Giving interpreters a voice: interpreting studies meets theatre studies

Abstract

Interpreters have to negotiate interpersonal power relations, for which their professional training often leaves them insufficiently prepared. The article outlines an approach to organising the teaching of interpreters with a view to giving them a voice under challenging social constraints. From the point of view of educational sociology this implies strengthening students’ individual potential for self-determination on a number of levels, especially in taking on increased social responsibility. This provides the basis for specifying didactic strategies tailored to individual forms of interpreting, incorporating approaches adapted from other disciplines, especially practical theatre studies, into the context of interpreter training. The interdisciplinary elements are not simply used in a cumulative fashion, but are complementary to each other. From the participant’s perspective they can be regarded as dialogically structured life contexts, and from the observer’s perspective they are construed as a system. This idea is illustrated in more detail with methods taken from the Theatre of the Oppressed.

Keywords:

• power relations
• social responsibility
• Theatre of the Oppressed
• problem-solving strategies

Notes

1. The methods of the Theatre of the Oppressed and the didactical examples are presented in more detail in Kadrić (2011).

2. For the role of body language as part of non-verbal communication in intercultural encounters, see, for example, Apeltauer (1997) and Heringer (2004). For non-verbal communication in interpreting, see especially Poyatos (1988, 1997), Argyle ([1986]2005), Pasquandrea (2011), Mason (2009), Davitti (2013) and Davitti and Pasquandrea (2013).

3. One of the main approaches at the non-verbal level is the hypothesis that we are governed not only by knowledge and rational thinking, but also by feelings and intuition. We have the ability to interpret other people’s gestures and facial expressions. We call this our ‘inner voice’, ‘intuition’, ‘sixth sense’ or ‘gut feeling’. Cf. Gladwell’s (2005) bestselling book Blink! The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, in which he convincingly argues that the best decisions are often not the carefully planned and considered ones but the spontaneous decisions we make in the blink of an eye.

4. Cf. in particular: ‘Cooperative Learning’ (Johnson and Johnson 1991); Sharan 1999; ‘Selbstbestimmtes Lernen’ (Bannach 2002); ‘Ermöglichtes Lernen’ (Arnold 2007); ‘Collaborative Learning’ (Kiraly 1997, 2000) and Hong and Kwak (2012).

5. For a discussion of rules in interpreter training, see Merlini and Favaron (2009).

6. The exercises require a relationship of trust between members of the group. Boal rightly points out that these exercises can become problematic if a person’s private sphere is violated. Therefore, it is important to resolve any occurring emotional tension in the exercise. Trust also plays a key role in pedagogy in general; this was the conclusion of a study by Johnson and Johnson (1991, 154), in which they analysed 500 cooperative learning projects.

7. See Bahadır’s (2009, 30) critique on classical interpreter training which mostly concentrates on ‘general processing operations, linguistic transfer processes, anticipation, identifying the gist-message, (de)verbalisation techniques, “rapid” decoding and encoding, and ways to improve and to routinise these operations and techniques’.

8. While the work by Major, Napier, and Stubbe (2012) illustrates ‘what happens truly’ in applying authentic interactions, a newly conducted study (Niemants 2013) shows the problems of using pre-written texts in dialogue interpreter training. Working with scenarios is, of course, only one out of different possibilities. Training through performance has diverse application within Interpreting Studies: compare Fernandez Garcia, Zucchiatti, and Biscu (2009), and Cho and Roger (2010) for firstly training students in theatrical competences and then through performance in language and communication, with Metzger (2000) for training sign-language interpreters through role play, and with Rudvin and Tomassini (2011) for giving concrete recommendations for dialogue interpreting training in role plays.

9. On the concept of social and psychological power, cf. French, Bertram, and Raven ([1959]1968); Raven (1992); Foucault (1978, 2005).

10. These (recorded) scenarios were part of a survey conducted in a cooperative interpreting class 2007 and 2008 at the Centre for Translation Studies, University of Vienna.

11. Politeness strategies in social interaction are realised in language and culture-specific ways and can be contextual or co-textual, depending on the text type. On different aspects of politeness, cf. in particular Watts, Sachiko, and Ehlich (1992), Locher (2004) and Locher and Watts (2005). On interpreter’s strategies for conveying threats to own face, see Jacobsen (2008).

12. For reasons of brevity, I shall not describe the entire scenes here but only begin with the sentence that puts the interpreter under pressure.

13. For more detailed information on this technique, see also Rainbow of Desire (Boal 1995).

14. This authentic situation was recounted by a Farsi interpreter at a seminar of the Austrian Association of Certified Court Interpreters.

15. For this contribution I purposely chose an example where the interpreter is put under pressure not by a powerful institution but by a rather powerless individual.