Translators' Toastmasters and Linguists Meetup

Learn a language, translate a speech, understand a foreign language - do any of these interest you/ Have they been a challenge in the past?

I have attended these Toastmasters clubs meetings:

Problems
1 An all-Mandarin club in Singapore
I could not understand a word, nobody could translate, and I had trouble finding the toilet. (Plus problems finding a public telephone, ordering a taxi home, and telling the taxi where to find me.)

2 A bilingual club in Singapore
A speech entirely in Mandarin. How could I vote for the best speaker, when two species were in Mandarin and two in English.

Successes
As 'secretary' cum translator into English in the typing room, surrounded by men who all jumped to their feet when I entered, at a conference at a hotel in India. I had to correct the English handout which translated a speech from French into English, for a Belgian lady.

I spent about three hours trying to understand the handwritten three page original. First it was in French, with lots of technical terms. Secondly, it had various crossings out and insertions and arrows for reversed paragraphs.

I spent some time trying to type it up. Then with the writer, another hour or so asking her about each sentence. She tried to explain, looked words up in a dictionary, then revised what she had originally said to make it clearer or because she had second thoughts. We needed up with at least six pieces of paper marked version one and version two.

Then I spent another two hours typing the translation with the correct punctuation in French. Finally another hour or more on the English translation.

Angela Lansbury, B A Hons, CL, ATG, English teacher, speech writer and speech coach.

Bilingual Clubs and Translation

In Singapore I went to the Francophone club where the meeting was entirely in French. I once went to a Mandarin club where nobody spoke English, except for one girl who spoke half a dozen words. Simple questions such as 'where is the toilet?' were a major challenge, involving several people and phones and drawings.

In the bilingual clubs I have been to in Singapore, people spoke rapidly in one language, and no translation was given to those members of the audience who spoke another language.

I would like to see bilingual clubs with translators.

In real life you are often talking to an audience where some of the people do not speak English fluently. At conferences you may be speaking to audiences where the speaker and audience speak different languages, so you have to pause constantly to wait for the translator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9FHU_WRc80

I speak English (British English), and French.

Angela Lansbury.