Becoming an Interpreter

[Elle Seven]

I don't know if this is the right place to post this question, so if it's not, if anyone would direct me to where it should be, I'd much appreciate it.

I am wondering if there are any Coli members who are multilingual thru their own studies (versus being born and raised in a family where multiple languages were spoken). If there are, I am curious as to how you accomplished this. Learning languages is something I, as of recently, would like to do in order to build a skillset I could use later on to work as an interpreter (or something related).

The thing is, I am a native speaker of English, 'studied' Spanish in middle school, high school and college, and have exposure to a handful of other languages while living abroad. However, as far as learning a language to fluency while still living in the US, I have no idea how to start. For now, my goal would just be to build on the knowledge I have of Spanish and go from there, but I do not know how to accomplish this in an effective and efficient manner. Does anyone have any ideas? Any input would helpful and appreciated.

 

[Phoenix Rising]

I learned Spanish and I'm not a native speaker.

Basically it's all about immersion. You have to figure out how to immerse yourself so you speak and hear more often. Going to school to learn any language is a waste because language isn't learned by reading a book. It's learned by hearing and then practicing to speak.

Think about a kid...they spend like 1 full year just hearing before they are able to verbalize. By about 3-5 they are able to speak, but it's all through listening. Cognition (which is both hearing and thinking) happens through the ears. So listen to anything in Spanish you can and learn how to pick up sounds and then practice the sonido (sound) so you can learn how to verbalize. Listen to lots of different stuff, and once you find a dialect you are most attracted to (for me it's Caribbean Spanish, like Cuban Spanish), focus on that more, learn more about that place, what it's movies, listen to its music and immerse yourself in the culture and history of the place. You basically need someone to sound like in Spanish because having a dialect makes you relatable to others. People have a hard time understanding people they can't place. It causes cognitive dissonance so even if you're using the right words native speakers will have a hard time understanding you on a mental level because they don't know how to place you. Sounds weird but it's a thing.

So listen, then figure out where you live, for me it's Cuba, immerse yourself in the sounds, culture, history of that place and then finally speak. Practice words, practice saying them and hearing them said and then figure out what your life interest are, what things do you talk about the most? Sports, women/relationships, sex, religion, politics, and then start building a vocabulary of your everyday world. I would start with mundane things like my surroundings, my house, my family, my commute to work. And then begin to practice, find someone you can speak to conversationally and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Don't be scared to sound like a 1 year old, then 3 year old, then 5 then 10 then 15...you have to go through the stages but let yourself do that. And this is sheerly from the stand point of speaking and listening.

Reading and writing is a whole other thing but the thing taught most in schools, because if you think about it school doesn't teach you how to speak ,they teach you how to read and write. But if you'rel trying to learn a foreign language it's backward because really you should come to school able to speak and understand and then school teaches you how to expand your grammar and vocabulary.

So learn how to speak and understand on a basic level through immersion (get yourself to 1st grade basically) and then start learning to read and write.

Here's a good video by a guy who teaches people how to be polyglot, he gives great advice.

 

[Elle Seven]

@Phoenix Rising

Thank you for responding.

I found your post quite helpful. The most helpful part is actually where you said to find someone to 'sound like'. It never occurred to me to work from this stance when learning a language. It's ironic because I used to teach English as a foreign language, and this is exactly what my students did; most of them tried to emulate American English. Another ironic part of your post is that what has inspired me to go ahead and learn a language (mainly Spanish for now) to fluency is my recent trip to Cuba. I only stayed 5 days, and it was just around that 4th day I started to break thru that feeling of being totally uncomfortable with my shytty Spanish and starting to understand the people around me a bit. It was time to come back home then, though.

I would really appreciate learning another language, not just because it could open other does for me financially but, mainly, because it could just open other doors for me in terms of learning in general. I've lived in two other countries, and it truly is different once you start learning the language of the land; it is easily to assimilate and a lot of the fear starts to fall away, once you know you can communicate to others what you need.

The thing is, I'm not in a position to immerse myself totally in a Spanish-speaking environment, at least not 100% of the time. At the risk of being offensive, at this point, all Spanish sounds the same to me, probably because I only hear it sporadically. You've given me a good start, though. I'll use Cuban Spanish as my base and work from there.

At the very least, until I get to travel again, I may go ahead and enroll in a class, at least for the experience for consistent practice and exposure to a native speaker.

I totally forgot to ask you - how did you learn Spanish? Did you learn solely thru immersion? How old were you when you did? What was your actual daily routine (or did you have one) for how to study the language on your own, outside of when you actually had to just go out and interact with others who were speaking Spanish.

Your point about kids learning is a good one, but what inspired me to make this post is because I realize the benefit kids have with language learning is kind of lost on adults. It's literally a brain wiring issue with kids where, I think, the first 6 to 7 years of their life, they are just like in download mode, so you can pump a whoooole lot of knowledge into them, and they soak it up. After that, it's like something turns off, and they just start running a program like the rest of us. However, maybe if they are actually taught the methods of language acquisition during that time, maybe those are habits they can take into adolescence and adulthood when it comes to learning other languages. I tend to be a visual learner and find the reading is actually quite helpful with language acquisition, so I'm going to see how it goes.

I will be taking your advice though. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience.

BTW, what part of Cuba are you in? I know my experience there would have been 100 times richer if I had known the language because I could have actually got into some meatier subjects or things to ask about when I was there. Without the ability to speak Spanish, I was pretty much relegated to just going touristy stuff, which was okay but not all that fulfilling.