken into account. We’d like to mention a few of them. These are the problems of pat phrases, terms and idioms usage. In our humble experience we have encountered these problems quite frequently. There is a great possibility that while working in simultaneous mode you can come to a deadlock, e.g. trying to translate an unknown term or an idiom. Due to this reason, continuous study of high frequency terms, idioms and pat phrases, especially in the fields of politics, business, law and others have become a serious part of our classes at TCI UWED. Now we know the rule to be followed by conference-interpreters: careful preparation for a given event saves you from undesirable flops.

Interpreting from Uzbek into English is different as compared to English-Russian interpreting. It requires specific approaches and ability to effectively use interpreting tools. Regular exercises at home and in the classroom help a lot to improve simultaneous interpreting from Uzbek into English. We hope that TCI UWED recommendations and hints adduced here will fuel growth in the number of students who are willing to try Uzbek- English simultaneous interpreting and develop their interpreting skills.

Sherzod Toshpulatov, Sanjar Norkuvatov