Interpreter Techniques to Learn a Language FAST – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.now what would you do if someone handed you a box and inside that box were Adolf Hitler's teeth well this really happened to a language interpreter called Elena she was just 25 years old fluent in Russian and German and suddenly she was caught in a top secret life or death mission see the Russians had found Hitler's teeth but they needed proof and forced Elena to interpret while they interrogated none other than Hitler's dentist on the spot no mistakes no second chances you have So you have 4 seconds to prepare what you're trying to say to survive this she needed incredible skill and nerves of steel but actually this is the same mental superpower conference interpreters use to this day it's a bit challenging because you're not a machine and this is what a lot of people think that interpreters are machines basically my name is Ollie Richards i'm a linguist and a language teacher i've taught hundreds of thousands of people a new language and published dozens of language learning books so I was very excited to meet three real interpreters Barry Martin and Andrea and share their secrets with you you will learn how interpreters do the impossible what actually happens inside their extraordinary brains and how you can train these same language superpowers for yourself but first let's go back to 1945 where Elena ends up hiding the most famous teeth in history elena loved poetry she studied literature and German in school so when she volunteered for the Red Army she probably imagined she'd be doing some kind of admin maybe some translation instead she literally ended up guarding a box of Adolf Hitler's teeth on May 8th my superior officer Major Gorbushin told me to go and see him he gave me a burgundy colored box and said "Those are Hitler's teeth you're responsible for them." It happened in May 1945 just after Hitler died soviet soldiers found a burned body near his bunkers no face no fingerprints just a few teeth if this was really Hitler it would solve World War II's biggest mystery and proved that the war was over but they had to be sure so they gave the teeth to their trusted interpreter Elena in a cigarette box horrible teeth they were heaven helper if she lost them or told anyone ever terrifying right just imagine that it's not just a big job it's the kind of responsibility that makes your bones shake but that wasn't even the hard part the following morning Yelaner and the two officers set off to track down Hitler's dentist maybe he could say for certain if these were Hitler's teeth but they knew neither the dentist's name nor his address or even if he was still alive finally they found out his name and that he had left the city 2 weeks earlier but they also learned that his assistant had stayed in Berlin hoping for her soldier husband to return from the front so they made Elena track down the poor dental assistant interrogate her in German and translate everything that she said she was all very very hush hush just one terrified witness a room full of men with guns and Elena the only one who could understand everyone the dentist the witnesses the soldiers perhaps she tried something like this there's also the strategy that at least in Slovakia we call something like bridging it means that you speak simultaneously with the speaker then you omit sentence and you connect the next sentence with the previous one without people noticing that you omitted the sentence so this would be uh for example risky risky strategy i would say it's a high-risisk strategy but still it makes you sound fluent the stakes well let's just say only two civilians knew the truth and one of them was sent to the gulag you know those horrible labor camps yeah well let's be honest if this were you or me we'd have that story on TikTok by bedtime or maybe even live streaming it to the US embassy but Elena well she was sworn to secrecy by Stalin himself elena as the interpreter was warned she would be held responsible in the case of a translation error everyone was given strict instructions and put under real pressure video and if you know your history Stalin did not want anyone to know that Hitler was dead and even pretended to keep hunting for him now in case it isn't obvious Elena's interpreting story shows us something incredible under the highest stress imaginable she didn't panic she didn't freeze she just translated and she got it right best part is our three elite interpreters are going to tell us exactly how they do this but before we dive in here's something that can seriously help you listen like an interpreter because if you're learning Spanish Japanese German or even trying to copy a regional accent you can't just memorize phrases you have to train your ear the way that real interpreters do not with slow recordings not with written transcripts but by listening to the messy natural rhythm of how people actually speak fast emotional full of slang interruptions mumbles that's the kind of speech that interpreters deal with every day and one of the best ways to train for that is of course TV movies local news talk shows reality TV even the ridiculous ones all packed with the unpredictable real life speech patterns your brain needs to hear but here's the catch most of those shows are geoblocks so unless you're actually in that country you can't watch them which is exactly why I use NordVPN who are very kindly sponsoring this video now NordVPN lets you switch your virtual location with one click so you can unlock content from over 118 countries suddenly you're not stuck with whatever your local Netflix offers you can jump to Argentina and write into an Argentine tel nolla you can watch a German courtroom drama catch the actual Japanese game shows that everyone's always talking about and yes it works on your phone your laptop your tablet even your smart TV plus Nord keeps your data safe on public Wi-Fi which is pretty important if like me you are watching things on the go i've been using Nord for years and if you're really trying to train your ear for languages like Elena had to it might be the most useful tool you could add to your language journey so if you want to give it a try head to nordvpn.com/yrichards and unlock a world of native content that you've been missing they've got a great offer for our viewers right now four extra months free on a 2-year plan plus a 30-day money back guarantee totally risk-f free so that's nordvpn.com/yrichard or there is a link in the description that you can click which you know how to do now you may be wondering Ollie do interpreters do anything special when they learn languages anything out of the ordinary what are their special secrets well it turns out yes they do it's all about going deeper beyond just words and grammar because interpreting isn't just about being accurate it's about making sure the listener fully understands and receives your message and this means you can't just repeat what someone said word for word no cuz that might not make any sense at all in the other language so interpreters learn to think in meanings not words and this means understanding culture and even how people do things what did I do when I was acquiring Russian all the way back i lived with a host family they're like "Oh we've got to go pay the electric bill." I'm like "I'll do it." Why i wanted to see how Russians paid for their electricity and so I was able to look and I would look at the bill and I'd be studying the bill as I was waiting in line and so those are the things you have to do right you've really got to immerse yourself in the language and the culture let's think about this for a second say you're listening to someone speak another language and you're trying to catch the meaning of what they're saying it's not always that simple because different languages use different word order in their sentences for example in English we say "I bought a pretzel." But in German it might come out as I have a pretzel bought you see what I mean so it's like you'd have to hear the whole sentence first before you can start interpreting it or do you hm maybe there's some other trick up their sleeve by the way if you're enjoying this I've created a special resource for you which is a collection of all of these special interpreter language learning tips and techniques from this video plus a few extra insider tips from Barry Martin and Andrea all together in one place i found these kind of techniques to be a real game changanger in my own language learning i think you can benefit from them too it's all completely free you'll find it inside the story learning fluency blueprint uh you can scan the QR code on the screen or you could grab the link in the description definitely check that out now as for Elena and our interpreter crew if you think being fluent in two languages makes interpreting easy just wait this is the calm before the storm and they have to reply in a full sentence for example to find a reason and while they answer your question you give them another question so they have to listen to another question while finishing the answer of the previous one and you have like for example 50 questions and they have to react quickly always finishing sentence listening to another question then finishing that sentence and and this is the thing when uh they get really tired now if all Elena had to do was speak German like a native then interpreting for Stalin wouldn't be such a big deal but that's not what interpreting is not even close interpreting means listening and speaking at the same time if you've ever witnessed a professional interpreter in action you'll know you've seen something amazing they they do something the rest of us don't listen to a message in one language and they say out loud in another language while still listening for the next sentence in the first language it's a it's a magic trick really but there are so many layers to this and so many ways that you can mess it up for me it was just fascinating when you would have someone who would say something and it's ambiguous and yet you know that they're specifically referring to something but not being said and everybody in the room that's listening to them in the original gets it now as an interpreter you have to get it as well but you can't make the implicit explicit you have to take that understand it's like I know what he's talking about but he's being really vague so I've got to be equally vague when I put it into the other language otherwise that could be misconstrued or I could get into trouble it's a mean little word trap and as if that's not hard enough they've got to do all this live and in front of very important people so it means staying calm under intense pressure and that's scary but I still remember the first time that I had to I had a job in Paris and I had to speak French to real customers in the in the youth hostel answer the phone i mean I was absolutely terrified and I was just kind of booking youth hostel rooms imagine doing this under this kind of pressure now I'm sure you must have seen some kind of interpreting on TV before maybe you know there's more than one way to do it you have consecutive which is the person speaks then stops then the interpreter interprets and then you have trained interpreters who are trained in what we call long consecutive with notes where they are able to listen to a message analyze it for meaning use their own customized notetaking system to jot down those ideas and then be able to give that back consecutively in chunks of anywhere from say 2 minutes to 10 it's a very advanced skill and one that is almost appears superhuman when you see people go i don't care which one you're talking about it's one of the hardest things you can ask a human brain to do elena actually wrote later that it felt like her brain had split in two one half doing the job the other watching from the outside but she wasn't supposed to be writing and when scientists scan interpreters brains they see something incredible the parts of the brain used for working memory impulse control and attention switching all light up like a firework display because it's not just juggling two languages it's is choosing the right one blocking out the wrong one and switching between them on the fly lightning fast and extremely sophisticated way beyond just language like the brain is shifted into a superhuman gear even more exciting though there's no single interpreter part of the brain that does all this it's multiple brain areas all pitching in it's complete drama that's why even the world's smartest computers still cannot interpret in real time and stay accurate and get this unlike normal bilingual interpreters don't just translate word for word is they are processing first and foremost for meaning they have to understand the meaning and then you know the words are just the vehicle for the meaning and the idea in other words they have to listen for the actual message predict what's coming next and remix the sentences all in real time if there's something that is really unknown I'll have it printed out in front of me highlighted whatever so trying to look up the some any kind of materials related to the topic i mean ideally the client gives you something as for Elena back in that bunker in Berlin she didn't get any notes to use but somehow standing there holding Hitler's teeth she did everything modern interpreters are trained to do think in meaning and the overall message not words understand the culture listen and speak at the same time in two languages and if Elena could do it could you you might think that interpreting is all about talent like you're born with some kind of split brain superpower and I wouldn't blame you for thinking that but every pro that I know says the opposite you train for it you mess it up a hundred times and eventually your brain catches on now I'm no interpreter but I remember this very clearly from my own life when I learned Spanish and then later learned Portuguese i found that having learned both those languages I would mix them up terribly so I actually had to go through a process of learning to switch between them so that I could talk with my Spanish friends and my Brazilian friends at the same time without getting completely confused and that was with two very similar languages these guys who do this professionally are incredible and if you're learning a language there are some cool things you can try at home so listen carefully don't worry about writing these down by the way all these techniques they're inside the special interpreters tips guide that I told you about earlier link in the description i believe yeah year three I think we started looking at simultaneous interpreting so we would we started with shadowing we did that for quite a while shadowing is where you listen to someone speak and repeat what they say out loud as they say it so you're not aiming for perfect understanding you're just copying the sounds the rhythm the natural flow of real speech miguel aua ever tried this it's amazing for pronunciation and it gets your brain used to realtime listening because you're echoing the actual sounds that they're making rather than perfect words if you want to give it a go it's not too hard just pick a short video played out loud and copy what you hear as it's happening once you've got the hang of that try waiting just a second or two before you repeat the words now I won't lie it'll feel weird at first like you're always playing catchup but that awkward little gap is where the magic happens because now your brain has to hold on to the meaning while still listening to what's coming next it's like juggling three flaming battles but if you train it even just a little you'll start thinking faster remembering more and understanding language in real time and it works really well with the next thing we would have all sorts of exercises for example you would have like simultaneous paraphrasing it means that I read a text in English and they're supposed to repeat the same text but using different words so they have to convey the same idea in the same language but use different words so they have to work with the text and word in their head before they start speaking paraphrasing is genius you hear a sentence and then say it in your own way same meaning different words for example you might hear "A giraffe can consume up to 75 pounds of acacia leaves every day." That's my weird example of the week and you say "A giraffe can eat a huge amount of leaves every day." They're not identical but it means the same thing and it gets you thinking in the language instead of just translating word for word and then we got into paraphrasing so it was still in the same language but saying ideas in a different way which was quite challenging because I think it's actually more challenging than interpreting because you have to think about okay I cannot say it this way I have to say it another way you know this is incredibly helpful when you're practicing speaking because you won't always know the exact words you need but you can work around this by describing it with words that you do know you might already know about this next one for example I start the sentence in in English and they are supposed to finish it in Slovak then I start the sentence in Slovak they're supposed to finish it in English code switching is when you switch between two languages even in the middle of a sentence so I have to go back now yeah you know what I mean half the world has this skill down already don't knock it if it works the most suitable the one I like the most would be anticipation which means that you start and you anticipate how the sentence is going to finish anticipation and that's a real superpower kind of like those annoying couples who do this we both grew up one block away from each other on the Lower East Side on Lansancy Street yeah you start guessing where the sentence is going even before it finishes now it sounds silly but it builds real fluency in a new language and especially helps you to start speaking faster you're coaching your brain to quickly figure out the gist of what someone is saying here's an idea maybe try next time you're watching a show with subtitles something like a comedy series where you know the characters well by the way I've got a great list of TV shows um that you should watch for learning different languages i'll put that in the description or just practice on your family don't throw the baby out the window just wait till your father gets a pack of diamonds yeah kids they're not so good at prediction and of course the goal isn't perfection it's to train your brain to stay calm while you're doing everything at once listening thinking speaking and another thing is for example splitting your attention so you have to do two things at once and we can train this also with our students for example I read one text in in the Slovak language they read simultaneously with me completely different text in English language then I ask them what did I read about and now you tell me what did you read about so they have to be able to listen and concentrate on two things and remember i absolutely love that i'm going to try it tonight now this is fun i heard of one interpreter who practices by doing crossword puzzles in one language while listening to another language in their headphones it's pretty crazy you can see how it can make your brain nice and sharp now here's the part of the story I didn't tell you elena didn't get a medal for helping solve the biggest mystery of World War II she got silence it was that all the labor camp so she shut her mouth not for 5 years not 10 she kept the secret for 40 years until the Soviet Union collapsed and at last she published her memoir spilling all the secrets still hiding in her razor sharp brain and if you've made it this far into the video well your brain will already be sharper than when you started all that is left for now is for you to pick out a language to learn but figuring out which language is right for you can be rather tricky but that's exactly why you should watch my next video it's all about choosing the perfect language based on what you already know and it's full of surprises like who knew that Arabic and Swahili were so similar watch this video and find out why