Understanding legal interpreter and translator training in times of change

Abstract

This article is the guest editor’s introduction to the special issue of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer on ‘Legal Interpreting and Translation’ (LIT). Monzó examines what fluctuations and advances are affecting the contents and methods proposed for training future legal interpreters and translators and argues that the changing legal, social and economic conditions, including an evolving linguascape and law reforms pertaining to LIT, demand professionals who can constantly adapt the services they offer to new settings and new conditions. Trainers need to be aware of the changing nature of the profession to adapt their own roles, and to set learning outcomes for a variety of learning contexts that allow future professionals to thrive in a changing society.

As much as translators and trainers need to adapt, so do the curricula themselves. Recent reforms in higher education have introduced substantial changes, purportedly to better correspond to market and States’ needs. As new frameworks and methodologies are enforced and introduced in higher education, several mismatches and inadequacies regarding societal and market needs have to be redressed. Trainers across regions enjoy different policy space regarding planning and delivery but they all face a new generation of citizens, a global citizenship which has been said to be the most qualified generation in history and yet faces unprecedented unemployment rates. Against this background, Monzó questions the ownership of the curricula and examines how trainers themselves struggle with changes impacting their professional discretion and identities.

Keywords:

• legal translation and interpreting (LIT)
• LIT training
• curriculum reforms
• professional profiles

Nowadays, legal interpreting and translation (LIT) training is being offered in a variety of settings. Undergraduate courses in interpreting/translation degrees, where students usually have not received any training on the subject matter (that is of their own – let alone a foreign – legal system); postgraduate courses, where law, interpreting/translation and other graduates bring their own implicit – sometimes conflicting or even competing – theories of what LIT is and how it should be implemented; seminars and PhD courses, where research issues are emphasised and a scientific mindset is raised and cultivated among students with different sensibilities and priorities; orientation seminars for legal practitioners, where law professionals learn to work with legal interpreters/translators; short courses to introduce new technology, skills or changes in legislation to LIT professionals; or preparation courses for those who, albeit coming from different backgrounds, share a wish to obtain licensure to practice as sworn, certified, authorised interpreters and translators. Of course, this list is by no means all-encompassing but it does highlight the need for LIT trainers to discuss and find best practices, core issues and system- and context-dependent variables that can build the knowledge and skills necessary to practise LIT and support its development.

The power to define the knowledge and skills LIT trainees and professionals need has been contested from – or shared by – different areas. Comparative lawyers focus on comprehensive analysis of the legal systems and cultures involved and the possible consequences of particular equivalences (Grosswald Curran 1998; Pommer 2006); jurilinguists stress their gatekeeping function to preserve legal and cultural consistency in the target language and legal system (Gémar 1982; Gémar and Kasirer 2005); and translation scholars are driven by the need to cater to audiences’ needs and expectations (Kalina 2004; Šarčević 2006; Christensen 2011; Prieto Ramos 2014). The goal is usually set at achieving some kind of equivalence between systems, texts or words (see Pigeon 1982; Šarčevič 1985; Hickey 1998; Harvey 2002; Santamaria Guinot 2006; Cao 2007; Vidal Claramonte 2005). However, the way equivalence in LIT is perceived, defined or questioned varies across disciplines whose basic assumptions sometimes clash and jostle.

At the edge of translation, the power to define LIT is performed by competing disciplinary areas claiming how legal communication across languages and cultures should be problematised and solved. Jurisdictional struggles typically favour the group with the most productive and trust-engendering knowledge (see Monzó 2009). Knowledge allows solutions for human and social problems to be developed and improved, but it also allows groups to distinguish themselves among competing professions, and flourish. To serve this purpose, however, this knowledge needs to be both tacit and explicit, both theoretical and practical, both scientific and applied. Advancing our profession’s interests calls for a cooperation where scholars take responsibility for systematising and formalising knowledge, trainers bring that knowledge to the classroom and partner with trainees to participate in its development so that they can later apply and circulate that knowledge as practitioners. The group that can provide the best and most widespread solution will be in the position to establish its way to perceive, interpret and solve the problem as the ‘right’ one, normal and normative. The challenge is then to make ‘legal interpreting and translation apud interpreting and translation studies’ the best and most common solution for LIT problems, and to keep it that way even when the roads are rapidly aging.

Nonetheless, defining that knowledge poses challenges as the Delphic aphorism ‘know thyself’ proves more complex than it might seem at first sight in a subject whose ‘self’ rapidly evolves. The epistemological debate as to what the essence of LIT is faces a changing reality where multiple needs, priorities and possibilities emerge and coexist. Despite never-ending attempts at classifications and boundary setting, also between specialisms and subspecialisms in and across both interpreting and translation, borders are mostly blurry and yet ‘[i]t is indeed possible to say a good deal about China and India without asserting that there are no ambiguities as to where the boundary between the two countries lies’ (Sen 1980, 353).

A first step on our way to knowledge is to identify and describe what our trainees will be supposed to do once they finish their degrees and enter a changing market. Different efforts, where particular LIT settings were explored or experiences were shared (among many others, Mayoral Asensio 2000; Gémar 2013; Hickey 2014), have shed light as to what exactly LIT professionals are involved in. Ethnographic studies have been blooming for some time (Valdés et al. 2000; Inghilleri 2003; Koskinen 2008; Gallez and Maryns 2014), and they provide us with situated descriptions that offer levelled conclusions, especially regarding the systems’ understanding of equivalence, how it can or should be achieved, and what it is that the interpreter/translator is exactly expected to do, told to do, and actually doing. Attempts at identifying the roles LIT professionals play (or should play) in different social settings (Hale 2008), describing their evolving, negotiated and constructed nature (Kadrić 1998; Mikkelson 2008; Tuck 2010), and acknowledging the cultural and social limits of any attempt at an answer (Page 1993; Angelelli 2004; Rudvia 2006) bring us closer to understanding what future we should prepare trainees for. The classroom – either virtual or face to face – is a site for the construction of knowledge and also of professional identities. The interactions taking place at that site build role expectations and define possibilities for professionals and professions. There is an urgent need for the theory underlying LIT training to echo the changing reality that trainees will face so that the role expectations and professional identities developed in the classroom can survive a reality check; and for trainers to increase awareness of the more or less tacit knowledge and implicit theories they are facing and conveying (see Colina 2002), their impact on professional identity, and the need for critical tools to identify and also negotiate and reshape roles. Europe has recently witnessed a major change in the way authorities deal with LIT (European Parliament and Council of the European Union 2010), US certificate interpreters have been making regulatory advances for quite some time (Sawyer 2004) and progress in sworn translation regulations has been reported in other regions (Hlavac 2013), although regressions and enduring dysfunctions are far from rare (Morris 2010; Bambust, Kruger, and Kruger 2012). These transformations will continue on a global basis. We now need to understand how to approach a moving object and train our future problem-solvers accordingly so that identity and market expectations formed in the classroom do not find themselves at odds with the actual roles that scholars, trainers and trainees play in the evolution of LIT.

To adapt to new needs and environments, including a reconstructed work market, to develop new knowledge on the job and solve new problems in real world settings, trainees will need high levels of cognitive skills (Woessman 2011). Skills and capabilities have been recently reappraised as the ‘fundamental bricks behind the economy of each country determining their fitness to compete in the international market’ (Cristelli et al. 2013). And yet, against the background of an overqualified society (Linder 2014; Vogtenhuber 2014), enterprises are affected by shortages of skilled labour (Buschfeld et al. 2011; Schumann et al. 2014). The skill mismatch is an urgent problem to tackle in the global economy (Cedefop 2012; Béduwé and Giret 2011), especially considering how adjustments in the industry require ever-changing skills and how the relentless advance of the global economy in services and knowledge (NIC 2000, 28) is speeding up industry remodelling and revolutions. New markets open access to international trade; new social realities and problems emerge; new legal solutions are developed; new migration flows transform the linguascape; political boundaries reconfigure; and LIT professionals need skills that had not been foreseen in their training. Globalisation is accelerating the pace at which changes come about, entire economies suffer the consequences, and LIT is no exception. How are we going to prepare trainees for those inexorable changes? We simply cannot on our own. A study of the World Bank (Almeida, Behrman, and Robalino 2012) suggests that advanced skills are acquired through both pre-employment education and on-the-job training. This cooperation model has been encouraged and explored in ITS (Li 2002; Furmanek 2004; Kelly 2005, 92; Gouadec 2007, 180, 352ff.; Johnston 2007; Pym et al. 2012, 93; Bown 2013), although there is general agreement that further developments are needed to harness its potential. If we are to give our trainees the tools to make ‘interpreting and translation apud interpreting and translation studies’ the best solution available in the market of intercultural communication problems, alliances between scholars, trainers and job providers have to be sought and consolidated.

The issue here is how third-level education and on-the-job training can help trainees develop the competences they need, and what responsibilities they should assume in their cooperation. The literature on translation training has been problematising how to plan students’ learning for decades (Delisle 1993). Establishing objectives (Delisle 1998), detailed procedures (Nord 1991), designing specific tasks to attain explicit goals (Hurtado Albir 1999), paving the way towards practice with activities other than translating or interpreting texts (Gile 1995) and emulating professional conditions to empower translators and develop professional practices (Kiraly 2000; Baumgarten, Klimkowski, and Sullivan 2008) have been mottos supporting a learning-by-doing approach in ITS and LIT training (to name but a few, Sparer 1988; Hurtado Albir and Borja Albi 1999; Harvey 2000; Way 2004; Biel 2011; Jiménez-Crespo 2013; Hale and Ozolins 2014).

Whereas the tendency in law schools is for lawyers to base their problem-solving abilities on sound formalised conceptual knowledge (the right way to solve a conflict according to the law their societies have developed), the trend for translation schools has been to teach – or show – how to translate and only implicitly convey a theory of the right way to solve an intercultural communication problem, even inadvertently (Lederer 2007), socialising the students in a ‘sense made common’ and allowing them to work with a naive theory at best (on naive theories, see, for instance, Premack and Woodruff 1978; Shtulman 2006; Maor and Leiser 2013). Indeed, translation competence has been defined as basically procedural knowledge or even as a technology (Mayoral Asensio 2001a), and this has generally aligned interpreting/translation training with the claims – rather frequent among students, practitioners and trainers – that practice is not only necessary, but also the only method that we need to learn how to translate (see Pöchhacker 2010, for a discussion). Albeit somehow convenient, given recent political education decisions in Europe, the stress might prove problematic in the short run. A link between the learning-by-doing approach (when not supported by investment in conceptual learning) and skill loss has been suggested (Belley 2012; Bowlus and Liu 2013; Khalifa 2015). Keeping the meaningful learning and integration of real-life scenarios emphasised by the learning-by-doing approach, the conceptual ingredient must be kept very much in the picture to develop the high skills that trainees need to adapt to a changing context and bridge the skill gap. The most educated generation in European history is facing the highest ever rates of youth unemployment, and finding an end to that trend requires the cooperation of students, trainers, training institutions, scholars and policymakers across disciplinary boundaries.

The dance between knowing ‘that’ and knowing ‘how’ can also be found in the general theory of pedagogy or even philosophy. Both represent inherently different approaches to the possibility of knowing the world – either an analytic stance or an intuitive move where knowledge can only be achieved through participation. Whereas Western debate has traditionally supported analytical thinking and disengaged rationalisation, other traditions, such as African thought, stress personal investment and participation as the way to know the world (Senghor [1962] 1995). Acknowledging alternative traditions and channelling their potential for cross-fertilisation is proving to be the trend for a new global citizenship (see Turner 2002). LIT training may be said to have been a step ahead in underscoring content-based learning, albeit linked to legal studies (see, among others, De Groot 1999; Northcott and Brown 2006; Prieto Ramos 2011; Engberg 2013; Glanert 2014; Scarpa and Orlando 2014), where translation is most frequently seen as a linguistic operation between equivalents (see, for instance, Condon 2012). The question is, can we systematise LIT knowledge and present a theory than can problematise, systematise and explain our past, our present and our future coherently or are we subservient to developments in the legal field? Is our scholarship powerful enough to define and develop the knowledge our trainees need, to engender solutions and trust? Can it be? For a discipline to thrive, there must be doctoral research (Bassnett 1998, 105). Are we giving students the right message for the profession to flourish when we talk about translational theory?

At workplaces we find the ordinary knowledge of what the ‘right’ way in interpreting and translation is, which can be usually traced back to the grammatical theories applied in second-language instruction (Colina 2002). In the classroom, IT trainers impart a particular theory (Lederer 2007), and from repeatedly applying models for textual analysis to the range of tasks included in training, the negotiation powers granted to students or the metaphors used to refer to translation and translators as more or less instrumental or leading, micropractices shape the way we construct LIT and our future chances. Making students aware of the underlying concepts and the alternative theoretical frameworks from which to approach LIT, analyse a problem, and infer and apply a solution empowers trainees as they realise that no default solution serves all systems at all times. When knowledge is formalised and learning is made explicit, trainees can flexibly regulate their skills (Moser-Mercer 2008, 15); they can see the big picture and map the underlying structure (Dienes and Altmann 1997), recognise the concepts in the occurrences, autonomously establish the connections needed to see patterns, requirements, alternatives and consequences, and advance evolutions or even encourage changes (Wahl 1994, 259). Implicit or naive theories, on the other hand, are inflexible (Berry and Dienes 1993) and enjoy default justificational status (Williams 1999, 55); that is, they are incontestable and promote uncritical thinking and an inadvertent adaptation to rules – which of course do not need to represent ‘LIT apud interpreting and translation studies’. As long as problems continue to be the same, solutions need not be fixed. However, a settled world does not seem to be supported by evidence, and confusing the familiar with the necessary proves thorny. The changing nature of our globalised existence, an unstable linguascape, the progress of technology, the transformation of value systems, and the evolution of our societies and training systems defy the presumption.

We owe our students both procedural and conceptual knowledge. Developing knowledge on ‘LIT apud interpreting and translation studies’ proves challenging on various grounds. The interdisciplinary nature of LIT calls for a close cooperation between different disciplines, and the pervasiveness of a linguistic theory of translation bequeathed by language learning requires public and pragmatic translation projects (Koskinen 2012). However, developments in university governance policies pose several questions on the ownership of interpreting and translation curricula and how harmoniously the different trainers’ roles can concur. Special emphasis is placed on market needs, whereas more traditional higher education functions, such as supporting social mobility or personal realisation (Scott 2006), are overshadowed. New legislation tries to cater to an increasingly complex society, while States aim at keeping social expenses at bay. Decisions on the general structure and final approval of degrees, and guidelines for course design are taken at a regional level and strongly influenced by policymakers, whereas survival of courses or degrees is based on their profitability and popularity. The capacity of teachers and universities to react to new demands and advances is obstructed in some regions (such as Europe) by the need for national or regional review and approval of contents and methods.

Universities find themselves under increased scrutiny. They are asked to focus on productivity and produce a new workforce for a reconstructed job market. In Europe, Bologna Process reforms to better adapt to the needs of the market have widely implied limits to the number of training hours, particularly of theory-based courses, on the premise that practice-oriented training gives students better employability skills. Yet theories in practice-based courses remain implicit behind text selection, grading system or role impartment. Pressure has been placed on well-functioning systems to release students to the job market at an earlier stage than they used to deem suitable (Välimaa, Hoffman, and Huusko 2007). In some countries, and given current economic contexts, MA degrees are widely unaffordable. Access to doctoral programmes is obstructed. Reforms have also shaken teachers’ professional identity, as trainers and trainees are no longer – more or less hierarchically positioned – partners in a common venture to create knowledge, but consumers and producers in a market economy. Trainers assume new roles, monitoring mandates and, in some countries, act as State deputies, as eligible interpreting and translation degrees grant licensure to practise as sworn or court interpreters and translators. Training and assessment fulfil an increased number of goals and the complexity of learning outcomes expands. The question arises as to what autonomy is left for trainers as professionals, and how the best education possible can prevail in the face of so many interests. Universities’ missions revolve around knowledge (Ortega Y Gasset [1930] 1992) expressed through research and teaching (Scott 2006). The will to knowledge and to the control of that knowledge brings different agents to the picture, with different priorities, different problems and different solutions. Against this background, and given the crucial role of research in knowledge creation, professions’ development and disciplinary progress, challenges to the advance of LIT are manifold.

The contributions in this issue deal with these challenges in different areas of LIT. Focuses and underlying theories represent diversity and establish an enriching dialogue between priorities to cater to in a changing world that continually overhauls our professional profile both as translators/interpreters and trainers.

Martín Ruano emphasises the need for LIT training to incorporate a critical stance in the classroom as a means to empower students to problematise current dominant discourses on fidelity as the regulating principle for LIT. The author supports her argument on the challenges our current society poses to two nuclear concepts, equivalence and neutrality. Martín Ruano questions dominant scholarly views on both notions, and highlights mismatches between those and particular problems pointed out in the literature. Her discussion on both concepts is particularly relevant and enlightening at a time when our whole world view has been shaken up and society has disposed of the possibility of neutrality rather convincingly. Our hometowns no longer have borders, we might be the firstborn global citizens, and yet somehow we have been dodging the responsibility to adapt scholarly views on the ideas of functionalist service to a market with definite, typical and discoverable needs.

Ordóñez López focuses on conceptual knowledge and surveys how it is included in the course planning of introductory LIT courses in Spain. In doing so, she critically examines how trainers conceptualise and materialise ‘basic legal knowledge’ as an ingredient of LIT competence. Her contribution is particularly relevant as she examines the methods that have been suggested to develop such knowledge, where legal genres have been used as the main tool of instruction. She argues that this approach leaves unsolved the issue of where the focus on conceptual legal knowledge should be placed and suggests a closer interdisciplinary cooperation as the possible solution.

Wallace’s contribution is a call to increase training opportunities beyond university degrees. She surveys the legislative measures taken in the US to provide access to justice to people with limited English proficiency and identifies mismatches with policy practices. She further describes the institutional framework and sketches the process to obtain licensure so as to identify education gaps and propose solutions based on an action research project in the framework of the Wisconsin court system. She argues that increasing training opportunities for professionals and establishing translating and interpreting education as a requisite to sit the certification examination would reduce institutional expenses and improve performance.

Hunt Gómez and Gómez’s contribution describes materials designed to allow students to experience increased realism in court interpreter training at university. They describe how the material was conceived, planned and designed. They cater to a wide variety of training needs, including traditional language-focused and law-focused tasks and learning outcomes, but also ethical aspects. They place a great importance on student motivation when facing the intense learning needed for court interpreting, and argue that such audiovisual material can improve performance by increasing authenticity. Even though the production of such material is resource- and time-consuming, developing such training aids for a wider range of language combinations, including less translated languages, would no doubt improve the training opportunities of a wide variety of students and professionals.

Rodríguez-Castro and Sullivan’s contribution focuses on course design by drawing on a specific university course from the University of Louisville. They stress the centrality of students in the whole learning process, from course conception to students’ assessment, and of the trainers’ freedom to adapt to emerging needs. They suggest specific and detailed learning outcomes that can be achieved following a task-based approach. In this more or less traditional scenario, they integrate two resources: portfolio assessment and expert mentoring. The data gathered from portfolios and satisfaction surveys show that both group and individual expert mentoring were determinant factors of student motivation.

Salmi and Kinnunen describe the rationale for specific LIT courses in Finland which grant specially successful students the right to obtain licensure and work as authorised interpreters and translators. They explore how such a gatekeeping function shapes course design and evaluation, and places new demands on trainers. They highlight what tensions arise between their traditional and the newly acquired role to distinguish what students can act as authorised interpreters and translators after successful completion of the course. Keeping in mind their responsibility to provide relevant training to every single student enrolled, they further discuss the assessment system, based on the grading system used for authorised interpreters and translator candidates. Their discussion leads to the conclusion that, despite difficulties and challenges, universities are indeed suitable depositories of the power to determine who will become an authorised translator, especially when universities cooperate at a national level.

Solová presents a survey on the training profile and demands of sworn interpreters and translators in Poland by comparing results from two different questionnaires sent before and after legislative reforms were introduced in the accreditation system. She analyses results against the training possibilities Poland offers to interpreting and translation trainees, professionals and also trainers. Several issues are discussed in the light of legal prescriptions and changes, such as the value respondents place on sharing information, considering that expert sworn interpreters and translators are obliged by law to share their knowledge with novice professionals. She establishes trends and observes an increasing interest in specific LIT training among professionals, strongly focused on practice-oriented training. The discussion tackles several thought-provoking issues with relevance for role definition, degree reform, course design and the pervasive discussion on conceptual knowledge in LIT training.

Several topics are recurrent across the different contributions. Issues of language policy and due process of law, ownership of the curriculum and cooperation with market agents, reshaping the notions of equivalence and neutrality in a globalised context, or LIT trainers’ and professionals’ role gain increased interest in front of more traditional debates that remain relevant, such as trainees’ different profiles and interests, students’ intrinsic motivation, professionals’ hunger for specific LIT training, their perception of conceptual and procedural knowledge, the necessity to emulate professional conditions in LIT training, or the boundaries between specialisms, particularly between emergent and divergent models of professionalism in LIT. Among them, the link between education, research and market practice seems to be our zeitgeist.

The progress of LIT is promising. Encouraging cooperation projects are increasing our knowledge of different traditions and settings; new methods and theoretical frameworks are producing deeper knowledge of our task and enable scholars to give more accurate explanations of a wider range of LIT problems and solutions. Challenges and open questions seem to ensure an interesting debate for quite some time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all contributors to this special issue for their enthusiasm for the project and their spirit of cooperation during the entire revision process. My most sincere thanks go to the anonymous referees for their generous contribution and insightful recommendations. I am also grateful to Leo Hickey and Luis Pérez González for their inputs when drafting and circulating the call for papers, to Luis Pérez González and Le Cheng for their help in the selection of the abstracts, and to Luis Pérez González, Dorothy Kelly and Ana Gregorio Cano for their help in this process.

ORCID

Esther Monzó Nebot http://dx.doi.org/0000-0001-5658-9967