Simultaneous Interpreting: English to Russian and Russian to English
What this domain tests
Simultaneous Interpreting tests real-time rendering in a booth or with headphones, usually of a legal submission, witness testimony or judge's summing-up. It measures lag management, anticipation and syntactic restructuring.
Core rules and concepts
- Maintain a comfortable ear-voice span: long enough to hear a clause, short enough to keep pace.
- Anticipate predictable legal collocations: 'the court finds that' becomes 'суд приходит к выводу, что'; 'I put it to you' becomes 'я утверждаю'.
- Restructure syntax. Russian verb-final subordinate clauses require you to hold the subject and predicate until the end, or to start a new sentence.
- Prioritise names, numbers, negations and modality over stylistic elegance. Omit redundancy, not propositions.
- Monitor your own output; correct only errors that change meaning.
Worked example
Source: 'The court, having considered the evidence and the submissions of both parties, concludes that the prosecution has not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.' Reasoning: in simultaneous mode you cannot wait for the final verb. Start with 'Суд, рассмотрев доказательства и доводы обеих сторон, ...' and then render 'приходит к выводу, что обвинение не доказало свою позицию вне разумных сомнений.' 'Concludes' is predictable after 'having considered'; 'beyond a reasonable doubt' is a fixed phrase. The negation 'has not proved' must be placed before the object in Russian.
Traps
- Letting lag grow until the speaker finishes a long sentence.
- Translating word order literally and producing ungrammatical Russian.
- Dropping 'not' or 'without' in fast speech.
- Over-correcting and losing the next clause.
- Using a dictionary equivalent that is wrong in court register, such as 'дело' for 'case' when 'судебное дело' is meant.