Author Archives for Tulkur - Elisabet Tiselius

Anne-Birgitta Nilsen – Interpreting for young children

This is a short summary of a presentation given at the Second International Conference on Quality in Interpreting, in Almuñecar, Spain 2010. The summary my own perception of the presentation and any mistakes in the summary are of course due to my misunderstanding.

Anne-Brigitta Nilsen (University of Oslo, Norway) talked about about quality in interpreting for very young children (age 3-7). She started exploring this because she had found that some interpreters are reluctant to interpret for young children. They are reluctant because they believe that children do not understand turntaking and the role of the interpreter, and you cannot interrupt a young child because then they will loose track. Her study comprised only four children from the age of six and a half to three, but the results were clear children of that age both understand turntaking and the role of the interpreter. It is also possible to interrupt them. She concluded that interpreting for children, same as interpreting for adults, and that quality in interpreting in general becomes more salient when studying children and particularly young children. A comment for the audience pointed out that maybe you adapt the way you interpret when you interpret for young children e.g. use of first person, register, simplistic language and so forth.

Impressions from the second international conference on quality in interpreting

If you have been following my twitter feed you see that I have been active during the conference :-). Most of the sessions I have been to has been very interesting. As usual there is always some frustration of colliding sessions, but unfortunately you cannot have it all. Almuñecar is an idyllic little town by the sea and the sun is shining and the orange flowers blossoming so it could be worse (maybe even better if I had the time to enjoy all that).

I’m pleased with my own presentation, at least it generated some interesting discussions. Clearly I will have to continue working on how to assess my material, since it did not really work out as I expected in the first place. But that’s the way it is.

Interpreting in Japan in the aftermath of natural (a human created) catastrophe

Unprofessional translation recommends the Liaison interpreter in Japan, right now he is blogging about his experiences from interpreting after earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. After coming back from Sendai he has two very good posts on interpreting in a crisis zone. How do you go about interpreting when you cannot rely on any of your learned modes or strategies? Read about fingers as note taking tools in consecutive here, and read about how to visualize interpreters just as doctors, firemen and other rescue workers here. I know that AIIC has a committee on interpreters in conflict zones, supporting them, awareness raising and so forth. This is definitely something for them.

When is it right to refuse to interpret?

Translating and Interpreting has a recent post on what assignment you would decline on a moral or ethical basis. Would you for instance translate a user manual adapted to children for a rifle knowing that the target audience were children soldiers?

The translation guy’s blog started the discussion (based on input from a company presentation he had listened to) but discussed whether you would translate porn or any defense or military work.

For me as an interpreting teacher this is always an issue that comes up. Can we at some point say: no – this is my limit, I will turn off the microphone. Last autumn I taught a course on consecutive interpreting to already seasoned community interpreters, several of them mentioned the difficulty of translating very crude language or swear-words if you are deeply religious. They said they had several colleagues who would refuse to translate such things. I argued then and I have also argued earlier that insults and swearing is not an excuse to not interpret. People have the right to be angry and they have to their own language use. Although, culturally you may have to adapt the insults of course(e.g. Scandinavians use less insults with sexual connotations than southern Europeans).

Then there is of course the situation where your speaker may have a completely different conviction than yours. It may be political, religious or moral. You may not agree with your speakers very right or left wing political views, you may not share the same faith or you may not agree with the sexual abuser who is totally convinced that his behaviour is perfectly normal and that the abused woman is only a drama queen. It does not matter, they all have the right to a voice. I have a very personal relationship to my speakers, even if I don’t agree with their views I still put my heart into their story and interpret it the most faithfully I can. I have turned of the microphone to let out some steam though, but I’m convinced my different opinion did not show in my interpreting.

But what to do when it comes to situations where you find it absolutely impossible to interpret, where you believe that it’s morally, ethically or personally wrong?

First of all, on a very practical level I think that interpreting agencies have an obligation to send the right interpreter to the right place. You don’t send an eight-month-pregnant interpreter to interpret a case of sexual abuse of very young children, for instance. This happened to me once and I can tell you that it was not only awkward for me. I fulfilled my obligation to interpret of course but it was clearly a very bad matching of interpreter. Had my agency cared to ask about the nature of the interpretation or had they cared to tell me I would not have ended up there. The same goes for male interpreter to a gynaecologist and similar situations.

Secondly, you must decide beforehand if you are going to decline an assignment, you cannot do it ad hoc. It’s very unprofessional to do it on the spot. Either you decline beforehand or, if you’re already there you fullfil your obligation, but decide not to take that type of assignment again.

I have to say that in my whole career I have not had to decline one single assignment for moral or ethical reasons (I actually only know of one colleague who has done it, and I would have done the same in that case), I have declined assignments due to very bad working conditions though or clear breach of contracts from the hirers side, but that’s a different story.

Update: I have just noticed that this discussion is also going on at interpreting.info. The thread is here. 

Amanda Galsworthy

Thanks to Bootheando I discovered the story from last year on Amanda Galsworthy. She has been the interpreter for the three recent French presidents including Sarkozy. Apparently she participated in the Hay festival last summer where she shared experiences and tips of the trade. Amanda is the daughter of a British diplomat and convinced European, in a wonderful interview with the BBC she describes herself as a linguistic experiment. Her father raised his four children in four different languages (French, Spanish, German and English), Amanda was raised in French which meant that she was put in a French school from kindergarten to the French bac. After a few years of university studies she ended up at interpreting school. Do listen to the BBC interview, it is a fascinating story of an interpreter’s life.

Swedish week at the Interpreting for Europe FB site

If you speak Swedish and are curious about interpreting or would like to become an interpreter. Check out Interpreting for Europe this week. They are having a Swedish week at their Facebook page.

The closing date for applying to the Master’s in Conference interpreting at Stockholm University is approaching. The details are here.

Interpreters and bloggers

I have been whining about interpreters not being present in the blogoshpere. Therefore I have to push for two blogs that I just discovered (thanks to the bloggers stopping by here!). They are in Spanish and Swedish. The Swedish blogger Tolken (yes, she uses the same alias as I do, I have to consider another one 🙂 at http://www.tolken.se makes a very important work trying to create a discussion on the working conditions and general questions for community interpreters. The public service interpreting market in Sweden (as in many other countries) is appalling and in some cases threatening the rule of law. Tolken blogs on these important issues.

The Spanish blogger at http://www.bootheando.com/ writes interesting articles about conference interpreting. I’m unfortunately linguistically challenged when it comes to Spanish so I cannot fully appreciate the blog, but luckily she links to other pages. Her blogrolls of vocabulary resources, associations and other interpreter’s pages are also very impressive.

I can only recommend a visit to these two fellow bloggers.

Conference preparation

Getting more desperate by the minute as I am preparing for a presentation at a conference in on Quality in interpreting in Almuñecar in Spain. As always when I’m writing a conference presentation it seems so long, everything takes more time than it should, my numbers are not in order and other things intrude on my work. So, after this short update. Back to work…

Daniel Gile – Enhancing research in interpreting

This is a short summary of a presentation given at the Second International Conference on Quality in Interpreting, in Almuñecar, Spain 2010. The summary my own perception of the presentation and any mistakes in the summary are of course due to my misunderstanding.

Daniel Gile (Université Paris 3, France) talked about institutional and social issues in research in interpreting. He presented an interesting overview of PhD theses in conference interpreting defended the past 40 years. From the seventies until today the number of defended theses dealing with conference interpreting per decade went from 7 to 45 (beautiful development but depressingly low, still… and I dare not think of the figures for community interpreting or sign language interpreting). He pointed out that there seems to be a strong psycho-social motivation behind the PhD work, committing to a PhD thesis is taking on a long-term engagement and something that is promoted through the atmosphere in the professional environment. One possible reason for an increase of the number of PhD theses that comes out of certain universities may be the leading researchers active there. Without the psycho-social motivation you are more vulnerable when it comes to getting institutional motivation and support. Since the interpreting training is practical, unless there is a strong conviction from teachers there is no familiarization with theory. Another important issue is the competition between teaching and practice. A good market creates less time and incentives for students or practitioners to go into research.

Day 12 In my suitcase

Conference interpreters travel a lot. Public service interpreters also have their fair share of traveling. I have worked outside the country I live for most of my professional career. The past 15 years I have commuted to work more often with airplane than with commuters trains. Yes I know, my carbon footprint is horrible. Anyhow, I consider myself a professional packer. I pack very quickly, I know what to bring and I always manage to squeeze in the necessary stuff.
So, what are the most important things in my suitcase? Well, I always bring my bed of nails, very popular Swedish mattress with plastic nails on it, you use it to relax, perfect after an intensive day. It also works very well on my bad back.
I have already mentioned how important my computer and my little black book are.
Then, a part from my clothes of course, my suitcase is filled with books. Books to read, books on interpreting, books on int

This post is part of a list, 30 days of interpreting. You can view the whole list here.