Why Legal Protection Can’t Save Translation and Interpreting

You don’t have to go far to find out what is worrying those in the translation and interpreting professions. Crowdsourcing, machine translation and large-scale outsourcing could easily make people fearful that the future of translation and interpreting consists of low-paid, low status work, offered by uncaring providers.

But hold on, cry a few voices, we can stop all this madness. All we need is some form of government protection. If there were only a law (or several) that limited who could translate and who could interpret, all of these issues would go away in the blink of an eye.

Alas, in the real world, things aren’t that simple. Leaving behind the whole issue of how to get legislative support for this idea in a single area – never mind an entire economic sector – the problems with relying on legal protection are legion. For a start, given that there is no way of tracking every single document translated or conference interpreted in even a single city, policing such a law would be impossible. Someone would always manage to get their work to slip through the net and in time, things would probably return to the way they are now, with a few possible exceptions in highly visible work, such as court interpreting and international tenders.

There is also the inconvenient truth that certification, which often goes hand in glove with legal protection, is not in itself an indicator of quality. It was, after all, certified auditors who allowed the Enron scandal to go undetected. And there is, as yet, no proof that “certified translators” produce better work than those with equal amounts of experience but no certification.

This, of course, does not mean that certification is worthless. It implies accountability and a professional approach to work, which are assets in themselves. It also implies a readiness to submit your work to outside scrutiny, which again, is worthwhile. When tied to membership of a professional association, such as MITI or MCIL or Chartered Linguist status here in the UK, it also implies a commitment to the good of the profession as a whole. It does not, however, mean that every translation produced by every certified translator will be of an equal standard. Restricting translation to those who are certified would therefore be no good to clients.

Protection, at least as it is commonly described, might even be detrimental to the professions it was meant to safeguard. How are people supposed to get into translation or interpreting if only existing professionals can do the work?

Perhaps we might be better seeking to emulate the practices of those in the medical profession. (Of course, this isn’t my idea, Heriot-Watt PhD student, Robyn Dean, thought of it before I did). The point is that, nowadays, anyone can be their own doctor. The internet offers a variety of different tools and sites, each of which can give medical advice of some sort or another, much like there is a range of ways you can get translation done.  What sets the proper doctors apart from the amateurs is not just training and passing exams but their part in a system which puts accountability and scrutiny at the core of career advancement.

What can and should set the “real” translators apart from the cowboys and amateurs then is not simply a certificate or a title – as good as these things are – but an entire approach to work. Setting up and promoting a system of checks and continued accountability is worth more than legislation. If the system is robust enough, it will justify limiting certain kinds of work to those who are within it. It would be much easier, for instance, to argue that those interpreting in courts should be independently checked and continually monitored by an entire system than that they should have passed a one-off exam. Similarly, it would be easier to argue for clients to use translators and interpreters within this system on the basis of added value rather than simply screaming for restrictions to be placed on the market.

At the end of the day, any system that is set up has to benefit clients and professionals alike. It’s this goal, not simply pushing for higher rates or restrictions on trade, that is worth pursuing.

 

Author: Jonathan Downie

Why Bother Doing A PhD?

Two weeks ago, Jonathan wrote and posted To PhD or not to PhD, a short post on the merits of doing research. Given the reaction on social media and the obvious interest in the subject, we thought we would follow it up. This week, Professor Jemina Napier, lets us in on what motivates her to do research herself and help others.

By nature, translators and interpreters are inquisitive. We need to be in order to critically analyse the languages and cultures we work with, and to determine the best linguistic and cultural choices we make in the translation/ interpretation process. Being inquisitive lends itself very well to doing a PhD!

I am a practising interpreter and chose to do a PhD as I was curious to explore my own practice, and the practice of others, in more depth to help me better understand interpreting as a situated activity. I’ve never looked back and I now have the pleasure of supervising others’ PhD projects.

I believe that doing a PhD is a collaborative activity between student and supervisor(s). The student has an idea and its my role to be a mentor for them along their research journey, but also for us to work together to achieve the thesis at the end of the journey. This means lots of talking, identifying relevant literature, assisting with research design, reading and commenting on drafts, and generally giving constructive guidance throughout all the milestones of a 3-4 year project. But the bottom line is that we need to work together as a team.

The satisfaction for both student and supervisor on completion of a PhD is immense. It’s almost like giving birth! Something new has been brought into the world, and you both had a part in creating it.

I am still a practising interpreter, which informs my research and my teaching. And I think I’m a better interpreter because I’m a researcher. So if you’re thinking about it, I’d recommend it, as you’ll benefit from it on a whole lot of levels!

Author: Jemina Napier

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conferences: What are they good for?

(with apologies to Edwin Starr)

Conference season is in full swing. As I write this, ITI have recently had their annual conference, BAAL will soon be having a conference in Edinburgh and I am preparing to co-chair a panel at EST conference in August. It’s that time of year when people look out their business cards, dust off their elevator pitches and get ready to travel to a foreign country, before spending almost all of their time there inside hotels and conference halls.

But why bother? Why go to the trouble of travelling, registering and even presenting? What do conferences give you that staying at home, playing about on social media can’t?

Oddly enough, looking at the reasons why people go to conferences is part of my PhD. It would seem sensible that, if we want to know what people want from interpreters, we should start with why they are at the conference in the first place.

The real answer might be troubling for interpreters. As Daniel Gile put it “the great majority of delegates … state that gaining new information is not their primary motivation for coming to meetings … . Instead, their responses include: making new contacts and renewing contacts they have already made, exchanging information outside of the sessions, the chance to take some time out for themselves, tourism (!) and other motivations that have nothing to do with exchanging information.” (1989: 659, my translation)

No matter the conference, delegates will mention that having time to network and get to know new people figures high on their list of reasons for coming. Sure, they might learn something in the presentations but the real added value seems to be found in the times between the sessions. It’s little wonder then that most astute speakers recognise that keeping people’s attention has to figure high on their list of priorities. There is just so much else going on.

This means that it is entirely possible that the interpreters could spend a week preparing for a conference, only to realise that their “clients” are paying little attention to them and are more interested in who they can chat to in the coffee break. Ever been there?

What is interesting to note, though, is that there is some evidence that the clients who do pay attention tend to want something different from those who don’t.

Ask clients who don’t rely on interpreters what they want and “tell me what they said” will be their basic (and possibly complete) view. Ask clients who are fully reliant on interpreters and engaged in the session what they want and things get complicated. You might find, like Ebru Diriker, that clients start to explain that they want interpreters to coin new terms or to re-express the gist of what the speaker said. You might find, like Şeyda Eraslan, that clients want the interpreter to bridge gaps arising from cultural differences. You might even find, like Jill Karlik has seen and as I am discovering, that some clients actually want the interpreter to partner with the speaker, sharing at least some responsibility for the success of the talk.

If conferences are as much about networking than gaining information then speakers have to think hard about how to make their talks worthwhile. If speakers have to work hard on making their talks worthwhile, interpreting might just involve a lot more than “saying what they said”. We might just have to rethink what it means to interpret at an event. Are we ready to rethink interpreting? Over to you.

To PhD or not to PhD

For the majority of language professionals, the thought of giving three or more years of their life over to sitting in an office, reading papers, writing notes and preparing papers sounds like a punishment. Who in their right mind would leave behind (or at least reduce) their professional workload in favour of spending hours on theory and methods. We must be mad!

Believe it or not, research might actually be good for you. Besides helping improve the status of translators and interpreters, besides helping them understand what clients actually want, besides raising the profile of languages, research might actually help make you a better translator or interpreter.

How so? Well, if you have been a professional for any length of time, you will certainly have already used a bunch of the skills researchers use on an everyday basis. If you need to find the right term to use, you need to analyse and classify sources, sort and collate information, think critically, build an argument and follow it through to its logical conclusion. Now, admittedly, you might not write much of this process down but maybe you should.

How many times have you done research for one job and not been able to recall where you found all the information you needed when a similar job came along? Have you ever done a great job of doing the research for one translation only to struggle to follow the same process for the next?

All methodology really boils down to is the discussion of different ways of gathering and collating information. What do I lose or gain if I do my research this way? How do I know the information I am gathering is trustworthy? How do I define “trustworthy” anyway?

And theory? Well, as Prof Graham Turner says, there is no better theory than practical theory. Theory can mean two things in Translation and Interpreting Studies, both of which may well be handy for professionals. The first thing theory does is to divide up the world and place pretty labels on the bits. As soon as you start talking about the difference between translation, transcreation and adaptation, you are talking theory. Yet this difference might be really important, financially important above all!

The other kind of theory starts to predict stuff. If I translate this sentence like this, will it make the translation work better or worse? Do my agency clients want something different from my direct clients? What happens if I increase my lag when doing simultaneous interpreting? Will anything bad happen if I am 100% accurate here?

Research is not quite so alien after all. In fact, it might have some useful stuff to say to professionals and professionals might actually have something to say to research too. It might even be the case that professionals could do worse than to get involved in it.

Now, not everyone is going to go as far as to go get a PhD. But there are several good reasons why professionals might want to keep their finger on the pulse of Translation and Interpreting research. If nothing else, keeping an eye on practical research might give us some useful ideas to try out, ideas that should have already been tried and tested.

Author: Jonathan Downie

Scotland’s Living Heritage

Next week, Prof Máiréad Nic Craith will give her inaugural lecture on world heritage in Scotland. She will look at the importance of historic and listed buildings in Britain and will point to Scotland’ s success in getting world heritage status for five designated sites. Máiréad will focus on the idea of “dúchas” which places great emphasis on people and connects living heritage to particular places. She will also look at examples of living heritage in Scotland. Máiréad will argue that it is time for the UK to ratify UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003).

The lecture takes place  in the Postgraduate Centre – Cairn Lecture Theatre at Heriot-Watt University on Wednesday 29th May at 5pm. If you would like to join us for this event, you are welcome to sign up.

 

Author: Máiréad Nic Craith

Equality for Deaf People

The next EdSign lecture will take place at Heriot-Watt University on 22nd May:

‘Equality for Deaf People’ by Colin Allen, President of the World Federation of the Deaf

Wednesday 22nd May

7pm – 8.30pm

Where: (PLEASE NOTE THE ROOM CHANGE, THE EVENT WILL NOW BE IN) Mary Burton Building, Room MBG20, at Heriot-Watt University

Directions can be found at http://tinyurl.com/bmqkz2c

Bus numbers 25, X25, 34 and 45 run from Edinburgh city centre.

Equality for Deaf People celebrates the linguistic, artistic, social, political and cultural contributions and accomplishments of deaf people, focussing on recognition of sign languages and the rights of deaf people around the world. The presentation offers insights into the World Federation of the Deaf’s critical work towards achieving equality for deaf people based on the international treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Colin Allen is a world leader in Deaf Community development, human rights and advocacy. He was elected President of the World Federation of the Deaf in July 2011. Among his other responsibilities, he regularly represents the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) at the United Nations Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Panel of Experts under the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disability.

The lecture will be presented in International Sign, and will be interpreted into British Sign Language and English.

Please note the slightly later starting time of 7pm!

Free event! All welcome!

Author: Dr Svenja Wurm

IPCITI 2013: Speaker Lineup, part I

A few weeks ago, we announced that IPCITI 2013, the International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting would take place here, at Heriot-Watt in November. Now, we are pleased to announce the speakers, starting this week.

IPCITI has a tradition of offering workshops as part of the conference program. This year, Professor Jemina Napier, who has recently joined Heriot-Watt will be taking one of them.

Jemina is an interpreter researcher, educator and practitioner and has practised as a signed language interpreter since 1988. She grew up in the British Deaf community, and works between English and British Sign Language (BSL), Australian Sign Language (Auslan) or International Sign. After completing an MA in BSL/ English Interpreting at Durham University, Jemina moved to Australia to undertake her PhD studies in 1998. She established the first university industry-accredited training program as a Postgraduate Diploma in Auslan/ English Interpreting in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney in 2002, held a postdoctoral fellowship at the same university from 2004-2006, and was Head of Translation and Interpreting from 2007-2012. Jemina is a past President, and now an Honorary Life Member, of the Australian Sign Language Interpreters Association (ASLIA). She was an inaugural board member of the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI), and now serves as Co-Leader of the joint WASLI-World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) Task Force on International Sign interpreter training and recruitment. She was one of the founding members of the Australian Interpreter Trainers’ Network, and instigated the annual Interpreter Trainers’ Workshops (now known as the Interpreter Trainers’ Network Symposium). She has delivered interpreter training and assessment to interpreters worldwide, including in Brazil, China, Fiji, Ireland, Kosovo, New Zealand and the United States. Jemina was a member of the Australian industry body – the National Accreditation Authority of Translators & Interpreters (NAATI) – Qualifications and Assessment Advisory Committee and a member (previously co-chair) of the NAATI Auslan Interpreter Examiner Panel.

Jemina returned to the UK in February 2013 to take up the new position of Professor and Chair of Intercultural Communication in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies.

IPCITI Organising Committee

An Unheard of Adventure

As readers of this blog may be aware, LINCS has established interests not only in translation and interpreting, but also in intercultural studies. Of growing significance in this respect is research about cultural heritage. The heritage of speakers of English, French, Arabic and so on is well understood – though many questions inevitably remain to be addressed. But the cultural heritage of Deaf people – particularly, for us, that of users of British Sign Language (BSL) – is much less well known.

One man who is about to write himself firmly into the annals of the British Deaf community is Gerry Hughes. A Glaswegian, Gerry was born profoundly deaf and uses BSL as his first language. Gerry is well known to Heriot-Watt’s BSL staff: he was one of the earliest researchers into BSL – here in Edinburgh in the early 1980s – and in recent years worked with Gary Quinn on an innovative Science Signs project. Now, he is set to be the first Deaf yachtsman to do a solo circumnavigation of the world past the five great capes.

This undertaking, being a landmark in the achievements of this incredible adventurer will also serve as beacon to the Deaf community and any of the many individuals who look to Gerry as a role model.  Crowds gathered to witneoss the momentous and historic occasion of his departure: what will greet his return? You can follow Gerry’s progress on his website  via updates as and when they are received, and on Facebook.

Gerry’s solo circumnavigation emulates a journey made famous by likes of Sir Francis Chichester and the legendary Sir Robin Knox Johnston. As a Deaf man, Gerry has, of course, had no radio contact throughout the voyage. To put the rarity of this achievement in context, 1525 people have been to the top of Mount Everest; 560 people have been up into space; but only 300 people have sailed around the world past all five capes single handedly.

Gerry set sail from Troon Marina at 12.00pm on Saturday 1st September 2012 in a bid to become the first Deaf man to sail single handed non stop around the world. And he’s about to finish. History in the making! Go go go Gerry!

Author: Graham Turner

Spitting the Dummy at Government Inaction

Records of British Sign Language may date back to the 16th century, but it took until 18th March 2003 for formal governmental recognition to be secured for the language anywhere in the UK. Ten years later, many Deaf (and hearing) people – including Heriot-Watt’s staff and students with an interest in this community – are asking what this ‘recognition’ really meant.

Dissatisfied with a decade’s uncertain progress, pressure is mounting for renewed attention to the issue. An Early Day Motion (EDM) is currently being promoted at Westminster – thanks in particular to the efforts of the Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Bruce, Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon – seeking to secure greater attention to BSL at UK government level. Over 100 MPs have so far signed. As Malcolm Bruce, whose daughter Caroline was born deaf 30 years ago, acknowledges,

“Sign language is a vibrant language used by tens of thousands of deaf people yet British Sign Language does not enjoy the degree of support that is provided for Gaelic and Welsh or even the foreign languages of our immigrant communities. With the service of interpreters profoundly deaf people can engage much more fully in work and society. If we can give support to deaf parents and their children to learn and use BSL and provide access to video relay services (providing video links to interpreters anytime anywhere) and teach BSL as a foreign language we will not only keep this part of our culture alive but really enhance the quality of life for deaf people.”

LINCS, of course, offers the UK’s only undergraduate degree  from which successful graduates will emerge as fully qualified BSL interpreters.

Harnessing the power of social media to unite the geographically diffuse Deaf community, a UK-wide Facebook group has been established to help campaign for enhanced recognition of BSL: in a few short weeks, this group pulled together over 11,000 members (a startling figure, when you appreciate that there are fewer than 100,000 BSL users in the UK – it’s as if six million people suddenly joined the Queens English Society). The group has a startling name – ‘Spit the Dummy’ – a reference to the community’s sense that the recognition of BSL secured in 2003 was actually an empty, meaningless pacifier, which has led to minimal gains in subsequent years. The sense of frustration at those 10 lost years is what has ignited the current action.

Heriot-Watt staff are active along with others in promoting the EDM, and have received positive feedback from two local MPs who are keen to take a greater interest in what we do. An Early Day Motion will certainly not be enough to wrest a bolder response from the UK parliament, yet other linguistic communities near and far have achieved real political successes along these lines – so what do you think needs to happen next?#

Author: Graham Turner

Edupunk, Engagement and the Rise of Peer Training

Last week, the Thesis Whisperer visited Heriot-Watt. No, it wasn’t an expert in animal training nor was it a visiting speaker who hadn’t learned to project their voice but instead Dr Inger Mewburn, known online for her Thesis Whisperer blog. Although her talk was aimed at helping young academics use social media to help them up the career ladder, one of the most memorable moments was her presentation of the idea of “Edupunk.”

Edupunk is new, dating from just 2008. Basically, it promotes a “do-it-yourself” rule-free approach to teaching and learning. What Dr Mewburn added was that this could easily apply to academic careers too. At a time when blogs and twitter feeds say as much about an academic as their publication list and CV, why play by the existing rules? Why not use new technologies to get the word out about what you do rather than spending all your time filling in form after form after form?

It’s not far off an approach that was tried here at Heriot-Watt to get Deaf and signing people more engaged with research. Since these people are online and engaging with blogs anyway, why not aim a blog at them and let them engage with research online? You will need to either come to the upcoming BAAL conference or wait until the paper hits the journals to find out how that went.

Still, whether that was successful of not, the point remains that nowadays, online, interactive, innovative learning is hitting the mainstream. In the world of commercial translation and interpreting, providers like eCPD and experts like Marta Stelmaszak are making waves with courses like Business School for Translators and showing that translators and interpreters can and should learn from their fellow professionals. National associations have long shown that this path is worth treading. ITI is only one example of a professional association that has long made a  point of providing opportunities for its members to learn from each other.

It’s a cultural shift that is spreading far and wide. But this wouldn’t be a LifeinLINCS post if we just left it there. Just as crowdsourced and professional translation might not be implacable enemies, so it is with Edupunk and traditional training. There are, after all, good reasons for boring-sounding concepts like Learning Outcomes and Syllabus Design. While you could almost certainly string together micro-course after micro-course and spend the same number of hours on informal translation and interpreting training as you could on a degree course, it wouldn’t add up to the same thing.

Of course, some would say that this only favours online and peer learning. A masters degree does not a translator make. That may well be true but it is also true to say that the good degrees can be recognised by the fact that they mix both practical and theoretical training, alongside exposure to events that provide a starting point for the transition from graduate to freelancer.

There might therefore be space for partnership between the new and the old or even for them to learn from each other. The new online course providers could perhaps do with looking at how universities pull together courses into a single package and how they check that the courses they offer are working. They might also want to take a peek at the transferable skills that graduates are supposed to learn to see what they could add to their approach. Learning how to learn effectively is, after all, as necessary a skill for aspiring freelancers as learning to market their services.

For pre-Edupunk academics, the lessons are more striking. For one, if the edupunk approach is has merit then some of the structures normally put around learning might be completely unnecessary. At the very least, it might mean mixing up the methods used for teaching and making more materials available online to absolutely anyone. Edupunk, engagement and peer learning tell us that people want to be far more involved in their own training. Perhaps it’s time to give them that opportunity.

Author: Jonathan Downie

[Editor's note: The first public version of this post erroneously suggested that national associations had "jumped on the bandwagon" in providing online, peer-learning courses. It has been correctly pointed out that this is not the case and in some cases the courses provided by national associations pre-date some of the examples given by several years. Jonathan apologises for any offence caused by this inaccuracy.]