But then it struck me: my professional life and my “political” life could converge; the world of interpreting too has much to offer to the advancement of human rights. For what is interpreting if not the removal of barriers, and what is community interpreting if not a means of reducing disparities and of ensuring that those who do not speak the official language(s) may be on an equal footing with those who do. … Ultimately, acknowledgment of the role of community interpreting in our society is a political process, which reflects a society’s view of communication as a basic need.
—Miriam Shlesinger, Reception Speech, Danica Seleskovitch Award, Paris, March 20, 2010
This Special Issue, as its title indicates, focuses on various aspects—from language access, policy and technology use in public service translation and interpreting to cultural mediation and interpreter training—in the context of the European migrant crisis. We believe public service interpreting and translation (PSIT) is closely related to basic human rights and service provision and thus has a direct bearing on the sociopolitical condition of migrants whether in Europe or elsewhere around the world.
The terms “public service interpreting” and “community interpreting” are often used interchangeably. Although definitions abound, there is a common understanding that community or public service interpreting takes place mainly in public sector service provision interactions, which tend to be dialogic and to demand the use of consecutive interpreting in the spoken languages, and less often demand simultaneous interpretation. In the field of interpreting, the simultaneous mode refers to situations where interpreters convey their target message while the main participant(s) speak (usually in conferences), whereas in the consecutive mode they pause to let the interpreter render the text into the target language. One of the unique features of PSI (in contrast to conference interpreting, for example) is that interpreters have to navigate the power differentials between service providers and service users, as well as the often broad cultural differences between them. In such situations, both parties are linguistically helpless, but obviously one side—the person seeking the service, who belongs to a language minority group, is in need of something (verdict, care, money) from the service provider. PSIT is therefore considered a language access tool that promotes equitable treatment of newcomers.
One of the main concerns of practitioners in the field centers on their professional role and the dilemmas of intervention in the course of public service interpreting. Recent work on this question has pointed to the need for more active interpreter involvement akin to that of the cultural mediator or broker. The ramifications of such involvement are many and can be explained in terms of the institutional nature of encounters where mutual understanding is vital (e.g., social services or medical interpreting), or where visibility and own voice interventions are expected, in contrast to court interpreting, for example, where it is considered less adequate.
That institutionalized discursive and social practices, patterns and expectations have such a strong bearing on professional standards has directed attention of researchers to the widely differing settings in which public service interpreters work. The first studies in the 1990s centered on the PSI sub-disciplines of healthcare and court interpreting, and have since branched out to include the role of PSI in religious settings, education, social services, mental health, law enforcement and the prison system.
However, one setting that has received relatively little attention so far has been interpreting for asylum seekers and refugees. Although there are a few seminal works on the subject, it is clear that the influx of migrants and refugees into Europe in recent years demand a more focused approach to the role of interpreting in the processes and procedures associated with the migration crisis. Beginning in 2015 large waves of migrants arrived in Europe, with around 4.7 million of them entering European Union countries. Thus from the beginning of 2014 to the end of 2015 the number of asylum applications to Europe more than doubled from around 40,000 to 100,000. Citizens who had been victimized or were fleeing their conflict-torn lands, or families looking for a place where they could make a living, often risked their lives to reach Europe. This still-ongoing trend has become known as the “European migrant crisis” or, perhaps more accurately, the “European refugee crisis.” The sheer number of people affected by this crisis and the gravity of their situation is impossible to ignore. This Special Issue focuses on the communicative dimension of the problem, one of the numerous problems that the immigrants face on a daily basis.
In the wake of the massive influx of migrants, the need for linguistic and cultural mediation has increased sharply both in the receiving countries and in the territories that migrants and asylum seekers cross to reach their destinations. These needs, however, have often not been adequately met. This failure may be attributed to lack of experience, inflexible social and institutional structures, and infrastructures that make it difficult for receiving states to respond to communication exigencies. At the same time, these more or less responsive reactions are often rooted in a lack of political will to appropriately fund initiatives that aim to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps.
A state’s approach towards language services is determined, among other factors, by its attitude to immigration, as Uldis Ozolins proposed in “Factors that Determine the Provision of Public Service Interpreting: Comparative Perspectives on Government Motivation and Language Service Implementation” (Journal of Specialised Translation 14 [2010]: 194–215). The general perceptions of immigration differ substantially: some countries, like Australia or Canada, consider themselves as multicultural immigration-based societies, whereas other more monocultural societies, like some European countries (Norway, Spain, and Belgium are examples discussed in this issue), have only more recently been faced with significant migration waves. These immigration waves not only challenge these countries’ monocultural and monolingual self-image, but pose practical challenges that are compounded by their lack of experience, training and certification for public service interpreters and translators, and adequate infrastructure for language services. Immigration policies and attitudes may also change when governments change, as happened in recent times in Austria and the United States.
Leaving aside the question of why states react to immigration in the way they do, multiple consequences arise from a country’s inaction or insufficient action when faced with an influx of migrants. In 2017, for example, several international NGOs assessed the availability of language services, and the consequent levels of comprehension, in refugee camps in Greece, Italy, and Turkey. Offering a rough approximation, one of the people on the ground estimated that less than 15% of interpreted interactions were conducted by a paid interpreter. The severe lack of funding for language services for humanitarian organizations has resulted in widespread comprehension issues and failed or stalled asylum applications. As a stumbling block to counseling and mediation services, it has left the most vulnerable migrant groups—women and girls, young children, the elderly, the disabled, and minorities—at even greater risk of exploitation or falling out of the system. As Ellie Kemp, head of crisis response at Translators Without Borders, put it, “For the human rights of refugees and migrants, and also very pragmatically for the governments wishing to have an orderly management of migration, it’s in everybody’s interests to make sure the information is provided and that it’s understood, and that that two-way communication can happen.”
The contributions included in this collection offer an overview of the settings and situations where public service interpreting takes place. Although some of the largest migrant receiving countries are not represented here, readers may find in it an array of topics, settings and approaches. In “Foreigners and Refugees Behind Bars: How Flemish Prisons Tackle Linguistic Barriers,” Emmanuelle Gallez presents the challenges of multilingualism in the Belgian prison system. Using mainly qualitative data she demonstrates how financial constraints mar the quality of linguistic mediation thus making it necessary to resort to alternative communication strategies. This is complemented by another study on Belgium—“Bridging the Communication Gap in Multilingual Service Encounters: A Brussels Case Study,” in which Koen Kerremans, Laurent-Philippe De Ryck, Vanessa De Tobel, Rudi Janssens, Pascal Rillof,and Marianne Scheppers analyze the language needs and challenges faced by public services in Brussels, where more than 100 languages are home-spoken today. They focus on the types of bridging functions that are commonly deployed by public service organizations in multilingual encounters as well as the motivations for using them. A special consideration is devoted to one of the rapidly-developing solutions of Remote Interpreting technologies (where at least one of the interlocutors is not present in the room) and other technology-enabled communication tools in the context of public service provision.
Turning from Belgium to Spain, in “Interpreting and Translating in the Spanish Asylum and Refugee Office: A Case Study,” Carmen Valero-Garcés explores the views of both service providers and translators and interpreters, by a detailed explanation of how the Office operates with interpreters and translators. This is followed by Mireia Vargas-Urpi’s “Judged in a Foreign Language: A Chinese-Spanish Court Interpreting Case Study” which examines a single court session of a criminal case, in which Chinese-Spanish translation was (supposedly) provided. Through a linguistic analysis of the transcribed session, Vargas-Urpi reveals interpreting mistakes, as well as complete utterances that were not interpreted. From this microanalysis, which is part of a larger database on court interpreting in Spain, she suggests various factors that might have affected the quality of interpreting in this case and potentially in similar cases.
The next two contributions deal with a unique training initiative in Israel that was undertaken to meet the demand for medical interpreters among the Eritrean community. In “‘We must do something instead of just watch’: The First Medical Interpreter Training Course for Eritrean Asylum Seekers in Israel,” Galia Sabar and Shiri Tenenboim discuss how the interpreters’ own perceptions of their role evolved during and after the training course, and also consider its potential for social change. Yonatan Gez and Michal Schuster’s “Borders and Boundaries: Eritrean Graduates Reflect on their Medical Interpreting Training” explores the perception of the role and professional boundaries of the Eritrean medical interpreters by analyzing the tension between the normative and actual setting in which they work. Given their political and social circumstances, the course graduates often felt compelled to extend their services beyond language mediation and serve as brokers, counsellors and guides to help their compatriots navigate Israel’s sometimes inhospitable system. Finally, in “Remote Interpreting: Potential Solutions to Communication Needs in the Refugee Crisis and Beyond,” Hanne Skaaden discusses how new communication technologies may make training of interpreters more efficient in terms of swiftness and language diversity in the face of the changing nature of migration flows.
The seven articles on the role of interpreters in the migrant crisis are placed in the broader, harsher and more disturbing historical perspective by “Translating in extremis,” Lucía Ruiz Rosendo’s comprehensive review of Interpreting in Nazi Concentration Camps, edited by Michaela Wolf (Bloomsbury, 2016), and Izabel E. T. de V. de Souza’s review of Interpreters of Occupation: Gender and the Politics of Belonging in an Iraqi Refugee Network, by Madeline Otis Campbell (Syracuse University Press, 2016), which closes our Special Issue. These reviews, along with the preceding studies on interpreting for people who are desperate for help, whether in Belgium, Spain, Israel, or Norway, is a fitting reminder of the potentially fatal effects language barriers may have. Indeed, most migrants everywhere in the world today face such barriers, not least because language directly affects their very definition and status. This too is why several international agencies (UNHCR, the European Court of Justice, the European Parliament, the International Criminal Court, to name a few) have recognized the crucial importance of adequate language mediation, not only in handling the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process but also in the provision of basic civil services in the host countries. Various legislations—such as the Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings—have also emphasized the importance of quality interpretation for meeting institutional goals and for ensuring that migrants and asylum seekers are not denied their basic human rights.
The articles presented here are a response to this political, socioeconomic and communicative crisis. Our basic premise was that approaching the migration crisis from the perspective of language access would be a timely and much-needed engagement that would contribute to Interpreting Studies as a growing transdisciplinary field of research, cutting across linguistics, cognition, communication, psychology and sociology, but would also have potentially concrete social impacts.
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We dedicate this Special Issue to the memory of Professor Miriam Shlesinger (1947–2012), an outstanding translator and interpreter and leading researcher in the field. Among Miriam’s various scholarly interests the one subject that was especially close to her heart was community interpreting and language accessibility, which also perfectly combined her professional excellence and ethical outlook. Miriam was a human rights defender: she served as the chair of the Israeli branch of Amnesty International and was active in the struggle for the rights of people with temporary or permanent disabilities.
It was this convergence of interpreting and human rights that led Miriam to establish the first course for medical interpreters, which was followed by similar interpreter training courses for other public institutions. She initiated the service-learning course, “community interpreting,” at Bar-Ilan University, where she taught, to enable bilingual students to appreciate their cultural capital and gain basic tools for their later work as volunteer interpreters in public settings, whether hospitals and clinics, ministries, municipalities and NGOs. By doing so, she not only assisted language minorities but also changed the perception of the role of interpreters for public service provision, and the need to introduce more professional standards. Miriam also played a central role in the professionalization of sign language interpreting in Israel by creating the first academic program for ISL interpreters.
Miriam Shlesinger was committed to overcoming language barriers in order to ensure equal treatment to minorities, the underserved and underprivileged. As her professional life attests and as she herself explained in her reception speech of the Danica Seleskovitch Award in 2009, an excerpt of which appears as our epigraph, she believed that interpreting, as a profession, could empower the “unequal” and enable them to attain their fundamental human rights. This Special Issue is a tribute to the inspirational person that she was.
Finally, we wish to thank Neri Sevenier for her guidance and advice in compiling this Special Issue, as well as all the authors who contributed to it.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michal Schuster
Michal Schuster is a research associate at the University of the Free State, South Africa. She holds a PhD in translation and interpreting studies from Bar Ilan University, Israel, where she is also a lecturer. Michal teaches community and medical interpreting, in academic and non-academic settings.
Lluís Baixauli-Olmos
Lluís Baixauli-Olmos is an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisville, USA. He received his PhD in Interpreting Studies in 2012 from Universitat Jaume I, Spain. Lluís teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on language, translation and interpreting, and his research interests include interpreter ethics, professional role and the sociology of interpreting.