Issues in Interpreting Studies PDF

ISSUES IN INTERPRETING STUDIES Instructor Basmah Alyahia INTRODUCTION (Interpreting is commonly referred to as ‘oral’ as opposed to ‘written’ translation, i.e. as the activity of rendering spoken messages in another language, but this simple definition fails to accommodate...

ISSUES IN INTERPRETING STUDIES Instructor Basmah Alyahia INTRODUCTION (Interpreting is commonly referred to as ‘oral’ as opposed to ‘written’ translation, i.e. as the activity of rendering spoken messages in another language, but this simple definition fails to accommodate a number of important phenomena) 1. EVOLUTION AND STATE OF THE ART 1.1 BEGINNINGS Two main sources can be identified as fuelling the early development of interpreting studies. 1. One is the body of insights gained by practitioners reflecting on their craft. 2. The other major source has been work done from the vantage point of other disciplines. Unlike the study of written translation, which owes much of its formative input to linguistics and literary studies, research on interpreting has been sourced predominantly by psychology. The crucial trigger for this was the increasing use of simultaneous interpreting. It was the skill of simultaneous listening and speaking, considered impossible according to psychological theories of the day, which spurred experimental psychologists in the 1960s to study this unique cognitive feat. Focusing on such issues as the time lag between input and output (also referred to as ‘ear–voice span’) and on the effect of various input conditions (e.g. speed, noise, text type)  1.2 ACADEMIC FOUNDATIONS In the 1960s, several personalities with a professional background in interpreting worked towards establishing the study of interpreting (and translation) as a subject in academia. 1- One of them was Otto Kade, a teacher of Czech and Russian and a self-taught conference interpreter, whose work at a university in East Germany, made him the most influential pioneer in the German-speaking area. 2- Seleskovitch played a pioneering role both in the profession (more specifically, in the International Association of Conference Interpreters – AIIC) and in the university-level training of conference interpreters at (ESIT) in Paris. It was there, at the University of Paris, that Seleskovitch managed to establish a doctoral studies programme in ‘traductologie’ (translation studies) ( in 1974). 1.3 INCREASING DEPTH AND BREADTH Interpreting research up until the mid-1990s was largely focused on conference interpreting, and, with few exceptions, on the simultaneous mode. Interpreting as practised within social institutions, such as courtrooms, hospitals, immigration offices, schools and social service agencies, was hardly noticed by the international interpreting research community – until a milestone event in 1995 placed the ‘intra-social’ dimension of interpreting firmly on the map. The international conference entitled The Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community, and the follow-up events held every three years, have provided a worldwide forum for practitioners and researchers to address profession-related concerns, such as training, standards of practice and codes of ethics, as well as conceptual issues of interpreter-mediated communication that arise in particular in face-to-face settings. By the end of the twentieth century, the discipline of interpreting studies, while ‘still based on a number of different paradigms’, had thus taken shape as ‘an independent, self-respecting research community’. 1.4 UNITY IN DIVERSITY Interpreting studies in the early twenty-first century presents itself as a thriving and increasingly diverse discipline, in which a set of largely complementary research approaches are brought to bear on a highly multidimensional object of study. It is important to stress, however, that the twofold distinction – between international versus community-based, and between conference and liaison interpreting or dialogue interpreting – must not be collapsed into one: there is dialogue interpreting in the international sphere (as in high- level diplomatic interpreting) just as there can be community-based conferences in which interpreters (e.g. signed-language interpreters) are at work. This shared conceptual base notwithstanding, research into interpreting has followed a variety of different pathways, shaped by tradition as well as by the demands of newly emerging phenomena and scientific viewpoints. In a liberal use of Thomas Kuhn’s notion of ‘paradigm’ (defined as a set of basic assumptions, models, values and standard methods shared by all members of a given scientific community), one could identify five paradigms of interpreting research: 1. the classic paradigm of the Paris School, based on its interpretive theory (IT paradigm); (translation as a triangular process: from one language to sense and from sense to the other language.) 2. the (often experimental) study of interpreter’s cognitive processing (CP paradigm); 3. the highly interdisciplinary approach relying on neuropsychological experiments and neuro-imaging techniques to investigate the neurolinguistics of interpreting (NL paradigm); 4. the view of interpreting from target-text-oriented translation theory (TT paradigm); (aims at adapting the text to the structures and cultural context of the target language. ) 5. the study of interpreting as discourse-based interaction (DI paradigm). 2 MEMES AND MODELS Inspired by a similar effort in translation studies, these alternative ‘ways of seeing’ have been described as ‘memes’ of interpreting (Pöchhacker 2004: 51– 61). Over and above five individual ‘memes’, or key ideas (i.e. a) interpreting as verbal transfer, b) cognitive information processing, c) making sense, d) text/discourse production and e) mediation), the three most fundamental conceptualizations can be singled out as ‘supermemes’ of interpreting, namely, interpreting as translation, interpreting as processing and interpreting as communicative activity. 2.1 INTERPRETING (DEFINED) AS TRANSLATION Otto Kade (1968) defined interpreting as a form of translation (in the wider sense) in which (a) the source-language text is presented only once and thus cannot be reviewed or replayed, and (b) the target-language text is produced under time pressure, with little chance for correction and revision. 2.2 TEXT AND DISCOURSE the study of interpreting as text production can draw on insights from text linguistics and discourse studies, both for describing relevant features of the interpreter’s input and textual product and for analysing the determinants and constraints of text and discourse processing. 2.3 COGNITIVE PROCESSING Charged with the comprehension and production of verbal messages, the interpreter has been conceived of as an information processing system relying on memory structures (working memory, long-term memory) and a number of cognitive subskills, such as anticipation, inferencing and macro-processing. 2.4 INTERCULTURAL MEDIATION Viewed from a social rather than a cognitive psychological perspective, the interpreter is seen as a mediator not only between languages but also ‘between’ cultures and value systems. Hence, the role of the interpreter, as prescribed in codes of ethics and professional conduct, has emerged as a particularly controversial issue (see section 8.3.4), especially in dialogue interpreting within community-based institutions. 3. MAJOR ISSUES This section presents some of the thematic focal points of research in interpreting studies. 3.1 COGNITIVE PROCESSING Drawing on insights and methods from such fields as cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics and cognitive pragmatics, research has explored both the cognitive substrate (i.e. memory) and the various strategies employed in processing verbal messages and their paralinguistic and non-verbal components ties difficulty Given the limitations of human working memory, a crucial concern is the high cognitive task load generated by the simultaneity of the main processing operations – simultaneous source-text comprehension and target-text production in the simultaneous mode, but also source-text comprehension, memorizing and note taking in consecutive interpreting. As highlighted in Daniel Gile’s (1997) Effort Models, simultaneous processes competing for limited attentional resources lie at the heart of performance problems in (conference) interpreting, making attention management the interpreter’s essential skill.  A related focus of interest is the strategies used by interpreters to cope with such processing constraints as 1- high source-text presentation rate (speed), 2- high information density, 3- scripted style and 4- unusual accents. 1-They include on-line strategies such as anticipation, compression and syntactic restructuring as well as 2- off-line strategies preceding the real-time task (e.g. background research, study of documents, preparation of glossaries). Most of the latter are designed to enhance the interpreter’s thematic and contextual knowledge and thus to aid ‘top-down’ (knowledge- driven) processing of linguistic input. At the same time, interpreters are guided by communicative (listener-oriented) considerations, so that features of the situated interaction become an integral part of their cognitive processing activity. 3.2 QUALITY Producing an interpretation that fulfils the communicative needs and expectations of the intended addressee is the interpreter’s primary task – and the principal standard for measuring the quality of an interpreter’s product and performance. For conference settings, quality criteria, in which fidelity to the source, cohesion, fluency and correct terminological usage rank above delivery- related features such as pleasant voice and native accent. Quality implies not (only) equivalence on the linguistic level but an equivalent effect of the interpretation on the listeners.  This ‘pragmatic’ perspective on quality is particularly salient for dialogue interpreting in institutional settings, where an interpreter’s performance in face-to-face interaction can shape, for instance, jurors’ impressions of witness testimony (see Berk-Seligson 1988); patients’ satisfaction with clinical interviewing, and thus the quality of medical service delivery; or an adjudicator’s assessment of an asylum seeker’s claim and credibility. It is no coincidence that the debate about ‘good interpreting’ and ‘best practice’ is conducted so vociferously in relation to legal and healthcare interpreting, where the interpreter’s role in the interaction invariably exceeds that of transmitting information and encompasses a co-construction of interactive discourse, that is liable to impact, for better or worse, on legal proceedings and clinical outcomes. 3.3 TRAINING Fuelled by the growth of international conference interpreting, the demand for professional interpreters led to the creation of university-level training institutions as early as the 1940s (Geneva, Heidelberg, Vienna). And with organizations such as the United Nations and the European institutions, as well as the interpreting profession (AIIC) taking an active interest, the training of conference interpreters, at postgraduate level, has long been consolidated and institutionalized, most recently in the form of a European model curriculum. Its core includes: a) consecutive interpreting with the aid of (more or less systematic) note taking; b) simultaneous interpreting in the booth, for which various preliminary exercises have been suggested; c) a variable dose of sight translation, either as a simultaneous mode of its own or in the booth (‘simultaneous with text’).  a- Consecutive interpreting with the aid of note taking. b- Simultaneous interpreting in the booth c- Sight translation No such ‘training paradigm’ has been established for (spoken-language) interpreting in community-based settings. Where training in public service interpreting (legal, healthcare and social-service settings) does exist, it is usually offered at undergraduate level, if as a degree course at all.  3.4 ETHICS AND ROLE As a community of practitioners with a special body of expertise and a commitment to serve society at large, is a set of rules stipulating what is deemed professional behavior. AIIC adopted a Code of Professional Ethics for conference interpreters as early as 1957, with a ‘Code of Honor’ consisting of five articles, chief among them the principle of professional secrecy. The RID Code of Ethics, dating back to 1965, went considerably further by addressing such principles as impartiality and faithfulness, American signed-language interpreters have indeed been at the front of shaping the concept of role, moving from the view of the interpreter as an uninvolved (‘neutral’) ‘conduit’ to that of a more visible ‘communication facilitator’ and of a ‘bilingual, bicultural specialist’.  In healthcare settings, the interpreter’s role is the pyramid model, according to which an interpreter’s baseline function is that of ‘message converter’, complemented when necessary by the incrementally more ‘visible’ roles of ‘message clarifier’, ‘cultural broker’ and even ‘advocate’. 1- message converter 2- message clarifier 3- cultural broker 4- advocate To the extent that court interpreting is subsumed under the broad notion of community-based (‘intra-social’) interpreting, such high degrees of ‘visibility’ are problematic in the judicial sphere, where the standard of ‘verbatim translation’ often remains the favoured. 3.5 TECHNOLOGY A major impact on the interpreting profession has always come from technological developments. 1. As early as the mid-1920s, newly developed electro-acoustic transmission systems were employed in experiments with simultaneous interpreting. 2. The biggest technological revolution upon them is undoubtedly the spread of remote interpreting, that is, a situation in which the interpreter is not in the same location as the communicating parties. i. This is implemented as (audio-only) telephone interpreting, which has been used for many years, particularly in community-based settings. Remote interpreting in web-based video mode has become increasingly feasible, for community-based as well as international communication scenarios.  i. The adoption of remote interpreting has been of particular significance in healthcare and judicial settings as well as in the domain of signed- language interpreting, where what is known as video remote interpreting (as distinct from ‘video relay service’, which links video access with a telephone call) is vastly expanding Deaf persons’ access to interpreting services. While the technical set-up has undergone significant improvement (including the use of large screens and multiple camera views), ‘visual access’ remains a problem and has been associated with a- increased eye strain and fatigue. b- Most critically, interpreters’ lack of a sense of ‘presence’ poses the risk of alienation and reduced motivation.