Sudden Visibility In every shitty situation there's hope for | Happy Interpreter

Sudden Visibility

In every shitty situation there's hope for some unexpected benefit. Due to Russia's aggression in 2014, people like me became full-fledged interpreters. And due to the shitshow that's happening now (with very tangible implications for millions of people), the profession suddenly gained long-due attention. 

Here's a recent example: Danylo Mokryk, a Ukrainian journalist with a 50K+ audience on YouTube devoted almost an entire episode to interpretation, translation, and our President's premature attempts to communicate in English. 

The video showcases some classic mistakes every beginner interpreter should know their way around:

False Attribution. In a misleadingly confident voice, the interpreter renders President Biden's words "it will be a war of choice" as "это будет та война, в которой мы будем участвовать по собственному выбору," in essence making him say the USA is willing to participate in the war. If this were a story from A. Falaleyev's course, it would have ended with something like "on that same day, the guy was shamed out of the profession, and soon after committed suicide / died a lonely drunkard / etc." But this is a real-life story, so you can be assured that this same guy is mistranslating someone else today, in the same gravely confident voice (and if I were Julia Poger, I would finish this sentence with "just because you are not marketing yourself enough"). 

Word-for-word Translation. Here Mokryk cites the example of "false-flag" being translated as "під чужим прапором". I agree, this rendition is less than ideal, and in many cases it makes much sense to interpret "a false-flag attack" as, let's say, "провокація". Nonetheless, "під чужим прапором" seems to have become an established figure of speech. Come to think of it, it sounds quite natural, and is quite difficult to substitute in many situations, so I'd rather abstain on this one.

False Friends. When interviewed by an international journalist, Volodymyr Zelenskyy (sorry for the official shitty spelling) has mistaken "ambitions" for "амбіції". Mr. President, she actually meant "прагнення"... But there's no one to give him a hint, and the entire answer is led astray.

What's Mokryk's conclusion? One should master foreign languages and check the original in case there's something suspicious in the translation. Actually, there's one more solution, which he shows without much comment: Mr. Zelenskyy on an official visit to the USA, accompanied and interpreted by our esteemed colleague from Kyiv—easily recognizable even when wearing a mask.