Does a translator ideally have perfect pitch?

Asked by food (792

) November 17th, 2009

I would like to know if pitch is necessary for translating all languages, or only those languages that have variations in pitch such as Chinese, or only for interpreting but not for written translation, or maybe only for interpreting in a diplomatic setting.

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3 Answers

I don’t think being a translator has quite the same requirements of being a Cantor. Billions of people throughout the world speak tonal languages without having perfect pitch.

dpworkin (27090

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I think you’re misunderstanding tonality. You can get most of Chinese without the tones (e.g., from context) However, you certainly don’t need perfect pitch (as @pdworkin said), since the precise note at which things are said is far less important than the relative pitch (which is what you are really concerned with in a tonal language)

grumpyfish (6657

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