Navigating interpreting practice and feedback with emotional intelligence (Part 1: Self-monitoring)

In today’s post, I want to go over an important personality trait that I think interpreters should develop, especially at the beginning of their careers. This trait is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence can be defined as your ability to perceive, manage, and regulate your emotions. As interpreters, we face a lot of emotionally challenging circumstances in and out of the interpreting session, so it becomes critical for us to develop our emotional intelligence to thrive professionally.

For example, when you are a beginner who is learning how to interpret in the consecutive mode, not being able to accurately repeat the information right after you hear it (even when you try very hard) can feel very frustrating. You may start thinking negatively about yourself and your skills. At that point, you might keep practicing but in a sour mood or you stop altogether and do something else more enjoyable.

Now, imagine that you had to do these practice sessions with other people listening to your rendition and giving you positive and negative feedback, pointing out your mistakes. How would that make you feel? Of course, no one likes to be scrutinized and much less when they tell you that YOU made a mistake! Some people may get a little defensive, while others may feel like they are terrible interpreters, criticism lowers their morale, and they may be less likely to stick to their interpreting studies due to the negative feelings associated with them. In either case, their emotions are doing them a disservice because they are preventing them from making the most of their studies to improve their skills and reach their goals.

There also are other types of external challenges that your emotions didn’t create, for example, having a toxic teacher, schoolmate, or colleague who contributes nothing but negativity to the discussion. You may have to deal with people who may have very good ideas but do not know how to discuss them while being tactful and respectful at the same time.

I’ve seen countless Facebook posts about terminology questions where some ”experienced” interpreters try to impose their opinions as if their knowledge were above everyone else’s, sometimes these ”experts” are condescending and disrespectful towards the person who is asking the question or those who dare to challenge their knowledge.

Of course, you shouldn’t take to heart what a random person on the internet says, right? Well, the truth is that if you happen to encounter many of these inconsiderate ”experts” along the way and you are a sensitive person, you may in fact take it to heart and then shy away from asking any questions online or participating in any discussion because of the fear of making a fool of yourself, therefore, you are potentially missing out on one of the most important activities that interpreters and translators engage in: collaborative discussion. Instead, you would be limiting yourself to your knowledge and perspective which can jeopardize the quality of your job or at least, keep you from reaching your full potential.

On a personal note, I used to be very shy and have a lot of social anxiety, so my emotional intelligence wasn’t particularly high, but I learned that in order to be a successful interpreter I had to learn how to interact with other people effectively. To do so, I had to practice introspection, looking within myself to understand how my emotions contributed to my actions. Since then, I’ve definitely seen a lot of improvement in how I handle negative feedback and interpreting challenges. So today I want to give you some of my insights to help you increase your emotional intelligence, especially when it comes to giving and receiving feedback as well as practicing interpretation:

Self-monitoring

Before you can work proactively with others during an interpreting practice session, it must be very clear to you what do you want to obtain from the practice session and how will you manage the challenges that inherently come with developing hard interpreting skills.

Practice introspection

Introspection means analyzing your thoughts and emotions. Like I mentioned before, I look within myself to try to understand my own emotions: what exactly am I feeling? Why do I act the way I do? What is motivating or discouraging me? And with this knowledge, what steps can I take towards a more practical and positive mindset? For example, if somebody is giving me negative feedback, how can I be aware of my emotion? And instead of letting them cloud my judgment and make me think negatively about myself and others, I try to focus on what’s important, which is to learn something useful from this feedback.

Focus on the silver linings and potential solutions

When you shift your focus from negative things to positive things, you don’t only feel much better about yourself and the situation you are in but you are also more likely to engage in the types of activities that will reap more benefits in the long run. It’s very useful to think in terms of what you did right, what you did wrong, and what can you do better tomorrow. In an interpreting practice, this could be acknowledging that you had a good tone of voice even if you were not completely accurate and then try to be more accurate in the next practice instead. This approach focuses on continuous improvement instead of the lack of skills, this, in turn, makes you a bit more confident about your ability to develop your potential which makes it easier to stick to your study plan.

Set goals and plan accordingly

Goals are the way of breaking down your purpose or ultimate goal into a series of smaller, more manageable goals. Your goals should be actionable and measurable. So whenever you set yourself a goal you always have to think: how can I make it come true? What do I need to do every day to achieve that goal? Which habits do I need to develop or break? It’s very important to write down your long-term and short-term goals to keep track of them and assess them every now and then. You will also need some time-management techniques like time blocking, the Pomodoro technique, To-Do lists, etc. (if you want me to talk about these techniques applied to interpretation practice, let me know in a comment). The most important thing is that you are following a plan with daily activities so your goal is not a wish but something that you are actively working on.

Now, in the case of interpretation, I recommend making a list of the skills that you need to develop and working on one skill at a time. For example, if I’m learning consecutive interpretation and I’m struggling with my memory, I will engage in memory development exercises like visualization, active listening, echoing, etc. 30 minutes before my daily 2-hour interpreting practice using InterpreMed practice materials for the next 3 months, from Monday to Friday between 9 and 11 a.m.

Notice how I’m very specific about the following:

What am I going to do? Memory exercises
How often will I do it? 30 minutes every day before my daily 2-hour practice
What am I going to use to practice? InterpreMed practice materials
For how long? 3 months
What’s my schedule? Monday to Friday, from 9 to 11 a.m.

Now you can use this same model, the only difference is that you have to decide two things: 1) What particular skill do you want to improve? and 2) Which tasks will you need to engage in to improve that skill? Answer the rest of the questions above, be disciplined, and put your time-management skills to work!

Journaling

This ties back to my first point about introspection. When you have a journal you write down your most important thoughts and emotions as they relate to your professional development and goals. A good approach is summarizing the key points of your day so you don’t really need to write extensively. In my case, I just write lists of short sentences that give me a snapshot of a stream of thought. My ideas in a nutshell, so to speak. In this same journal, you can write down your goals, daily tasks, insights, etc. Every so often I read the thoughts that I’ve written and this gives me a good idea of where I have been directing my attention to lately, therefore I become more aware of my thoughts. I think that having this awareness is the first step to problem-solving and creative thinking. You need to understand thoroughly WHAT is the problem to think about HOW to solve it.

In Part 2, I’m going to talk about receiving and giving feedback! So keep an eye on InterpreMed’s social media or subscribe to my newsletter to receive updates about my new posts every Friday!

Thank you for reading. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.