Emily Royal

Summary of Activity Issues / Lessons Learned /

(Qué es lo que has Helpful Resources
Organization: hecho)

Provo MTC I started off by translating I first machine translated the

talks for sacrament document and then went through
Activity: meeting, and then the document and fixed the errors
interpreting during that the computer did not catch. I
translating/interpreting sacrament meeting in real learned how to navigate machine
time. translation better and use tools
Date: 9/25/22 like Linguee in conjunction with
that. Then I learned how to use a
Start Time: 8:00am
headphone/microphone system to
hear what was being said in the
End Time: 10:30am
Sacrament meeting and then
interpret in real time while hearing
what I am saying at the same
time. This was so challenging! It
was hard to keep up and it was a
little confusing at times. I am
excited to try again and see if I
get any better.

Summary of Activity Issues / Lessons Learned /

(Qué es lo que has Helpful Resources
Organization: hecho)

Provo MTC I again helped interpreting This week was challenging! I

for sacrament meeting helped interpret a few different
Activity: through listening to talks in things but I got to one talk that
English and interpreting was particularly difficult. The man
translating/interpreting them to Spanish in real was speaking in scripture, but
time. wasn’t mentioning any kind of
Date: 10/16/22 reference. I stumbled a lot. I felt
truly bad for the person that was
Start Time: 8:00am
listening to me try to stumble
through everything. I learned
End Time: 10:00am
though, that in this situation, I just
needed to get the point across. I
am excited to practice more and
be better at thinking on my feet.
 Summary of Activity Issues / Lessons Learned /
(Qué es lo que has Helpful Resources
Organization: hecho)

Provo MTC On this day, I first helped It was nice to practice interpreting
to translate some of the again, and I felt like I did a little
Activity: talks to Spanish and then I better this week. While translating
did some interpreting the documents, I learned
translating/interpreting during the Sacrament something important. We first
meeting. used machine translation, and
Date: then as I was going through and
making adjustments and fixing
Start Time: 8:00am
mistakes, I realized that every
single word that was used in the
End Time: 10:00am
original english document, was
translated over to the Spanish
version. I realized when reading it
over, that it was unnecessary to
do this. I asked the person in
charge what he thought and he
confirmed that it was always
better to be more concise. This
was a good learning experience
for me that I think will help me in
future translations

Total hours: 6.5

Reflection:

Volunteering at the MTC is an experience that I will never forget. I went into it having no
interpretation experience and it was definitely a lot of learning. I got to practice interpretation
during sacrament meetings at the MTC, and although this was a fairly low pressure situation, it
was really hard at first. I would put on a headset, and in one ear I would hear the meeting in
English, then I would speak into the attached microphone and hear my own voice in Spanish in
the other ear. It was overwhelming at first. It felt difficult to keep up, even when I was interpreting
something fairly simple. It made me think about this class a lot and when we had talked about
how interpreters are often extremely undervalued. I feel like I can attest to that now. I can see
how people assume that interpreting is easy if they don’t speak another language. I think I
believed that too, even before this class. It is assumed that if you speak another language then
it is a simple job to interpret and translate. We’ve learned in class that there is so much to
consider with translation, and now having experienced a little bit of interpretation first hand, I
can say that it is difficult as well. It takes a lot of quick thinking and knowledge of language,
culture, as well numerous other topics that you may never expect. For example, one time, I was
interpreting for one of the senior missionaries who was giving a talk and she began to talk about
her time as mission president in a Chinese-speaking country, and how specific words in
Mandarin often confused her. I felt very off-guard, trying to speak Spanish about the Chinese
language, and translating the Chinese words that she was explaining in English. I also had
trouble when interpreting scriptures. Sometimes the speakers would mention a scripture
reference but a lot of times they would not. Then I would listen to them, and I knew they were
quoting a specific scripture or general conference talk but I would have to give a very rough
version of that when interpreting into Spanish. I often worried that I was using the wrong words
and I just hoped that they were understanding the message of the talk well enough.
Another interesting experience I had while volunteering at the MTC, was being able to
translate some of the talks before interpretation. I would often arrive earlier in the morning on
Sundays so that I could translate the talks that had already been provided digitally by the
speakers. During these times, I learned a lot. I learned more about machine translation and how
to utilize that in an effective way. First, we would use a machine translation through Google
Docs to give a rough translation of the talk and then we would go through everything to fix any
mistakes that we came across. It was interesting to see that because the machine translation
had been utilized quite a bit to specifically translate sacrament talks from English to Spanish,
that the machine translation was able to catch quite a bit. There was still a lot to fix, like
changing “anciano” back to “elder” or “charlar” to “discurso”. I also had the opportunity to work
with a Colombian man who has interpreted and translated for the church for quite some time,
and he gave me a lot of great tips. It was great to learn from him, and learn new ways to write
and translate in a more natural way. I truly feel as though I was able to learn a lot during this
whole experience, and that I have learned things that I will carry with me in my Spanish career. I
am excited to continue practicing and learning Spanish so that I can keep interpreting, as it is
such a useful and important skill.