The ATA Chronicle - March/April 2018 - 16

THE INTERPRETER ON THE BIG SCREEN continued

Alex (far right) appears here doing whispered interpreting in a scene where Stefan Zweig is interviewed by international journalists. (Image courtesy of X Filme.)

are other scenes in the movie where
Zweig does understand and speak
Spanish, but those might be set later
on, when he's lived in South America
for a longer period. Going back to
our scene, perhaps they wanted to
show Zweig becoming progressively
more impatient with the interviewers'
questions, which is why he might
tolerate the interpretation of the
Spanish question (which is the first
one), but then grows impatient and is
eager to get the interview over with as
quickly as possible. But I really don't
know, so we would have to ask
the director.

Obviously it's a movie and not a real
interpreting situation, but how would you
compare your experience to an actual
assignment? Was it easier or harder?
You probably had the script beforehand,
right? One can usually only dream of
such a thing.
Yes, we did get the script way in
advance, which, as you say, is a bit of
an ideal scenario compared to real life.

The ATA Chronicle | March/April 2018

Contrary to what I would normally do, I
translated my part beforehand, realizing
that the entire thing was about to be
recorded for the big screen.

It was clear that the production
team had already put a lot of
thought into it, but weren't
shying away from additional
input to make the interpreting
scene as authentic as possible.

In the scene, Stefan Zweig is being
interviewed by a group of journalists
at the PEN Congress in Buenos Aires
in 1936. The tension in the room is
palpable as the journalists try to elicit
a political statement regarding the
Nazi regime from Zweig that he
politely but firmly refuses to make.
Having the interpreters relay Zweig's

answers in whispered tones to the
journalists was seen by the director as
an important contribution to the overall
feel of the scene. My two interpreting
colleagues and I were prompted to
whisper audibly, where normally you
would try and keep noise levels to a
minimum. Another interesting aspect
was that because we spent all day
shooting the same scene repeatedly,
I could keep rephrasing my output in
a bid to keep polishing and refining
it-a chance we seldom, if ever, get
in interpreting.
As to whether it was easier or
harder than a normal interpreting
assignment, that's difficult to say.
It was easier in the sense that there
were no surprises in the content I was
interpreting. But what made it difficult
was the unfamiliar situation of having
to "look the part" for the camera. And
because there weren't many breaks in
the day, I possibly talked more that day
than during any other job I've had. To
sum it up, despite being very familiar
with the dialogue thanks to all the

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