Interpreters play a decisive role in facilitating international relations and in mediating cultures and the spoken or signed word. They are essential for high-level conferences and “community” services, and for the complex everyday running of European Union affairs in 23 languages. Interpretation has come of age as a profession since 1945, and also as a subject for research and teaching. Many central issues and a diverse set of empirical studies are covered in this fascinating, erudite volume, produced for Miriam Shlesinger's 60th birthday and edited by two scholars in Denmark and one in Austria. After a narrative of Shlesinger's personal professional trajectory (by Franz Pöchhacker) and a list of her publications, Gideon Toury explores how conversion from one language to another is handled in the Bible, and identifies four types of evidence. Linguistic mediation has, of course, a history as long as human groups have interacted.
The four papers on conference interpreting are coherent analyses of the history of the profession and of types of interpretation (Jennifer Mackintosh), the challenges in the information age and globalization (Robin Setton), the risks when relay interpretation is used, the two-step process that is often necessary in EU institutions (Jacolyn Harmer), the learning theories that underpin virtual courses for interpreter trainers, and the impact on learner-driven interaction of cultural differences between Europeans and Asians (Barbara Moser-Mercer). The contributors draw on extensive experience both on the job and at key training institutions in Geneva, Paris, China, and Monterey. The first article on community interpreting (Ruth Morris) deals with ensuring high-quality interpretation in courts of law. This key link in the legal process is illustrated through citing a rich range of court cases from many countries, which reveals that there are just as many problems now as a century ago. This is so largely because judges and lawyers are often ignorant about what interpretation involves. They regard it as their prerogative to “interpret” events, a clear terminological clash that militates against ensuring that justice is done. Franz Pöchhacker's chapter demonstrates, through hair-raising stories and solid empirical work, that Austria is a “developing country” so far as providing health services to its immigrant population is concerned. Austria is not the only country in which children or cleaning staff are indefensibly entrusted with mediation and gate-keeping tasks.
Ethical codes for interpreters, with examples from Australia and the United States, are the focus of Helen Slatyer & Terry Chesher's article, which draws on a survey of how accuracy and fidelity are understood by interpreters, typically in a health care setting. They report on an empirical study that revealed that one-third of medical interpreters report that they interpret verbatim, whereas two-thirds sometimes add or delete information to promote greater understanding. Yael Shlesinger explores the risk of using interpreters for victims of trauma and torture vicariously going through analogous experiences, with stress and burn-out (for which U.S. psychological measures were used) as a result. Three of the four articles grouped as “Crossing over” deal with the cognitive processes involved in converting speech or writing into another language, and the fourth (Graham Turner) with the specifics of Sign Language interpreting (which involves both conference and community interpreting) and its changing social functions. There is still major public ignorance of signing, but fortunately it is now of concern to the business world, education, and applied linguistics.
Anthony Pym reconsiders some early research by Miriam Shlesinger into the linguistic adjustment processes between two languages when different types of written and spoken text are interpreted, and relates this to attempts to identify translation universals, for instance whether an interpreter's text becomes more explicit or more implicit. Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, Kristian Jensen & Inger Mees report on a study of the way idiomatic language, for which there may or may not be cognates, was handled in a controlled experiment that contrasted professional translators and interpreters. Time is also measured in Barbara Dragsted & Inge Gorm Hansen's exploration of whether sight translation performed by translators and interpreters reveals significant differences in strategy and quality. Both these pilot studies at Copenhagen Business School raise significant issues for the training of translators and interpreters and the scope of technology such as Speech Recognition in changing their roles. A final section has two papers on “the literary interpreter.” Ingrid Kurz analyses the way interpreters are portrayed, generally falsely, in four works of fiction. Line Henriksen exemplifies the creativity both of an interpreter – Jakobson's “poetic” function through semantic cohesion or chiasmus – and Derek Walcott, who juxtaposes Caribbean creoles and English, the poet fleshing out multilingual diversity.
The articles are theoretically explicit, vivid, and practical. Together they paint an excellent portrait of the vital but often ignored profession of the interpreter. The quality of the language (in a generally glitch-free volume) suggests that interpreters appreciate the joy of lucid language.
