When interpreting from or into another language, cultural awareness is fundamental, since an interpreter has to avoid both misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

It is important to distinguish between these two terms: misinterpretation is the inability of two people to communicate due to linguistic barriers whereas misunderstanding is the inability to establish productive communication due to differences in the cultural interpretation of the same or similar objects, events or concepts.

For example interpreting from and into English for languages such as Japanese or Chinese is rather tricky because cultural gap is considerable.

Japanese uses two forms of communication: Tatemae and Honne. The first one is formal, characterised by a mask of smiles from the speaker to avoid deep involvement and positive words to avoid offending the other person. The second one is more informal; this is generally the stage at which business discussions become meaningful and substantive.

The Chinese tend to express themselves indirectly as an attempt to preserve harmony. This allows both parties to “keep face”. They also avoid giving overtly negative responses, partially due to their language, which does not have a word for “no”; literally translated, the corresponding phrase for this actually turns out as “not yes”. This type of circumvention exists because negative responses are considered impolite.

A good interpreter has to be very culturally perceptive to get the message across in the best possible way. To secure a top quality interpreting service ask SanTranslate.