"May your dream be your horse, and you can live anywhere."

On the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, I dragged my suitcase out of the Capital Airport, and it was a gloomy winter scene outside the window.

2 hours and 40 minutes, I arrived in Beijing.

When I landed, I thought of a sentence in my mind: Where is Beijing?

Beijing is a place where you never dream and no one laughs at you.

People who come here are all looking for their dreams.

I was huddled in the dormitory of 10 square meter with two other strange friends, feeling the land and gold at the foot of the son of heaven.

13 came here once before, when I was 8 years old. Going abroad for the first time and attending summer camp. When I was visiting Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace and the Great Wall, no one thought that I would revisit my old place after 13, just for a small but great dream.

We participated in a CATTI three-level introductory interpretation class, with a total class time of 14 days. Classes begin at three o'clock in the afternoon and end at nine o'clock in the evening, with a half-hour dinner break.

Let me briefly summarize what this course has brought me.

1. Understanding of interpretation

It is actually a helpless choice to apply for English major in the college entrance examination. For a person who only gets 60 points in math 150, not studying math in college is the biggest temptation for English majors. At first, my understanding of interpretation was that it was a well-paid job, which represented the highest level of bilingualism. How many English majors have dreamed of becoming a first-class interpreter since their freshman year, and how many people can stick to this dream?

I study English in a second-rate university in a second-rate city. Take the students in our class as an example. Many of them dream of becoming interpreters, but few people are willing to take the time to try junior and senior high school entrance exams and CATTI exams. In the interpretation class offered in junior year, spit is always more than appreciation; The homework in interpretation class is always worse than perfunctory.

I remember the first interpretation training class. When the teacher stood on the platform and asked "Please raise your hand for English majors", there were about twenty or thirty students in the class, and half of the students raised their hands. Then he asked, "Raise your hand if English majors can do simultaneous interpretation." Nobody raised their hands except the teacher.

"Interpretation has always been a niche industry," the teacher said earnestly. It requires endless practice, proficiency and mastery of the language, accumulation of background knowledge, and most importantly, it requires you to go through a period of time when no one cares.

2. If you only do one thing well in your life.

The teacher who regards interpretation as a lifelong career said that he was not so wonderful in his life and only did one thing, that is, interpretation. There is a popular saying in their interpretation circle: from booth to box (from simultaneous interpretation box to urn). This is a humorous sentence reflecting the work of simultaneous interpretation, and I like it very much. This not only overturns the fallacy that deduction is a meal of youth from the side, but also makes me feel that it is great if a person can persist in doing one thing well all his life. What's more, in the later study, when the teacher divided the interpretation field into IT field, automobile field, energy field, anti-terrorism field and art field, Kan Kan talked about it, and I really understood why he said that he only worked as an interpreter in his life.

But it may take a lifetime to master this matter.

This reminds me of the documentary Gai Na Juzi's Deductive Life.

Juzi Gai Na is a 70-year-old Japanese translator. The former vice president of the United States once praised her as the first interpreter in Japan, even the first in the world. This 47-minute documentary records Juzi Gai Na's acting career in detail, including the process from smooth sailing to falling to the bottom and starting again.

There is a sentence in the whole film that I remember deeply: preparation and hard work will not betray you.

All successful interpreters have probably answered that sentence-if you are determined to go that way, then the whole world will make way for you.

3. Principles and methods of interpretation

Interpretation requirements can be roughly divided into two points: psychological quality and professional level.

The teacher introduced us to the four principles of interpretation learning: accuracy, fluency, self-limitation and intuition.

Speak fluently and clearly, avoid preconceptions and have intuition.

What puzzles me most about the Four Principles is intuition. Intuitive interpretation always makes me feel unreliable. Later, in classroom learning, it was gradually classified as knowledge reserve and the ability to spread thinking.

For example, the teacher played an English-Chinese translation of the British ambassador's speech at Beijing Foreign Studies University. When the ambassador said: In British history, many people have pushed the world forward, the teacher paused the recording, and then let us infer what to say next.

At this time, your intuition may incarnate your knowledge reserve and tell you that there are many famous people in Britain: Shakespeare, Churchill, Bacon and so on. When the teacher continued to play the recording, the content also confirmed this.

This seemingly small part can provide you with a general prediction direction in the live tense translation. When you think of Shakespeare, you will naturally think of his achievements and his four tragicomedy, which will make your translation more handy.

Remember, you are a primate, and your brain is far more powerful than you think.

The easiest way to improve this intuitive ability is to read more books, make full preparations before translation, and do cloze exercises blindly.

6. Be like Beijingers, and Chinese-English translation should be like Chinese Americans. Besides, you should be able to talk in Kan Kan in Chinese and English in familiar fields. No wonder some people say that every qualified interpreter is a superb master of speech.

4. Those who take dreams as horses can live anywhere.

In the class of interpretation, besides me, a junior and senior English major, there are many other majors or people who have already worked. There are lawyers, doctors, graduate students majoring in computer science in Peking University, and freshmen majoring in international law in Foreign Affairs University.

Step out of your comfort zone, you know that those peers in the outside world are not as busy as you think in TV dramas. It is true that ordinary or wonderful is the choice of life, but I still believe that a person who has not pursued a wonderful life, choosing ordinary is only a compromise of life.

During my stay in Beijing, the weather has been fine these days. In the past two weeks, I have been thinking about how to go in the future.

I envy those who give up decisively-the road to interpretation is blocked, so I can be a teacher and take the civil service exam.

I also envy those who have resumed the over-examination, but insist on interpreting.

I wavered in the middle, unwilling and lacking a kind of courage. The unsatisfactory score and the distant dream interpretation are juxtaposed with self-mockery.

But they also said that the dream of being laughed at is the value of hard work. Without genius, everyone is climbing mountains and mountains alone.

I think of Mu Xiyan, an interpreter in Taiwan Province Province, and recall her simultaneous interpretation time. In her article, she said that the greatest sense of accomplishment and frustration in her life came from the moment she devoted herself to simultaneous interpretation.

And the words at the end of her article gave me great courage. She said: "I think the coolest person is walking in a direction that others can't understand, smiling without explaining;" Firmly grasp the value that you cherish and cherish, and resolutely guard it. "

I think maybe this is what interpretation means to me.

The road to translation is long, and I will go up and down.

May we all be what we want to be.

Then take dreams as horses and live everywhere.