Conference:
ECER 2009
Format:
Paper
Session Information
Contribution
Up until the 1990ies, the approach to interpreting was grounded in a normative paradigm in every respect: The professional role which has always been an issue both in professional life and in training was defined in relation to the key notions of neutrality and accuracy by professional institutions, their codes of practice (cf. Wadensjö 1991/2002:354) and, not least, through classroom instruction and assessment structures. In university-based research the normative view on the profession was backed by experimental studies on students’ performance, errors and quality.
Since that time, this perspective on the profession has been challenged in peripheral fields (for example community interpreting), where it was shown how contextual factors such as diverging interests, loyalties, power and the impact of institutional framings bear on the interpretation, urging the interpreter to step away from his neutralistic posture and get involved in the situation.
For a long time the established conference-interpreting community downplayed such contextual factors in regard to university-taught conference-interpreting, suggesting that these phenomena are only specific to peripheral forms or non-professional interpreting (cf. Kalina 2000, in: Bührig/ Darlanik/ Mayer (eds)). Recent data from typical conference settings (Diriker 2004, Giannoutsou 2006 Master’s Thesis) has illustrated, however, that subjectivity, role problems and involvement are factors that will indeed occur across settings and professional levels.
As the notion of subjectivity is slowly dripping into mainstream theory and as more and more scholars in the growing field of Interpreting Studies take an interest in exploring facets of it, the question now is, if and how the implications of the interpreter’s involvement are received, discussed and implemented in the academic training of conference interpreters.
My approach to the analysis of interpreted material and on the teaching and learning in interpreters’ training is based on the ethnomethodological assumption that the provocation and observance of breaches in social orders can reveal “insights in the work involved in maintaining the social order“ (Garfinkel 2002:8).
Phase 1: By comparing authentic material from various real-life settings (press conferences, religious contexts, politics etc), I will attempt to extract the above phenomena from my corpus transcripts, focussing specifically on the documentation of instances where the “smooth“ flow of interaction is disrupted.
Phase 2: I will record training lessons in interpreting courses in higher education and analyse this material in a similar manner.
Method
I transcribe my data with EXMaRALDA, software specifically designed for the representation of fine-grained linguistic phenomena, such as simultaneous speech, pauses and intonation. I use concepts from Conversation Analysis (CA) and draw on Halliday’s Functional Grammar (1985) for the analysis of my data: Examining the turn-taking and sequential organization of interaction according to CA allows the extraction of patterns and rules that structure certain types of institutionalised interaction, where interpreting most frequently occurs. Notions such as „dispreferred formats“ (Sacks 1978) or “rich points“ (Agar 1994) serve to identify the breaches of these structures. I will use Halliday’s concept of the “interpersonal dimension of language” and phenomena attributed to this dimension, e.g. modality, to describe the speakers’ stance, their subjectivity and degrees of commitment of speakers. For my didactic analysis, I draw on the conceptual frame of Bildungsgangforschung,i.e. Didactic Research on Educational Experience and Learner Development (cf.Trautmann 2004,Terhart 2009).
Expected Outcomes
To a greater or lesser extent, interpreters will produce own, diverging accounts of reality throughout their professional lives.Similarly,diverging accounts of reality are thematized in Bildungsgangforschung,in regard to classroom settings.Instances of conflict for example are used to document the mutual expectations and tacit assumptions, which are brought into the interaction by students and instructors. An analysis of what is said and interpreted in a classroom setting can serve to reconstruct the participants’ learner biographies and provide an outlook on their prospective development.At the same time instances from professional life can reveal universal patterns of institutional discourse and document changing role expectations,interactional disruptions, emotions and subjectivity.A reflective approach,where classroom settings are analysed alongside material from typical professional situations,will illustrate the interplay between the interpreter’s “own voice”,the rules and norms of institutional discourse and the other participants’ roles and actions and further encourage a non-normative perspective on subjectivity in interpreting and interpreter’s training.
References
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