Language and Mind 01 - Interpreting is like a state of possession

Quite a big title I have put up for this article, but I would like to write in series (and from my experience) about language and its influence to how we think.

I do Japanese to English interpreting in Aikido (one type of Japanese martial arts) seminars. The Aikido master explains and shows the seminar students the moves and principles, and the interpreting has to come consecutively, without lag, for it is crucial in this kind of seminar that the students hear the explanation when that certain move is demonstrated.

In England, I was doing this interpreting for 3-day seminar of my Aikido master. Although I have studied with my master for many years and understood what was going on, interpreting the seminar was another thing. I had to use very different part of my brain.

Several weeks before the seminar, I prepared myself by revising articles written by my master and remembering what he had taught and said in the past seminars. Sitting in the seminar, I had to instantaneously convert what was said, so I tried to grasp the perspective of what was being taught and tried to I estimate what could be coming - always equipped with several choices of words, phrases and topics. It is quite a hard work switching languages in one little brain.

On the third day of the seminar, I had got used to the interpreting  and it was going really well. Then something very strange happened to me -  I thought that I was reading my master's mind. I could tell what he was going to say next. My mind was connected to my master's mind.

It sounds a little horrific, but I thought that interpreting is like in a state of possession. Although in a different language, from speaking the words of another person, you start thinking in the same way as that person, you are thinking in the mode of the speaker you are interpreting.