Life Skills – Are they important for an interpreter?

Life skills

Generally with Life Skills we mean a series of basic cognitive, emotional and relational skills, which allow us to act with competence both on an individual and social level. They are skills that allow us to acquire a versatileand positive behavior, thanks to which we can face life’s issues and challenges easier.

In this regard, the WHO has identified 10 fundamental competences. As I said in the first moment, we could divide these competences into 3 areas: emotional (self-awareness, coping with emotions, coping with stress), relational (empathy, effective communication, interpersonal relationship skills) and cognitive (problem solving, decision making, critical thinking and creative thinking).

Are they important for an interpreter?

Analyzing these 10 skills, I couldn’t find one that is not fundamental for the work of an interpreter, as well as of his or her daily non-working life. Analyzing them one by one we can say that:

1 “Self-consciousness”, is relevant because developing self-consciousness allow us to understand when we are about to reach a level of stress or tension and so be able to prevent that by relaxing.

2 “Empathy”, is relevant because although we don’t have to interact face to face with the speaker, it is good to establish a certain empathy with him or her since we will have to interpret him or her. 3 “Critical thinking”, maybe is the least important because we don’t have the right to criticize the speaker’s thinking, but we have to limit ourselves to just report his or her words.

4 5 6 “Creative thinking, decision making and problem solving” because are three fundamental points, both during consecutive and simultaneous mental processing (written and oral as well).

7 “Interpersonal relationship skills”, because are important to create in our mind a certain “positive empathy” both with the speaker and with the audience, this link us to point 8 “Effective communication”.

Point 9 “Coping with stress” and 10 “Coping with emotions” send us back to self-awareness, because knowing how to recognize when we are about to go into emotional distress, we can resolve that situation by coping with stress, negative emotions and negative thoughts.

Conclusions

In conclusion, acquiring all these skills and knowing how to master them, allows us to reach a maximum level of professionalism in this field. I’m still in training so I wish to improve even more time by time.