Kudos to IWEC Past Awardee, Vigdis Eriksen for being tapped for translations of Trumpisms!
“At Eriksen, we’re used to receiving out-of-the-box requests from our interpreting clients, but we were still intrigued when the phone rang one afternoon and The Daily Show was on the line. A producer from the program was looking for interpreters to interview for a segment on the challenges of translating Trump. We knew from the start this was a project we wanted to be a part of, and immediately delved into the specifications: the language and country requirements, the shoot schedule, and the process for screening the interpreters prior to filming.
The challenges of interpreting Trump’s manner of speaking have been widely discussed over the course of his rise in the political spotlight. The list of grievances is long: his super-short sentences, repetition of phrases, broken syntax, limited vocabulary, throwaway words, sentence fragments, and sarcasm. To make an interpreter’s job even worse, he jumps from topic to topic and often starts sentences with no clear indication of where they’re going.
Then there’s Trump’s special vocabulary – terms which don’t always exist in other languages. This includes the nonsense words and malapropisms, “bigly,” “braggadocious,” and “unpresidented.” And of course, how does one properly express the infamous “bad hombres” or “nasty woman” to people in other cultures?
Trump’s speeches are tailored to specific segments of the American audience, so out of context, they lose much of their intended impact. Compounding this is his use of “Americanisms,” words or expressions that are unique to the U.S. For example, he described former FBI Director James Comey by saying, “He’s a showboat,” “He’s a grandstander.”
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