When I attended a session about consecutive interpreting at ATA’s 2010 Annual Conference, the speaker recommended a few books, among them ‘Note-Taking For Consecutive Interpreting – A Short Course‘ by Andrew Gillies. The book is fascinating and really helpful when it comes to understanding and learning the techniques that professional consecutive interpreters have to master. Read a review of the book published on AIIC’s Web site. The fact that the book was part of a series (‘Translation Practices Explained’, published by the British St. Jerome Publishing and the American InTrans Publications) intrigued me, and I wanted to check the other titles in the series. Here is what I found out.

For example, there is one book in the series titled ‘Legal Translation Explained‘ (ISBN 1-900650-46-0) by Enrique Alcaraz and Brian Hughes, offering a very good introduction to legal English and legal translation. Here is the book’s description:

Focusing on the problems of translating English legal language, Alcaraz and Hughes offer a wide-ranging view of one of the most demanding and vital areas of contemporary translation practice. Individual chapters deal with legal English as a linguistic system, special concepts in the translation of legal English, the genres of legal translation, and offer a series of practical problems together with discussions of proposed solutions, as well as insight into the pragmatic ways translators go about finding solutions.
The numerous examples and discussions of specific terms make the book useful both as a manual in the translation class and as an invaluable reference work for students, teachers, self-learners and professional translators.

Another title is ‘Revising and Editing for Translators‘ (ISBN 1-900650-96-7) by Brian Mossop, a great way to learn the basic principles, parameters and rules of revising and copyediting.

Yet another one is the self-explanatory ‘Introduction to Court Interpreting‘ (ISBN 1-900650-30-4) by Holly Mikkelson from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. This little book gives not only an overview of the background of court interpreting in the world, but also some interpreting techniques that may be very helpful for those who want to decide if they want to pursue a career in court interpreting. Warning: this book does not replace a formal training in interpreting.

I can’t think of a better and more systematic introduction into translation and interpreting techniques. This was a great addition to my translation library, and I am looking forward to reading the next titles.

Other Titles in the Series

  • Translating for the European Union Institutions by Emma Wagner, Svend Bech, Jesús M. Martínez, ISBN 1-900650-48-7
  • Conference Interpreting Explained by Roderick Jones, ISBN 1-900650-57-6
  • Electronic Tools for Translators by Frank Austermühl, ISBN 1-900650-34-7
  • Subtitling through Speech Recognition by Pablo Romero-Fresco, ISBN 1-905763-28-X

To Buy the Books

In the US you can buy the books from InTrans Book Services, a bookstore that always has a booth at ATA annual conferences.

In the rest of the world, you can either buy them from Amazon:

… Or directly from St. Jerome Publishing in the UK.

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