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The best way to get better at interpreting is practice. The hardest thing is finding good material. Luckily for us, YouTube and similar sites have a lot. Here’s something I found, and some comments.

At 21 minutes, there comes a really tricky part. The general notices a word that the reporter asks in a question:

你了到［过大］这个字我有问题。You used the word “exaggerated” in your question, and I have a problem with that.

The general then goes on to say that “exaggerated” implies that something is over some baseline, and that that baseline is completely arbitrary.

Now it’s always hard to interpret when someone talks about one specific word because that one word might have different connotations in one language; the speaker might be talking about a connotation that isn’t present in the target language. It might not have even been present in the interpretation.

For the record, I didn’t hear the reporter use the word [过大/exaggerated] in his question.

Another really tricky bit for the Chinese to English interpreter comes 40 minutes in.

但是要清楚地懂得：击毙本 拉登肯能还有木拉登，还有嘿拉登还有崩拉登的问题。

I’ll give those of you who can read it a chance to give it a try. Don’t forget you’re at the Pentagon, with 50 reporters and a contingent of military representatives from China and the US waiting for you. Not to give you any extra pressure, just want you to get an idea of real working conditions.

Here’s a literal translation.

But we have to understand that killing Bin Laden still probably leaves the problem of Mu Laden, Heng Laden and Bung Laden.

Obviously Mu, Heng and Bung don’t exist, he’s just playing on words, implying that even after killing Osama, there are still other terrorist leaders out there (and they probably have names that are just as funny sounding).

The interpreter handled it well. You can actually hear her sigh on the original as the considers how to interpret it:

We have to be keenly aware that the killing of Bin Laden cannot prevent the emergence of other figureheads of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.