Transcriber: Mariya V Zhdanova Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Laura Burian: First I'd like to tell you my language learning story.
When I was a kid, I played the violin, and growing up on the east coast in the US
that meant that most of my friends were Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean
first generation Americans.
And I'd spend a lot of time at their houses,
and in some cases had a lot of difficulty
and hilarious incidents of miscommunications
or a lack of communication with their parents or their grandparents.
And it really inspired me to want to try to learn the languages
and the cultures that they knew and understood that I did not.
It ended up that in college I studied Chinese, studying Mandarin,
and then in grad school I did a master's degree
in translation and interpretation for Chinese and English.
And in the end, I ended up working with panda experts,
with doctors and lawyers,
with politicians, and a wide range of people,
trying to extend a helping hand to them.
Jacolyn Harmer: My language learning story -
I was born and grew up in Great Britain.
You can tell, I think.
(Laughter)
My mother had to leave school when she was twelve
because her father didn't think it was worth
wasting an education on a girl.
But my mother had a really cool vision for her daughter.
When I was young - six, seven, or eight - the family would go to France on vacation,
and I would be the kid that was sent to the baker's
to buy the bread, armed with the French phrase book.
And I always came out with the bread.
And it was this success that inspired me to plunge into language learning.
And as soon as I could, I moved to Europe,
where I could swim in languages other than my own.
Now, one day the United Kingdom
became a member state of the European Union,
and a door popped open for me:
a training course to become a conference interpreter in Brussels.
And I walked through that door.
It was my ticket off the island -
a ticket to, well, anywhere, really, including Monterrey,
where I ended up training the next generation of interpreters.
Oh, you're probably wondering about my mother's vision for me.
My mother thought it would be cool
if I could be a hairdresser on a cruise line
(Laughter)
because they got to see places that she would be never able to see.
But things worked out much better for me actually;
I would've made a terrible hairdresser.
(Laughter)
LB: So Gabriel will continue telling us his story,
but he's going to be speaking in Spanish.
So go ahead and put on your headset if you need it,
and do make sure it's turned to Channel 1 and that the green light is on.
That's also where your volume control is, with a central wheel, okay.
Gabriel Guillen: (Spanish) Learning a second language
is more than just something else to add to your resume -
it's a transformative adventure at the personal, local, and global levels.
From the personal perspective, well, we already know this,
learning a language helps us to make more money,
it helps us get into college,
it helps us to get a job,
it helps us to live more and better,
it helps us get better grades.
What can I say?
I'm a language teacher, after all.
But I also work in new technologies and language learning.
It's one of the most promising industries at the moment,
with 700 startups and worth more than 50 billion dollars.
However, in our research, we've discovered that few companies
have the capacity to transform
to revolutionize the language learning sector.
Learning a language is a challenge, especially within an app.
Few entrepreneurs connect technology with the world that surrounds us
to learn a language, and what is a language, after all?
It's a part of our body, it's a metaphor, it's a word that's alive that changes ...
constantly.
From the local perspective, learning and teaching a language
also allows us to open our minds, our worlds, our hands,
and stretch them out to the hands of others.
That's what our students have been doing with Team Tandem,
a language exchange program within the community in Seaside,
in Soledad, in Salinas, here within Monterrey.
For three years, every week, for two hours,
hundreds of students have collaborated in English and Spanish.
They've collaborated in these languages,
and they have really changed one another.
"I learned that people in the Army
are respectable, serious, and intelligent."
This was a comment made by one of our students,
a woman who works as a farmer.
She said this after ten exchange sessions with one of our students,
a veteran from the Afghanistan war.
These are differences that we see every single day, that we don't even realize.
One interaction with a single individual is enough to change our perception
of an entire group of people.
An interaction between two people is enough for a language exchange,
but also for the exchange of ideas.
I started this project with April, another one of our students.
April had a genuine interest in language learning,
which was the topic for my doctoral thesis.
More than 50% of Monterey County's residents speak Spanish.
We have study programs in El Salvador, in Peru, in Cuba.
Why don't we have a study program in Salinas,
less than 20 miles away from our university?
And that way, together, in autumn of 2015,
we launched the first Team Tandem project in Soledad,
Three years later, we were in Seaside too, collaborating with the community.
But learning a language also has global reasons for learning them.
You could learn French, Spanish, Chinese
to connect yourself with billions of people,
but there are more than 7,000 languages in the world.
97% of students within the United States
are taking the same 14 languages in school.
Why don't you learn another language, an additional one to add to your belt?
You could learn Triqui or Mixteco here in Monterey, in the community.
It's a local language here.
Or you could learn Norwegian, like the mayor of South Bend.
Learning a language is more than just something you can add to your resume.
It's a transformative journey at the personal, local, and global levels.
Jacolyn now will speak in French,
so please put your headphones on if you 'll need them.
(Applause)
JH: (French) Translators are able to translate everything.
Likewise, interpreters can help bridge the gap
between language and culture,
but in that case we're talking about oral communication.
And if your words are going to be interpreted,
you have the right to a faithful interpretation
in terms of meaning, effect, and affect.
Sometimes the political stakes are extremely high.
Or if we're talking about a clinic where our services are provided for free,
by the way, I'm the interpreter here,
in that case it's all about relieving suffering.
The interpreter you can see here is working in a conflict zone.
You can listen to me now in English thanks to simultaneous interpretation.
Here is your interpreter in the booth.
She's following my words, my ideas, and she decides in a split second
how she will express her, or should I say, my ideas in English.
One of the unexpected results of World War II
was simultaneous interpretation.
It was born during the Nuremburg trials
that were conducted in Germany in four different languages.
The court was able to follow everything in real time
thanks to the system of interpretation that you are using tonight.
Interpreters were the pioneers back then of this new technique,
and now this mode is used daily within all international institutions
including the United Nations.
Let us not forget there Is another type of interpretation:
consecutive interpretation.
In that case the interpreter has the speaker pause for interpretation.
Here's Laura here.
She's the interpreter with Michelle Obama.
Consecutive interpretation is transparent, personal,
and does not require advanced technology.
The only thing it requires is a highly skilled interpreter.
You know, most interpreters and translators
have chosen their profession
precisely to help their words to extend a helping hand.
Interpreters are a bit like first responders
on the scene of an accident:
they have to understand very quickly what happened,
they have to be resourceful under pressure without panicking.
Translators are also passionate about what they do;
however, they are more like surgeons.
They need to have precise, meticulous, and delicate hands.
However, they have a significant advantage: time.
What about you?
Are you more of a first responder or a surgeon?
Do you think of yourself as a social justice warrior?
How do you take the first steps?
Now Laura will talk to you in Chinese.
You might still need your headset.
LB: (Chinese) Jacolyn talked about taking the first steps.
How do we do that when we don't know where to start?
If you want to help others with language,
you'll need to start improving your language skills.
Then you will have a new perspective to look at the world
because that is a process of decentering
from a center where the center is your culture and world.
I started learning translation and interpretation
after I started learning a new language.
You need to have a very high level of foreign language,
meaning that you need to reach native or near native language skills
for your foreign language.
It takes a lot of effort.
Oh, I forgot to switch my slide.
This is the first slide.
Many people think as long as you're bilingual
you can interpret or translate.
This picture is a proof that this is wrong.
It looks like Jacolyn and I finished our marathon.
This is deceptive because we barely finished half and gave up.
Because we did not go through the professional training.
Some say, to become an expert or to master a new skill,
it takes 10,000 hours of practice.
What do you think?
If you want to learn how to ski,
well, you'll make some progress with 10,000 hours,
well, maybe you can know how to ski down a hill,
but it's better to go through systematic training.
You'll need to engage in what we call deliberate practice.
For example, if I want to become an Olympic skier,
in order to get there, how do I start?
First, I need to go up a hill and fall.
Then I realize, "Oh, I don't know how to ski!"
Then, have a friend who knows how to ski,
and he or she will tell me, it's not the right way to do it,
how to balance yourself, how to make the moves.
Then, step by step,
I will need to divide my big goal of becoming an Olympic skier
into smaller chunks.
For example, I'd start with controlling my turns.
I need to know where do I place my weight: left foot or right foot?
Then slowly I will know how to control my turns.
However, every time you make some progress,
you will come across frustration, but slowly you'll make more progress.
Then you'll have to repeat the cycles to move ahead, set new tasks,
then step out of your comfort zone
to be in an environment that is uncomfortable to learn new skills.
Through deliberate practice, I might actually become an Olympic skier.
I'm almost 50 years old.
Well, the dream is there.
Coming back to our theme of helping hands.
This is me seen from the perspective of language.
When you first start learning a new language,
of course you can help others in small areas.
However, if you really want to take language further as a profession,
it takes more effort.
First you need to improve yourself; for example, if you want to interpret
or translate, it takes a lot of time and effort.
You'll fall many times, and you have to pick yourself back up,
but slowly, if you are willing to engage in deliberate practice,
you will transform,
you will have the stronger skills to help others.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)