how neutral is ‘neutral’? issues in interaction and participation in community interpreting
TRANSCRIPT
METTE RUDVIN*
HOW NEUTRAL IS ‘NEUTRAL’?
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community
Interpreting.
One of the basic premises of this paper is the paradigm shift in
translation and interpreting studies away from a simplistic positivism to a
context-based approach. This paper will, in the context of community
interpreting (or ‘public service interpreting’),1 examine how previously
held positivist axioms of equivalence and ‘neutrality’ are being replaced by
a more dynamic, interactional approach which looks at the community
interpreter as an active agent in the construction of ‘meaning’ and attempts
* SSLiMIT, University of Bologna. I would like to thank Gaby Mack and Patrick Leech
for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Needless to say, any
shortcomings are entirely my own. In the first draft and in my oral presentation of this paper
at the SSLiMIT conference on interpreting in November 2000, I presented a national survey
that I have been conducting - via questionnaires - among community interpreters and service
providers in Italy, examining issues of neutrality. As the survey is still in its early stages,
however, and the data still incomplete, I have decided not to present it in my contribution to
the present volume. 1 Definitions of community interpreting will not be discussed in this paper (for discussions
on definitions see for example Mikkelsen 1996, Schweda-Nicholson 1994, Gentile 1995,
Mason 1999). A very broad working definition of community interpreting has been adopted:
an encounter between a representative of a host country institution and a client who does not
speak, or does not wish to communicate, in the host country’s official language(s),
interpreted by a third party. The term “service provider” (typically a hospital, a welfare
institution, a police station, a court room, etc.) is often used in literature on community
interpreting to denote the host institution; ‘client’ is typically a patient, an asylum seeker, a
witness, a defendant etc. My working definition includes court interpreting because,
although different parameters might apply to a highly formalized courtroom setting, the core
issues regarding ‘neutrality’ are, in the final analysis, the same (see Berk-Seligson 1990 and
Jansen 1995 for discussions on, respectively, interpreter participation and ‘neutrality’ in the
courtroom.) Furthermore, the word “courtroom” is not always easy to define. Is a formal
hearing in the judge’s office a ‘courtroom’ setting, for example? (Franz Pöchhacker’s
suggestion (in this volume) to regard ‘interpreting’ on a continuum as “a conceptual
spectrum of different (proto)types of activity” rather than getting stuck in a quagmire of
definitions and strict boundaries is, in the present author’s opinion, an eminently sensible
one.)
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to account for cultural and individual factors involved in the
translation/interpreting process. The findings of a survey conducted
recently on job-induced trauma among community interpreters will also be
touched upon (Baistow 2000). One of the many interesting points that has
emerged from this survey is that an important source of stress for the
community interpreter was the expectation that s/he should be ‘neutral’.
Recognizing the community interpreter’s dynamic role as an active,
decision-making protagonist rather than as a “pane of glass” or “conduit”
(traditional translating/interpreting metaphors) during the interpreting
encounter is, this paper claims, crucial and could offset the negative effects
of stress (as described in Baistow’s study) for the community interpreter.
The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: Firstly, to look more closely at
what is really meant by ‘neutrality’. Is this, seemingly objective criterion,
culturally defined? Secondly, to explore the community interpreter’s
interactive role as a cross-cultural facilitator and to problematize cross-
cultural differences.
1. Some theoretical premises
1.1. A dynamic view of language
An underlying premise in this paper, then, is a dynamic view of
language and interpreting2 which sees language as a communication
system in which each of the three interlocutors not only brings to bear
of their own self to the exchange, but that which unfolds during the
exchange (the ‘meaning’, result, conclusion) is a result of the
interlocutors’ combined interaction. In an interpreting encounter this
would mean that the ‘translational meaning’ is a direct – and
unpredictable - result of a triadic interaction with the combined input of
three parties. In other words, the interpreter is not interpreting a ‘fixed,
set meaning’ already in place in the minds and utterances of the other
two interlocutors. In the same way that conversation progresses as a
2 Many authors could be mentioned here; Cecilia Wadensjö’s valuable 1998
interdisciplinary study Interpreting as Interaction on interpreting from a dialogic - rather
than monologic – perspective, deserves special mention event. The following quote
summarizes her view of ‘interaction’ in language use: “[In a dialogic view of language] an
utterance is seen as a link in a chain of utterances, as a thread in a net of intertwined
communicative behaviour. Meanings conveyed are seen as resulting from joint efforts
between the people involved. Hence, the meanings of an original utterance will depend on
how it is reacted to by people present at it [...] on preceding and following sequences of talk,
on non-verbal communicative behaviour and extra-linguistic features defined by and
defining the speech situation” (Wadensjö 1998: 43, my emphasis).
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
3
result of the client-service provider’s combined interaction in a
monolingual conversation, it also progresses and emerges as a result of
the interpreter’s input. Needless to say, any translation decision that the
interpreter makes during the exchange stems directly and inevitably
from his/her own interpretation of the situation, an interpretation that
can – at least in theory - never be finite or fixed but will necessarily be
the result of a hermeneutic process. When the interlocutors in the
interpreting encounter come from cultures that are generally considered
to be distant from each other, as typically happens in community
interpreting, the frequency with which the interpreter will have to resort
to bridge-building, or communication-facilitating strategies that go
beyond the semantic level, is clearly much higher.
1.2. The concept of ‘neutrality’
The word ‘neutral’ is itself is slippery, vaguely understood to mean
‘objective’ and/or impartial (vs. bias), void of any subjective evaluation or
opinion. The last few decades however have witnessed a surge of cultural
critics, literary theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, etc.
(primarily but not only the human sciences) who have been challenging the
positivist assumption of ‘objectivity’, arguing that assumed states of
objective neutrality are actually deeply inscribed not only in context but in
the individual views of the participating agents. Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, a well-known literary theorist, notes how the very idea of ‘neutral’
or ‘free’ dialogue is illusory:
[A neutral communication situation of free dialogue] is not a
situation that ever comes into being - there is no such thing. The
desire for neutrality and dialogue, even as it should not be
repressed, must always mark its own failure. To see how desire
articulates itself, one must read the text in which that desire is
expressed. The idea of neutral dialogue is an idea which denies
history, denies structure, denies the positioning of subjects.”
(Spivak 1990: 72, my emphasis)
In the same way as there is no such thing as neutral dialogue, nor can there
be, this paper will argue, any such thing as ‘neutral communication’. In
interpreting studies the positivist view claiming that interpreting is or
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should be ‘simply’ a neutral transfer of information is still alive, if not –
now – kicking3. As Nancy Schweda Nicholson reports:
Don Barnes [...] characterizes the role of the interpreter as similar to
a “pane of glass,” through which light passes without alteration or
distortion. [...] Continuing with the “pane of glass” analogy, one
can say that the interpreter allows for communication of ideas, once
again, without modification, adjustment or misrepresentation.
(Schweda-Nicholson 1994: 82, my emphasis)
“While the facilitator role, the adaptation role, and the
interpreter/conciliator role may be appropriate in certain situations,”
Schweda-Nicolson continues, “it is important to stress that the “pane of
glass” analogy is the one which most accurately reflects the most basic and
fundamental function of the interpreter.” (Schweda-Nicholson 1994: 84,
my emphasis). This argument is clearly difficult to sustain if the theoretical
premises underpinning the general trend in cultural studies, as reported for
example by Spivak, are accepted. If the interpreter is an active protagonist
in the interpreting encounter, constantly making decisions – subjective
decisions and fruit of individual interpretation – s/he can hardly be a
transparent entity through which some assumedly fixed meaning passes,
crosses linguistic systems and comes out the other side ‘untouched’. A
prism might be a more suitable metaphor, if metaphors we need: through a
combination of input and receptacle/mediator, ‘light’ is thrown out in many
different directions and in many different colours, allowing for a series of
possible interpretations depending on the angle or position from which it is
seen. This paper suggests that the interpreter will necessarily affect the
outcome (and consequently ‘truth value’) of the encounter and that his/her
interpretation of any utterance is, inevitably, subjective.
1.3. Different cultures, different histories = different languages?
Underlying the call for neutrality, the author believes, is the Western
individualist philosophy of ‘freedom from constraints’ which, many
scholars believe, emphasises the role and rights of the individual and
his/her responsibility towards institution/nation, in clear contrast to many
traditional sociocentric societies in which a person’s main responsibility is
3 See Miriam Shlesinger 1991 for an example of a more context-based approach. Carr 1995
also contains several valuable contributions following this general approach.
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
5
towards the group/kin.4 By the same token agents in a triadic, cross-cultural
interpreting encounter would, according to the Western tradition, be
principally governed by their role in and their professional responsibility
towards the host institution/nation. This might not necessarily be the case
for a non-Western community interpreter and/or client where group-, kin-,
social-, status-based identities might be governed by other norms.
It might be useful at this point to remind ourselves of Sapir-Whorf’s
much-maligned contribution to (ethno)linguistics which in Hymes’
interpretation sees language not only as a phenomenon which is not static
but and whose repertoire therefore both reflects and limits culture, but
whose internal systems, structures and functions vary radically from one
culture to another: “Different cultures often impose quite different
conventions for the use and form of language in comparable social
situations” (quoted in Foley, 1998: 249). Indeed, not only does language
reflect a person and a group’s experience, but different languages are
“distinct communicative systems” that emerge from different experiences
and histories.5 If these observations are applied to community interpreting,
it becomes clear that the expectations which client(s) and service provider
bring to the interpreting encounter may vary radically, as do the strategies
and skills – both linguistic and supra-linguistic – deployed (by all three
parties) in managing that encounter. Far from a clearly delineated social act
in which social conventions are agreed upon by all members of the group
(as would normally happen, although arguably not always and not
completely, in a monolingual encounter between a public-service user and
the representative of a public institution), a situation arises in which the
two – or often three - parties belong to different sets of social conventions
and conventionalized language systems. Furthermore, underlying status-
and power- affirmation or negotiation played out in a monolingual situation
4 For example Gellner 1964, Foley 1998, Duranti 1997, to name only a few (specifically,
those mentioned in the bibliography). This is clearly a rather over-generalized presentation
which begs further clarification and qualification, both of which are beyond the scope of this
paper. Kim’s 1994 collection of essays Individualism and Collectivism contains useful
analyses on how, for example, societies needn’t be either individualistic or collectivist, but
contain both traditions and/or lie on a continuum; as such it constitutes a welcome warning
against simplistic binary dichotomies (see esp. Sinha and Charan Tripathi, ch. 8). 5 In Foley’s words: languages are “linguistic practices [which] are the primary
communicative behaviour through which humans sustain ongoing histories of social
structural coupling [...] [D]ifferent systems of such practices entail different trajectories of
lived history, embodied in the habitus and its practices in the sociocultural world” (Foley,
1998: 250, my emphasis).
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(e.g. between judge-defendant or doctor-patient) might, in bi- or tri- lingual
conditions, be carried out (consciously or unconsciously) in forms largely
unfamiliar to each party and according to completely different criteria.
Even the seemingly spontaneous act of greeting is not only very loaded, but
loaded differently in each culture6. The different expectations and
conventions that each party has will naturally guide his or her spoken
contribution to the interpreting encounter (typical questions of a
hypothetical client could be: how much ‘space’ to give to the other party;
should one be obsequious or take control? which level of politeness is
appropriate/demanded? can one expect patronage in exchange for ‘giving
the expected answers’? etc.).
If different linguistic systems do not necessarily overlap, fill the same
functions or take the same form in similar circumstances, the interlocutors
could easily end up talking at cross-purposes. In an already confusing
communicative process fraught with difficulties, the contribution of the
interpreter to this negotiation process will necessarily be a result of his/her
interpretation of events. It cannot, the present author argues, in such a
complex process, be considered ‘neutral’ in any absolute sense of the word.
Only with difficulty, it could further be argued, can absolute impartiality be
claimed: by ‘interpreting’ (in the wider – literary or legal - sense of
interpreting) the situation and the utterances, is the community interpreter
not taking a stand, and just as importantly (a point to which we will briefly
return at the end of this paper), who decides what is ‘impartial’? The
present author has demonstrated elsewhere7 that in some cases the
interpreter is required by the client to interact in a lengthy, preliminary
status-negotiation exchange before even beginning to interpret and before
6 Foley reports an interesting example of how forms of greeting reflect underlying social
ideologies and systems. In Australia, a largely egalitarian society, the act of greeting is
generally a way of establishing a relationship, however brief, based on equality and
familiarity. The Nigerian Wolof greeting, by contrast, is profoundly non-egalitarian,
reflecting and indeed constituting hierarchical relationships within the community. Any
greeting involves self-lowering or self-elevating strategies in which the relationship between
the two speakers is carefully negotiated: the respective hierarchy of each person in relation to
the other is established during this short, obligatory interaction, occasionally involving some
form of competition for status. Greeting routines, Foley believes, reflect the cultural
construction of personhood (Foley 1998: 256ff) as well as, obviously, in-group roles. 7 Paper presented at the UCL/UMIST conference ‘Research Models in Translation Studies’
in April 2000: “Community Interpreting in the Area of Mental Health. Psychosocial
Implications of Interpreting Strategies”. The paper was based on a case study of a small
group of Kurdish refugee women in psycotherapy sessions with a Western-trained analyst,
using a Farsi-speaking interpreter.
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
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including the service provider in the communication process. (In this
particular case study involving Kurdish refugee women, the interpreter
found that before the client was willing to accept her as an interpreter, i.e.
before even beginning to interpret, she had to negotiate ethnically-based
and status-based roles with the client in order to establish their space, or
roles, vis-à-vis each other.) It would be difficult in such cases to define an
interpreter’s position, in any absolute terms, as ‘neutral’. Indeed, the
outcome of such preliminary negotiations profoundly affects (and if
successful, facilitates) the subsequent linguistic mediation.
1.4. The invisible observer?
In the last couple of decades, anthropologists have shown how the ideal of
the ‘silent or invisible observer’ is more of a myth than a fact.8 In critiquing
their own fieldwork methodology, they show how the presence of an
assumed ‘invisible’ third-party (in their case the fieldworker observing the
research-subjects) can never be entirely ‘neutral’ but will, simply by virtue
of the fieldworker being there, perforce influence the situation (be it the
performance of a ritual or the narration of epic poetry). In the same way,9 if
the analogy is extended to mediating verbal communication, the mediator –
the interpreter – cannot be wholly ‘neutral’ anymore than s/he can be
wholly invisible. His/her very being there affects the outcome of the
exchange. To become a “pane of glass” would mean denying his/her own
personal experience, judgement and culture as well as the socio-cultural
structural differences inherent in each language.10
8 Geertz 1993, Haring 1972, Shweder 1989 or Clifford 1986 are only a few examples. 9 It is by no means far-fetched to compare fieldwork methodology in anthropology or
qualitative sociology to interpreting methodology, i.e.: the fieldworker’s process of
observation of data; analysis of data; communication of data analysis to academia versus
the interpreter’s listening (observation); interpreting, in the wide sense, linguistic and
paralinguistic data (analysing data); interpreting in the narrow sense, i.e. ‘translating’
(communicating data). 10 In their 1996 study Interpreters and the Legal Process, Joan Colin and Ruth Morris show
how the courtroom interpreter is indeed far from transparent: “Aspects related to the
provision of a linguistic link by an interpreter can affect the proceedings. Thus, an interpreter
may interrupt in order to request clarification, or to ask for somebody to slow down or to
speak up. Other people in the proceedings may comment on the fact that an interpreter is
present. They may comment on aspects of the interpreter’s performance. All of this draws
attention to the interpreter. The very presence of an interpreter in a particular situation may
change the way in which people communicate” (Colin and Morris 1996: 23-24, my
emphasis). A similar comment can be found in Sabine Fenton’s 1995 study: “Far from being
that unobtrusive figure which the law prescribes the interpreter to be, recent studies (Berk-
Seligson, 1990a and b) have shown to what extent interpreters are free agents and very
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Another interesting contribution that argues strongly and convincingly
against the positivist ‘invisible fieldworker’ model from a rather different
angle is Sherry Kleinman and Martha A. Copp’s 1993 study Emotions and
Fieldwork. Kleinman and Copp argue that instead of denying (as
sociologists and anthropologists have traditionally been trained to do) the
fact that emotions – both positive and negative – arise during the course of
fieldwork vis-à-vis one’s subject group/theme and/or individual
informants11, these very emotions can in themselves be valuable data for
the analytical process in that, being indicative of the fieldworker’s
social/psychological culture-bound persona, they are clues (or ‘cues’) to the
fieldworker’s culture-bound attitudes towards their informants (for example
hostility towards a particular informant could be a cue to understanding a
particular cultural phenomenon or perhaps current in-group dynamics)12.
This paper further suggests that the very act of speaking in the first
person on someone else’s behalf, as is generally expected of dialogue
interpreters, is a vivid reminder of the “pane of glass” analogy; they
simply “aren’t there” and any personal contribution they might bring to
the encounter is not only neglected, but regarded to be ‘misleading’.13
One might also ask what the implications are of service provider and
client addressing each other directly (i.e. grammatically, 1st, 2
nd person)
visible verbal participants in the courtroom.” (Fenton 1995:32). 11 Note the negative reaction to the diaries of Bronislaw Manilowski’s (pioneer of
anthropological research and fieldwork), published posthumously, towards the fieldworker’s
emotional engagement (especially negative emotions) humorously described by Geertz
(1989). 12 In the same way as the fieldworker is trained to be ‘invisible’, interpreters are expected to
be ‘invisible’ and emotionally ‘neutral’. Acknowledging the difficulties and paradoxes
inherent in the situation and the negative feelings that often ensue, might help alleviate the
burden or feelings of guilt that many interpreters have, as Baistow has shown, in respect to
professional neutrality requirements. Indeed, as Kleinman and Copp’s fieldworkers,
interpreters could be trained to use their negative feelings as paralinguistic cues, and use
those cues to enhance their interpreting skills, thus improving performance, rather than
suffering the burden of not feeling ‘professional’ because one has, simply by harbouring
negative emotions, broken an ethical requirement to be neutral. 13Another translation phenomenon which mirrors this ‘invisibility’ metaphor is that of film
dubbing, in which the voice of the speaker is synchronically substituted for another’s, giving
the impression that this substituted version directly renders the speaker’s utterance, when of
course no such thing is happening: the original speaker’s utterance is, often radically,
mediated through translation and through the utterance of the dubber. (For further references
to film dubbing, see SSLiMIT’s ample literature on dubbing in the CLUEB series.)
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
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but not the interpreter (i.e. addressing the interpreter as if s/he were the
other interlocutor). Even the spatial positioning of the interpreter in the
courtroom, police station, or more generally in liaison interpreting
(sitting or standing directly behind one or both interlocutors, especially
in chouchoutage) is such that s/he should seem ‘invisible’14. The whole
scenario, or choreography, underlies and encourages the invisibility
myth. A number of ‘political’ and ethical issues in terms of
representation arise at this point – who speaks for whom? who is
mandated to speak for whom? who gives the mandate, and is it legally
incumbent upon an interpreter to accept that mandate if this creates an
unsolvable dilemma – either of a cultural/linguistic nature, or of a
moral nature?
1.5. Construction of personhood
It was claimed above that the call for neutrality in the Western
interpreting tradition stems from the Western individualist model of seeing
agents as accountable to institutions (institutions being, par excellence,
representatives of nation, as the agents themselves are in virtue of their
status as citizens of that nation) rather than to their immediate social group
or kin. According to William Foley, a renowned ethnolinguist and
folklorist, the construction of Western (individualist) vs. ‘traditional’
(socio-centric) identity and personhood is also reflected in language.15 In
Karmela Liebkind’s excellent study (Liebkind 1992) on the construction of
identity, she too sees identity as a profoundly culture-based phenomenon
and, commenting on the results of another scholar (Stryker 1987), she notes
that people “who share particular concerns are predisposed by social
structure to interact in particular situations and bring to bear particular
interactional skills and resources” (Liebkind 1992: 158). Each interlocutor
thus brings to the cross-cultural encounter different linguistic and
paralinguistic behaviour patterns and a different understanding of his/her
14 See Mona Baker’s 1997 article describing an interpreter-mediated interview with Saddam
Hussein where the interpreter is called upon publicly, by Saddam Hussein, to account for his
translating decisions. Such public manifestations of interpreter involvement which call
attention to the interpreter so openly, rendering him/her visible, are the exception rather than
the norm. 15 Egocentric Western individualism which “leads us to view a person as an individual, an
embodiment of absolute value in her own right, and not simply in terms of her position in
any social pattern” (Foley, 1998: 265) is in stark contrast to a sociocentric context-
dependent conception of personhood: “his embeddedness in the social context is the stuff of
his definition as a person. Personhood is, thus, defined in sociocentric terms, according to
the social position a particular human being occupies”; Foley 1998: 264-269).
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own self-hood and previous experience (see footnote 5 above) of
him/herself in relation to others. Applying these observations to community
interpreting, it could be concluded that each interlocutor’s construction of
personhood is unique, tuned into their respective group identities. Not only
will linguistic behaviour such as politeness and greeting forms be governed
by their reciprocal understanding of this relationship, but also their
expectations of the weight and function of the institutions themselves and
the role the service provider plays in the institution, especially in terms of
authority.
If linguistic practices reflect non-analogous constructions and concepts of
personhood in the cultures at issue, the implication for interpreting would
surely be that these differences cannot be simply ‘briefed away’; a simple
pre-session brief16 between interpreter and client and/or interpreter and
service provider is not sufficient, given the complexity of the process, to
assure ‘neutrality’. This paper suggests furthermore that when they occur
(which they do not, in general, in Italy), these briefings – although welcome
- will generally uphold the institutional and institutionalized power-
hierarchy, and if they assure ‘neutrality’ it is ‘for’ the service provider.
2. Objectivity and language use in the courtroom
But are these same conditions applicable to formal courtroom
interpreting, one might ask.17 A number of excellent studies on the
‘subjective’ and ‘cultural’ factor in courtroom interpreting such as Peter
Jansen’s (1995) study, demonstrate that the neutral/objective/truth-finding
foundations of the Western courtroom tradition are not quite as transparent
as one might often like to think. Jansen reminds us that “the situation in
which the interpreter has to translate bears directly on his or her translation
strategies” and “hence, it is clear that there cannot be such a thing as a
neutral translation. This insight seems to clash with the often claimed
16 Briefings are short meetings between service provider and interpreter prior to the
interpreting session to give a general outline of the situation, common practice in Australia,
for example and also in the UK. Colin and Morris (1996) report that in judicial proceedings
in the UK it is not unusual for the interpreter to meet also the client briefly before the
interpreting session to make sure they speak the same language/dialect, but they are not
allowed to discuss the case. 17 As Bente Jakobsen rightly pointed out during the discussion that followed the oral
presentation of this paper at the Forlì conference. Although I agree with her ‘at a practical
level’- for interpreters accuracy obviously has high priority as they perform - I think the
point can only be taken so far, and that neutrality in any absolute sense is illusory.
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
11
neutrality of the court interpreter” (Jansen 1995: 13).
In that courtroom language practice and ‘ritual’ are unique to each
particular cultural community, they are therefore both subject to the
constraints of that particular community and construed by them;
consequently, these practices differ enormously from one culture to another
(especially, seen from Italy, beyond the Western, or ex-colonial, frontier).
Furthermore, in the meeting between cultures in the courtroom, the parties
are not only drawing on different language and courtroom traditions but
they are quite likely unaware of the existence of these differences. If
speaking itself, as Foley explains, is a culturally construed act for which
there are very different practices and traditions, it is even more so in the
courtroom. In the European and American tradition, Foley says, upholding
the strict rules and conventions, also linguistically, is crucial for a
successful outcome: “Onlookers are never permitted to speak at all, under
punitive measures labelled contempt of court. The judge has the widest
latitude in speaking, she even controls the speaking of the other
participants, but she too is bound by fairly defined conventional limits”
(Foley 1998: 250-251) while “other cultures have different ways of settling
such disputes. Commonly this consists of discussion between the disputing
parties in the presence of the assembled members of the camp or village”
(Foley 1998: 252).18
The interpreter finds him/herself then not only in the role of cultural and
linguistic mediator/facilitator but forming a bridge (quite possibly
unconsciously to herself and to the two interlocutors) between different
institutional practices, practices that are a direct result of the understanding
of self and personhood in the respective cultures. These differences are so
deeply inculcated that they cannot be surpassed simply by ‘goodwill’ or
even ‘good interpreting strategies’.
18 This form of settling disputes is common to many so-called ‘traditional’
cultures, for example that of the Pathans in Afghanistan and north-western Pakistan, in the
so-called ‘jirga’ system: a closed meeting of the village elders which meets to discuss and
decide upon legal and other matters that affect individuals and/or the group as a whole; the
physical conformation of the forum – delineated spatially in circular or semi-circular form –
is itself profoundly symbolical of clan power-distribution. Fredrik Barth’s work is perhaps
the most well-known focussed study of Pathan group identity. An important – if secondary
to the study itself – conclusion of his fieldwork (Barth 1969) was the inherently dynamic
nature of group identity and its potential for change and adaptation. It is indeed crucial to
remember that identities – be they at an individual level, group level, community level or at
the level of nations – have in themselves the potential for change.
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2.1. Politeness
In terms of linguistic and paralinguistic features that influence the
interpreter’s performance, the use of greetings and politeness markers is
perhaps one of the features which has received most attention in literature
on interpreting.19 As Tariq Rahman notes, just as “impolite words are not
always interpreted by addressees as being impolite, so polite words are not
always interpreted as being polite. They may be used ironically,
insincerely, or in jest. Politeness then does not inhere in linguistic or non-
linguistic from, it inheres in the decoding of that form by adressees.”
(Rahman 1999: 193, my emphasis). Colin and Morris note for example how
appropriate politeness and deference in one language might sound like
mockery in another, and conclude that interpreters omit such features at
their own peril, risking the charge of ‘editing’ (Colin and Morris 1999:
22ff.). In interpreter-mediated interaction politeness forms are, furthermore,
a direct result of power/status relations in the triadic configuration. The
differences between politeness codes in the two cultures often remain
unacknowledged, potentially leading to tension and hostility between
parties and, even more importantly, hostility from the jury. If sharing
certain information is considered taboo or impolite because of the structural
rapport between the interlocutors, this may lead to a breakdown in
communication.
Based on the author’s own work with and knowledge of Pakistani culture
(in Pakistan and in Italy), it seems to be clear that politeness and status
negotiation (in which politeness markers and face-saving techniques,
especially self-lowering and elevation of the interlocutor, play a crucial
part) might in some cases hinder the sharing of information and knowledge.
Seeking ‘patronage’ or indeed ‘compassion’ in a hierarchical relationship,
through positive face is one possible way of escaping a potentially
threatening situation, for example during a trial or at the police station but
severely condemned in the same institutional context in a different culture.
Or an attempt to please and establish – through self-lowering – a
19 Susan Berk-Seligson’s 1990 The Bilingual Courtroom is perhaps the most quoted study
in this regard. Much has been written on cultural variations in politeness/greetings in fields
such as anthropology and sociolinguistics, of course; Clifford Geertz’ study on Java
‘Linguistic Etiquette’, reprinted 1972, is well worth looking at, as is Susan Ervin-Tripps’
classic study on sociolinguistic rules of address in the same volume. Multilingua – Journal of
Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication – has dedicated an entire volume (1989/8-
2/3) – as well as a numerous individual articles - to politeness forms in different cultures.
Many others could of course be mentioned.
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
13
hierarchical relationship between oneself and the interlocutor, one might be
inclined to not divulge ‘offensive’ information and only provide the
answers one believes that the interlocutor expects or wants to hear. By the
same token, an attempt-to-please ‘yes’ might actually mean ‘no’, a situation
which would be understood and expected in the client’s own culture, but
not in the host country.
2.2. Knowledge economy
There are two more aspects of language-based communication in the
court-room which differ widely from culture to culture that could be
interesting to consider here, namely that of ‘knowledge economy’ and what
might be called ‘the truth factor’. The access to and right to information, or
knowledge is, in some traditional cultures far more restricted and jealously
guarded than in the Western tradition. Whilst in the Western tradition
‘economy’ is considered to be based on material property and property
rights,20 the Australian Aboriginal culture, for example, emphasises
intellectual property. Information – controlled, restricted and highly
guarded – is gained through kinship and initiation (Foley 1998: 253). This
could have drastic consequences in the courtroom, Foley says:
[T]he principles underlying the Aboriginal restricted ‘knowledge
economy’ can preclude a particular Aboriginal witness from
divulging certain information in answer to a question, even if he
knows it. This follows from the fact that he may not have the right
to such knowledge and may face severe social or supernatural
sanctions if he should divulge it. Failure to do so, of course, may
leave him open to the legal sanction of contempt of court, leaving
the witness with a potentially very difficult choice. [...] Our
received legal concepts of truth and perjury are simply not relevant
here.” (Foley 1998: 253, my emphasis)
It might be interesting to further explore the implications a difference in
one’s understanding of ‘knowledge economy’ might have in a legal context
for example, or one related to the welfare or health sectors, for that matter.
How much information is the client willing to – or feel s/he is ‘allowed to’
– share, and how does this affect the outcome of the trial or medical visit?
This could, the author suggests, seriously hamper understanding between
20 Although it must be mentioned that many scholars, most notably Bourdieu, have pointed
to the status- and prestige- value of other forms of ‘capital’ in Western societies.
Mette Rudvin
14
client and service provider, and jeopardize the client’s needs and/or rights.
It is hardly surprising then that the community interpreter who finds
him/herself ‘mediating’ this situation and is expected to function as a cross-
cultural bridge, or facilitator, feels severe stress under the pressure of
having to communicate such complex socio-structural differences by
‘simply interpreting’ (in the sense of ‘translating’).
2.3. The truth factor – history as truth
The second aspect that could be worth exploring here is that the
narrative forms used in courtrooms, or other institutions fulfilling similar
functions in different cultures, do not necessarily correspond to one
another. In the Western courtroom tradition, the ‘objective’ sworn-in
recounting of ‘facts’ is fundamental to the judicial process. In contrast, the
Philippine Ilingot use a form of “crooked speech” (Foley 1998: 252ff) in
negotiating legal matters, the goal of which is subtle persuasion – as
opposed to exclusively examining witnesses’ accounts of past events. The
anthropologist Jan Vansina reminds us that “historical truth is also a notion
that is culture specific. [...] In many cultures truth is what is being faithfully
repeated as content and has been certified as true by the ancestors. But
sometimes truth does not include the notion that x and y really happened”
(Vansina 1985: 129). He adds further
Status and truth are sometimes related. In Mande land (Guinée,
Mali) truth is appreciated according to the antiquity of the family of
the professional who speaks: the older, the more truthful. A
correlation between truth and rank seems to occur in some stratified
societies: the higher the rank of the speaker the truer what he says,
even if he speaks about the past. (Vansina : 130).21
Another anthropologist, Ruth Finnegan (1977), reports how the history of
one particular tribe is recounted, orally, from generation to generation and
how during this process a form of selective memory pruning takes place,
for mnemonic and other practical reasons, and information is thus
amended, omitted or added. This form of chronicling of events spills over
into judicial situations (often entailing the pleading of a case in front of the
21 The truth-rank link might of course apply also in class-conscious or hierarchical Western
societies. It is likewise true that in the Western courtroom tradition the rhetorical force of a
lawyer and his/her ability to sway the jury is often far more decisive in terms of influencing
the final sentence than are the defendant’s or other parties’ testimonies or rendering of
events. For ethical reasons, this is not openly acknowledged.
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
15
tribe’s elders) when evidence is taken and given. It is considered no less
‘truthful’ or ‘objective’ - on the contrary it is expected (by the community).
If a Western judge were to find the same inconsistencies and gaps in a
witness or a defendant giving evidence, it could seriously jeopardize the
latter’s credibility and, probably, the outcome of the trial to the subject’s
disadvantage. It is clear, then, that ‘swearing to tell the truth and nothing
but the truth’ can potentially be much more complex in a cross-cultural
situation than in a monolingual Western tradition (Foley 1998).22
2.4. Power relations
The issue of the host institution’s hierarchical relationship with the
client has already been touched upon. If ‘neutrality’ is not only the norm,
but this is a culturally constructed norm, who, might one ask, sets the
norm?23 And if the interpreter must choose between conflicting demands,
where do his/her loyalties lie? Whose interests are being served? In most
cases, so this paper claims, it is the host culture and/or each specific
institution to which the clients must do their best to adapt (and by whom
they are paid).24 This again puts into doubt the possibility of using
‘neutrality’ as an absolute parameter. Indeed, in some cases there is no
question of neutrality, presumed or otherwise; advocacy and loyalty can
sometimes be explicitly required, for example in totalitarian regimes (the
ex-USSR can be mentioned) or wartime interpreting. During the Nazi
occupation of Norway, for example, under the Quisling government, the
word ‘interpreter’ was closely associated to ‘interrogator’.25 Interpreters
were required to acquire as much information as possible from the ‘client’,
information which would then be passed on to the interrogator, the party in
power (in this case power relations are blatantly obvious, but it could be
argued that in many if not most community interpreting situations the issue
22 But even within the Western tradition itself, Jansen reminds us, “[t]ruth, however, is not
an objective and independent fact. In the context of a criminal lawsuit, what is meant by
“truth” is really a coherent story about how the law was broken (if it was broken) by the
defendant. [...] Once all the information needed for the judicial classification of the offence
is gathered, the story is marked as “true”” (Jansen 1995:19). 23 This question was raised by Sergio Viaggio at the Forlì conference during the question
session following Franz Pöchhacker’s keynote address on community interpreting.
Unfortunately, no discussion ensued. 24 According to information provided by a judge at a conference on legal interpreting (in
Sicily, Italy in October 2000), in Italy the defendant is actually expected to pay the (very
low) interpreter’s fees in judicial proceedings. In practice, however, according to the same
source, they often cannot afford the expense and the state pays. 25I am grateful to Patrick Chaffey of the University of Oslo for this information.
Mette Rudvin
16
of power relations and power negotiation is relevant, if less visible and
traumatic). Because of his/her unique position, understanding both
languages and therefore having access to everything that is being said, the
interpreter is able to communicate exactly what s/he chooses and the
interlocutors are completely dependent not just on the interpreter’s
communicative ability but on his/her loyalty.26
If an interpreter is expected to conform to the linguistic conventions of the
host institutions it could be plausibly argued that as such they are the
mouthpiece of the host institution and their overriding goal is therefore to
safeguard the latter’s interests. In theory, it is the client’s unalienable right
to be able to communicate in his/her own language, but if – as this paper
argues is commonly the case – the interpreter’s main loyalty27 is to the host
institution, are the clients’ rights really safeguarded? If the premises, or
‘pulls’ (between client and service-provider) contradict each other, the
interpreter’s loyalty will be expected to lie with the service provider.28
From one point of view, this might be more palatable if it were somehow
stipulated in the unwritten ‘contract’ (i.e. if this is what is the interpreter is
paid for), it is far less so, however, if the illusion of complete neutrality and
equal rights/access to communication is taken for granted. Even in the –
extremely welcome – pre-encounter briefings, this author would argue,
these power relations still hold. It is always the host country and/or the host
country institutions that set the norms.
3. In conclusion: What’s neutral, then?
26 The author suspects (based on personal communication with community interpreting
colleagues) that the interpreters themselves do not necessarily always agree to these
unspoken terms, but it is no less true that they are expected to do so. 27 Not necessarily emotionally, but in the underlying ‘status-negotiations’ the strongest
party is almost inevitably the host institution. Again, this assumption is based on the author’s
personal experience as a community interpreter, and not on statistics. She is currently in the
process of collecting data, however, which, to present date, confirm these claims, at least
certainly as far as Italy is concerned. 28 This is perhaps one of the reasons why service providers (in the author’s own experience
this applies particularly to judges) are almost obsessed by ‘neutrality’. The author believes
that what might be meant by this neutrality requirement is not so much, or not only,
‘objective truth’, but that the service provider wants all the information s/he needs to
proceed – i.e. s/he doesn’t want to ‘miss out on anything’. Whether or not the client gets all
the information s/he needs is perhaps less crucial - or important only insofar as it must
satisfy the bureaucratic and judicial requirements of the host country (for example that a
defendant is allowed to communicate in his/her own language, that they are read their rights
in their own language, etc.), otherwise the case might be annulled for breach of procedure.
Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting
17
Many interpreting scholars, although recognizing the need for culture-
sensitive interaction and the interpreter’s active participation, still uphold
the positivist ideal of complete objectivity, impartiality, neutrality, and
translating ‘exactly what you hear’. This paper has attempted to show that
this is a myth and deeply embedded in Western paradigms of self and
personhood and the authority/sanctity of a ‘rational/scientific/objective
model. One of the underlying assumptions among interpreters and service
providers alike is that ‘being neutral’ equals translational equivalence. If
decades of research in translation/interpreting theory (especially the
descriptive approach) have suggested that the positivist ‘equality’ paradigm
is illusory and not a productive avenue for investigation, surely this should
lead us, as researchers, to question the neutrality paradigm.
The author of this paper is not supporting advocacy of clients’ causes;
clearly, interpreters cannot and should not become freely-choosing
advocates of either client or service provider. To some extent at least this
paper has played the part of the devil’s advocate, attempting to highlight
problems rathre than success stories, whilst ‘on the ground’ interpreters
naturally have to perform according to the mandate of the host institution
and have to provide (or create) ‘translational equivalence’ without ‘taking
sides’. Nor is it suggesting, however, that interpreter-mediated cross-
cultural communication is impossible, quite the contrary: Culture, as group
identity, is not only rigid structure, but has in itself the potential for and
impetus to change and adapt. Moreover, interlocutors are individuals, not
merely products of culture, and each interpreting encounter is a unique
event. In that interpreting encounter each party has certain interests that
need to be fulfilled and over time they will tend to adapt themselves to new
norms. Although status and power distribution will generally favour the
host country and clients will generally adapt to the former’s norms, host
institutions will inevitably have to acknowledge and cater to the presence
of new nationals, temporary or permanent, and to growing multiculturalism.
Mette Rudvin
18
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