The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting

Holly Mikkelson, Renée Jourdenais, Holly Mikkelson, Renée Jourdenais

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317595014
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting provides a comprehensive survey of the field of interpreting for a global readership. The handbook includes an introduction and four sections with thirty one chapters by leading international contributors.

The four sections cover:

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• The history and evolution of the field

• 
  
  

• The core areas of interpreting studies from conference interpreting to interpreting in conflict zones and voiceover

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• Current issues and debates from ethics and the role of the interpreter to the impact of globalization

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• A look to the future

Suggestions for further reading are provided with every chapter. The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting is an essential reference for researchers and advanced students of interpreting.

Part I

Historical Perspectives

1

The History of The Interpreting Profession

Jesús Baigorri-Jalón

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Oscar Wilde

Introduction

While I am writing, exchanges facilitated by interpreters are happening all around us. A frontline in Afghanistan, a court of justice in Guatemala or The Hague, a hospital in Canada or in the United States, an international conference in Sydney or Bangkok, a market in Morocco or Senegal, multilingual assemblies from Pretoria to Brussels or New York, countless conversations in neighborhoods, at border crossings, hotels, travel agencies and other businesses … all require interpreters: oral or sign language, professional or not, remunerated or not, in situ or remote. Other chapters in this book will explore many of these situations. And it has always been like this: since prehistoric times, contacts through interpreters must have existed, with different levels of frequency and sophistication, all over the world, whenever mutual intelligibility failed.

To clarify the title, I understand “history” as the branch of knowledge that will guide my explanation of examples from the past along a chronological path; “interpreter” as a person who translates speech orally or into sign language for parties who speak different languages; and “profession” as a paid occupation or calling based on expert knowledge and often academic training. Many of the interpreters in these pages do not fit fully into these definitions, because (1) their duties went beyond interpreting, (2) they were not paid, and/or (3) they had no formal preparation. Is it then possible to write a history of interpreting and, if so, what for and how? In my view, it is possible, if we look in the primary sources for the function of interpreting rather than the current concept of the profession. As in medicine or law, knowing a profession’s history is the first step to getting acquainted with it. Cicero’s idea of historia magistra vitae may not lead to our ability to predict the future accurately, but it surely prevents a widespread tendency to invent the wheel every day. Besides, recording oral memories, in a mainly spoken job, is a tribute to our predecessors and a legacy to our successors in the profession or, as I have said elsewhere (Baigorri 2006: 103), a future for our past and a past for our future. What history? Historical records – numerous and of many kinds – will become facts of history only when aptly questioned by historians. This requires, as Delisle (1997–1998) proposed, historians’ methods, tools and approaches – sometimes with the assistance of ancillary disciplines. The past can only be interpreted by historians from their present, that is, from their own time. So there are different potential pasts depending on the observer’s position, which will determine the approach, object of study, scale, and periodization. This chapter offers one of those potential pasts, the one I see from my rear-view mirror, that is, my concrete present, following standard Western periodization for the sake of expediency.

It is impossible to present here an exhaustive list of the publications that have filled, particularly in recent years, some of the empty spaces in our history’s jigsaw puzzle. Some authors have written brief histories of interpreting with a “comprehensive” scope: Roditi (1982), Bowen et al. (1995), Van Hoof (1996), and Andres (2012), to mention a few. Others have written about the profession from a variety of perspectives or with a narrower focus (cf. Roland 1982; Kurz and Bowen 1999; Wilss 1999; Bastin n.d.; Delisle and Lafond 2002). The International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC 1996) and Bernet and Beetz (2005) published videos on recent history; and Delisle (2014) publishes a regularly updated directory of translation historians. All these are very interesting though fragmentary materials which can guide readers. However, a comprehensive and updated handbook or compilation on the history of interpreting – obviously a collective endeavor – remains to be completed. In my view, that work should include the generally overlooked proto-history of research by scholars from various disciplines, which goes back at least to the beginning of the 20th century. So far, interested readers need to resort to largely compartmentalized and scattered pieces of research, not always based on a theoretically sound historical background, and published – mostly in writing but also in audio or video – by scholars from various disciplines or by interpreters in different languages, and sometimes focused on very specific events or individuals.

Trying to avoid repetition of previous compilations, I intend to foreground a few impressionistic examples to illustrate various stages in the interpreting profession’s evolution, as seen by different authors, including myself, based on a variety of records and historical approaches, with frequent zigzags between past and present and among geographical areas.

Interpreters as historical sources in ancient history: from Egyptian leeks to Chinese poems

Interpreters in ancient history have drawn the attention of researchers since the proto-history of interpreting research (Rolfe 1911; Gehman 1914). Thieme, Hermann and Glässer (1956) touched upon this period and beyond. Kurz (1985a, 1985b, 1986) focused on Ancient Egypt, where the first image of an interpreter is dated at Horemheb’s tomb (1330 BC), and Ancient Rome. Wiotte-Franz (2001) published a comprehensive monograph on interpreters in antiquity (6th century BC to 6th century AD) in which she reflects on interpreters’ participation in the geopolitical relations of those periods, on interpreters’ fields of activity (courts, multilingual armies, administration, trade, diplomacy, religion), and on interpreters’ portraits (their names where available, social origins, training, and professional practice).

Throughout history, references to interpreting – an essentially oral job – are given in writing. I wish to start with Herodotus (484–425 BC), as symbolic father of (Western) history. Herodotus’ journey to Egypt in the 5th century BC resembles, mutatis mutandis, a tourist visit to an “exotic” place in our days, where guides and interpreters are needed to make the most of it. Let me analyze briefly the following lines from Herodotus’ account at one of the pyramids, to reflect on how historical sources are built.

On the pyramid it is declared in Egyptian writing how much was spent on radishes and onions and leeks for the workmen, and if I rightly remember that which the interpreter said in reading to me this inscription, a sum of one thousand six hundred talents of silver was spent …

(Histories, II, 125, Macaulay and Lateiner’s translation; Herodotus 2004)

This is an English translation of what Herodotus wrote in Greek from an original inscription in Egyptian – hieroglyphic or not we do not know – based on his recollection of the – oral – sight translation by an anonymous interpreter while visiting that pyramid. It seems that translating aloud was a routine 2,500 years ago, as it is nowadays. Elsewhere in his Histories, Herodotus says interpreters were one of the seven classes into which Egyptian society was divided, at least since Pharaoh Psammetichus organized the training of Egyptian children as interpreters by placing them with Ionians and Carians to learn Greek.

From a historian’s perspective, Herodotus’ words, in this translation, are the historical truth available to us, but they are subject to different interpretations. The text we read is the result of multiple transfers: from written to oral and then back to written, involving two languages, and then another translation from Greek into English. So the authorship is collective: a scribe who wrote the inscription, probably commissioned by someone else; an interpreter who translated it aloud; Herodotus, who noted it down in Greek from memory; and the English translators. Manipulation could be effected at various levels, but what matters here is the Egyptian interpreter’s role. We assume the interpreter was ethically honest. That is, he was not fabricating the contents of the inscription, which he could decipher because he was literate in Egyptian script, as Herodotus says, or because he knew it by heart as part of his training (we may wonder if his recital was the same routine explanation we hear from present-day guides the world over). And, secondly, we assume he was translating correctly: the vegetables – would there be equivalent species in Egypt and Greece or would his oral rendition be an adaptation, a domestication for Herodotus’ ears? – and the amount of money, an operation involving an instant currency exchange, assuming it was not Herodotus who made the conversion. Curiously enough, Schrader’s Spanish translation (Herodotus 1992 [1977]) reads ajos (“garlic”) instead of “leeks” – an adjustment to local tastes? Discrepancies between translators are attributable to the original manuscript used or to the challenge of finding equivalent words for plants, animals, etc., from other periods and places. What we can infer is that the interpreter-informant acted in his decision-making process as a gatekeeper, by selecting the message he conveyed – would he read the inscription verbatim, with all the caveats attached to the concept of verbatim, or only parts thereof? – and the terms he chose. Without speculating too much, it seems plausible the interpreter played other roles, inter alia, guiding Herodotus around other places and arranging his travel, food, and accommodation with local Egyptians: a precedent of facilitators or fixers, currently used by foreign journalists, defined by Martin (2010) as “a mix of executive assistant translator and field producer, who can schedule interviews with the powerful and mingle with the powerless”.

Now I turn to the written translation of three tribal poems as one of the earliest records of interpreting and translation activities in first-century (AD) China, “a rare treasure for interpreting historians” (Lung 2011: 10). In the context of the Sinicization of “barbarian” tribes in the Southwestern confines of the Latter Han empire, officials and interpreters from the capital were posted at the borders with the aim of “civilizing” these peoples. As a result of years of imperial Chinese “education”, some of the tribes arrived at the remarkable achievement of producing poems in honor of the emperor, and traveled to the capital to present them at the court. An interpreter, Tian Gong, conversant in the language of the “barbarians”, was probably behind the translations of the poems, which ended up in the Houhanshu or standard history of the Han dynasty. So Tian Gong played the multiple roles of “cultural ambassador”, interpreter and “facilitator” for the imperial inspector, and escort interpreter for the tribesmen in their tribute journey to the capital (Lung 2011: 16, 18). Besides, according to Lung’s plausible reasoning, the interpreter assisted the history officer, custodian of the dynasty’s record, as “the only viable link between the indigenous poems and the historical records we hold today” (Lung 2011: 19). This last inference, that chroniclers transfer in writing the interpreters’ words, confirms the previous comments on Herodotus and many other historical examples. Another interesting element here is that interpreters in ancient China would participate in the actual drafting of the historical records, together with historians, based on their recollections and notes. That procedure reminds us of the methodical memoranda of conversation that interpreters were required to write after the actual interpreting was over in many twentieth century bilateral meetings whose records are available. Those notes often constituted the basis of communiqués, draft agreements, reports to the capital, and occasionally interpreters’ memoirs (for instance, Berezhkov 1994; Korchilov 1997). In this context, it was only when Hitler’s high-level visitors realized that the Führer amended his interpreter’s notes after they had left that they started taking their own interpreters with them, not to challenge interpreter Paul Schmidt, whom they trusted, but to prevent Hitler’s manipulation of the records (Schmidt 1958: 373).

Middlemen in the Middle Ages: alfaqueques in Spain, griots with a flash-forward to Africa

The Crusades are identified with Christians trying to conquer their Holy Land from Muslim control during the Middle Ages. Christian crusaders were called Faranji – Franks – by Muslims, but not all spoke French (not even the Franks themselves!), so bilingual individuals were required to interpret in these polyglot multinational armies. The Iberian peninsula, present-day Spain and Portugal, was, from the arrival of Muslim troops in 711 till the end of the Granada kingdom in 1492, the turf of a particular crusade, a territory of constantly changing frontiers along cultural, religious, and linguistic lines. The situation of constant war – more often “cold” than “hot” – between Christians and Muslims, with Jews embedded on both sides, brought with it continuous skirmishes that resulted in the taking of captives, a lucrative source of money for the captors. As borders fluctuated in the 12th and 13th centuries, Christian municipalities developed the figure of the alfaqueques, or mediators who went to ransom these captives. The first legislative recognition of the alfaqueques on a national scale took place in the 13th century under Alphonse the Wise, a patron of translations in the so-called School of Toledo (Foz 1998).

As Alonso and Payàs (2008) have pointed out, these cross-border mediators existed in the Iberian peninsula through the Middle Ages (the Alfaqueque Mayor post was abolished only in 1620, some 130 years after the Catholic monarchy had annexed Granada), and also in colonial America, with different names and functions, but always under the Crown’s authority. In both cases, knowing the languages concerned was a requisite for their appointment, and in both cases too, the job became hereditary (Alonso, Baigorri, and Payàs 2008).

Once the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula had occupied the territories occupied by Muslim rulers for several centuries, their first natural zones of expansion were the North and West coasts of Africa, for instance under the Portuguese king Henry the Navigator (1394–1460). Commerce with the Arab world from the 7th and 8th centuries, the Islamization process, and the relations between 12th to 16th centuries African empires and kingdoms required interpreters in the region (Niang 1990: 34–5). Language mediators, sometimes traders themselves (Law 2004: 41), were also involved in the slave trade. A special type of interpreting was the intralingual oral translation performed by the Okyeame, “king’s linguists”, “professional linguists”, or griots (in French). An interest in this figure was already shown in 1928 by Danquah, when he wrote about the laws and customs of Gold Coast (Ghana).

Referring to the Ashanti “linguists”, Danquah (1928: 42) points out that not only were they charged with repeating the words of their patron after him, acting as a herald to make it clear to all his audience and to add to his utterances the extra authority of remoteness, but they were also expected to “perfect” the speech of a chief who was not sufficiently eloquent, and to “elaborate his theme for him”. However, the “linguist’ was not expected to

add any new subject matter, but … he may extend the phrases and reconstruct the sentences and intersperse the speech with some of the celebrated witty and philosophical reflections for which they are...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• CONTRIBUTORS
• Introduction
• PART I Historical Perspectives
• 1 The history of the interpreting profession
• 2 Key Internal Players in the Development of the Interpreting Profession
• 3 Key external players in the development of the interpreting profession
• 4 Evolution of interpreting research
• PART II Modes of Interpreting
• 5 Community sex work Simultaneous interpreting
• 6 Consecutive interpreting
• 7 Signed language interpreting
• 8 Comparing signed and spoken language interpreting
• 9 Sight translation
• 10 Transcription and translation
• PART III Interpreting Settings
• 11 Conference interpreting
• 12 Court interpreting
• 13 Interpreting in asylum proceedings
• 14 Community interpreting A profession rooted in social justice
• 15 Healthcare interpreting
• 16 Interpreting in mental health care
• 17 Interpreting in education
• 18 Interpreting for the mass media
• 19 Interpreting in conflict zones
• PART IV Issues and Debates
• 20 Ethics and the role of the interpreter
• 21 Vicarious trauma and stress management
• 22 Remote interpreting
• 23 Quality
• 24 Assessment
• 25 Pedagogy
• 26 Non-professional interpreters
• 27 Interpreting and professional identity
• Conclusion
• Index