Metaglossia: The Translation World

A lack of compulsory education for interpreters in Denmark could lead to errors translating interviews with asylum seekers with potentially fatal consequences

Asylum seekers are often given different interpreters for their different interviews (Photo: Colourbox)
Asylum seekers are placed at risk due to the poor quality of interpreters on offer to them, according to an editorial published last Friday in Politiken newspaper.

The two authors, Enhedslisten MP Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen and Michala Clante Bendixen from Refugees Welcome, referred to a report released earlier this year that exposed the poor level of training required for Danish interpreters.

The report from the Department of Business Communication at Aarhus University found that 80 percent of interpreters used by the national police Rigspolitiet in court cases had no education in interpretation and that judges had reported problems associated with this deficit.

In the editorial, the two authors argue that asylum seekers are also at risk because the Udlændingestyrelsen (Immigration Service) and Refugee Appeals Board used the same interpreters as the Rigspolitiet.

This post is intended mainly for people doing research on Natural Translation.

Technical terms should be used with care and precision. As Michel Paradis warns us:
“Too many controversies over the past quarter century have been caused by a failure to stipulate what researchers meant by a word, and sometimes this was a word that referred to the very object of their research.”
It pains me, therefore, to have to do a mea culpa and confess to flagrant and repeated misuse of the term language brokering. Most recently in the post of 6 August about the interpreting done by athlete Elizabeth Seitz, which bore the title Olympic Language Brokering but wasn't.

So what is language brokering (LB)?

Let's go back to the beginning. The earliest use of LB that appears in my Bibliography of Natural Translation is in a 1995 article by Lucy Tse of the University of Southern California. She defined it as follows:
“Language brokering refers to interpretation and translation between linguistically and culturally different parties. Unlike formal interpreters and translators, however, language brokers influence the messages they convey and may act as a decision maker for one or both parties.
Thus the defining characteristics are that "brokers influence the messages they convey and may act as decision makers." Hence the use of brokering, as in to broker (i.e., to negotiate) an agreement. It follows that LB shouldn't be used as a synonym for mere interpreting, even if the interpreting is done between members of linguistically and culturally different communities and renders them a service. But that's what I've done.

Last year there was a post on this blog about a translation agency called myGengo. To find it, enter mygengo in the Search Box on the right. MyGengo's peculiarity is that it openly offers paid translation work to bilinguals who aren't trained or experienced translators – in other words, who are Native Translators. For this it pays the translators very low rates and charges customers accordingly. The translations are of a kind which it calls "simple human translation". It sees as its competitors not Professional Expert Translators but the machine translation services that are available on the web for free.

This report has just come in from Cincinnati, Ohio, in the heart of the American Midwest.
It’s crunch time for the language volunteers of the 2012 World Choir Games.

Bob Stevie, 65, of White Oak and president of the Cincinnati USA Sister City Association, began recruiting volunteers fluent in foreign languages a year ago. He started with three volunteers, and largely with the help of the University of Cincinnati’s international community, he has built a group of 60 leaders. Each leader, specializing in specific languages and dialects, has received a list of volunteers that they must then interview to make sure their workers are actually fluent.

When I look for other phenomena in human mental development that show some similarity to translation, music comes to mind.

Music is universal; translating is almost so.

If one admits that culturally different 'musics' (Western European, Chinese, classical and jazz, etc.) are different musical 'languages', then it's possible to be multi-musical as well as multilingual, and even both at the same time.

Both musical and translating ability start so young that one is driven to suspect there is something inherited which facilitates them.
"Babies love the patterns and rhythms of songs. And even young babies can recognize specific melodies once they've heard them...
Young children's developing brains are equipped to learn music. Most four- and five-lyear-olds enjoy making music and can learn the basics of some instruments”
Young children’s developing brains are likewise equipped to learn two or more languages. Once they’ve done that, they can translate between them and most of them enjoy doing so.