Translators

Two of my research assistants are from Talas. They’re sisters: Begayim and Jyldyz. I’ll be putting up their bios, along with those of my other assistants, on a special section of the website within the next few weeks. They went with me to Talas to help me find my way around and to translate for me. My Kyrgyz is improving, but it still is pretty bad. It would be counterproductive for me to try to conduct an interview in that language.

It turned out that I only needed translators for a few of the interviews. Many of the older generation know Russian, especially if they work in education. Those interviews tended to flow a little more naturally. Even though both of my translators did a wonderful job, it is difficult to have a natural conversation when there is a large pause in between every idea.

It’s interesting. During my first interview in Talas (with the devout householder), I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He would speak, and I would wonder if he had some weird accent that made his Kyrgyz unintelligible to me. I listed to that interview again today, and actually understood large sections of it. Passive understanding is a lot easier than active engagement in a conversation.

I’ve found the most effective way to work with a translator is to pretend that he or she is a telephone. When you talk on the telephone with someone, you don’t talk to the telephone and then expect the telephone to talk to the person on the other end. The phone is just a means by which the conversation takes place. When I work with translators, I encourage the person I am interviewing to talk directly to me, and I talk directly to that person. The translator usually sits to the side. When she translates, she speaks as if she were me or that other person (“I think…” as opposed to “he thinks…”) I’ve found the more I am able to directly interact with the person I am interviewing, the better the interview goes. If that person continually turns to the translator and talks to her, the conversations suffers and I don’t get as much valuable information.