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Non-professional
Interpreting
and Translation
edited by
Rachele Antonini
Letizia Cirillo
Linda Rossato
Ira Torresi

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Non-professional Interpreting and Translation
Benjamins Translation Library (BTL)
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Yves Gambier Franz Pöchhacker Gideon Toury†
University of Turku & University of Vienna Tel Aviv University
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Federal University (IKBFU),
Kaliningrad, Russia

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Binghamton University Charles University of Prague Concordia University
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FUNDP (University of Namur) University of São Paulo University of Massachusetts
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Nouvelle Universitat Rovira i Virgili Temple University
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Universitat Autònoma de University of León University of Graz
Barcelona

Volume 129
Non-professional Interpreting and Translation
State of the art and future of an emerging field of research
Edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi
Non-professional Interpreting
and Translation
State of the art and future
of an emerging field of research

Edited by

Rachele Antonini
University of Bologna

Letizia Cirillo
University of Siena

Linda Rossato
University of Bologna

Ira Torresi
University of Bologna

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdam / Philadelphia
 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/btl.129
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isbn 978 90 272 6608 8 (e-book)

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 Table of contents

Chapter 1
Introducing NPIT studies 1
Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi

Part 1. State of the art of research on NPIT and general issues

Chapter 2
Unprofessional translation: A blog-based overview 29
Brian Harris

Chapter 3
We are all translators: Investigating the human ability to translate
from a developmental perspective 45
Bogusława Whyatt

Chapter 4
Dialoguing across differences: The past and future of language
brokering research 65
Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

Part 2. NPIT in healthcare, community and public services

Chapter 5
Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting
in Italian healthcare institutions 83
Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

Chapter 6
More than mere translators: The identities of lay interpreters
in medical consultations 107
Anna Claudia Ticca
vi Non-professional Interpreting and Translation in Institutional Settings

Chapter 7
Issues of terminology in public service interpreting: From affordability
through psychotherapy to waiting lists 131
Sonja Pöllabauer

Chapter 8
From confinement to community service: Migrant inmates mediating
between languages and cultures 157
Linda Rossato

Chapter 9
The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters
in religious settings: The VIRS project 177
Adelina Hild

Chapter 10
Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience: Volunteer
interpreting in a Finnish Pentecostal church 195
Sari Hokkanen

Chapter 11
Beyond the professional scope? Sign language translation
as a new challenge in the field 213
Nadja Grbić

Chapter 12
Language-related disaster relief in Haiti: Volunteer translator
networks and language technologies in disaster aid 231
Regina Rogl

Part 3. NPIT performed by children

Chapter 13
Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters:
Why should their views be measured? Why should they count? 259
Claudia V. Angelelli
 Table of contents vii

Chapter 14
Child language brokers’ representations of parent–child relationships 281
Tony Cline, Sarah Crafter, Guida de Abreu and Lindsay O’Dell

Chapter 15
Child language brokering in private and public settings:
Perspectives from young brokers and their teachers 295
Letizia Cirillo

Chapter 16
Through the children’s voice: An analysis of language brokering
experiences 315
Rachele Antonini

Chapter 17
Seeing brokering in bright colours: Participatory artwork elicitation
in CLB research 337
Ira Torresi

Chapter 18
Language brokering: Mediated manipulations, and the agency
of the interpreter/translator 359
Elaine Bauer

Chapter 19
Not just child’s play: Exploring bilingualism and language brokering
as a precursor to the development of expertise as a professional
sign language interpreter 381
Jemina Napier

Index 411
 Chapter 1

Introducing NPIT studies

Rachele Antonini,* Letizia Cirillo,** Linda Rossato*

and Ira Torresi*
* University of Bologna / ** University of Siena

1. Introduction

When in May 2012, as founding members of the research project In MedIO

PUER(I), 1 we organized the First International Conference on Non-professional
Interpreting and Translation (NPIT1), we were convinced that the times were ripe
to acknowledge the existence of a fruitful strand of research revolving around the
practices of Non-professional Interpreting and Translation (henceforth NPIT). We
were also persuaded that this segment of academic research, conducted by scholars
in and out of Translation and Interpreting Studies (henceforth TIS), was likely to
grow and deserved an appropriate and legitimate space within TIS.
In response to an unprecedented rise in the need for communication across
linguistic and cultural barriers, which has clearly come to the forefront in the last
three decades as globalization trends have been gaining unexpected proportions,
there has also been a steep increase in the number of academic studies that have
attempted to shed light on a variety of largely invisible, yet widespread, NPIT
practices.
As Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva aptly pointed out:
Translation studies finds itself today at a stage where its traditional focus on trans-
lator and interpreter training and on the advancement of the status of translators
and interpreters as professionals is no longer sufficient to address the complexity
of real-life situations of translating and interpreting. As increasing numbers of
non-professionals translate and interpret in a wider range of contexts and in more
diversified forms, their work emerges not only as an alternative to established

1. In MedIO PUER(I) stands for Interpretazione e Mediazione Istituzionale ad Opera di Piccoli

Utenti in Emilia Romagna (e in Italia). The project was funded by the University of Bologna
to investigate child language brokering in Italy and, more specifically, in Emilia Romagna. For
further details about the project, see Antonini (this volume).

doi 10.1075/btl.129.01ant
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Rachele Antonini et al.

professional practice, but also as a distinctive phenomenon, which the discipline

has yet to recognize as a noteworthy area of study.
 (Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva 2012: 149)

During the first and second NPIT conferences, the wide-ranging incidence of
NPIT was largely confirmed. 2 The existence on a large scale of NPIT practices and
routines finally surfaced as a corollary of fast transforming social, technological
and communication landscapes, and as a result of changing migration fluxes and
patterns. During these two NPIT conferences, relatively new phenomena such
as fansubbing, fandubbing, translation recruitment through crowdsourcing and
long-standing phenomena like adult and child language brokering could be finally
addressed in the same academic arena, discussed from different perspectives and
approached from diverse theoretical frameworks. In line with our expectations and
with Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva’s (2012: 152) mapping of NPIT, it emerged
that such practices date back to the origins of human communication itself, which
occur both on an ad hoc and regular basis and in formal and informal contexts
alike, are equally common in public institutions and in the private sector, and are
performed either by non-professional interpreters, language/cultural brokers and
translators, or by professionally trained interpreters and translators who work on
a volunteer basis. Against this backdrop, the two conferences have brought about
the awareness that NPIT can no longer be swept under the proverbial carpet.
Relatively recent disciplines themselves, TIS have long strived to achieve the
academic recognition and the independent standing that they enjoy today (Baker
1998: xiv; Pöchhacker 2004: 1). In their early stages, TIS focused on professional
practices and products, while the largely hidden world of non-professionalism
remained therefore under-researched or even avoided. Perhaps as a result of this,
NPIT research was long perceived as the “poor relative” of TIS, and only very re-
cently has it acquired official recognition within TIS when a chapter devoted to the
“Natural Translator and Interpreter” was included in the Handbook of Translation
Studies (Antonini 2011: 102–104), and when the entries “Non-professional inter-
preting” and “Child language brokering” were listed in the Routledge Encyclopedia
of Interpreting Studies (Antonini 2015a, 2015b).
Over the last few decades, a growing body of literature reporting on NPIT
practices has been published. The phenomena of fansubbing, fandubbing and par-
ticipatory engagement in the translation domain have been addressed by various
scholars from the fields of Media Studies and Audiovisual Translation (Díaz Cintas
& Muñoz Sanchez 2006; O’Hagan 2009; McDonough Dolmaya 2012; Dwyer 2012;

2. The conferences were held, respectively, on 17–19 May 2012 at the University of Bologna at
Forlì (Italy) and on 29–31 May 2014 at the University of Mainz at Germersheim (Germany).
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 3

Casarini 2014; Pérez-González 2014), while non-professional interpreting in the

management of emergencies, disasters and conflicts (Bulut & Kurultay 2001;
Rogl this volume; Baker 2010), as well as child language and cultural brokering
(Tse 1995; Orellana et al. 2003a; Hall 2004; Weisskirch 2005; Hall & Sham 2007;
Orellana 2009; Antonini 2010) have been tackled not only by TIS scholars, but also
by sociolinguists, education scholars, psychologists and sociologists.
Despite this growing interest in NPIT practices, research in this field has clear-
ly suffered from a somewhat lesser interest than its professional – and therefore less
controversial – counterpart. Possible reasons for this state of things are offered in
Section 3 of this chapter, together with our motivations for doing and promoting
research specifically on non-professional practices.
Suffice it to say here that discussing NPIT, we believe, is enriching for a number
of disciplines, some of which have, to this point, seldom found points of contact –
and TIS make no exception. As Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva (2012) observe,
non-professional interpreters and translators are no longer to be seen as a less ex-
pensive alternative to their professional counterparts. Indeed, NPIT is conducted
by a progressively more varied range of participants, contributing to the emergence
of new forms of civic engagement in public life, the reshaping of the publishing
and media landscapes and the consolidation of linguistic and cultural mediation
practices in new forms of cross-cultural interaction (ibid.: 152).
Now that TIS are acknowledged as fully-fledged and free-standing disciplines
(Baker & Saldanha 2009), and that scholars have started investigating the sphere
of NPIT per se or in combination with its professional counterpart, legitimating
de facto its study, the time seems ripe for a volume that draws together the work
of scholars from diverse disciplines who have focused their research interests on
issues regarding NPIT in institutional settings. One of the main aims of the pres-
ent collection is to gather different standpoints and approaches on the matter,
in order to minimize the risk that such perspectives occupy a minority niche in
their respective domains of knowledge rather than fostering an interdisciplinary
discourse around a single clear focus. Most of the papers included in this volume
were originally presented either at NPIT1 held in 2012 or at NPIT2 held in 2014.
However, some further contributors were invited to participate in this project to
complete the picture and provide a broader, all-encompassing overview on the
phenomena of and around NPIT in institutional settings.
Before illustrating the contents of the volume in Section 4.1, we will explore
the terminology of NPIT (Section 2), some of the reasons why it is worth investi-
gating (Section 3), and the contexts where it occurs and is researched (Section 4).
4 Rachele Antonini et al.

2. How “non-professional” is non-professional interpreting

and translation?

No discussion of NPIT is possible without accounting for the use of this and
other related labels in the relevant literature and, above all, explaining which in-
terpreting and translating practices are being referred to as “non-professional.”
Sections 2.1 and 2.2 are devoted, respectively, to the former and the latter.

2.1 One thing with many names?

Although the term “non-professional” applied to interpreting and translation has

by now been ratified by the scientific community (see Section 1), such phrase is
by no means the only available expression used to describe the kind of interpret-
ing and translating addressed in the present volume. In fact, “non-professional
interpreting and translation” is only one of a plethora of terms used by various
scholars from different perspectives and vantage points. Before arguing why we
think “non-professional” is the best option and looking in more detail at what be-
ing a non-professional interpreter and translator means, let us briefly consider the
most common terminology and the most influential studies published in this field.
Researchers started to engage with NPIT as an object of investigation per se
nearly 40 years ago, i.e. when Brian Harris launched the expression “natural trans-
lation” to define “the translation done in everyday circumstances by bilinguals
who have no special training for it” (Harris 1976: 96). 3 The concept of natural
translation was established through subsequent work by Harris and Sherwood
(1978) and Harris (1980), who proposed a development model based on the in-
nate translation competence of pre-school bilingual children. A few years later,
Malakoff and Hakuta (1991) noted that translations by bilingual schoolchildren
display high communicative competence and metalinguistic awareness, despite
some syntactic and semantic flaws in the target language.
In the second half of the 1980s, Shannon (1987, 1990) introduced the label
“language brokering” to describe naturally occurring interpreting and translation
by children. The new term also seemed to mark a shift from a purely psycholin-
guistic/psychological perspective to a more sociolinguistic/sociological approach
(or, at least, a wider range of approaches), which characterized a significant portion
of subsequent research on child language brokering (henceforth CLB), including
Hall and Sham (2007), Orellana (2009), García Sánchez (2010) and Katz (2014), to

3. In fact, la traduction naturelle is one of the topics of earlier work by Harris (1973) originally
published in French.
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 5

mention but a few. Related, though more discipline-specific and less widespread,
labels employed to define naturally occurring interpreting and translation done
especially by children include “para-phrasing” (especially used in educational
studies, e.g. Orellana et al. 2003a; 2003b) and “family interpreting” (particularly
used in bilingualism studies, e.g. Valdés 2003).
Clearly, non-professional interpreting and translation are not performed ex-
clusively by children and adolescents, although it goes without saying that the lat-
ter have been the focus of NPIT studies originated within research on bilingualism
and language acquisition, 4 as well as studies with a special interest in minority
children’s school performances, acculturation processes and family relationships. 5
Parallel to this strand of research, however, the growing interest of scholars from
interpreting studies in dialogic forms of interpreting, particularly in institutional
settings, 6 where “informal” (MacFarlane et al. 2009) interpreters often replace
professional ones, has produced a considerable body of literature on the so-called
“ad hoc” interpreting (Bührig & Meyer 2004). The term “ad hoc” refers to interpret-
ing done by whoever is immediately available, for instance bilingual hospital staff
(Pöchhacker & Kadric 1999; Elderkin-Thompson et al. 2001; Schouten et al. 2012)
or family members, be they adults or under age (e.g. Meyer et al. 2010b), but also,
to move to a completely different context, bilingual police officers (Berk-Seligson
2009) or prison inmates (Rossato this volume; Martínez-Gómez Gómez 2015).
Finally, the term “non-professional” was used for the first time in relation to
interpreting by Knapp-Potthoff and Knapp (1986; 1987), who see a non-profession-
al interpreter as one who “at the same time functions as a transmitter of the mes-
sage of SA and SB and as a mediator between conflicting viewpoints, assumptions,
and presuppositions” (Knapp-Potthoff & Knapp 1987: 183; emphasis in original).
As pointed out by Pöchhacker (2008: 18–19), while the distinction between the
transmitter and the mediator reflects a duality of roles that is typical of intercul-
tural communication, such duality is by no means confined to non-professionals. 7

4. But also of much literature on sign language interpreting, as illustrated by Napier (this
volume).
5. Reviewing the various trends and patterns in current research on CLB is beyond the scope
of the present Introduction. For a thorough review, see Orellana (this volume).
6. That is, the type of (professional) interpreting commonly known as “community interpreting”
(see among others Hale 2007; Valero-Garcès & Martin 2008) or “public service interpreting” (see
among others Cambridge 2004; Corsellis 2008). See also the proceedings of the various Critical
Link conferences.
7. Knapp-Potthoff and Knapp’s (1987) definition is also in line with the widely held view of the
professional interpreter as a mere conduit (on the role metaphors of interpreters see Roy 2002).
This view was long cherished by both interpreting practitioners and researchers and then strongly
6 Rachele Antonini et al.

What is it, then, that distinguishes non-professional interpreting and translation

from its professional counterpart? In Section 2.2, we shall attempt to outline the
main differences and find a working definition of “non-professional.”

2.2 Defining non-professional interpreting and translation

The brief overview provided in Section 2.1 makes it possible to identify some
characteristics of non-professional – as opposed to professional – interpreting
and translation, which we will now try to highlight and rearrange based on their
relevance and implications for the present collection.
First, it must be said that “non-professional” is probably the best umbrella term
for the purposes of this book, not just because it is a generic enough rubric to sub-
sume a wide range of practices, but also because it lacks the biases that other terms
seem to have. The labels that we have cursorily presented in Section 2.1 may in fact
be to some extent problematic, although for different reasons. “Natural” seems to
highlight the “innate” character of translating practices or, at least, their onset at a
very young age, which does not necessarily apply to all non-professionals, as may
be argued not only for specific translation types (e.g. fansubbing), but also for spe-
cific settings or situations (e.g. prisons and police interrogations). Similarly, CLB
displays an obvious age bias, and, in addition, it does not seem to pay justice to the
complex practice of mediating between persons who, besides speaking different
languages, often come from very different cultural backgrounds. “Informal,” while
referring to the unofficial nature of the role assigned to non-professionals, fails to
account for the rather formal character of many institutional or service encounters
involving non-professional interpreting, including doctor – patient consultations,
immigration interviews, clerk – client interactions, etc. Finally, the term “ad hoc”
places a special emphasis on the allegedly limited and unplanned occurrence of
non-professional interpreting and translation, with “ad hoc” language support
by family members or other readily available laypeople being resorted to should
professional services be difficult to implement for any political, financial or organ-
izational reason. However, as we will see in the contributions to this volume, much
NPIT is – if not planned – at least strongly expected to take place, by either primary
party (or even both parties) and/or the interpreter, in a number of circumstances
in which participants are aware that there is no professional option available.
Having said that, the adjective “non-professional” clearly defines something
by negating its opposite. The same may well be said of “unprofessional,” which

questioned by the interactional accounts of the past two decades – from the pioneering work of
Wadensjö (1998) to the recent collection edited by Baraldi and Gavioli (2012).
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 7

is also sometimes used to describe NPIT practices. This, however, seems to have
an unfavourable connotation, which “non-professional” lacks. Interestingly, if we
searched “unprofessional” and “non-professional” in both general and specialized
language corpora, and compared their concordance lines and most frequent col-
locates, we would observe different semantic prosodies. To be more precise, we
would find that “unprofessional” seems to have a negative overtone based on the
quality assessment of a given performance or behaviour, while “non-professional”
tends to refer non-judgementally to the fact that a given profession or activity is
carried out by laypeople, i.e. people who are not qualified in that profession – in
short, non-professionals. Arguably, the focus of the adjective “non-professional”
is thus on the who, rather than the how (which is instead the focus of “unprofes-
sional”). It is precisely on the who of NPIT that our working definition is centred.
Although non-professional interpreters and translators can be defined by var-
ious features, not all of these can be generalized and some probably weigh more
in the accounts brought together in the present volume. What is indisputable is
that non-professional interpreters and translators are unqualified, i.e. they have
received no specific education and/or training to translate and/or interpret; this,
of course, does not always mean they are incompetent. Furthermore, non-profes-
sional translators and especially interpreters are often described as “bilinguals”
(see Section 2.1). Without venturing into a discussion about the meanings of bi-
lingualism, we shall point out that the subjects referred to in the present volume
are essentially “circumstantial bilinguals” (Angelelli 2010), i.e. people who have
not chosen to become bilinguals but are somehow forced to do so due to life cir-
cumstances (e.g. children of migrants).
When we think of professionals, there are a number of things that we will most
probably associate with their being part of a profession. A professional is recruited
to do a specific job, for which s/he will be paid and which s/he will do complying
with a specific set of rules, i.e. with a code of ethics and standards of practice. Her/
his professional status will also normally involve social prestige. If we subtracted
from the above description the words in italics, we should have a close depiction of
a non-professional. In fact, such description would turn out to be not very accurate
and should be accompanied by a number of caveats. For instance, the basis of re-
cruitment for non-professional interpreters and translators may be voluntary, but
non-professionals may also be locally recruited, as is the case for bilingual clinical
staff, who, as noted by Meyer et al. (2010a), should also be offered training modules
to facilitate communication with migrant patients. The fact that non-professionals
are not paid is also not so obvious. The example of bilingual nursing staff is a case
in point, in that if such staff are required by their home institution to interpret
between patients and other clinicians, and are even provided some on-the-job
training to do so, then it will be hard to say that interpreting is not part of their
8 Rachele Antonini et al.

duties. Similarly, child brokers may be more or less pressured to perform the task
of language facilitators by their families and communities, and, although their
work would be unwaged, they may receive benefits for it and, by providing lan-
guage support, they will contribute to the material and social well-being of their
families and communities (Hall & Sham 2007).
If the issues of mode of recruiting and pay of non-professional interpreters and
translators are more complex than it may seem at first glance, not having specific
standards of practice and social prestige are not even discriminating features.
When interpreting and translating, non-professionals may in fact comply with the
codes of conduct of other professions (e.g. clinical professions) as well as general
ethical principles. In addition, as noted by Angelelli (2004: 20–21), the codes of
ethics of professional interpreters and translators associations favour prescribed
over actual roles and tend to place too much emphasis on monolithic concepts like
neutrality and invisibility, which cannot account for the complexity of interpreting
and translating practices – be they professional or non-professional. Along the
same lines, it may be observed that, if it is true that non-professionals will most
probably not derive any social prestige from ad hoc practices, significant differ-
ences in terms of status can also be found among professionals, as witnessed by
the die-hard divide between conference interpreters and community interpreters
(see among others Garzone & Viezzi 2002; Angelelli 2004).
What emerges from the previous discussion is clearly a much-diversified pic-
ture of the who of NPIT. In Section 4, while presenting the contents of the vol-
ume in more detail, we shall take a closer look at the what, where and when of
non-­professional interpreting and translation. Before that, however, in Section 3,
we will consider why we think NPIT should receive greater attention by both
academics and practitioners.

3. Why NPIT is worth studying

In the previous sections, we have seen how NPIT can be defined (Section 2) and
the place it currently occupies in and out of TIS (Sections 1 and 2). Now is perhaps
the time to take a step back and ask ourselves, is it really worthwhile to study
non-professional interpreting and translation? Or, as has emerged during some
Q&A sessions and informal talk among the presenters of NPIT1, can it be that by
choosing it as a research focus, one risks branding it as a practice that is acknowl-
edged and accepted by the academic community, therefore inherently “good,” or at
least harmless? The implications of bringing non-professional practices to the fore,
in terms of profession and market politics, are clearly powerful. Such implications
cannot go unnoticed, particularly by interpreting and translation scholars, who
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 9

are typically also members of, or at least have close contact with, the professional
interpreting and translation communities (and the editors of this volume make
no exception).
We discussed the issue in depth before organizing the NPIT1, especially be-
cause we came from the experience of investigating a particularly controversial
kind of non-professional practice, CLB. The conclusions we came to at that time
still hold after two further NPIT conferences have added some spark to the on-
going discussion. We will leave aside the most obvious argument for choosing
this research focus – the researcher’s freedom of research – because we believe
that the purely academic side of the issue is not as controversial as its professional
side. It is professionals, then, and the translation and interpreting scholar’s spirit
of communion with professional communities, that we primarily address here.
The first argument for shedding light on NPIT is that the phenomenon is
there, has existed for a long time and is unlikely to disappear soon. Since non-­
professional practices are largely unpaid, and usually more readily available than
professional services, they inevitably meet a part of the existing demand of trans-
lation and interpreting services. It is debatable whether such demand would oth-
erwise reorient towards remunerated professional services, putting up with the
cost, time and effort necessary to contact them, or remain unfulfilled for lack of
information or material resources. At any rate, leaving non-professional practices
out of the discussion on translation and interpreting will not erase them from the
real economy. Quite the opposite, if left to their own devices, they would probably
continue to proliferate hand in hand with the increase of migration flows, and
trade and cultural globalization. It is arguable, then, that professionals whose
clients may be attracted by ad hoc translation and interpreting would not benefit
much from remaining in the dark as to the dynamics and nature of the phenom-
enon. Blindly advocating for stricter policies against non-professional interpret-
ing and translation in general, without acknowledging their rich diversity, might
reap equally meagre practical results. At the same time, building walls against
those natural translators and interpreters who may not know that their work may
replace that of professionals, or ignore how to attach a market value to it, would
only result in excluding them from the professional communities who might give
them guidance in this respect. It is our opinion that in order to set up efficient
strategies to retain one’s market share, professionals should first and foremost seek
in-depth knowledge of the market they operate in, including its non-professional
side. It is also our opinion that seeing all non-professionals in a negative light,
as competitors who unfairly operate on the market, is an unnecessary prejudice
that may bias a full understanding of the market situation and therefore prevent
professionals from setting up effective strategies.
10 Rachele Antonini et al.

A second consideration stems from our first argument. It is our contention that
investigating NPIT is important particularly for the translation and interpreting
scholarly and professional communities. Those who take into account and under-
stand the market dynamics of professional interpreting and translation markets
can add such elements to the academic description and analysis of NPIT, provided
that the professional’s stance does not obscure, but rather integrates, the points
of view of the others involved in the phenomenon being studied – e.g. those of
providers and users of non-professional services. This is particularly important
since so far the professionals’ viewpoint has been little voiced in the specialized
literature, much of which has either focused on the product-oriented analysis of
NPIT from the perspectives of linguistics and communication science, or on the
social, psychological or educational aspects of such practices (especially in sensi-
tive areas such as the healthcare setting or CLB). Considerations about attaching
a (market) value to NPIT have hardly been the focus of discussion.
When the issue of attaching value to NPIT has emerged, it has usually been
in terms of acknowledging an intangible asset that is usually taken for granted
by non-professionals’ social surroundings and end users. In the narrower field
of CLB, for instance, research points out that child brokers’ services foster im-
migrant families’ social inclusion (see Section 2.2), and should therefore be fully
regarded as work – services that the children perform for both their families and
host societies (Orellana et al. 2003a; Hall & Sham 2007; Orellana 2009: 50–67).
Other studies mention the value that language brokering may acquire for the
children who perform it, by raising their awareness about their own role in their
families, communities and societies and ultimately increasing their academic self-­
efficacy and performance (Buriel et al. 1998; Dorner et al. 2007; Crafter et al. 2009).
Curiously, to the best of our knowledge the socializing and self-awareness-raising
power of NPIT practices have not been investigated in relation to adult ad hoc
brokers. Academic interest in such aspects seems to dwindle as research subjects
grow beyond schooling age, an implicit indication that the educational and cog-
nitive sides of personal development are thought to become less relevant in adult
life and psychology. This, however, appears to contrast sharply with the growing
importance that contemporary knowledge-based societies and educational mar-
kets attach to adult (re)training and lifelong or continuous learning.
Is there a way, then, to professionalize and give a pricetag to the largely intan-
gible – although sometimes burdensome and always unacknowledged – asset of
spontaneous interpreting and translation? Apparently there is, given that several
training courses and certifications for public service support figures such as lan-
guage and cultural brokers are targeted at categories of people who presumably
already perform informal brokering practices, mainly bilingual migrants (Avery
2003; Straker & Watts 2003; Zoffoli 2005; Rudvin 2005 and 2006; Zorzi 2007; Niska
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 11

2007: 302). Such proactive actions specifically aim at channelling non-professional

interpreters and translators into the mainstream market, and may be seen as fur-
ther proof that purposefully leaving ad hoc practices out of professional discourses
hardly has any effect as a market defence strategy.
From an interpreting and translation researcher’s point of view, then, choos-
ing to ignore non-professional practices as an “unworthy” subject matter in fear
of acknowledging their presence on the market would only result in missing out
on what is becoming an increasingly interesting and established field of study.
Colleagues from other disciplines are already very fruitfully interacting with
non-­professionals and the end users of their services, not only to best investigate
the phenomenon but also to attempt to guide its practical applications so as to
optimize its potential for personal development and social inclusion (University
College London & the Thomas Coram Research Unit 2014; Cline et al. 2014). As
interpreting and translation scholars, we feel that our research field may contribute
a specific perspective grounded in the specific nature of the interpreting and/or
translation work as a pas de trois, which actively includes the figures “in the mid-
dle” (Wadensjö 1998: 10). Such perspective, coupled with intensive field work, may
in time result in practical guidelines addressing non-professionals and the users of
their services, perhaps with the aim of channelling non-professional practices into
professional careers, or at least raising awareness about the value of such practices,
empowering both non-professionals and their beneficiaries for fairer and better
informed choices (including when to say “no” and resort to professional services).

4. The who, what, where, why and how of research on NPIT

This section will provide an overview of the rationale of the volume and of the
contributions herein included.
As stated at the beginning of this introduction, the main objective of NPIT1
was to provide an opportunity for scholars and researchers who are making a
contribution to the study of NPIT to present their work and research in an event
that could ensure the attention and visibility they deserve. Before 2012, whoever
decided to present their work at a conference was very likely to be relegated into
sessions and panels that have little to do with the topic of their studies. What
became immediately apparent at NPIT1 was that research is being carried out in
many countries on a great variety of NPIT-related topics and issues through the
lenses of many disciplines. A second aspect that also emerged is the separation
between NPIT practices performed by adults and children, a division that mirrors
the fact that since its inception, research on non-professional interpreting has
developed in two distinct, though at times overlapping, strands, depending on
12 Rachele Antonini et al.

whether it is performed by children, which has generated the bulk of academic

production, or by adults, which is lagging behind.
The strong immigration waves experienced by many countries and the pres-
ence of a growing number of diverse linguistic communities within the boundaries
of individual countries have caused an exponential increase in the demand for
linguistic services. The ways in which individual countries address and guaran-
tee the provision of language services vary enormously. In a comparative study
of interpreting service provision around the world, Ozolins showed that there is
a spectrum of response, ranging from those countries that deny the existence
of multilingual communication issues, to reliance on ad hoc services, to generic
language services, to fully comprehensive responses. (Ozolins 2000: 21)

While some countries (e.g. Australia, Sweden, the UK) have addressed the need to
facilitate access to a range of public services by implementing integration policies
(in the form of community interpreting) aimed at a variety of languages (Roberts
1997), in most other countries, the belief has prevailed that the language barri-
ers created by increased immigration would be transitional in nature and that
problems related to increased linguistic diversity in the country would decrease
and disappear with the acquisition, eventually, of the host language (O’Rourke
& Castillo 2009; Meyer et al. 2010b). Hence, this demand is generally not met by
an adequate provision of linguistic services that would enable foreigners to fully
access a wide range of services.
NPIT touches upon so many aspects and domains of the life of so many adults
and children (from different walks of life, with different backgrounds and expe-
riences) that it would be unattainable to address it in a single volume. However,
given the demographic changes triggered by mass migration in the past century
and the contexts and settings in which foreigners and immigrants are more likely
to require the services of an interpreter, the everyday circumstances in which
NPIT occurs will inevitably include public settings. The purpose of this volume is
thus to provide a detailed representation of various forms of NPIT that occur in
institutional settings, which have so far been neglected or scarcely studied.

4.1 Overview of the volume

Most of the contributions included in this volume provide a description of the

who, what, when, where, why and how of NPIT from the perspective of different
disciplines and methodologies.
In terms of the who of NPIT, most chapters describe NPIT practices and ac-
tivities involving members of a variety of ethnic and linguistic minorities (includ-
ing two contributions devoted to language brokering activities centred on sign
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 13

language). However, as some of the accounts on recent research show, there seems
to be a tendency to move away from studies that focus exclusively on one specific
ethnic or linguistic group by extending the research to wider samples that include
an array of such groups and communities.
The what of NPIT covers both oral and written language brokering, although
the latter is the topic reported by only one contributor (a reminder of the fact that
not much research is being done in this area of NPIT studies).
The when and why of NPIT are, obviously, at the heart of NPIT research. The
when is connected to the reasons and contingencies that make it necessary for a
non-­professional to interpret or translate, i.e. all those situations in which – either
because of financial reasons or because of personal and cultural motivations – in
the absence of a professional linguistic and/or cultural mediator/interpreter, peo-
ple need or prefer to have a family member or a member of their ethnic or linguistic
community language brokering for them. The why is not only related to the above,
but also to the need to explain those interpreting/translation competences that
may be innate to or which are developed by bilinguals and provide a theoretical
background to NPIT.
The where of NPIT, in the case of this volume, is, as already stated, any situa-
tion in which people need to access the services provided by a public institution.
Research into this area of NPIT has tended to focus on healthcare settings and
provision, with a strong bias towards the medical setting. While being one of the
areas dealt with by some of the contributors to this volume, space is also given to
other (less studied) areas of public service-related settings such as churches, social
services, museums, prisons and schools.
The how of NPIT involves both the strategies used to language broker and the
attitudes that adult and child language brokers may share towards this practice.
However, the how of NPIT is also addressed from the researcher’s point of view,
with a reflection on agency issues, the use of specific data collection methodologies
and ethical concerns related to doing research with and on children.
Another relevant aspect of NPIT research that emerged from many of the
contributions included in this edited collection is related to public engagement
outcomes, and the impact that research on NPIT can have at a practical level by
generating synergies between researchers and society with the creation and im-
plementation of good practices that can be exported to other countries.
The contributions included in this collection are divided into three broad
sections:
1. state of the art of research on NPIT and general issues;
2. NPIT in healthcare, community and public services;
3. NPIT performed by children.
14 Rachele Antonini et al.

In Sections 4.1.1–4.1.3, we will provide a brief description of each paper, discussing

its relevance for the present volume and for research on NPIT at large.

4.1.1 The state of the art of research on NPIT and general issues
The plenary held by Brian Harris at NPIT1 has become the opening chapter of
this volume. Its inclusion and pre-eminence represent a homage to the initia-
tor of NPIT research and, as his contribution clearly shows, to a scholar who is
still at the cutting edge of past and current research on NPIT in all its aspects,
developments and applications. Harris focuses on his web blog, Unprofessional
Translation, which was started in 2009 with two main goals: first, to give visibility
to the study of NPIT and, second, as a reaction against conventional publication
processes through traditional academic channels. The declared primary topics of
the blog are Natural Translation, Native Translation and Language Brokering. A
wide array of issues and aspects related to these topics are described in detail in
individual items. One of the most notable threads is constituted by the natural
translator hypothesis and its expressions that allowed the author to further develop
it. The original definition postulated that the empirical study of translation should
be based on the ability that bilingual children have to perform translating activities
without having received any special training in translation (Harris 1980). It also
theorized that the ability to translate and interpret is a quasi-universal natural
aptitude and not the exclusive realm of professionals. This concept has been chal-
lenged by other scholars (see for instance Toury 1995; Valero-Garcés & Martin
2008; Grosjean 2010) who have argued that bilingualism is not a prerequisite for
the development of translation competence and that each individual differs in
terms of fluency, ethics, specific and specialized knowledge, strategies and tech-
niques used to translate. The new model that Harris puts forward represents a
progression from Natural to Expert Translator that strives to reconcile his original
theory with other hypotheses (e.g. Toury 1995).
Research on NPIT is generally situated within (and sometimes constrained
by) the theoretical paradigms of very specific disciplines (e.g. anthropology, edu-
cational studies, psychology, sociolinguistics). Starting from a cognitive develop-
mental perspective and following Harris’ theoretical model, Bogusława Whyatt’s
paper describes the progression from natural predisposition towards translating
and interpreting to untrained ability, trained skill, competence and finally ex-
pertise. While not denying the fact that the progression from ability to skill and
professionalism necessarily requires training, the author argues that the predis-
position to translate is innate in all human beings in varying degrees. All humans
are able to translate intersemiotically and understand intersemiotic translations;
furthermore, natural translation – in Harris’s terms – occurs among bilinguals
and language learners. Additionally, an extensive literature review and statistical
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 15

data support the argument that the experience of translation is more important
than formal education in providing the kind of training that fosters the transition
towards professionalism.
The interpreting and translation practices and activities performed by chil-
dren and youths represent a multifaceted and multidimensional phenomenon that
became the object and focus of research only in relatively recent times. Marjorie
F. Orellana, one of the most established and productive researchers in the field
of educational and ethnographic studies, draws a comprehensive overview of the
state of the art of research on CLB. She describes which aspects of CLB and which
methodological approaches have been used over the last three decades to study this
phenomenon. By identifying the theoretical framings and paradigms on the basis
of CLB research, Orellana analyses gaps in past and current research and poses
some topical and provocative questions: has the study of CLB come to age? Can we
really study CLB with an interdisciplinary approach? Will interdisciplinarity really
help research in this field move forward? Can all the different loci of investigation
of CLB be connected to one another and thus contribute to a deeper understanding
of the practice and its effects? Furthermore, Orellana outlines which direction
future research on CLB may take and reflect on the methodological challenges
still facing the field.

4.1.2 The who and where of NPIT in healthcare, community and public
service
The contributions included in this second part of the volume deal with diverse
public service settings ranging from healthcare, social service and welfare insti-
tutions to disaster relief, prisons and religious contexts. Moreover, they provide
analyses of data collected by using a variety of methodological tools and through
the lenses of different disciplines.
The first paper included in the second section of this volume is by Claudio
Baraldi and Laura Gavioli, two prominent scholars in the field of conversation
analysis and interpreting studies. Their work contributes to highlight the auton-
omy and ability in handling cultural difference that mediators may display in
encounters between Italian doctors and African women patients. The analysis of
their data shows that mediators tend to adopt two different approaches when ad-
dressing cultural differences. The first, intercultural adaptation, envisages cultural
differences as a plurality of options and seems to empower the patient and allow
her to make informed choices. The second, cultural essentialism, represents the
opposite stance, that is the tendency to stereotype the patient and the difference
between her culture and the doctor’s medical culture in terms of dos and don’ts
that avoid the interlocutors’ active participation. On the basis of their analysis, the
authors argue that in order to deal with and overcome cultural differences and to
16 Rachele Antonini et al.

facilitate the mediated patient – doctor encounter, all stakeholders should be aware
of the pros and cons involved in taking either approach.
Anna Claudia Ticca’s study examines the activities in which lay interpreters
engage when they are involved in medical consultations. By means of the analy-
sis of a large corpus of conversations video-recorded in a rural clinic in Yucatan
(Mexico), where both Spanish and Yucatec Maya are spoken, Ticca is able to show
how these mediators go beyond the mere translation of talk. Indeed, the analysis
of the recorded conversations illustrates how the participants who took part in her
study engage in activities that contribute to the emergence of identity categories
and thus of specific social identities, e.g. “social peer” or “expert,” with which their
co-participants may align or misalign. The relevance of this contribution to the
study of NPIT lies in the fact that not only does it validate what many scholars and
researchers have been arguing for the past 20 years, that is that NPIT activities are
extremely multifaceted and complex (e.g. Shannon 1990; Hall & Guéry 2010), but
it also sheds light on the strategies that lay interpreters use when they mediate in
a medical consultation and on how they accommodate to their co-participants’
needs and expectations as to the role they are expected to play in a given situation
during the medical encounter.
The contribution by Sonja Pöllabauer represents a detailed and specific take on
the strategies adopted by interpreters with little or no training to render special-
ized terminology. This study is based on the recordings of interpreter-mediated
institutional encounters between service providers and non-German speaking
clients recorded in the Austrian province of Styria as part of an interdisciplinary
project called “Community Interpreting and Communication Quality in Social
Service and Healthcare Institutions.” The analysis of these data helps the author
identify the three strategies (omission, simplification and paraphrases) that the
non-professional interpreters in her study tend to use when dealing with the spe-
cialized terminology used by institutional representatives. This specific aspect of
the interpreter-mediated institutional encounters presented by Pöllabauer points
towards the need, within public service interpreting, to develop and implement
communication strategies and adequate in-house training for interpreters. This
is particularly significant in the cases where the level of difficulty or sensitiveness
is particularly high and the outcomes of an unsuccessful linguistically mediated
event are potentially harmful for the recipients of public service provision.
Linda Rossato’s chapter presents a study that was developed as a spin-off of the
research project In MedIO PUER(I) (see Section 1). Apart from very few exceptions
(see, e.g., Martínez-Gómez Gómez 2014), the study of language and cultural bro-
kering that takes place among migrant inmates is still an under-researched aspect
and setting of NPIT. Yet, in many countries, such as Italy, where immigration
is still a recent phenomenon, only scarce resources are allotted for professional
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 17

language services in public services, and they are virtually non-existent in seclud-
ed environments such as prisons. Hence, in order to overcome language barriers
and to make communication between foreign inmates and jail personnel possible,
convicted migrants who are fluent in Italian may act as language brokers. In or-
der to shed some light on this form of language and cultural brokering, Rossato
analyses and discusses data gathered by means of a survey questionnaire with the
aim of mapping the phenomenon and of ascertaining whether this practice has
an impact on inmates’ self-perception and rehabilitation process.
The two chapters that follow represent an important contribution to the field
of church interpreting. Despite the presence of numerous religions, churches and
denominations in which interpreting is practised on a regular basis, religious set-
tings have been given little attention. The two studies described in Hild’s and
Hokkanen’s contributions are based on similar (ethno)methodological approaches
and address the topic of church interpreting from, respectively, a more general and
a more introspective and personal viewpoint.
Adelina Hild’s paper reports on the results of an ethnographic study of
non-professional church interpreters, exploring how they adjust their behaviour
to their perceived role in religious settings. The VIRS project illustrated by the
author combines observational data (field notes, audio and video recordings) with
in-depth interviews in order to address questions concerning the motivational
structure of native interpreters, the specific strategies they apply in rendering the
performative and linguistic aspects of evangelical preaching, the role of social
recognition and the process of effecting emotional homeostasis. On the basis of
these findings, the paper compares the self-regulation processes of professional
and of volunteer interpreters and discusses how church interpreters perceive their
role as visible co-constructors of meaning in theological discourse.
By applying an autoethnographical methodology to her personal experience
as embodied knowledge, Hokkanen discusses the volunteer simultaneous church
interpreting that she, a professionally trained interpreter, provides at Pentecostal
Christian services. The main aim of her study is to illustrate how her professional
identity and her identity as a Pentecostal Christian coexist in a non-professional
interpreting context. After describing the way in which simultaneous interpreting
is organized in a Finnish Pentecostal church, as well as some of the ideological
underpinnings motivating this practice, the author examines one instance of si-
multaneous interpreting voluntarily performed by members of the religious com-
munity. Hokkanen argues that for these interpreters, the practice of simultaneous
interpreting in the church is intimately intertwined with the religious nature of
the setting, and that while interpreting the prayers, songs, sermon and other parts
of the service, they engage in the service spiritually.
18 Rachele Antonini et al.

Sign language translation is one of the least explored territories in the study of
NPIT. In her chapter, Nadja Grbic contributes to this area of research by describing
the production of recorded signed texts based on written sources. After describing
the development of sign language translation, and presenting some typological
questions related to sign language translation with a focus on some of the problems
that arise when we talk about activities that cross the supposed boundary between
translation and interpreting, Grbic illustrates a project involving the translation
of the Austrian Jewish Museum’s website into Austrian Sign Language. The case
study presented in this chapter is based on the translation produced by a team
comprising two hearing sign language interpreters, a deaf linguist and a deaf
technician. The author used empirical observation, interviews and text analysis
to analyse the textual and social challenges faced by untrained and inexperienced
sign language translators.
In the last contribution included in this section, Regina Rogl offers an example
of the role played by both professional and non-professional volunteer interpreting
and translation in disaster relief operations. Her contribution focuses on various
forms of language-related activities and practices that were made available fol-
lowing the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Rogl shows how, in this highly specific and
complicated setting, all the forms of linguistic mediation that were performed by
either amateurs or trained professionals and ranged from voluntary to paid work
could only be effective as they were part of a technology-mediated cooperative pro-
cess. Her study is based on an online ethnographic approach consisting of 1,300
entries from social media and profession-oriented networks, as well as numerous
blogs and wikis. These entries offer an insight into the role played by Internet
communities in the various stages of disaster relief, from needs assessment and
mobilization to project planning and implementation. Empirical research in this
field can help define best practices in language-related relief work and deepen our
understanding of the interplay between technology and social interaction.

4.1.3 NPIT performed by children

The third section of the volume is composed of contributions that focus exclusively
on a variety of topics related to CLB and that represent an innovative outlook on
the implementation of methodological and interpretative tools for this field study.
Claudia V. Angelelli’s contribution centres on her research design aimed at
measuring bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of the crucial role they play in bro-
kering communication for monolingual adults. The method she applies was tested
and validated in her research on professional interpreters, which relied on data
collected by means of a survey questionnaire, the Interpreter Interpersonal Role
Inventory (IPRI, Angelelli 2004). Angelelli’s chapter describes how she adapted
and developed this tool to obtain a new one, called the IPRI Junior, with the
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 19

aim of surveying language brokers’ perceptions and attitudes towards CLB. By

drawing on her previous work on CLB, which was informed by the perspective of
bilingualism and sociolinguistic studies, Angelelli argues that the data collected
by means of the IPRI Junior will reveal important information on bilinguals who
have had experiences in language brokering. She observes that by obtaining this
information in an empirical way, it will be possible to learn about the choices that
bilinguals make when brokering communication and will teach us a great deal
about their perceptions of their agency and talent. Most notably, it will contribute
to honing and nurturing these children’s gift, thus giving them more opportunities
in terms of access, education and future career.
From the standpoint of psychological studies, Tony Cline, Sarah Crafter,
Guida de Abreu and Lindsay O’Dell report on a case study of bilingual students,
which is part of a broader study of young people’s representations of conflicting
roles in child development. They used vignette methodology to explore the issue
of family relationships with a group of bilingual students who spoke a variety of
first languages and had had personal experience of CLB. Through the analysis
of individual CLB case studies, Cline et al. examine the dynamics that influence
individual participants in terms of the level of independence and interdependence
as well as the balancing of the demands of autonomy and connectedness in their
analysis of relationships between young people and their parents. Their findings
confirm that there are subtle and complex family dynamics that influence how
young brokers perceive their CLB activities, and suggest that the way in which
an individual adolescent evaluates a parent’s reliance on their child as a language
broker is dependent on the complex interplay of many dimensions.
Letizia Cirillo’s contribution presents the results obtained by means of a
questionnaire survey conducted in junior high schools of the Emilia Romagna
region (Northern Italy) as part of the research project In MedIO PUER(I). Two
questionnaires were designed to explore and assess the presence and diffusion
of CLB in Italy and to ascertain, respectively, students’ and teachers’ perceptions
of CLB-related issues. The responses thus gathered enable Cirillo to identify the
who, where, when and what of CLB, generally confirming the results obtained
by previous studies at both national and international levels. However, different-
ly from most previous studies, this study, and the research project it is part of,
does not focus on a single ethnic or linguistic group, but takes into consideration
CLB practices performed by children of all ethnic and linguistic groups present
in Emilia Romagna. By comparing the two sets of responses, Cirillo shows how
brokers’ and teachers’ attitudes towards CLB may diverge.
The chapter by Rachele Antonini provides a far-­reaching overview of NPIT as
performed by children of immigrant families in Italy. Antonini starts by discuss-
ing the ethical considerations of doing research with children, as well as the pros
20 Rachele Antonini et al.

and cons of the application of narrative methodology to CLB. She then analyses
the narratives produced by immigrant children attending primary and middle
school in the Forlì province of the Emilia-Romagna region. The narratives were
submitted for a school contest specifically organized with the purpose of raising
awareness about and giving visibility to CLB practices, which are largely given
for granted by all stakeholders. By giving children themselves the opportunity to
have their voices heard, Antonini’s study offers a detailed description of the lan-
guage brokering activities in which they are involved and illustrates their feelings
towards CLB, thus providing an insight into the impact it has on their lives, both
as providers and receivers of brokering practices.
Ira Torresi analyses the visual narratives submitted by the children who took
part in the same school contest. By using a social semiotic approach, Torresi in-
vestigates how children depict CLB by identifying the meanings embedded in the
visual narratives. Even without the use of words, many of the drawings analysed
by the author narrate real-life-mediated encounters between speakers of different
languages, or represent the multilingual/multicultural background of these chil-
dren. By analysing the way in which the children draw, the colours they use and
the subject/situation they choose to depict, Torresi is able to present a poignant
description of their experience as immigrants and as language brokers, which
also represents a powerful reminder of the fact that they “are first and foremost,
and unproblematically, children.” The author also makes a point for participatory
artwork elicitation as a data collection method in CLB studies.
Elaine Bauer’s chapter uses data from a UK study to explore the retrospective
childhood experiences of adults who grew up interpreting and translating for their
parents. Following the paradigmatic shift in sociological studies that changed the
perspective on children and their role in family and society, Bauer examines the
ways in which children perform as agents during language brokering, and looks
more specifically at how, in order to achieve particular goals, they choose to con-
vert meanings in one language into meanings in another. Her analysis of narratives
collected from adults (former language brokers) delves into how her informants
exercised agency in childhood, and illustrates how CLB impacted on their feelings
and the construction of their adult identities.
The last chapter included in the volume represents an important contribution
to the study of CLB, in that it portraits one of the least studied forms of CLB,
language brokering activities performed by the children of deaf adults. Jemina
Napier contextualizes her study within the wider context of interpreting studies
and the discussions of bilingualism and professional interpreting. She provides an
overview of an international survey aimed at collecting information about CLB
experiences of people who have grown up bilingual in the deaf community using
a signed language and a spoken language (so-called CODAs). Her findings show
 Chapter 1. Introducing NPIT studies 21

that there is a parallelism with studies on spoken language CLB in terms of factors
such as age, settings and the feelings that CODAs may have towards their language
brokering experience. Similarly to Angelelli, Napier defines this form of CLB as an
asset that many brokers have exploited as adults when pursuing a career. For this
reason, she argues that even though not all young CODAs may necessarily want to
become professional interpreters (as is often the case), it is possible to safely assume
that their bilingualism and language brokering can become a precursor to the
development of expertise as a professional signed language interpreter. Moreover,
it is also important to acknowledge and value the expertise that CODAs develop
and the language brokering experience that they have gained as a form of active
citizenship and a productive contribution to society through the use of their bi-
lingual skills (Bauer 2010).

5. Conclusion

The main purpose of this volume is to give greater visibility to NPIT research. The
study of NPIT practices is still quite fragmented because research is carried out by
scholars who may not always be aware of what is going on outside the boundaries
of their own discipline. Hence, the need to bring them together so as to provide a
window into research that deals with NPIT practices within institutional settings,
as well as with emerging NPIT-related topics. We hope that, by contributing to
meeting such need, this volume will encourage the cross-fertilization of different,
sometimes distant, disciplines as well as research paradigms and methods. The
mix of chapters and authors in this volume indicates that researchers with diverse
academic backgrounds can not only coexist, but can also forge new understand-
ings of and insights into NPIT. In fact, our intended readership for this volume
is not confined to the community of researchers interested in NPIT. We believe
that the volume may also act as a catalyst for increased cooperation and dialogue
between researchers and public service providers.
NPIT is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon; therefore, it is important to
note that even within the well-defined objectives and scope of this volume, there
are areas of interest relevant to NPIT studies which this volume does not cover
and which deserve further investigation. Possible shortcomings notwithstanding,
we hope that this volume will not only enhance our understanding of NPIT, but
will also represent a compass reading in all those countries where NPIT is still an
unnoticed and unacknowledged practice.
22 Rachele Antonini et al.

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Part 1

State of the art of research on NPIT

and general issues
 Chapter 2

Unprofessional translation
A blog-based overview

Brian Harris

This paper will discuss the pros and cons of publication in blog format com-
pared with publication through conventional academic channels. The web blog
Unprofessional Translation was started in 2009 as a reaction against the way
“mainstream” translation studies and bilingualism studies had continually
ignored the important aspects of translation that it focuses on. The declared
primary topics of the blog are Natural Translation, Native Translation and
Language Brokering. As of 31 July 2012, the blog contained approximately
140,000 words in 234 posts accompanied by illustrations and by 268 comments
from readers, of whom 124 were formally registered “Members.” It addresses a
non-expert readership, with the explicit aim of convincing them that translat-
ing is a quasi-universal human capability and activity which is not confined to
trained or highly experienced experts. There are numerous posts for each of the
blog topics. However, the blog template displays the posts chronologically, and,
as a result, it requires considerable work with the Search function to follow any
of the threads coherently. Therefore, this paper brings together a selection of
the material thematically.

Keywords: natural translation, native translation, language brokering, blog,

war interpreting, religious translation, court interpreting, medical interpreting,
crowdsourcing, sports interpreting

1. Introduction: Blog publication

This paper is based on a blog. The blog is called Unprofessional Translation and its
URL is http://unprofessionaltranslation.blogspot.com. 1 It began sporadically in
February 2009, and has been published regularly at approximately weekly intervals

1. The title Unprofessional Translation was invented before the term non-professional translation
became widely known, though the latter can be traced back at least as far as 2005 in a paper by

doi 10.1075/btl.129.02har
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
30 Brian Harris

since July of that year. At the time of this writing, it contains 282 posts. At a con-
servative estimate, the posts average 700 words in length, which would make a total
of nearly 200,000 words or 750 printed pages or 35 typical journal articles. Much
of this, it is true, is made up of quotations from other documents; nevertheless, the
blog constitutes a substantial source of information. All the original material has
been written by a sole author, who is also the author of this paper. References for
the quoted material are given at the end of each post, and direct hyperlinks have
been provided since 2011 from most of the references to the full original sources.
Most of the posts are accompanied by an appropriate image.
The blog is hosted on Google’s Blogger platform (www.blogger.com), which has
proven to be a sufficiently robust and user-friendly application for the purpose.
Blogger is physically located in the Google “cloud,” which makes it possible to
compose, manage and archive the blog, despite its size, from a small, inexpensive
netbook computer.
The declared topics are Natural Translation, Native Translation and Language
Brokering. These terms, along with the complementary terms Expert Translation
and Professional Translation, are defined within the blog itself, as will be de-
scribed below. While most of the posts remain focused on the declared topics,
there are many, perhaps a quarter, which are not, though they have some connec-
tion with translating. Examples of the latter are the posts on fictional translators
(e.g. Mr Melas in Conan Doyle’s The Greek Interpreter); the annual “Christmas
Diversions,” which trace the migration of familiar fairy stories from their first
translations into English to their popular cultural adaptations on the British stage
(Aladdin, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker); obituaries, for example, of the
bilingualism psychologist Wallace Lambert; and, last but not least, biographies
of Professional Expert Translators, notably the influential Egyptian of the Arab
Awakening, Tahtawi.
In this case, the blog format was decided for both personal and professional
reasons. There is a literature now about the pros and cons of blog publication
from a professional viewpoint. 2 Some of the criticism of conventional publication
can be found on what is itself a blog, The Future of Scientific Publication (http://
futureofscipub.wordpress.com/). The main disadvantages of conventional publi-
cation are:

Lörscher (2005). Unprofessional Translation was intended to catch the eye and not for use as a
technical term.
2. A sample of it is given in the post UT #1# 7-28-2013.
 Chapter 2. Unprofessional translation 31

1. The paucity of specialised reviewers who are competent in the designated area
of research. Of the many experts on translation theory, for example, few know
anything about translation by children;
2. The time taken by the review and publication process, typically one to two
years from submission of a paper or presentation at a conference to its appear-
ance in print. A blogger, on the contrary, publishes a post as soon as it is ready
for reading: wake up with a bright idea in the morning, make it known to the
world for evaluation and suggestions by evening.

Time taken is crucial for the present author, who has reached an advanced age
at which his survival for another two years is statistically uncertain. In addition,
he has long since passed the stage at which he needs to further his career by pub-
lications that will be credited by university or fund-granting committees. He is
therefore free to choose how to publish.
In any case, the “learned” publications are addressed to very elite, restricted
readerships, and indeed many of them, including doctoral dissertations, are little
read at all. They may be expensive to produce and therefore to acquire. On the
contrary, blogs are open, free and usually written in an easily understood style.
In short, insofar as they are science, they are popular science. This is important
for translatology, because the widespread complaint that the general public does
not appreciate translating and translators at their true worth is partly due to the
lack of suitable writings. 3
On the other hand, blog publication has serious drawbacks. The worst one is
that blogs are not taken seriously by the academic community, which is still stuck
in an earlier mould:
The essential drawbacks of the current system of scientific publishing are all
connected to the particular way that peer review is used to evaluate papers. In
particular, the current system suffers from a lack of quality and transparency
of the peer review process, a lack of availability of evaluative information about
papers to the public, and excessive costs incurred by a system, in which private
publishers are the administrators of peer review. These problems can all be ad-
dressed by open post-publication peer review (OPR). Together with open access
(OA), which is generally accepted as desirable, OPR will revolutionize scientific
publishing. (Kriegeskorte 2012)

Another is assessing the readership. Unprofessional Translation currently has 164

“Followers,” i.e. people who have registered as regular readers. Of course, this does
not mean that they all read every post. In contrast, many of the Comments, and of

3. An exception that breaks the academic mould is the recent book Found in Translation written
by Kelly and Zetzsche (2012).
32 Brian Harris

the emails that are directly received by the blog’s author, come from people who
are not Followers. For some of the Followers, profiles are available; however, it is
not clear from the profiles whether they have a serious interest in the topics of the
blog. The posts that have received the most attention from commenters are not
those the blog’s author would have wished. The Comments also attract undesira-
bles, particularly the people who use them as a pretext for advertising their own
translation services.
Finally, there is the internal organisation of this particular blog and of blogs in
general. The order of the posts is strictly chronological. This makes it complicated
to locate and follow threads about a particular topic. Users cannot be expected to
trace them themselves through the 280 posts. Fortunately there are some aids built
into Blogger. Labels and tags can be added to posts that can be grouped by them.
There is also the Search box on the right-hand side of each page, which enables
more specific searching by keywords. Nonetheless, those search tools throw the
onus back on readers to assemble the posts meaningfully themselves, and for that
they need quite expert knowledge of the tags and keywords used.
In what follows, therefore, some examples will be given that assemble infor-
mation from the blog. The references to the blog are given by post date, and take
the format month-day-year preceded by UT. To find a post quickly, write the date
out in full in the Search box that appears on the right-hand column of every page;
for example, to access UT 9-12-2009, enter September 12 2009 in the Search box.

2. The Natural Translation Hypothesis (NTH) and its extensions

This is the most important of the topics, because it is the most fundamental. It
concerns the origin and natural development of the quasi-universal human ability
to translate.
The thread should begin with the statement of a precursor, the Bulgarian
semiotician Aleksandăr Lûdskanov (1969): “By intuition and habit, all bilingual
people can translate in some way or other.” 4
A definition of natural translator was given early on in the post UT 7-13-2009:
Natural Translators
These are people who do translation of a simple kind without having had any
training in translation, either formal or informal. They have been observed
among very young children, though natural translation (NT) is by no means

4. There is a post on “Alexander Ludskanov and Natural Translation” (UT 12-6-2009). There is
also a post (UT 12-9-2009) about a fairly recent Italian translation, edited by another semiotician,
Bruno Osimo, of the theoretical part of his magnum opus (Lûdskanov 2008).
 Chapter 2. Unprofessional translation 33

limited to them. The very young onset age of NT strongly suggests an element of
innate capability, though we do not know what form that might take – specifically
linguistic or some more general power of conversion. Such translators may be
stimulated by real communication needs, as in the case of the immigrant chil-
dren, called language brokers, who translate for their families; or they may trans-
late spontaneously or even just for fun. They perform in everyday circumstances
in which they are not out of their depth in what is being said. They have some
awareness of what is a “good” or “correct” translation, but it’s unsophisticated.

Substance was already given to the probability of an innate component by the

data in a much earlier paper, “Translation as an Innate Skill” (Harris & Sherwood
1978). 5 However, it leaves open the question of whether it might be “specifically
linguistic or some more general power of conversion,” of which translating is mere-
ly an application. The “power of conversion” is adumbrated in UT 7-25-2009. It is
likened to converting currencies or the mental representations of the controls of
different models of cars. In addition, it is hinted that besides the conversion ability
itself, “The mind can also compare the product of a conversion with the original,
and judge its equivalence.” Much of the modern writing about translation centres
on the meaning of equivalence (Kenny 1998).
Concerning natural translation itself, it is emphasised that although research
has concentrated on children, 6 NT is far from restricted to the young. The post UT
10-27-2010 bears the title “Natural Translation Has No Age Limit” and recounts
the contribution to understanding made at a dinner party by a Spanish/English
bilingual lady:
She was born and brought up in Spain and left school at age 14. She had no higher
education. At 16 she went to England as an au pair girl… There she married a
unilingual Englishman and stayed in England for some 50 years. So her English
became fluent, though she still has a heavy accent which leaves you in no doubt
that she isn’t a native speaker. She returned to live in Spain 12 years ago. She had
no training in translation, not even an English language course. She therefore
conformed to the two basic elements in the definition of a Natural Translator:
1. No training in translation
2. Translating in everyday circumstances.

5. This data has been criticised as “anecdotal.” Nevertheless, it consists largely of observations
by trained linguists.
6. The First International Conference on Non-professional Interpreting and Translation
(NPIT1) was held practically on the eve of the 100th anniversary of publication of the first
account by a trained linguist describing development of the ability to translate in a very young
child. This was Ronjat (1913). See also UT 6-1-2013.
34 Brian Harris

In the direction of development from the initial natural capability, the blog offers
a full model of development stages with definitions. These are best set out in the
diagram (Figure 1) that illustrates UT 11-12-2010.

The Progression
from Natural to Expert Translator

Natural Translator
Typically children

Native Translator
Beginner

Language Broker

... Advanced

Professional Translator

Expert Translator
By formal traning / By mentorship

Figure 1. From natural to expert translator

Native Translators are

bilinguals who have been exposed to and influenced by examples: examples of
other people translating and examples of translations done by other people. Here
too I’ve realised that the categorisation is too crude. There’s a large gap between
what a school-age child absorbs and what, say, a literary translator has learnt by
years of reading that includes translations. Hence the need to distinguish between
Beginner Native Translator and Advanced Native Translator.

A noteworthy departure from the traditional terminology is the distinction be-

tween Professional Translator and Expert Translator:
Professional Translator means someone who does translating as a livelihood,
whether full time or part time. The reality is that many professional translators
are not well trained or qualified, even though you have a right to expect them to be
if you’re paying them well (but not if you’re underpaying them). And on the other
hand, there are many people who can translate as well as the Experts but who
don’t do it as a profession. They’re common among academics; colleagues have
occasionally taken time from their own work to translate an article for me. When
Samuel Moore, a lawyer by profession, translated the Communist Manifesto into
English for Marx and Engels – surely a challenge with them looking over his
shoulder – he did so out of friendship and conviction.
 Chapter 2. Unprofessional translation 35

3. Language brokering 7

NPIT1 drew many contributions to this phenomenon, including the keynote

speech by Marjorie Orellana (Orellana this volume). Indeed, there was a whole
section on it. Because of its prevalence in the United States, it is perhaps the most
researched application of Natural and Beginner Native Translation.
However, most of the literature about language brokering concerns the ser-
vice rendered by the bilingual children of immigrant families to their elders for
dealings with the surrounding community, especially the Hispanic community
in the United States. Perhaps one of the blog’s most important innovations has
been to extend the concept to the interpreting done by organised groups of bilin-
guals within their schools, first reported in a Canadian paper of 1995 (Bullock &
Harris 1997). The best example of the latter is the series of posts that describe the
Young Interpreter movement in today’s amazingly multilingual United Kingdom
(UT 3-19-2013, 3-24-2013, 4-21-2013, 5-4-2013), and also beyond as far as Jordan
(UT 7-23-2013).

4. Church interpreting

This topic has drawn the most comments from practising interpreters, most of
whom could be classed as Native Interpreters. A study of church interpreting in
South-Western Nigeria reports:
Interpreters in spiritual gatherings in the Yoruba speaking lands of Nigeria are
not trained interpreters. They know nothing about the rules guiding the pro-
fession. They are simply bilingual with a deep knowledge of the subject matter.
(UT 9-15-2010)

Certainly, only a few church interpreters, sign language interpreters in the United
States, appear to be professionals at it. On the contrary, most of them regard it as
an offering to their church, an attitude that is given prominence in Hokkanen’s
paper to NPIT1 (Hokkanen this volume).
It is a branch of interpreting that deserves to be much better known, both for
its long history since antiquity (UT 7-29-2009) and for its present-day prevalence
throughout the world. A post (UT 8-9-2009) recounts the present author’s first
encounter with it, which took place at an open-air service on a university cam-
pus in West Africa and involved a single interpreter. It was on that occasion that
he first observed the “mimicry” style of consecutive interpreting used by many

7. For the blog’s many examples of it, enter language brokering in the Search box.
36 Brian Harris

church interpreters (UT 8-11-2009). Later, he learnt that church interpreting is not
confined to consecutive interpreting but may be simultaneous (UT 8-27-2009); in
addition, far from being carried out by a lone interpreter, it sometimes involves
one of the largest interpreting organisations in the world (UT 4-10-2010). This is
the interpreters for the annual general conferences of the Mormon church (The
Church of the Latter-day Saints), known for short as Conference. Most of the
work is done in simultaneous at the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City,
but some is done at remote sites through a tie line telephone network and some
even more remotely.
Conference is interpreted live in up to 92 languages – 52 in the conference
center, 28 via the remote Tieline system and another dozen on-site in countries
across the world… In all it takes 800 people, including hundreds of interpreters
and dozens of support staff.

5. Religious (written) translation

Religious written translation is far better documented than religious interpreting

and has publications of its own. Yet it has not been given the importance that it
deserves in “mainstream” translation studies. Where are the courses on it in the
dozens of translation MAs and PhDs? There are many courses on literary transla-
tion, yet it can be argued that religious translation has had and still has a greater
impact on the transfer of cultures and languages. In general, it is not for Natural
Translators, because it usually requires advanced knowledge of the religions them-
selves and their theologies. Nevertheless, it has engaged many Native Translators
who have worked at it without thought of remuneration. One may wonder how
Joseph Smith translated The Book of Mormon into English (Skousen 1998), but
there is no doubt that the principal translator of its first Spanish edition, Melitón
G. Trejo (1886), was an altruistic Native Translator who finished his life cultivating
fruit trees (UT 9-29-2012).
The blog had the good luck to coincide with the celebrations for the 400th an-
niversary of publication of the King James Bible in 1611. The translators and revis-
ers were, almost without exception, non-professional Expert or Advanced Native
Translators (UT 1-13-2011). But another post regretfully called it “The Academic
non-event of the year” (UT 10-20-2011).
Surprisingly, one of the early religious translations cited by the blog is by a
child, and a child who is far from anonymous. This is the long religious poem
translated from French to English by the Lady Elizabeth, later to be Queen
Elizabeth I of England, for her stepmother (Prescott 1985). She was 11 years old
at the time (UT 12-31-2011).
 Chapter 2. Unprofessional translation 37

6. Wartime interpreting

Military interpreting is a better-known branch of interpreting, due to its essen-

tial role in several modern wars. Although it too has a documented history since
antiquity, it has taken the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to make the general
public aware of it. On the blog, it begins with first-hand accounts of the Korean
War and especially of the negotiations at Panmunjom that ended it for the time
being in 1953 (UT 5-24-2010).
The developmental range of military interpreters is wide, from Natural
Interpreters recruited in the USA for service in the Middle East and paid profes-
sional salaries, to fully trained professionals. Robert Ekvall (1960), for example,
whose book Faithful Echo is one of the best accounts of Panmunjom, was a sea-
soned military interpreter from World War II. In contrast, the blog was fortunate
enough to attract a contribution from one of the surviving Panmunjom inter-
preters, Richard Underwood, thanks to the good offices of researcher Mariela
Fernández (UT 5-24-2010). Underwood says of himself (UT 6-3-2010),
I have never been a professional translator. Rather I was a bilingual interpreter
in the US army and was assigned to interpret… I always felt inadequate for this
task in view of my total lack of training in the Korean language. I had just learned
it naturally growing up and playing with Korean children and surrounded by
Korean adults who were educated and sophisticated in their language.

There were equally inexperienced members of the Chinese delegation, like

Chaozhu Ji, one of its leading interpreters:
The experience had transformed me from a clumsy, Chinese-challenged universi-
ty student on the science-doctorate track into a member of China’s foreign policy
apparatus, a low level cadre in the Foreign Ministry. I had studied hard and could
now actually read The People’s Daily. (UT 5-23-2010)

The Panmunjom interpreting was “small beer,” however, compared with the re-
sources needed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It was there that the colloquial
term terp came into use for a military interpreter. The need was so great that
generous “bounty money” was being offered to recruiters (UT 12-3-2011). A post
entitled “The Go-Betweens” (UT 7-11-2011) goes into their functions in some detail
and describes the changes in their preparedness over time:
Military or intelligence terps are divided into two distinct sub-groups: “hyphen-
ated” Afghans with residence in the United States – unprofessional but fluent
in the local languages and in English; and “native” Afghans, hired locally and
sometimes illiterate, but who are gifted with the ability to ingest and mimic the
tongues of foreigners. (Michael Griffin, quoted in UT 7-11-2011)
38 Brian Harris

The illiterate ones are probably close to being Natural Translators, the others
Native Translators.
Meanwhile, wartime interpreting does not end with strictly military inter-
preting. Recent conflicts have also been remarkable for another newly expanded
phenomenon, namely media coverage. The armies, especially the American ones,
have been accompanied by battalions of print and media journalists. Operating in
countries whose languages they cannot speak or understand, they too have been
dependent on interpreters and written translators. Operating usually outside the
immediate battle zone, their role has been closer to that of liaison interpreters;
moreover, like liaison interpreters elsewhere, their function often goes beyond
translating. They become intermediaries between reporters and the local people
they want to interview or obtain permits from, and the eyes and ears of their em-
ployers. Thus has arisen the profession of fixer. There are two blog posts dedicated
to them (UT 11-19-2009, 3-21-2010), and the second of these summarises a chapter
in Åsne Seierstad’s (1993) book The Bookseller of Kabul about a fixer named Tajmir.
Tajmir is liaison interpreter for an American journalist called Bob. Since both he
and Bob are employed by “a large American magazine,” he must be considered
a Professional. Indeed his motivation is strictly Money. When the journalists
streamed into Kabul [in the wake of the Taliban retreat] the American magazine
picked him up. They offered to pay in one day what he was normally paid in two
weeks. He thought about his poor family…
Tajmir is a Native Translator. He speaks exceptionally good English thanks
to the education forced on him by his ambitious mother.

It should be emphasised that the work of the wartime interpreter – translators

does not end at the cease fire. After it comes the transition period of negotiations
between the belligerents and the problems of the inhabitants of the conquered
or occupied territories. Several posts recount the flight of Slovenes through the
Alps from their country to Southern Austria at the end of World War II, and
one in particular is about how a young medical student, Jerzé Jancar, teamed up
with a young Englishman, John Corsellis (who is still alive), to act as the latter’s
interpreter in running a refugee camp hygienically (UT 2-12-2011). He did so at
the bidding of an older colleague, Valentin Meršol, who had learnt good English
during his medical training and was called in to interpret between the Slovenian
National Council and the British victors in the area (UT 2-2-2011).
There was one paper on military interpreting at NPIT1, an interesting histor-
ical account about a war that has been largely forgotten outside Finland, where
it took place (Kujamäki 2012). However, more could have been expected from an
area that generates so much non-professional activity.
 Chapter 2. Unprofessional translation 39

7. Medical interpreting

This is a very sensitive area because of the potential consequences of even a minor
mistranslation, and especially so when the interpreters pressed into service are
children. Thus, the post UT 4-13-2013 begins:
Let me make it clear from the start that I share the concerns of Professional Expert
medical interpreters and many other people about letting immigrant children
translate between family members and health care staff.

and lists the reasons why. Nevertheless, it goes on, “the reality is that a great deal
of ad hoc medical interpreting for immigrants is still done by their children.” It is
also done by untrained adults. Among the reasons are the following:

–– Lack of trained interpreters at the time and place and in the languages re-
quired, a factor especially apparent in emergencies;
–– Lack of money to pay Professional Interpreters;
–– Familiarity and confidence between patients and interpreters they know.

Emergency situations are illustrated by the heroism of a boy:

A bilingual 4th grader [11 years old] hurt in an Arizona bus accident that killed
six people and injured more than a dozen others translated from an ambulance
stretcher for busy rescue workers as they hurried to set up a triage center.
(UT 10-3-2010) 8

The thread has been further enriched by two first-hand personal testimonials: one
from an adult and the other from childhood memories.
The first is from the present writer, who was called in to interpret for a fellow
Englishman who was stricken with dementia in a Spanish coastal town. Although
an experienced conference interpreter, I had no training or experience as a med-
ical interpreter and so could not be considered more than a Native Translator in
this specialised area. Indeed, it is a super-specialised area, since interpreting for a
patient with a cognitive and language impairment like dementia imposes extra dif-
ficulties of understanding and making understood. Consequently, I made mistakes
in the beginning. The experience is recounted at some length in UT 16-10-2010,
17-10-2010, 20-10-2010, 27-10-2010, 1-1-2011, 8-11-2011.
The second testimonial is from somebody in California, now adult, who recalls
how she used to interpret for her mother from fourth grade on:

8. This item was supplied by Marjorie Faulstich Orellana.

40 Brian Harris

If I had not been there my mom would not have had anyone to translate for her.
Professional interpreters are expensive and a lot of times, my mother was ex-
pected to be able to provide her own translator when it came to understanding
documents or speaking with someone about medical business…
When it came to just naming body parts and symptoms, I was usually good at
that, but there were a lot of terms that I did not understand in either Vietnamese
or English.
I learned a lot of things during those visits. I learned as a fourth grader that
women have eggs inside of them. I learned that many conditions have the same
symptoms, so that regardless of the illness, a patient, like my mother, would often
repeat words such as hurt, nausea, and dizziness.
That was when the doctor would have to explain his side of the conversation.
He would tell me what the issue was in English, and I would try my best to regur-
gitate the explanation in Vietnamese…
This job wasn’t always easy, but it was an important part of family life in my
immigrant family. (UT 13-4-2013)

8. Court interpreting

From time to time, somebody asks me when I think non-Professional translators

(by which they mean non-Expert in my terminology) should not be used… I
usually start by answering:
When the translation may have legal implications or consequences, it’s not just
a question of quality. A translation by an Advanced Native Translator may be
just as good per se. It’s also a matter of authority. If the translation is ever used as
evidence or called into question in legal proceedings, then it won’t be necessary to
go through some procedure to establish the translator’s ability if that has already
been tested and sanctioned by some recognised body. One obvious area where
the translating should carry such authority is court interpreting. But notice I say
“should carry.” The observable reality is that the precept can’t always be followed.
There are many reasons, but one of the most common is that adequately qualified
interpreters aren’t available at the right place at the right time, and this is often
due to the languages involved. Another reason which arises these days is that
the interpreters have been trained in the traditional mode for court interpreting,
which is consecutive interpreting, but the powers-that-be have decided to import
modern technology and switch to simultaneous interpreting.  (UT 1-18-2012)

Several posts on the blog commented on the linguistic and technical shortcomings
of the Shafia murder hearings in Canada, where the above problems arose (UT
2-15-2020, 2-18-2010, 2-28-2010, 3-7-2011, 6-2-2011, 11-6-2011).
 Chapter 2. Unprofessional translation 41

9. Sports interpreting

Starting, in modern times, with the revived Olympic Games, international sports
events have become ever more popular and frequent. Furthermore, today, there
are so many exchanges of players from different countries between teams that
language problems arise even within the teams. Yet this is another area neglected
by academia, even though an important part of it is actually served by Professional
Expert conference interpreters.
There are some posts that touch on the professional component, due to the
present author’s own experiences at the Montreal Olympics of 1976 (UT 21-2-2010,
27-7-2012). At the same time, however, care is taken:
to draw attention to the army of other interpreters at the Games, the Liaison
Interpreters. Unlike us conference interpreters huddled away in our booths, they
wear smart uniforms and are to be seen walking around everywhere at all such
international events. Some are temporarily professionals, some are volunteers.
But they aren’t engaged as interpreters and they aren’t recognized as such. They’re
called hostesses and hosts. Of course they have a lot of other duties besides inter-
preting, but they usually have to be bilingual, and it’s not sufficiently appreciated
that translating and interpreting are often ancillary parts of other jobs (bilingual
secretary, for example). (UT 21-2-2010)

There are also examples of sportspersons helping their fellow sportspersons in

the international game of baseball, where the interpreter was honoured for his
work (UT 16-12-2012,) and in the very local game of Valencian pilota handball
(UT 1-3-2010).

10. Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, as applied to translating, means “outsourcing” a translation, usu-

ally in chunks, to a varying community of translators, usually Native Translators
and often unpaid volunteers. It has come to have a wide variety of applications,
several of which have been recognised in the blog: for example, subtitling of videos
(UT 12-19-2009). One particularly fecund source is Wikipedia, for which hundreds
of unsung translators have laboured. This community is being surveyed by Julie
McDonough Dolmaya of York University in Toronto (2011a; 2011b; UT 8-22-2011).
Given the advanced cognitive difficulty of Wikipedia texts, it rules out Natural
Translators; however, according to her figures, over two-thirds of Wikipedia trans-
lators are Advanced Native Translators.
42 Brian Harris

11. Conclusion

Other threads might be consolidated, for instance the posts about Native
Lexicographers (e.g. UT 1-27-2013, etc.) or the natural origin of simultaneous in-
terpretation (e.g. UT 11-24-2012, etc.). Nevertheless, the selection of the major
ones given above should be enough to show incontrovertibly that non-professional
translation is very widespread, probably more so than the professional kind, 9 and
exists in fields that are just as varied. Furthermore, it is not limited by age, educa-
tion, culture or historical period, and does not require prior training in translating.
Readers are asked to bear in mind that the blog is descriptive and not prescriptive:
it aims to paint broadly the translation scene as it is and not as it ought to be.

References

[Bible]. The Holy Bible Conteyning the Old Testament and the New: Newly translated out of the
Originall Tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and reuised by His
Majesties speciall Commandement. Appointed to be read in Churches. London: Robert
Barker, Printer to the Kings most excellent Maiestie, 1611.
[Book of Mormon]. El Libro de Mormon relación escrita por la mano de Mormon, sobre planchas
tomadas de las planchas de Nefi. Translated by Melitón G. Trejo and others. Salt Lake City:
Deseret News, 1886.
Bullock, Carolyn & Brian Harris. 1997. “Schoolchildren as Community Interpreters”. The
Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community. Papers from the 1st International Conference
on Interpreting in Legal, Health and Social Settings, Geneva Park, Canada, 1–4 June 1995 ed.
by Silvana E. Carr, Roda P. Roberts, Aideen Dufour & Dini Steyn, 227–235. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Ekvall, Robert B. 1960. Faithful Echo. New York: Twayne.
Harris, Brian & Bianca Sherwood. 1978. “Translation as an Innate Skill”. Language Interpretation
and Communication ed. by David Gerver & H. Wallace Sinaiko, 155–170. New York: Plenum
Press. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4615-9077-4_15
Kelly, Nataly & Jost Zetzsche. 2012. Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and
Transforms the World. New York: Penguin-Perigree.
Kenny, Dorothy. 1998. “Equivalence”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies ed. by Mona
Baker, 77–80. London & New York: Routledge.

9. There are no reliable figures for the total amount of professional translation that is being done,
only “guesstimates” based on its monetary value (so many billions of dollars a year spent in the
“language industries”). Not even the vaguest estimates exist of the amount of non-professional
translating.
 Chapter 2. Unprofessional translation 43

Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus. 2012. “An Emerging Consensus for Open Evaluation: 18 Visions for
the Future of Scientific Publishing”. The Future of Scientific Publication: Ideas for an Open,
Transparent, Independent System, October 29, 2012. http://futureofscipub.wordpress.com/
(last viewed April 6, 2017). doi: 10.3389/fncom.2012.00094
Kujamäki, Pekka. 2012. “Mediating for Brothers-in-Arms: Finnish Arm Liaison Officers as Non-
Professional Translators and Interpreters in Northern Finland in 1991–1944”. Paper to First
International Conference on Non-professional Interpretation and Translation, University
of Bologna at Forlì, 2012.
Lörscher, Wolfgang. 2005. “The Translation Process: Methods and Problems of its Investigation”.
Meta 50. 597–608. doi: 10.7202/011003ar
Lûdskanov, Aleksandăr. 1969. Traduction humaine et traduction mécanique (Documents de lin-
guistique quantitative 2 et 4). Paris: Dunod.
Lûdskanov, Aleksandăr. 2008. Un approccio semiotico alla traduzione. Dalla prospettiva infor­
matica alla scienza traduttiva ed. by Bruno Osimo. Milan: Hoepli.
McDonough Dolmaya, Julie. 2011a. “Wikipedia Survey I (Respondent Profiles)”. Blogging about
Translation and Localization, May 30, 2011. http://mcdonough-dolmaya.ca/ (last viewed
April 6, 2017).
McDonough Dolmaya, Julie. 2011b. “Wikipedia Survey II (Types of Participation)”. Blogging
about translation and localization, June 12, 2011. http://mcdonough-dolmaya.ca/ (last
viewed April 6, 2017).
Prescott, Anne Lake. 1985. “The Pearl of Valois and Elizabeth I: Marguerite de Navarre’s Miroir
and Tudor England”. Silent but for the Word ed. by Margaret Patterson Hannay, 61–76. Kent
OH: Kent State University Press.
Ronjat, Jules. 1913. Le Développement du langage observé chez un enfant bilingue. Paris: Champion.
Seierstad, Åsne. 1993. The Bookseller of Kabul. Translated from Norwegian by Ingrid Christo­
pherson. London: Little, Brown.
Skousen, Royal. 1998. “How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the
Original Manuscript”. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7:1. 22–31.
 Chapter 3

We are all translators

Investigating the human ability to translate
from a developmental perspective

Bogusława Whyatt
Adam Mickiewicz University

This paper shares some observations and data about the human ability to
translate as described in detail in Whyatt (2012). Setting off from an assump-
tion that the human mind is intrinsically a translating mind, the human ability
to translate can be viewed in its developmental continuum from the predispo-
sition to translate to expertise in translation. Choosing this developmental per-
spective has a number of assets. First, it allows encompassing all the forms and
facets of translation as a widespread social phenomenon in today’s multilingual
and multicultural communities. Second, it allows seeing the development of
the human ability to translate in response to the experience of translation in
which external social factors come to interact with cognitive factors within
the translating individual. Third, it encourages an all-inclusive approach to
the study of translation as a human ability performed by professional and fre-
quently invisible and unacknowledged non-professional translators.

Keywords: translating mind, interlingual translation, natural translation,

developmental perspective, questionnaire, translation experience

1. Introduction

Translation as a social phenomenon and as an object of research has never enjoyed

such vibrant development. Globalization, intensive migration and the IT revo-
lution have made the presence of translation as a service to the local and global
community more and more visible in all areas of life. Although translation as a
means to facilitate communication has been practised throughout history, the
human ability to translate has for a long time been thought of as being reserved for
some talented individuals. As a result, it has been classified as a special skill that
needs professional training and expertise to be performed well. While this might
be true of expert translators whose competence has evolved due to their lifelong

doi 10.1075/btl.129.03why
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
46 Bogusława Whyatt

experience (and possibly specific training), the continuity of development allows

us to assume that it must have originated from some more fundamental general
communicative capacity shared by all people. Retracing the developmental route
of translation as a human aptitude capable of overcoming communication barriers
allows including all human translators, both professional and non-professional.
Simultaneous interpreters, literary translators, top professionals, novices, trans-
lation trainees, L2 learners, language brokers or any person conversant in two
languages can act as a mediator and might provide an essential communicative
link in a wide spectrum of social situations, with each requiring a different level
of specificity and/or accuracy.

2. The human translating mind

Although translation as a form of communication is most often associated with

interlingual translation that includes recoding meaning via a mediator when
speakers do not share the same language, it is in fact a much broader phenome-
non. As defined by Jakobson (1959), there are three kinds of operations that in-
clude a recoding of the same meaning in a different form: interlingual translation,
intralingual translation and intersemiotic translation. Interlingual translation,
described by Jakobson as “translation proper,” has received the most attention,
especially since the new discipline of Translation Studies has become established.
Although interlingual translation is the main focus of this chapter, a closer look
at intralingual translation might reveal that language users, in general, have a
translating mind that underlies the human ability to translate.
Intralingual translation or rewording is practised by all language users when-
ever they paraphrase their own utterances, or those said by others, in different
forms of the same language. People resort to intralingual translation when they
notice that their communicative intentions are not understood by their interlocu-
tors, but the operation itself is rarely thought about as a kind of translation – after
all, people do not need special training to paraphrase, although they do it with
various degrees of communicative success. Intralingual translation has not re-
ceived systematic attention from Translation Studies; nevertheless, some scholars
have noted that in today’s increasingly compartmentalized and specialized world,
intralingual translation may be increasingly necessary to facilitate communication
between people who, while sharing the same language, do not share the same sys-
tem of concepts and labels to refer to them – specialists and laypersons, doctors
and patients, etc. (Zethsen 2007).
Intersemiotic translation also involves a re-expression of the same meaning
and encoding it in a different non-verbal system of communication. Highway
 Chapter 3. We are all translators 47

Code regulations expressed in road signs are a classic example. Others include
the intrinsically human ability to express verbal messages in gestures, images or
various publicly or privately shared sets of symbols. Intersemiotic, intralingual
and interlingual translation can all be used to fulfil the human need and desire
to communicate when communication is not possible due to various barriers in-
cluding language, literacy and disability.
To further illustrate that the human mind is intrinsically a translating
mind, some fundamental facts about verbal communication might prove useful.
Language as a symbolic system shared by members of the same community is used
to “translate” preverbal intentions and messages into a verbal code. Levelt (1989) in
his speech production model distinguished three stages of utterance production:
conceptualization – when the idea and willingness to communicate something
is conceived; formulation – when the appropriate words are selected from one’s
mental lexicon; and articulation – when the message is uttered and made accessible
to others who, if sharing the same verbal code, will reverse the speech production
process and interpret the utterance, ideally, as carrying the intended meaning as
conceptualized by the speaker. Communication is possible only if the communi-
cators share the same verbal code and the same system of concepts which makes
the interpretation of a verbal message possible. To quote:
The more I think about language the more aware I become of all the backstage
cognition needed for understanding and meaningful use of language. The forms
become only a kind of prop, a powerful means of prompting dynamic on-line
constructions of meaning that go far beyond anything explicitly provided by the
lexical and grammatical forms. (Fauconnier 1998: 251)

In a fairly plausible way, human beings are very familiar with encoding and de-
coding meaning, as this is what they do throughout their lives. However, effective
communication apart from linguistic and conceptual knowledge requires the
pragmatic knowledge of socially determined rules of language behaviour which
govern what is and what is not appropriate in a particular communicative event
(Hymes 1971; Paradis 2009). An effective communicator always tries to adjust
verbal means to fit the communicative context using a range of strategies. He/she
can also put special care into how the message is structured by applying a host of
metalinguistic abilities. Is this intrinsically human skill to flexibly and creatively
structure and restructure verbal messages transferable to interlingual translation?
Or is interlingual translation indeed a special skill?
48 Bogusława Whyatt

3. Interlingual translation as a human skill

In psycholinguistic terms, interlingual translation, or translation proper, has been

frequently described as one of the most complex mental operations performed
by the human mind. As a result, as pointed out by De Groot (1997) and Walters
(2005), translation was very early on classified as a special skill, implying that it
is a privilege of the few rather than a general aptitude. As observed by Malakoff
& Hakuta:
translation is typically viewed as a valuable skill that is available only to the highly
trained and linguistically sophisticated bilinguals who come out of interpreter
and translator training schools. It is not a skill that is generally considered to be
within the repertoire of just any bilingual, much less children, much less minori-
ty-language children. Yet, studies have found that children can both interpret and
translate materials that are within their comprehension and vocabulary.
 (Malakoff & Hakuta 1991: 144)

The above quote shows that the human ability to translate might be a socially mis-
understood phenomenon. On the one hand, it is viewed as an intricate process of
decision-making and problem-solving judged by many as “too complex to grapple
with” (De Groot 1997: 26). On the other hand, it seems to be socially expected of
anybody who is able to communicate in two languages.
When in 1977 Brian Harris published his article “The importance of natural
translation,” in which he explained that the human ability to translate is not a
special skill that requires training but it is available even to bilingual children
and therefore deserves to be researched within the new discipline of Translation
Studies, his views received criticism from translation scholars. The phenomenon of
“natural translation,” defined as “the translating done in everyday circumstances
by people who have had no special training for it” (quoted after Toury 1995: 241),
was considered as marginal in Translation Studies. Instead, Translation Studies as
a discipline focused on professional translation as a complex, specialized skill. It is
only fairly recently that the translation services provided by non-professional nat-
ural translators have started to attract more attention (Antonini 2010). In today’s
multilingual and multicultural communities, due to intensive migration, the need
for interlingual and intercultural mediators is constantly on the increase. Not all of
these intercultural communicative events require professional translation services
as they occur in informal settings, and those which do, as they include formal
contexts including hospital visits, police intervention, immigration policies, etc.,
are left without the assistance of professional mediators due to economic austerity
(Meyer et al. 2010). Non-professional translation makes room for a reassessment
of the human ability to translate as a part of intellectual potential, in which it is
 Chapter 3. We are all translators 49

viewed from its developmental perspective as the predisposition, described by

Harris & Sherwood (1978), to professional expertise.

4. Need for a developmental perspective

When looking back at the dispute over the concept of “natural translation,” some
terminological confusion becomes apparent. In fact, terms such as “ability,” “skill”
and “competence” have frequently been used as synonyms (see Shreve 1997: 121).
This confusion of terms that describe various degrees of aptitude is fairly com-
mon when writing about complex skills, including translation (Carroll 1993: 4). It
seems, though, that confusing the terms and equating “ability” with “skill” and
“competence” may lead to the false assumption that ability (potential) guarantees
competence. To avoid misunderstandings, the three terms can be considered as
forming a developmental continuum from predisposition to ability to skill to com-
petence and finally to expertise in translation.
Translation ability, then, is considered as the initial stage that is open to all
bilinguals – the term “bilingual” being used here in its liberal sense following the
psycholinguistic tradition (Bialystok 2009), meaning anybody who can commu-
nicate in two different languages.

expertise

competence

trained skill

untrained ability

natural predisposition

Figure 1. The human ability to translate in its developmental continuum

(Whyatt 2012: 29)
50 Bogusława Whyatt

Skill, according to the MSN Encarta Online Dictionary, can be defined as:
“1. ability to do something well, usually gained through training or experience;
2. something requiring training and experience to do well, e.g. an art or trade.”
The term competence is defined in the same dictionary as: “the ability to do
something well, measured against a standard, especially ability acquired through
experience or training.” Figure 1 illustrates the developmental continuum along
which the human ability to translate may develop.
This model is consonant with Shreve (1997: 125) who suggested that transla-
tion ability should be viewed in “a kind of evolutionary space” where the starting
point is indeed the natural ability of bilinguals to translate. The ultimate stage
to which translation ability can evolve under favourable external circumstances
(i.e. the need for translation services) and internal conditions (i.e. the translator’s
conscious effort to develop) is translation expertise.
Finally, an expert is defined by the MSN Encarta Online Dictionary as: “some-
body skilled or knowledgeable: somebody with a great deal of knowledge about,
or skill, training, or experience in, a particular field of activity.”
Potentially, all people who have access to at least two languages and who by na-
ture are predisposed to translate (just as they are predisposed to communicate) can
use this ability and translate when the need arises. However, only some will make
the effort to refine their ability and will become capable of a skilled performance.
Possibly some percentage of skilled translators will choose to pursue a career in
translation and will develop translation competence, either with or without the
support of structured education. Finally, some of those who are competent prac-
tising translators will develop to reach the level of translation expertise (Hoffman
1997). Accepting this developmental continuum makes the study of translation
as a human ability an all-inclusive area of research, which makes room for all
forms and facets of translation as interlingual/intercultural communication per-
formed by all possible human translators, both professional and non-professional.
Ultimately, it also provides a framework within which the range of capacities
ascribed to each consecutive stage can be explained.

5. Translation as an untrained ability

To understand how it is possible that bilinguals can translate, it is essential to

have a closer look at the bilingual foundations of translation ability. According to
advances in bilingualism research, more and more is known about how the human
mind accommodates two or more languages, although there are still many mis-
conceptions about the status of the two languages used by bilinguals. L2 learners
are generally expected to have lower proficiency in their foreign language (L2) than
 Chapter 3. We are all translators 51

in their native language (L1). Natural bilinguals (raised with two languages and
two cultures), however, are assumed to be equally proficient in their two languages,
although this tacit assumption has not been confirmed by empirical research. On
the contrary, as claimed by Grosjean (2002) according to the Complementarity
Principle, it is essential to remember that a bilingual uses his/her two languages
(separately or together) for different purposes, in different domains of life and with
different people. Because the needs and uses of the two languages are different,
a natural bilingual is in fact rarely equally, or completely, fluent in the two lan-
guages in all domains (Grosjean 2002: 2). For the same reason, as expounded by
Grosjean, himself a natural bilingual, contrary to common expectations, natural
bilinguals rarely make good translators. Their vocabularies are not equally rich in
their two languages, and they may lack words to express equivalent meanings (see
Bialystok 2009: 4) – something that is expected of professional translators. This
is explained by the psycholinguistic concept of “functional encoding,” meaning
that words acquired in one language will be more easily accessed by the bilingual’s
memory in that language. Consistently, the two languages of a bilingual user are
involved in an unequal relationship that will affect the bilingual’s translation per-
formance. “[C]ontrary to popular opinion, translation has little to do with fluency,
and bilinguals range from being very poor to being very competent translators”
(Grosjean 1982: 257).
Translation as an untrained ability is performed by two groups of natural
translators who act as intercultural mediators in multilingual communities:
(1) non-professional language brokers (including bilingual children) and (2) lan-
guage learners, who can also act as language brokers for their monolingual fam-
ilies, or who use their translation ability as a pedagogical tool to enhance their
communicative skills. As the modest research into translation as an untrained
ability shows, both groups of natural translators differ in their approach to trans-
lation, most probably due to the different communicative events they usually me-
diate in and due to their different language acquisition histories.
Language brokers tend to focus on the message that needs to be conveyed.
Since language brokering very often takes the form of community interpreting,
brokers strongly rely on their pragmatic knowledge and the extralinguistic con-
text in which the communicative event is set. The non-verbal setting and the
inferences made by the other participants will frequently disambiguate unclear
meanings. Malakoff & Hakuta (1991) tested Harris’s (1977) claim of natural trans-
lation and studied the translation ability of Puerto Rican children in New Haven,
Connecticut. Their systematic study concluded that “[b]ilingual children are able
to translate, albeit with flaws, and their translations reflect their understanding
of the communicative importance of translation” (Malakoff & Hakuta 1991: 143).
The authors explained that with reference to their bilingual proficiency, natural
52 Bogusława Whyatt

translators focus on the conceptual level (the message) while the structural (lexi-
co-grammatical) level may be compromised:
In natural translation, linguistic sophistication and explicit knowledge of con-
trastive linguistics is generally not the norm, especially among grade school chil-
dren. Although children of this age can speak two (or more) languages correctly,
they do not have a conscious awareness of the specific differences between lan-
guage systems. Despite the absence of such linguistic knowledge, children are
able to communicate meaning; although the meaning may be embedded in poor
sentence structure. (Malakoff & Hakuta 1991: 150)

Language learners as translators seem to have a different attitude to translation

from language brokers. However, due to the widespread rejection of translation
as the fifth skill of L2 learners by contemporary teaching methodologies, research
in this area is also limited. To quote Cook, who has frequently spoken in favour of
translation in L2 teaching and learning:
Despite the widespread popular assumption that translation should play a major
and necessary part in the study of a foreign language, twentieth century theories
of language teaching and learning have at best ignored the role of translation, and
at worst vilified it. From the turn of the century onwards almost all influential
theoretical works on language teaching have assumed without argument that a
new language (L2) should be taught without reference to the student’s first lan-
guage (L1). (Cook 2001: 117)

From the accounts of how L2 learners use their untrained ability to translate,
which are available from translation process research (Krings 1986; Lörscher
1996), it seems that L2 learners’ performance reflects their language learning his-
tory according to which they rely on interlingual lexical associations and tend to
translate in a form-oriented or horizontal way (Lörscher 1996; De Groot 1997).
As can be expected, L2 learners as translators, at least initially, represent the type
of translators perceived as amateur and unskilled, who by linear transcoding pro-
duce awkward, incomprehensible translations full of L1 interference (i.e. “trans-
lationese”). Gile (2004) observed that the same performance is initially exhibited
by translation trainees who, however, with appropriate guidance and feedback
very quickly learn to translate in a sense-oriented way. The unwelcoming attitude
towards the place of translation in L2 teaching is gradually changing. Recent pub-
lications have drawn attention to the fact that translation practice might help L2
learners to organize their two linguistic systems by raising their metalinguistic
awareness and fostering intercultural competence (Witte et al. 2009; Cook 2010;
Whyatt 2012). Additionally, there is more awareness that translation as a human
ability is socially expected of L2 learners:
 Chapter 3. We are all translators 53

“Translation is intuitive and necessary and inevitable in the process of learn-

ing another language and also in the process of understanding another lan-
guage through an intermediary” (Pellatt 2002: 126), for the following reasons:
Translation is a reality in everyday life, and becomes more so as society is in-
creasingly globalized. We translate constantly in non-professional contexts such
as instructions, timetables, ingredients, letters. (Pellatt 2009: 345)

In a questionnaire study conducted among 80 Polish native speakers who studied

English at the university level, as many as 87.5% respondents admitted that they
had been asked to translate a text for somebody else (Whyatt 2012). Some of them
acknowledged that they felt that the task exceeded their translation ability, as they
did not possess sufficient domain knowledge and adequate vocabulary.
To sum up, in general, the untrained ability to translate has a limited capacity.
The study by Malakoff & Hakuta (1991) confirms that bilinguals are able to trans-
late; however, the results also indicated that translation proficiency “goes beyond
the sum of the two language proficiencies.” Malakoff & Hakuta (1991: 157) further
suggested that translation proficiency may be related to metalinguistic skills. As
explained by the authors, a third factor, translation strategies, will only improve
the performance as long as language proficiency and metalinguistic knowledge
have reached an optimal level of attainment. This conclusion allows us to see the
untrained ability to translate as an initial stage in the development of expertise,
since the continuity of development (see Figure 1) assumes that “human abili-
ties are forms of developing expertise” (Sternberg 1998: 11). As observed by many
scholars, including Shreve (1997) and Toury (1995), in order to develop into a
more refined skill, translation ability needs favourable circumstances. According
to Toury, both internal and external factors have to interact:
It would seem much more convincing to argue that some additional factors are
needed in order to trigger off the “specialized predisposition” for translating and
set in motion – most probably, a certain combination of personality and environ-
mental circumstances. (Toury 1995: 245–246)

There are still views that the ability to translate will naturally develop; see, for
instance, Brian Harris’s blog (Harris 2010) for an alternative developmental route
including the so-called “native translators.” However, this possibility needs to be
empirically investigated, as it might apply only to some limited communicative
contexts or some talented individuals.
54 Bogusława Whyatt

6. Translation as a trained skill, competence and expertise

Since the literature on the development of translation as a trained skill, com-

petence and expertise usually focuses on formal translator training, only some
aspects that characterize the development of translation will be discussed in this
section (PACTE 2003; Pym 2003; Cronin 2005; Göpferich 2013).
As observed by Shreve, if the spectrum of translation ability is viewed in a
kind of evolutionary (developmental) space, the “[m]ovement within the space is
not automatic or necessary and the end point is not a single cognitive set shared
by all translators who arrive at professionalism” (Shreve 1997: 125). Toury (1995)
noted that a set of external environmental factors has to be combined with factors
internal to the translating individual. The environmental factors will first of all
provide demand for translation services, and if the natural ability to translate
is repeatedly exercised in translation performance, it may develop into a more
efficient fluent skill. However, since “there is very little evidence of complex skill
learning outside of consciousness” (Donald 2007: 78), the personal involvement
of the translating individual, who by self-reflection can work towards more fluent
and more effective performance, is seen as being essential. The conscious involve-
ment of the translating individual in transforming his/her natural ability into a
trained skill is considered crucial in the context of both formal translator training
(Kiraly 1995) and self-learning. As expressed by Kiraly, “[it] has been by translating
professionally that I myself have learned (and continue to learn) how to translate”
(Kiraly 2000: 8). This combination of repeated practice combined with self-reflec-
tion is further confirmed by many handbooks written by experienced translators
in order to share their knowledge with those who are starting their professional
careers (Sofer 2006). Figure 2 shows the results of a questionnaire study in which
40 professional translators marked their different routes to translation expertise.

100 95
90
80
70
60
(%) 50
40 32.5
25 30
30
20
10
0
translation training self-development only mentor who shared through professional
programme his/her professional work and self-reflection
experience

Figure 2. Different routes to translation expertise (Whyatt 2012: 314)

 Chapter 3. We are all translators 55

The data illustrated above allow us to assume that translation competence emerges
as a product of repeated translation experience combined with reflective think-
ing in the process of which translating individuals develop their self-concept as
translators (Kiraly 1995). Whyatt (2012: 316) reported that as many as 72.5% of
professional translators who participated in her study noted that in the process
of their careers, they developed their self-confidence as translators. As can be
expected, the acquisition of professional competence is a slow process (Ericsson
2010) in which a developing translator can be viewed as an expert learner who
can develop professional competence either in the context of institutionalized
translator training or in the process of self-learning supported by mentoring from
senior colleagues (Ertmer & Newby 1996: 1). This perspective, while respecting
the developmental continuity, recognizes various routes in which the learning
process, both conscious and subconscious (Robinson 1997: 51), takes place. It also
seems justified in view of the fact that translation as a service to a community had
been practised for centuries before the first translator training institutions were
even established.
Many scholars devoted to translation competence acquisition, which is the
aim of those who want to provide professional services (PACTE 2003; Göpferich
2013), observe that what is viewed as holistic competence is in fact componential
in nature and includes several sub-competences, of which bilingual sub-com-
petence is just one component. Others include extralinguistic sub-competence,
instrumental sub-competence and the knowledge about translation sub-compe-
tence as well as psycho-physiological components which consist of “[d]ifferent
types of cognitive and attitudinal components and psycho-motor mechanisms”
(PACTE 2003: 59). All these sub-competences are interdependent and governed
by the strategic sub-competence that coordinates and governs the application of
other sub-competences. This integrated complex repertoire of knowledge, both
declarative and procedural, combined with professional ethics, which requires
that the translator should be neutral and faithful, allows for providing translation
services of professional quality. As can be expected, this kind of competence and
professional ethos cannot and should not be required from natural translators.
Finally, translation expertise has no ultimate level of attainment, but rath-
er is always open to improvement (Shreve 1997; Hoffman 1997). Jääskeläinen
(2010: 215) noted that not every professional translator is an expert translator and
the length of experience has to be considered together with job requirements to
assess the quality of their work. A key feature of expertise is economy of effort,
the ability to deal with atypical situations and “consistently superior performance
in the domain” (Ericsson 2010). As a result, not every professional translator is
automatically an expert translator and professional competence is best seen as a
capacity for developing expertise.
56 Bogusława Whyatt

Yet, the question of professionalism that could help to draw a borderline be-
tween professional and non-professional translation performance is controver-
sial. As pointed out by Shreve (1997), professional translation is not equivalent to
advertising translation services or being a graduate of a translator training pro-
gramme, but to the ability to produce a “constructed translation,” most probably
meaning a high-quality communicatively and formally flawless translation. The
quality condition of the product (a translation), however, makes the borderline be-
tween professional and non-professional translation rather fluid as the clients who
commission translation services are often unable to assess their quality (House
2001: 257). The situation is further complicated by the fact that in many countries,
translation is a freelance career and formal qualifications or licensing are not
required to provide translation services. The translation market is a fast-growing
business, and some suggest (Gouadec 2007) that survival on the market is the best
measure of professionalism and quality of provided services.
The problem of translation quality is, on the contrary, closely related to the
stage which a translating individual occupies on the developmental continuum of
translation as a human skill. This, however, is frequently not taken into account by
the general public, which, together with a limited understanding of the translation
process itself, contributes to misconceptions about translation ability.

7. Misconceptions about the human ability to translate

It is possible that some misconceptions about translation ability are rooted in a

simplified view of the translation process. For laypersons, translating simply means
saying or writing the same in another language, which is perceived as a process of
linear transcoding of a string of words in a source language (SL) into a string of
translation equivalents of these words in the target language (TL). Yet, this simpli-
fied perception does not reflect the complex relationship between words and their
culturally situated meanings which have to be accounted for in translation, and
which cannot be transcoded but re-conceptualized (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
2010). Other challenges that have to be overcome in translation include ambiguity,
metaphors and implicit meaning, an understanding which frequently requires
“reading between the lines” and which cannot be meaningfully transcoded as
such (Pinker 2007).
Translation process research has demonstrated that both written translation
and interpreting involve complex processes of comprehension, transfer of meaning
and language production. Since the SL text or utterance is in one language and the
TL output has to be in the other language, in psycholinguistic terms, global lan-
guage switching is required; a certain amount of cognitive control is also needed
 Chapter 3. We are all translators 57

to avoid cross-linguistic interference. Understandably, there are substantial differ-

ences between language processing in written translation and in oral translation
(i.e. interpreting). The latter requires excellent concentration skills, multitasking
and division of attention because SL spoken input is transient and can be held in
the short-term memory only for a very limited amount of time. Depending on the
kind of interpreting, the actual context of the communicative event, especially in
community interpreting, can exert an extra burden on the processing capacity of
the interpreter (e.g. interpreting in distressful situations like hospital consulta-
tions or police interrogation). To cope with the workload and ensure good quality
services, skilled interpreters automatize certain sub-skills to be able to devote
more cognitive attention to the more challenging aspects of their task. Through
experience and/or training, they learn to supervise their performance in order to
ensure faithful, fluent, neutral and communicatively functional translation. This
kind of complex performance cannot be expected from ad hoc translators and
language brokers.
Although a layperson cannot be expected to understand the intricate infor-
mation processing that takes place in the mind of a translating individual, aware-
ness of the complexities involved in the translation process might explain some
difficulties experienced by those who use their natural ability to translate and
grant more respect to those who work as professional interpreters and transla-
tors. Whyatt (2012: 319) reports that 70% of the 40 respondents of a questionnaire
study (professional translators who were asked to select the most desirable changes
towards translation as a profession) said that they would like to see more public
concern for the quality of translation. Furthermore, as many as 65% said that they
would like to see more social awareness of what is involved in translation. Before
closing the discussion on the developmental perspective of translation as a human
skill, one more aspect deserves to be mentioned, namely the consequences of the
translation experience.

8. Consequences of the translation experience

The linguistic, cognitive and psychological effects of the translation experience

have not been systematically studied in comparison to the effects of bilingualism
on a language user (Bialystok 2009). As observed by Walters (2005), the reasons
for the lack of research into the effects of translation on language proficiency
might be due to “the sheer complexity of the phenomenon involving hidden so-
cial agendas, nonexplicit pragmatic considerations, unbridgeable cross-linguistic
gaps and awesome memory and time demands” (Walters 2005: 209). Further rea-
sons include a negative attitude towards using translation as a pedagogical tool in
58 Bogusława Whyatt

enhancing the communicative skills of L2 learners, which has resulted in a lack

of research (Witte et al. 2009; Cook 2010). Nevertheless, some observations, albeit
fragmentary, report the effects of translation tasks on the communicative skills
and language proficiency of L2 learners.
Kroll (1993) reported that the repeated experience of translation that relies on
access to the bilingual memory will have a positive effect on the fluency and speed
of lexical retrieval. Laufer and Girsai (2008: 696), who studied Hebrew learners of
English aged 15–16 years, provided evidence that translation tasks proved more
successful in vocabulary learning and resulted in the longer retention of newly
learned words than monolingual tasks. Paradis (2009) suggested that professional
translators and interpreters throughout their working lives store in their memory
cross-linguistic equivalents which they are able to recall quickly without analys-
ing their conceptual meaning (see Mossop 2003). Whyatt (2012) reported that
as many as 82.5% of translators acknowledged that it is through translating that
they constantly learn about their two (or more) languages. Furthermore, 85% of
professional translators who participated in the questionnaire study reported that
one of the major benefits of their translation practice is their constantly expanding
mental lexicon (Whyatt 2012: 316). This result is consistent with Toury’s (1995)
observation on the ability to establish similarities and differences between the
two languages (what he termed interlingualism) that represents an essential part
of translation proficiency development. This contrastive alignment of the two lan-
guages between which one translates was also reported by L2 learners as raising
their metalinguistic awareness, which makes it possible to see languages as tools
with different devices for conveying meaning. Thus, the effect of translation expe-
rience on language proficiency and verbal fluency should not be underestimated
and demands further research.
In terms of cognitive effects, the impact of translation lies in expanding the
conceptual experience by forcing a translating individual to constantly bridge
intercultural differences, fill conceptual gaps and seek understanding. If bilingual
language users might be implicitly aware of how their two languages differently
lexicalize similar concepts, in translation, these differences become more explic-
it. Translation does require re-conceptualization in which a common platform
for understanding and shared meaning has to be established (Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk 2010). Establishing a shared understanding seems easier in interpret-
ing situations when all the participants can draw information from the situational
extralinguistic context that will disambiguate meaning if it is expressed in an
awkward form. However, the same endeavour is increasingly more problematic
when it comes to translating written texts when the translator has to analyse the
linguistic form (frame) to see the scene the text refers to (see Fillmore 1977: 61).
Therefore the “understanding can be achieved only if the information contained
 Chapter 3. We are all translators 59

in language units is supplemented by background knowledge of facts referred to

in the message” (Komissarov 1991: 43). It is not surprising that translation is de-
scribed by professionals and non-professionals alike as an intellectual challenge
as well as an opportunity to learn new things or refine related skills. For example,
Whyatt (2012: 275) reported that 87.5% of professional translators acknowledged
that the intellectual benefits of constantly learning new things through transla-
tion constitute the main reason that keeps them in the profession. In the context
of non-professional translation, Orellana (2003) investigated the cognitive effect
of translation experience on young language brokers, and reported that children
who interpreted for their families performed better in reading and mathematical
tests. Investigating the effect of translation practice on L2 learners, Whyatt (2009)
reported that translation experience has a positive effect on language control in
advanced L2 learners and helps them to learn to keep their two languages apart
to avoid cross-linguistic interference. This finding confirmed conclusions from a
translation experiment conducted by Price et al. (1999) who reported that trans-
lating enhances cognitive control in general.
The psychological effects of translation experience include several aspects
ranging from very positive to sensitive and difficult issues. Language learners
have been reported to enjoy translation tasks and found them rewarding for several
reasons. As observed by Auerbach, the use of L1 “reduces anxiety and enhances
the affective environment for learning, takes into account socio-cultural factors,
facilitates incorporation of learners life experience” (Auerbach 1993: 20 quoted
after Ramos De Oliveira Harden 2009: 370). In a translation class conducted along
the lines of collaborative learning (González Davies 2004) and social constructivist
ideals (Kiraly 2000), not only two languages but also two realities and two world-
views meet. L2 learners take on the role of intercultural mediators, and they feel
that by translating they can meaningfully use their bilingual skills. As a result,
many come to aspire to become professional translators – as many as 70% of 80
first-year students who studied English at the BA level declared in a questionnaire
that they were interested in pursuing a career in translation (for details, see Whyatt
2012: 263).
Most translators in the making, as well as those with considerable work ex-
perience, are extremely self-motivated and dedicated to the development and
maintenance of their knowledge and skills. They enjoy the activity and find it
self-rewarding (Sofer 2006). Indeed, as Sofer explains:
a translator never stops learning. Language keeps changing, knowledge keeps
increasing, and the professional translator stays on top of it all. Once you have
developed good translation habits, you will enjoy the activity of continuous learn-
ing of new words and terms, and being part of the latest advances in many areas
of human knowledge. It is, indeed, a privileged position. (Sofer 2006: 151)
60 Bogusława Whyatt

Jones (2002: 130) observed that the translator might find “an abstract, game-play-
ing pleasure, marrying both objective, analytical reasoning and more intuitive or
creative thought processes.” Hence, comparing translation to a game of skill is not
uncommon (Gorlee 1994).
The generally positive impact of translation experience on L2 learners and
professional translators is not unanimously reported by research into child lan-
guage brokering, which focused more on the emotional well-being of language
brokers. Orellana (2003) reported that children accepted their roles as interpreters
as normal and enjoyed their performance. However, as Guske observes, the pos-
itive effects of the language brokering experience are appreciated only by some
language brokers and “only with the benefit of hindsight” (Guske 2010: 335). The
following quote illustrates the contradiction of viewpoints when seen from the
child broker’s perspective:
While instances of successful language and culture brokering certainly bolster
an adolescent’s self-esteem, conveying a sense of competence, independence, and
maturity, children often perceive these tasks as a burden, especially when the
stakes are high and a situation requires mediation skills that are beyond their
linguistic, cognitive and emotional capabilities. (Guske 2010: 325)

Green et al. (2004) noted that child language brokers are frequently expected to do
much more than professional translators. They are put in adult situations involv-
ing sensitive matters when they are expected to interpret during hospital visits,
or negotiate with bank managers. Some 45% of language brokers studied by Tse
(1996), when looking back at their experience as intercultural mediators for their
families and neighbours, perceived the same aspects in a positive light, as a spur for
their sense of independence and maturity. Others, as pointed out by Guske (2010),
admitted that they felt uncomfortable, embarrassed (11%) and overburdened by
the tasks expected from them (17%), while at the same time they were very much
aware of how the well-being of their families depended on meeting these unrealis-
tic demands. Meyer et al. (2010) concluded that, in order to relieve child language
brokers from this burden, community interpreters should be available to assist
immigrants in formal legal and healthcare situations. This advisable solution to
assist migrants in their new host countries is still beyond reach in many European
countries (for a detailed analysis of the provision of language services in a variety
of countries, see Ozolins 2010). Hall & Guéry (2010) drew attention to the fact that
child language brokers have been in fact invisible translators whose work has been
undervalued by their families and institutions. Making them visible as translators
is the least that can be done to show an appreciation of their efforts which would
often put a professional translator in a difficult situation. Consequently, as sug-
gested by Malakoff & Hakuta, translation can and should be used to raise “pride
 Chapter 3. We are all translators 61

in bilingualism particularly for minority bilingual children whose home language

is not valued by the majority culture” (Malakoff & Hakuta 1991: 163).

9. Conclusions

The human ability to translate is demonstrated in a multitude of communicative

contexts where a mediator is required. It seems that the human mind is predis-
posed to translate if the need arises, by using its capacity to formulate intentions
and ideas and share them with others in linguistically encoded forms. The capacity
to act as an intercultural mediator in a communicative event is developmental in
nature and ranges from the untrained ability of natural translators, which can
develop into a more refined skill if the experience of translation is treated as an
educational learning environment by the translating individual. If the trained
skill is utilized and coupled with self-development aimed at improved transla-
tion performance, professional competence is gradually acquired, which in some
cases can result in expert performance. This developmental view of the human
ability to translate allows us to consider all human translators, both professional
and non-professional, as legitimate intercultural mediators who are necessary and
valuable in today’s multilingual and multicultural communities. A more system-
atic research into the effects of translation experience on the human intellectual
potential might help to understand and appreciate the role it plays in individual
and social development.

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 Chapter 4

Dialoguing across differences

The past and future of language brokering research

Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

UCLA

This chapter provides an overview of the research that has been done on lan-
guage brokering over the last three decades. It identifies the kinds of questions
that have been asked and the framings that have driven the work, raising ques-
tions about why these and not other directions were pursued. Using this over-
view of the field, it suggests what is missing and what other kinds of questions
could be asked. It also considers how each locus of investigation could be built
upon and connected to others, in order to expand and deepen our understand-
ing of the practice and its effects, and suggests what is needed for the next gen-
eration of research on this multidimensional topic.

Keywords: language brokering, research methodologies, translanguaging,

literature review

1. Introduction

Three decades ago, the phenomenon of immigrant child language brokering was
virtually invisible in both the public eye and the research world. Even in the liter-
ature about children during the first massive wave of immigration to the United
States in the early 1900s, there is scant mention of children serving as language or
cultural brokers, though surely the children of immigrants must have served in
this capacity (Orellana 2009). Similarly, Brian Harris in his blog http://unprofes-
sionaltranslation.blogspot.it/ has done extensive work tracing the development of
research on Natural Translation writ large; he notes that even in classic studies of
children’s bilingual language development such as that of Leopold (1939–1949),
there is little attention to the acts of spontaneous or “natural” translation by young
bilinguals.
But slowly – and then quite rapidly in the last decade – the practice has com-
manded the attention of academics from a wide array of disciplines, as well as

doi 10.1075/btl.129.04ore
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
66 Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

educators, social service providers, and policy makers in the United States, Europe,
and to some extent around the world. This chapter provides an overview of the
kind of research that has been done on the topic, the questions that have been
asked, and the framings that have driven the work. It will also suggest what is
missing, what other kinds of questions could be asked, how each locus of inves-
tigation could be built upon and connected to others, and what is needed for the
next generation of research on this multidimensional topic.

2. From invisibility to visibility

Language brokering research first entered the social science arena in the 1990s, in
two fields of inquiry: educational research and developmental psychology. Lucy
Tse and Jeff McQuillan (McQuillan & Tse 1995; Tse 1995 and 1996; Buriel et al.
1998) brought the phenomenon to the attention of educational researchers in the
United States, establishing it as worthy of study by detailing the prevalence of the
phenomenon, how it was experienced by participants, and suggesting its relation-
ship to academic achievement. This and other early research was based on surveys
and interviews, generally with young adults reflecting back on their experiences.
Some attention was also given to the actual language demands of translation, from
a psycholinguistic perspective (Malakoff 1991 and 1992; Malakoff & Hakuta 1991).
One early methodological rarity was the work by Sheila Shannon (1987; 1990),
which documented a live language brokering episode; however, after this, there
were no sociolinguistic or ethnographic analyses of what actually transpires in lan-
guage brokering encounters. Nor was there much focus on language in immigrant
child language brokering research at all, until at least a decade later.
Meanwhile, psychologists also discovered the phenomenon and began to
examine its developmental implications on other aspects of youth development.
Arguably, researchers could have followed the lines laid out by Malakoff & Hakuta
(1991), and examined the linguistic, cognitive, academic, and pragmatic compe-
tencies that are fostered through brokering; instead, the main focus of the first
decade of psychological research was on the psychosocial effects for children.
Researchers looked for effects in terms of internalization (Buriel et al. 1998; Chao
2006), stress (Kam 2011), and family conflict (Jones & Trickett 2005; Trickett &
Jones 2007). This focus on negative consequences followed from theoretical argu-
ments about what was involved in the practice: “adultification” or “parentification,”
or the reversal of proper parent – child relationships. This was consistent with
many popular reports on the practice that began appearing in newspapers (see,
e.g., Kemsley 1994 and Fein 1997).
 Chapter 4. Dialoguing across differences 67

3. Deficits and deviances

We might consider why these and not other developmental questions were pur-
sued. What assumptions underlay these research foci? What beliefs about children,
adult – child relationships, learning, language, social processes, and development
framed the work? Why was the focus almost exclusively on the presumed detri-
mental effects of the practice? Why was it presumed that the practice necessarily
or most always was bad for kids?
We might also consider why it took so long for the phenomenon to have much
take-up by anthropologists, sociologists, or educational researchers. Given that the
phenomenon is all about language, why did sociolinguists and linguistic anthro-
pologists not notice and study the practice before? Given that it is about translation
and interpreting, why were Interpreting and Translation Studies one of the last
fields to discover the phenomenon?
From the start, and despite research and theory confirming the “natural”
nature of translation in bilingual children (Harris & Sherwood 1978), language
brokering was generally presumed to be non-normative, not a natural part of social
life in a multilingual world, and something children should not do. Either implicit-
ly or explicitly, research started from the assumption that the practice was deviant,
damaging, and antithetical to “proper” child development and family processes.
It also did not fit within the scope of interpreting studies’ focus on professional
norms and skills, and the field’s well-developed ideas about what translation and
interpreting does, or should, involve.
Twenty years later, there is more recognition that the world is multilingual
and intercultural, and that contact between speakers of different languages is a
normative experience. Children growing up in such a world naturally draw on
their multilingual toolkits to mediate understanding for others. Translation and
interpreting happen in many ways, not always as prescribed by professionals, or
presumed by psychologists. Indeed, when I ask my undergraduate students at
UCLA whether they have had experience as language brokers, three-quarters of
the class invariably raise their hands. Whatever anyone may feel about whether
or not children “should” do this work, or how we might view their competencies,
they are doing it, and in new immigrant communities, the practice is normative.
It is one of many “translanguaging” practices (García 2008) that bilingual and
multilingual youth engage in every day.
68 Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

4. Broadening the developmental lens

Over time, developmental psychologists began to broaden their lenses on the prac-
tice, to consider its positive as well as negative effects in different domains. Some
found positive gains in school achievement (Acoach & Webb 2004; Buriel et al.
1998; Dorner et al. 2007; Weisskirch & Alva 2002). Others found that language
brokering benefited youth in terms of biculturality (Love & Buriel 2007) and ac-
culturation (Acoach & Webb 2004).
One of the newest lines of inquiry has involved examining the effects on em-
pathy and perspective-taking – prosocial skills that arguably could be cultivated
by the demands of language brokering. Guan et al. (2014) found that language
brokering was associated with higher scores on a transcultural perspective-tak-
ing measure (to be distinguished from general kinds of perspective in that it de-
mands cultural sensitivity and knowledge) that the authors developed, as well as
on measures of empathic concern. This accords with now considerable qualitative
evidence of the cultural competencies involved in brokering (e.g., Bauer 2010;
García Sánchez 2012; Guo 2014; Hall & Sham 2007; Lucas 2014; Martinez et al.
2009; Jones & Trickett 2005; Morales et al. 2012; Orellana 2009; Trickett & Jones
2007; Valdés 2003).
As we move into the future of language brokering research, we might further
broaden this developmental lens. Rather than always looking for the effects of
language brokering on other capacities, why not use developmental perspectives
to explore the development of language brokering per se? We might ask how the
competencies and strategies that youth deploy change over time. Does the nature
or quality of their translations change as well? For example, my observations of
one child language broker over a period of many years suggested qualitative shifts
in how she approached her work. In early observations, when asked to translate a
written text, she would read the text aloud in English, and then attempt verbatim,
line-by-line translations into Spanish. When she was older, she would read texts
silently and then provide a gloss or summary of the key points for her mother
in Spanish (Orellana 2011). What do younger siblings learn from observing or
participating in the practice led by their elders? What do parents learn? What
distinguishes more and less expert language brokers?
We might also ask, as Anne Phoenix (2009) and Elaine Bauer (2013) have
done through their interviews with adults reflecting back on their experiences as
language brokers, how people’s views of the practice change over time, and how
people construct their stories of brokering to render themselves in particular
ways. (Methodologically, this work is important when we consider that much data
that has been gathered on language brokering is based on interviews and other
self-reports.)
 Chapter 4. Dialoguing across differences 69

One of the greatest methodological challenges still facing the field, in terms of
understanding any effects that language brokering may have on other capacities,
is to sort out causal mechanisms, and the relationship between particular kinds
of experiences and particular kinds of competencies. Are language brokers partly
selected by their families because they have social and linguistic skills? To what
extent does the practice itself cultivate linguistic, social, cognitive, and cultural
skills? Research has begun to tease out the relationships and mechanisms, but
much more research could be done to illuminate these more precisely.

5. Understanding the practice

This expansion into other effects of the practice has been partly fueled by qual-
itative research that has helped us to better understand just what is involved in
language brokering and how youth navigate its demands. Observational research
and in-depth interviews have made evident that language brokering includes a
myriad different kinds of tasks, involving both the spoken and written word,
set in different contexts (both public and private), with different kinds of people
(family members, authority figures, strangers), and differing degrees of support
and/or pressure. Language brokering often involves the brokering of printed texts
(Hall 2004; Orellana et al. 2003a, 2003b; Perry 2009), including genre-specific
brokering (Perry 2009, 2014) and cultural norms (García Sánchez 2010; Guo 2014;
Jones & Trickett 2005; Trickett & Jones 2007). It includes relatively “easy” kinds
of tasks, done for close family members in the privacy of homes, as well as more
anxiety-provoking activities in the public eye (Hall & Sham 2007; Orellana 2009;
Reynolds & Orellana 2009). Children generally can leverage some degree of sup-
port from other participants (Eksner & Orellana 2012; Orellana et al. 2012), and
the practice must be understood in relation to family relations (del Torto 2010;
Martinez et al. 2009), community contexts (Katz 2010; Orellana 2009), relation-
ships between cultural groups (García Sánchez 2012), and social class positioning
(Kwon 2013; Reynolds & Orellana 2009). The work is not strictly that of interpret-
ing/translation, as defined by professional translators, but rather the mediation
of meaning, and the use of language to accomplish things in the social world
(Orellana et al. 2003b).
Explorations of what is involved in the practice naturally drew attention to
language. Researchers began to ask how language brokers draw on their own lin-
guistic toolkits to negotiate meaning (García Sánchez 2010; Orellana et al. 2012),
and how they are supported in doing so by others (Eksner & Orellana 2012).
Expanding in a different direction, del Torto (2010) considered the distribution
of language skills within an intergenerational Canadian Italian family, and looked
70 Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

at spontaneous language brokering in everyday interactions. Bolden (2012) took

a similar approach, through conversation analysis, to identify the interactional
construction of conversational competence in Russian American immigrant fam-
ilies. This focuses on families’ strategies for meaning-making, not on individual
language brokers. Eksner and Orellana (2012) worked from a different theoretical
point of view, to consider similarly how parents and children mutually scaffold
their engagement with tasks (see also Orellana et al. 2012).
While the ethnographic base has grown greatly over the last decade, the prac-
tice of language brokering is incredibly complex and multidimensional, and so
the field would benefit from detailed ethnographic and observational research in
a wider array of settings. We need to know more about how language brokering
transpires in different kinds of families, communities, and institutional contexts,
in relation to different task demands and relationships, and with different kinds of
supports. We need more attention to specific dimensions of language brokering,
such as media and technology brokering, and in particular domains, such as health
and education. This will help to elucidate just what makes language brokering
harder or easier, and what effects it may have, not just on individuals, but also on
families and communities.

6. Families and communities

As noted above, much of the focus of study has been on child development, and
the individual language broker has been the typical unit of analysis. However, the
practice is also a sociological phenomenon that matters for families and commu-
nities, and that is shaped by community and family contexts. Valenzuela (1999)
early on raised questions about the gendered nature of the practice, finding that
more girls than boys served in this role, and interpreting this in relation to family
dynamics. Orellana et al. (2003b) found the practice to be less clearly gendered
for young children, but suggested that more girls than boys may persist with the
practice as they grow older. García Sánchez (2010) also weighed in on discussions
of the gendered nature of the practice, through her work with Moroccan immi-
grant communities; a continued eye to gendered dynamics seems important for
understanding the practice in all its complexity. There is also much more to be
done to consider how the work of language brokering is distributed to kids of dif-
ferent ages, and in different kinds of families. How, if at all, does that distribution
change over time?
Sociologically and anthropologically oriented work has emphasized that lan-
guage brokering is done in the service of other things: providing access to resourc-
es (Kwon 2013; Orellana et al. 2003b), connecting families to media sources of
 Chapter 4. Dialoguing across differences 71

information (Katz 2010; 2014), and meeting the demands of family life in immi-
grant communities (Valenzuela 1999). For example, Song (1997) showed language
brokering as one element of children’s contributions to family-run businesses.
Bauer (2010) explored how language brokering shapes civic participation – a very
active and conscious form of civic participation at that, as brokers negotiate dis-
putes, exercise agency, and make decisions about their involvement in public life.
Katz (2010) revealed language brokering as a key dimension of how immigrants
access media and communications technology. New research by Kwon (2013) ex-
plored the neglected dimension of social class in language brokering experiences,
identifying the class-specific language brokering work that working-class bilingual
Korean immigrant youth engage in. This work is important for many reasons,
including the fact that language brokering has principally been treated as a “cul-
tural” phenomenon, not one that is profoundly shaped by social class positioning;
because it is set in Korean immigrant communities in the United States, Kwon’s
research helps to disrupt “model minority” (and class-blind) myths about Asian
immigrants, and offers a useful point of comparison with low-income Latino im-
migrants whose language brokering experiences have been well documented.
Such sociologically oriented research presses us to consider local and commu-
nity contexts. How do local language resources matter for those experiences? How
do the local fields of difference – i.e., the particular composition of immigrants
and native-born in any space – affect how brokers from particular language groups
are viewed and treated, and how in turn does that shape the language brokering
experience? How can various conceptual frameworks help us to understand the
work that language brokering does, the ways it matters not just for children, but
also for the functioning of society?
We need more studies that expand the lens beyond the individual child and
his/her family, to consider the impact of this practice on communities, schools,
and other settings. Research set in specific contexts, such as clinics, hospitals,
stores, schools, bus stations, and restaurants, would provide a different picture
of the phenomenon. Such ethnographic studies are not easy to conduct; there are
reasons why most research on language brokering relies on interviews and surveys,
and starts from the experiences of particular children. One approach would be
to start with the setting rather than the people, and to look for organic language
brokering episodes that arise therein.

7. Classrooms and schools

Schools are an important site of language brokering practices, with a limited body
of work revealing how brokering transpires in different kinds of classrooms and
72 Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

educational settings. Olmedo (2003) looked at the spontaneous translations that

bilingual kindergarteners provided for each other in a bilingual classroom, re-
vealing how even these very young children were sensitive to the language needs
of their peers. Bayley et al. (2005) examined the kinds of teacher talk that older
bilingual youth spontaneously translated for their peers in science class, finding
that this was limited mostly to summaries of teacher instructions. Coyoca and
Lee (2009) identified a typology of language brokering events to reveal variations
in the ways children use their two languages to facilitate understanding. Alvarez
(2014) looked at language brokering as a form of translanguaging that supports
children’s understanding of homework assignments, considering how children,
parents, and tutors in an afterschool program pooled their linguistic resources
around kids’ homework. These few studies point to the need for research on how
teachers support and/or inhibit the work of language brokering in classrooms with
various language mixes, and toward what ends (e.g., how does brokering shape the
learning of monolingual children or that of the brokers themselves?).
And then, of course, there are parent – teacher conferences, a key educational
setting in which language brokering takes place. Hall (2004) and Valdés (2003)
broke new ground in the study of language brokering by asking children to reenact
language brokering encounters between parents and school officials; Valdés used
this to argue that language brokering competencies constitute a form of giftedness.
García Sánchez and Orellana (2006) and García Sánchez et al. (2011) audiotaped
actual parent – teacher conferences and analyzed how youth handled their de-
mands, further revealing the cultural nuances that children have to navigate. The
children in their study did not do what many readers might assume children do
when translating their own conferences; not only did they not exaggerate their own
achievement, but also they actually downplayed and minimized their successes,
taking what teachers said down a notch, and assuming more responsibility for
problems than teachers assigned to them. Was this peculiar to the children in this
study? We need more research either to corroborate or challenge these findings.
In another line of educational research on language brokering, some scholars
have designed programs to support language brokers (Borrero 2007). Others have
illustrated how language brokering experiences can be leveraged to support learn-
ing, even in monolingual settings (Bailey & Orellana 2015; Carbone & Orellana
2010; Prokopiou et al. 2013; Jimenez 1996, 2013; Martinez et al. 2008; Reynolds
& Orellana 2009; Puzio et al. 2013). A special issue on language brokering in the
educational journal Language Arts (91:5, including among others Alvarez 2014;
D’warte 2014; Perry 2014) explores other ways that language brokering could be
both recognized and built upon in schools.
 Chapter 4. Dialoguing across differences 73

8. Feelings

Beyond child development and family dynamics, which seem to be driven by the
question, “is this good or bad for kids?,” the second most common question asked
about language brokering seems to be: how do kids feel about the work?
Researchers have attempted to find a definitive answer to that question: kids
like it or they don’t; they find it stressful or not (Morales & Hanson 2005; Parke
& Buriel 1998; Umaña-Taylor 2003; Weisskirch 2006). Case study portraits have
illuminated the feelings of individual language brokers (e.g., Lucas 2014; Morales
et al. 2012). We might ask: given the diversity of situations involved in language
brokering, is it any wonder there are varied feelings? Cannot the practice be all
of the above: frightening, empowering, exhilarating, satisfying, anxiety-provok-
ing, and “just normal” (Orellana 2009)? And might the same child not like some
aspects of it and not others? Instead, we might focus our attention on why some
aspects of the practice are experienced as more pleasurable, or more oppressive,
than others, and identify ways to mitigate the worst effects and enhance the best.
In refining our understanding about the feelings involved in language broker-
ing, some researchers have attempted to categorize kids into those who like it and
those who do not (Kam 2011; Morales & Aguayo 2010; Weisskirch 2006). This may
be important for understanding the effects of the practice on child development.
New research has found that youth who associated negative feelings with language
brokering have more negative outcomes than those who reported feeling good
(Kam 2011; Weisskirch 2006). Weisskirch (2013) found that perceptions of lan-
guage brokering were influenced by perceived levels of parental support. Another
new development has involved looking at ways in which the most negative effects
may be mitigated; for example, with greater support (Love & Buriel 2007), higher
levels of parent – child bonding (Buriel et al. 2006), or higher family levels of ac-
culturation (Weisskirch & Alva 2002). Conversely, some have found the negative
effects exacerbated by problematic family relationships (Hua & Costigan 2012).
The sheer amount of language brokering (which could be correlated with new
immigrant status) also seems to affect the burdens of language brokering, and
how it is experienced by youth in terms of behavioral and emotional adjustment.
Cline et al. (2010) also took an interesting approach to examining feelings
about and understandings of language brokering, by comparing the views of youth
who have experience with the practice and those who do not. The authors found
that monolingual students had only a vague understanding of language brokering
experiences, and considered them unusual or “strange.” Bilingual students, in
contrast, saw them as normal, and had a fuller appreciation of what was involved.
74 Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

9. New populations

Research on language brokering in the United States has centered heavily on

Latino immigrants (Martinez et al. 2009; Tse 1995; Chao 2006; Orellana 2009;
Weisskirch 2006, 2013), but the field has now expanded to include Sudanese refu-
gees in the Midwest (Perry 2009), and immigrants from Korea (Chao 2006; Kwon
2013), the Middle East (Guan et al. 2014; Nash 2014), the Soviet Union (Jones et al.
2012), and Vietnam (Trickett & Jones 2007). There is a growing body of research
on other groups living around the world: Moroccan immigrants in Spain (García
Sánchez 2010), Moroccan, Turkish, and Italian immigrants in Germany (Degener
2010; Guske 2010, Meyer et al. 2010a, 2010b), and a variety of immigrant groups
in Italy (Antonini 2010; Bucaria & Rossato 2010), Australia (D’warte 2014), and
England (Cline et al. 2010, 2011; Hall 2004; Hall & Sham 2007; Hall & Robinson
1999; Lucas 2014).
This expansion into new populations and contexts is important, because the
practice is not just about language, or children, broadly defined: it is about par-
ticular children, from particular immigrant families, living in particular locales,
speaking particular languages. How children and parents are viewed and treated,
and thus how they experience the work, may be shaped by the nature of the re-
ceiving context in which they live. Collectively, as a field, we need to look across
these studies and consider variations as well as commonalities, and not assume
that language brokering is experienced in the same way by all, or that it looks the
same in all communities. García Sánchez (2010) delineated how views of Moroccan
immigrants in Spain enter into and shape the children’s experiences of language
brokering, including ways in which children seem to work to protect their families
from judgment. Reynolds and Orellana (2009) also looked at views of Mexicans
in the “white public space” of the United States, and how that shaped language
brokering events. Nash (2014) examined language brokering within the context
of US – Arab relations.
As the field grows, we begin to see language brokering from a range of per-
spectives, not just from that of the youth themselves. New work explores the per-
spectives of social workers (Lucas 2014), doctors (Katz 2014), and both bilingual
and monolingual kids (Cline et al. 2010). We still know rather little about how
parents – or teachers, lawyers, store personnel, or the myriad of other “recipients”
of language brokers’ efforts – experience language brokering. It is easy to forget
that language brokering generally involves at least three people, and that different
perspectives enrich our understanding of what is involved. We should not assume
that co-participants are passive; research might identify a range of ways in which
language brokering is co-constructed.
 Chapter 4. Dialoguing across differences 75

10. The future of language brokering research

Now that the field is maturing, what unites research on this complex, multifaceted,
social, cultural, cognitive, and linguistic practice? Language brokering has been
studied in relation to child development, family dynamics, sociological process-
es, linguistic and cognitive development, learning, and education. A variety of
conceptual frameworks and methodological traditions have been invoked in this
work. Findings from one study do not necessarily translate to another.
Perhaps it is time to begin differentiating these fields of study more, rather
than to lump them all under the broad umbrella of “language brokering research.”
Perhaps such an umbrella is meaningless, given the breadth and variability of the
studies. Or perhaps branches of this work should be like distant cousins: we know
they exist, but we do not really interact with them very much.
Conversely, we might ask: how can we all take advantage of the interdiscipli-
nary nature of the research to build robust research in our own fields of study?
Dialoguing across disciplinary and methodological boundaries allows us see as-
pects of the phenomenon that may be as invisible as the phenomenon itself once
was. They may help us to ask questions that we might not otherwise have been
addressed, and to interpret our own findings in more complex, nuanced, and
robust ways. By identifying gaps in the overarching field of research on this topic,
we can select areas of study that align with our own interests, disciplinary orien-
tations, and methodological predilections, but still contribute to the construction
of knowledge writ large.

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Part 2

NPIT in healthcare, community

and public services
 Chapter 5

Intercultural mediation
and “(non)professional” interpreting
in Italian healthcare institutions

Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

This paper analyses interpreting activities performed by intercultural media-

tors in Italian healthcare services. It proposes a reflection on the type of profes-
sionalism that seems to be required in healthcare institutions where the issue
of dealing with cultural differences between the patients and the operators is
considered of fundamental importance. Our analysis shows that mediators
address cultural differences along the lines of one of two orientations. The first
treats cultural differences as a plurality of options, thus enhancing patients’ ac-
tive participation and choice. The second is based on cultural essentialism and
treats differences in terms of dos and don’ts, preventing interlocutors’ active
participation. We suggest that in order to accomplish the task of dealing with
cultural differences “professionally” in healthcare interaction, mediators and
interpreters alike may be made aware of the advantages and risks involved in
taking each of these two orientations.

Keywords: conversation analysis, intercultural mediation, healthcare

institutions, recontextualisation

1. Intercultural mediation in Italian healthcare services

The organisation of interpreting services in the Italian healthcare system has been
characterised by a divisive debate over the choice adopted by most institutions to
employ “intercultural mediators” rather than “professional interpreters” (see, e.g.,
Baraldi et al. 2008; Luatti 2011). Intercultural mediators do not (necessarily) have
a professional training in interpreting; in Italian healthcare services, however,
they are preferred to professional interpreters, in that they are presumed to be
more competent in dealing with the possibly different “cultural” perspectives of

doi 10.1075/btl.129.05bar
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
84 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

healthcare providers and migrant patients. Intercultural mediators’ competence

is thus assumed to derive from their experience in intercultural communication.
Intercultural communication, in the sense above, is intended as a form of
communication that originates from the existence of different “cultural presup-
positions” (Gumperz 1992) or different cultural identities (Ting-Toomey 1999).
The observed difference is between migrant patients and their background, on
the one hand, and institutions’ expectations, on the other hand, and is considered
necessary for providing adequate healthcare services in multicultural societies
(Goode & Like 2012). The epistemological background of intercultural media-
tion can therefore be described in terms of the so-called “essentialism” (Holliday
2011), a position that looks at cultural differences and identities as fundamental
presuppositions of actions and communication. This epistemological background
determines what is now the mainstream approach to interpreting “as intercultural
mediation,” and provides a framework to explain mediation as a way of “bridging”
different cultural communities (Angelelli 2004, 2012; Penn & Watermeyer 2012).
The notion of intercultural mediation, as the main activity of mediators and
the fundamental necessity of services, as opposed to “mere” interpreting, high-
lights what is the primary goal of Italian healthcare institutions in their relations
with migrants. While interpreting is considered important for achieving commu-
nication, intercultural mediation is considered the necessary component “beyond”
interpreting (e.g. Castiglioni 1996; Ceccatelli Gurrieri 2003; Luatti 2011) to allow
for (intercultural) communication to be effective. The core of the debate (and the
conflict) about the type of professionalism that is needed for healthcare services in
Italy, and that counterposed professional interpreters and experts in intercultural
mediation for a while, can probably be addressed by way of the following question:
what does “going beyond mere interpreting” mean?
Studies in professional community or public service interpreting have focused
on two contrasting positions entailed in institutional interpreting services for
migrants. The first position is that treating intercultural mediation as something
“going beyond” interpreting means to attribute interpreting a reductive function
(Merlini 2009). In this perspective, interpreting is conceptualised as mediation,
with a twofold meaning: (a) it makes cultural differences understandable and man-
ageable (Wadensjö 1998) and (b) it provides a means to bridge different speech
and cultural communities (Angelelli 2004). The second position maintains that
the very fact of “going beyond” interpreting is, in principle, debatable according
to interpreters’ professional ethics, as it involves interfering with communication
between primary participants (Tebble 2012). In this perspective, the very idea
of “managing” talk culturally is considered as implicitly evoking a different and
unappreciated professionalism an “interpreter” should not engage into.
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 85

What to “go beyond mere interpreting” actually means, however, has not been
fully discussed either in the literature on intercultural mediation, which deals
with principles and normative indications defining the “intercultural” component
of mediation (but not the interpreting one), or in the literature on interpreting,
which, similarly, seeks for normative indications accounting for interpreting with-
out interfering. On the one hand, the epistemological presupposition, adopted in
intercultural communication, that cultural differences are “beyond” and “other
than” linguistic differences involved in translation is not empirically grounded,
since mediators’ engagement is primarily required in those cases where linguistic,
not necessarily cultural, differences prevent understanding and effective medical
care. On the other hand, the ethical presupposition that interpreters should only
perform “direct” translation of uttered talk (Hale 2007) runs the risk of being a
mere prescription since a number of studies in community interpreting have now
shown that professional interpreting of talk, if it is to make sense of what is said,
is not limited to direct translation (Bolden 2000; Böser 2013; Cheng Zhan 2012;
Davidson 2000; Metzger 1999; Van de Mieroop et al. 2012). Whether the “going
beyond” searched for in intercultural mediation is in fact a form of interference,
or how far interpreters actually need to “interfere” to guarantee healthcare pro-
fessionals and patients with access to their mutual perspectives, are thus questions
that have probably been overlooked for a long time, in both intercultural mediation
and interpreting studies. Answers to these questions are increasingly coming from
empirical research based on recorded data, which shows the interplay between
intercultural mediation and interpreting and highlights what type of profession-
alism can be considered functional to the healthcare context. In this paper, we
look at some of these data. We shall limit our analysis to look at the ways in which
mediators negotiate cultural differences with the doctors and the patients within
their interpreting practice.

2. Interpreting as intercultural mediation

Research on community interpreting has shown that, in interpreter-mediated in-

teractions, cultural issues are often not immediately translatable and their rendi-
tion needs a clarification work, which is hardly achieved without engagement in
dyadic sequences between the interpreter and either primary participant. In dis-
cussing sequences where utterances are clarified in order to be rendered, Wadensjö
(1998) introduces the idea that interpreting involves interpreters’ coordinating
work. Interpreters’ coordination can be implicit, in, for example, expanding, cut-
ting or modifying turns for renditions, or explicit, through interpreters’ initiatives
that focus on the organisation of the conversation and involve talk with individual
86 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

participants (e.g. requests for repetition or clarification). Wadensjö shows that

forms of coordination are necessary to make sense of interpreter-mediated inter-
actions, and suggests that, in their activity as talk coordinators, interpreters can
be considered “cultural mediators”:
Interpreting as interaction makes it possible to identify non-linguistic features
which link people together, and also non-linguistic differences between people –
differences in world view – which make shared understanding between them
difficult to achieve despite the interpreter’s bridging of the language gap.
 (Wadensjö 1998: 277–278)

What Wadensjö makes clear, here, is that interpreter-mediated interaction in-

volves “differences in world view,” whose understanding and consideration by the
participants require an active work on the part of the interpreter – that is to say,
“adapted” renditions (e.g. expanded, cut or modified) and even engagement in
dyadic sequences with one of the interlocutors to make sense of their contribution
“for the others.”
In a 2006 paper published in a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics, Ian
Mason brings this idea one step further. He notes that, out of the context of the
interaction, utterances are “underdetermined” units and that the actual mean-
ing of utterances in talk is subject to contextual assumptions and participants’
negotiation. He shows examples where interpreters make the utterances of one
interlocutor more explicit to the other by rendering not only what is said in the
utterances, but also the contextual assumptions that are clear to participants in
the interaction.
Mason’s concept of contextual assumptions is not far from what Gumperz
(1992) calls “cultural presuppositions.” Even though Gumperz’s studies do not
consider interpreter-mediated bilingual interaction, he notes that in conversa-
tions involving speakers from different cultures, some contextual assumptions
can be observed, which give meaning to what is said and to the interactional
construction of culture. Cultural presuppositions are highlighted or made salient
through “contextualisation cues,” i.e. verbal and non-verbal signals constructing
“the contextual presuppositions that underlie situated interpretations” and thereby
affecting “how constituent messages are understood” (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz
2009: 24). Contextualisation cues are revealed through language use and may be
usefully taken up by language mediators as indicating that different assumptions
may need to be made explicit to the interlocutors.
Professional interpreting has long been described as “direct” interpreting, in
which “everything” needs to be conveyed (Corsellis 2008; Hale 2007). While, by
and large, there is no argument against the idea that rendition needs to convey
everything that is said (and, in fact, the problem of rendering cultural assumptions
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 87

goes in this direction), direct interpreting seems to subsume entities (utterances or

turns) with “a stable, definable meaning” (Mason 2006: 359). As Mason notes, how-
ever, the meaning of utterances is unstable, and is negotiated under interactional
pragmatic assumptions; therefore, Mason shows that, in interpreter-mediated in-
teractions, meaning achievement through explanation of contextual assumptions
has more to do with mediating than interfering.
Against this background, what qualifies the intercultural dimension of inter-
preter-mediated interactions is that meaning negotiation may involve reinterpre-
tation of differences between cultural presuppositions – a reinterpretation that
has relevant effects on institutional communication processes. Treating cultural
issues involves that interpreters/mediators make different world views and cultural
assumptions explicit, a disclosure which enables them to transform and recontex-
tualise the institutional interaction. Following Gumperz, Baker (2006: 322) high-
lights that context is a resource that is selectively constructed in communication
and that the ongoing interaction can consequently be recontextualised through
specific interpreters’ actions. The contextualisation of interaction then informs
mediation in two ways: on the one hand, cultural presuppositions shape interpret-
er-mediated interactions; on the other hand, these interactions may renew cultural
presuppositions by reinterpreting them in and for the local context.
In what follows, we shall look at some ways in which intercultural mediators in
our data address participants’ (possible) assumptions as revealed through interac-
tional contextualisation cues and recontextualise talk by adjusting their renditions
in order to make them understandable for (all) the participants in the interaction.
This involves proposing new contextual perspectives, with different consequences
for mediators’ coordination of interlocutors’ participation.

3. Aim of this paper

In this paper, we illustrate an analysis of interpreting activities performed by

intercultural mediators in Italian healthcare services. We shall highlight some
ways in which these activities can be observed as practices for the treatment of
cultural issues, in “rendering-in-the-interaction” with and for speakers of different
languages. For this purpose, we shall use a collection of over 200 consultations
involving healthcare providers, migrant patients and intercultural mediators. The
recordings we will look at here have been collected in maternity/gynaecological
settings, with Arabic-speaking or English-speaking women patients from North
and West Africa. The mediators are all women in their thirties having a migra-
tion experience themselves. The data were recorded in the course of a long-term
research study based on the collaboration between a team of researchers and a
88 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

local healthcare institution, which is one of the most advanced in Italy as to “mi-
grant-friendliness” and services for migrants (Chiarenza 2008).
This paper aims to systematise some reflections on “mediator-interpreted”
interactions, which have already emerged elsewhere (Baraldi & Gavioli 2007, 2008,
2010, 2012; Gavioli & Baraldi 2011). While healthcare services involve mediators
as both interpreters and experts of cultures and intercultural communication,
what they precisely do in each of these roles is worth analysing. By looking at
transcribed recordings of mediator-interpreted interactions, our contribution thus
attempts to clarify the consequences of mediators’ actions for patients’ participa-
tion. Our aim is to clarify what is meant with “going beyond mere interpreting”
by looking into the interplay between intercultural aspects of interaction and the
mediators’ rendition work.
The analysis reveals that treating cultural issues implies a high level of medi-
ators’ autonomous design of turns and projection of participants’ next turns. This
level of autonomy is much higher than the level of autonomy that is prescribed for
direct interpreting. While such a high autonomy level can cause an increased risk
for the mediators to mismanage their coordinating work, it seems to be required
in the interaction, in that it is acknowledged and even called for, particularly
by healthcare providers. As a result, possible faults in mediators’ achievement of
communication in the bilingual context under investigation should probably not
be searched for in the amount of autonomy that mediators have, but rather in the
ways in which they handle this autonomy.
Our data show that cultural differences can be handled along the lines of
one of two orientations. The first orientation, which we shall call “intercultural
adaptation,” treats cultural differences as a plurality of options, thus enhancing
patients’ active participation and choice. The second orientation is instead based
on cultural essentialism and treats differences in terms of dos and don’ts, thus de
facto preventing interlocutors’ (particularly patients’) active participation. While
both orientations require mediators’ autonomy, the first cannot per se account for
communicative and clinical success, but generally leads to effective treatment (and
rendition) of different cultural perspectives; the second instead seems to create
obstacles in the interaction.

4. Mediation as intercultural adaptation

Intercultural adaptation is based on the display, in the interaction, of expectations

of participants’ cultural presuppositions and enhances favourable conditions for
participants’ contributions. For example, it has been shown that, in doctor – pa-
tient interactions, interpreters may help patients classify pain on an intensity scale
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 89

by adapting ways of translating technical terms to the patients’ different culture

(Angelelli 2004, 2012). It has also been shown that interpreters may adapt the
communication process to the cultural conditions of patients’ participation, for
example, in the case of South African medical care involving aphasic patients
(Penn & Watermeyer 2012).
In our data, we found different types of turn organisations in which inter-
preters achieve intercultural adaptation. In what follows, we discuss two of these.
The first relies on interpreters’ initiatives and is organised as a substituted, pos-
sibly extended, rendition. The second is based on negotiation with the doctor,
who “authorizes” the mediator to tell the patient about some medical problem or
procedure, and involves dyadic sequences between the interpreter and (mainly)
one of the interlocutors. In both cases, mediators’ renditions are designed with an
orientation to patients’ understanding and, possibly, choice.

4.1 Recontextualising renditions

In one of his examples of effective interpreters’ renditions explaining contextual

assumptions, Mason (2006) quotes an item that has to do with “cultural” knowl-
edge. The example, shown below, involves an immigration officer, an interpreter
and a Polish migrant. In turn 3, the Polish man makes reference to a centre that is
familiar to Polish immigrants in the UK, but possibly not to other UK residents.
The interpreter’s rendition for the immigration officer then substitutes the acro-
nym POSK and replaces it with its extended name plus an explanation of where
it is (King Street) and what types of activities one does there (English classes).

1. IO Did she ever return them [passports] to you?

2. I Zwróciła je?
[Did she give them back?]
3. PM Nie, powiedziała że nam będzie załatwiać szkołę w POSKu.
[No she said that she would arrange school for us in POSK.]
4. I 
W POSKu. [In POSK.] No she said that she would need them
because she was going to arrange for them to attend English
classes at the Polish Social and Cultural Centre in King
Street.
5. IO Your passport is still with this woman?
 (Mason 2006: 367)

In addressing the potential underdeterminacy of the acronym POSK, the inter-

preter reveals and makes relevant a series of assumptions, which are familiar to
her as a Pole living in the UK and possibly not to the immigration officer. The
interpreter does not know precisely whether the immigration officer understands
90 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

references to institutions for Polish immigrants in the UK, but she allows for the
possibility that he does not, thus making this lack of knowledge acceptable in the
(intercultural) conversation. In so doing, the interpreter adjusts her rendition to
meet the immigration officer’s presumed expectations.
In our data, the explicit use of contextualisation cues in the interpreter’s ren-
dition is not rare and accounts for one of the ways in which interpreters promote
intercultural adaptation in their translation work. Let us consider some examples.
The first two (1a and 1b) come from a set of data involving West African patients.
In 1a, the doctor asks about the birth dates of the patient’s children. In turn 2, the
mediator first provides a quasi-literal rendition asking when the patient’s deliveries
took place, and then repeats the rendition in a different form, addressing the age
of the children rather than the dates of the deliveries. The assumption she is refer-
ring to and making relevant here is that, as she explains elsewhere, for Ghanaian
patients, details like birth date, height and weight do not provide relevant infor-
mation about the (health of the) person and these patients may have no record of
such data. By rewording the rendition into “how old are [the children],” she shows
the expectation that this rewording makes her question easier to answer. The me-
diator’s rendition back to the doctor includes the child’s year of birth, reorienting
the answer to the expectations projected in the doctor’s question.

c5-q1a(1a)
1. D: quando sono nati i bambi:ni
When were the children born
2. M: when did you give birth to them. (.) how old are they.
3. D: [in- in the year]
4. P: [ah (.) the] first one is eh:: (.) ten years
5. D: Ten
6. M: ten years = [quindi è nata nel duemila e:
[so she was born in two thousand and:

It is interesting to note that earlier in the encounter, the mediator uses the same
type of rewording to ask the patient about the date of her first menstruation. Here,
the mediator reorients the doctor’s question (which, interestingly enough, is in
English) from an implicit request for a date (of the patient’s first menstruation)
into an explicit request of the patient’s age when she first had her period.

c5-q1b(1b)
1. D: allora ((so)) (.) the first menstruation.
2. M: 
how old were you when you saw your menstruation the first
time.
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 91

Extract 2 comes from our Arabic dataset. Here, the doctor asks the patient whether
she had previous “aborti,” meaning both miscarriages and abortions (the Italian
word aborto includes both meanings). In her rendition in turn 3, the mediator
treats the topic as emotionally sensitive and (1) she uses the expression “any preg-
nancy that did not continue,” thus avoiding more technical words like “abortion”
or “miscarriage” which may not be familiar to Maghrebi speakers, and (2) she
refers to the reassuring presence of the patient’s existing children (“you have two
children”) and to the future one (“now it is the third pregnancy”), thus making
it clear that this is a routine question and does not imply that something is going
wrong in the current pregnancy. The formulation of this rendition includes the
use of an Arabic expression (“al baraka,” i.e. “God bless”), which highlights the
importance of the “existing” children.

c5-q2(2)
1. D: 
poi chiedi se non ha avuto degli altri aborti (.) delle
altre –
Then ask her if she had other abortions (.) other -
2. M: 
ya’ni ‘indik elbaraka waladin w halla’ elhaml ithalith
elbaraka (.) ghir hik waqa’ haml w ma kamal, law ya’ni ma
iktamal la qaddar Allah.

You have two children, God bless them, and now this is your
third pregnancy, God bless it (.) beyond that, was there
any pregnancy that did not continue or –
3. P: La
No

The mediator re-authors the doctor’s question adapting it to the patient’s expected
cultural presuppositions: through her rendition, she adjusts the delicate topic of
abortion in a way that may be more acceptable in the patient’s perspective. These
interpreter’s initiatives, on the one hand, clarify the doctor’s question, seeking the
projected answer and orienting the patient to provide it, and, on the other hand,
they do this by referring to (and thus displaying) cultural presuppositions that may
hinder an appropriate patient’s reply. They also show sensitivity and attention for
the patient’s perspective.
Data on interactions involving intercultural mediators, such as those shown
above, highlight that mediators’ actions may involve rather significant chang-
es of primary participants’ turns aimed to clarify cultural differences that may
emerge between the (Italian/Western) medical culture and the patients’ cultural
perspectives. In these cases, the recontextualisation of the interaction is produced
through a rendition which may reword, even significantly, the doctor’s turns in
order to highlight a potentially different way of addressing topics in the cultures
of the patients. Such rewordings may involve different ways of understanding what
92 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

is pursued in medical talk (e.g. dates, measures), or different ways of addressing

delicate or critical topics (e.g. abortion).

4.2 Authorising recontextualisation

The second type of organisation that we illustrate here involves a doctor’s turn
which introduces a topic that needs to be explained to the patient. Such introduc-
tion or explanation is addressed to the mediator and includes a specific request
that the mediator explain a (medical) problem or procedure to the patient. We thus
have a first dyadic sequence of variable length, where the doctor’s explanation is
given to the mediator, who aligns as a recipient (nodding, and producing yeses,
mhms and other continuers). Normally, this sequence is brought to conclusion
by the mediator with an acknowledgment token, which signals that she is ready
to shift to rendition.
Let us have a look at two sequences, both spanning from the doctor’s introduc-
tion of the topic, including the request “to tell the patient,” to the mediator’s shift
to rendition. Extract 3 below involves an English-speaking Ghanaian couple whose
baby is under medical examination for a serious episode of seizure that occurred
immediately after birth. Here the doctor provides a long explanation about how
the baby’s case is being examined and diagnosed and what outcomes may be the
expected. The mediator does not interrupt the explanation and aligns as a listener
with “yeses” and nodding. The doctor tells the story of the baby-patient’s problem
and emphasizes (twice, see the lines in bold below) what is important that the
mediator tells the parents. As we will see below (5), such rendition takes up the
doctor’s request (and authorization) “to tell the parents.”

c5-q3(3)
1. D: 
la cosa ovviamente importante è un po’ la storia che
lei ha, > le cose che invece un pochino ci preoccupano
diciamo< (.) che è importante che loro sappiano (.) .hh
eh: è la storia, cioè com’è stata la cosa nel senso che è
stata anche un po’ una sorpresa per noi perché lei si è
ripresa molto pre:sto, subito:, è stata rianimata anche
po:co, quindi devo dire che ha avuto una ripresa molto
rapida (0.2) la sorpresa è stata un pochino quella notte
che appunto invece è partita con queste convulsioni ed è
stata intubata [addirittura

what is obviously important is the history she has, >what
is a bit worrying let’s say< (.) what is important for them
to know (.) .hh e:rm is the history, I mean how this event
occurred I mean it came as some surprise for us because she
recovered very qui:ckly, immediately, she was reanimated
very quickly, so I have to say that her recovery was very
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 93

rapid (0.2) what was unexpected was instead that night when
seizures started and she was [even intubated
2. M: [sì ((yes))
3. D: 
quindi insomma è stata proprio male in quel momento lì
(0.2) allora, un po’ questo andamento è chiaramente
preoccupante perché fa pensare anche a qualcosa di: di
sofferenza prima forse del fatto proprio del parto, dove
lei ha sicuramente avuto un fatto acuto, però fa pensare
anche a qualcosa che possa essere un po’ più datato, alcune
ore prima del parto stesso, di una sofferenza forse più
cronica

so I mean she was really ill in that moment (0.2) so, this
evolution has been really worrying because we have thought
of something of: some disease that occurred perhaps before
this episode possibly during the delivery, she definitely
had an acute episode, but it may also be something older,
some hours before the delivery, possibly a chronic disease
4. M: ((nodding)) mhm:
5. D: 
cosa che è anche un po’ avallata dalla risonanza magnetica
.hh che è l’altra cosa che ci preoccupa (.) eh: la
risonanza magnetica fa vedere delle immagini un po’
più diffuse di apparente sofferenza (.) queste immagini
preoccupano >nel senso che sono in zone< che possono dare
degli effetti poi su quello che è sia la motilità sia
sull’aspetto cognitivo, però:: questo è quello che abbiamo
in mano ora (.) tutte cose che sicuramente la inseriscono
in una bambina a rischio di problematiche neurologiche,
questo è bene che lo sappiano (.) a fronte di questo
però è una bimba che ha fatto un buon percorso in questo
ultimo periodo quindi devo dire che l’aspetto clinico fa
anche sperare in qualcosa che forse non è così grave come
[potremmo pensare

an idea that is supported by the results from the scan test
.hh this is another thing that worries us (.) erm the scan
test shows images of an apparently slightly more widespread
disease (.) these images are worrying >in the sense that
they are in areas< which may cause consequences both on
motility and on cognitive capacity, however: this is where
we are now (.) all elements which suggest that the baby is
at risk of neurological disease, this is something they
have to know (.) in contrast though, the evolution of the
baby in the last period has been good, so I can say that
the clinical examination hopefully suggests that she has a
disease that is possibly not so serious [as we might think
6. M: [°sì° ((yes)) (0.2) ((the mediator shifts to rendition))

Work on interpreter-mediated interaction has shown that mediators’ contribu-

tions such as nodding and gaze (see Gavioli 2012; Mason 2012) are “visible” to all
of the participants in the interaction and may have a regulatory function, in that
they elicit one participant to continue talking and put the other “on hold.” This is
94 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

what occurs in the extract above. A concluding “sì,” by the mediator, followed by
a two-second pause, signals shift to rendition for the parents.
Extract 4 provides a similar, though shorter, sequence. Here the doctor in-
troduces the topic of prenatal screening underlining what needs to be explained
to the patient (turns 1 and 9 in bold). She concludes turn 9 by explicitly asking
the mediator to explain the patient about the prenatal screening system in Italy
and offering to supply more information (“can you explain it a bit? Do you know
all about it?”). The mediator confirms that she knows about the system (“Yes yes
yes the amniocentesis yes,” “we talked about it more than once”) and is explicitly
authorised to carry out the task (“try out,” see turns 10–13 in bold below). The
doctor’s authorisation is followed by the mediator’s shift to rendition.

c5-q4(4) (PH is P’s husband)

1. allora adesso le spieghiamo che::
D:
So now let’s explain her that
2. M: mhm.
3. D: allor- l’ecografia: queste cos- gli esami del sangue che
facciamo a tutte le donne sono gratu::iti – e:

oka- ultrasound: these thing- the blood tests that we give
to all women, they are free:: and:
4. M: =oka:y
5. D: =e sono per tutti.
=and they are for everybody.
6. PH: mhm.
7. D: E poi ci sono degli esami che invece si possono fare se
uno li vuole fare. (.) E che si pagano fino a trentacinque
anni.

And then there are tests that instead one can do if they
want to (.) and these are paid under thirty-five years of
age
8. M: ok[ay.
9. D:  [le spieghi l’amniocentesi (.) un pochino la sai
spiegare? Sai già [tutto?
 [explain her about the amniocentesis (.) can you explain
it a bit? Do you know all [about it?
10. M: [sì sì sì. l’amniocentesi sì[::
[yes yes yes the amniocentesis ye[::s
11. D: [lo sai
 [you know
about it
12. M: =è più di una volta che abbiamo parlato –
we talked about it more than once -
13. D: prova mo’
go on try

Although the topic and format of the doctor’s turn in extracts 3 and 4 are different,
they are both designed in such a way as to (a) make clear what the parents/patient
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 95

need(s) to know and (b) ask the mediator explicitly to pass the explanation and all
relevant details to the patient.
The renditions that follow these explanations and invitations to (re)explain are
taken up by the mediators as authorisations to “tell the patients.” These renditions
are designed in such a way as to adapt doctors’ main point for the patients, thus
recontextualising the interaction. Even in this case, the mediator’s rewording is
significant and addresses topics that are presumed to be more familiar and un-
derstandable to the interlocutors.
In extract 5, which is the continuation of extract 3, the mediator retells the
(medical) story of the baby to the parents. She mentions that the baby’s symptoms
were really worrying when she had her first seizure attack, but that she is recov-
ering surprisingly well and that this is an unexpected relief for the doctors. In
her rewording, she addresses cultural differences dealing with possibly different
perceptions of epilepsy in the African culture (e.g. “In Africa we don’t know what
it is,” “they don’t know how […] It can kill ‘cause it can paralyze somebody,” see
turn 1 in bold below), and adds details that help the parents locate the period when
the baby’s conditions were more serious (“at the beginning she was (.) I came here
to visit her and I saw her (.) and me too I was worried! I tried to talk with you just
to try to relax you,” see turn 4 in bold below). She concludes by praising God’s will
that the baby will finally recover completely, thus rewording the doctor’s explana-
tion that such a good response to the therapy is surprising and his hopes that the
prognosis can now develop into a better one.

c5-q(5) (continuation of extract 3)

1. M: 
°sì° (2) the doctor said that he want to let you
understand the story of this baby, how she was born (.)
‘cause never have this good aspect of because he was
worried, everybody was worried after she was born (.)
because when they carried out exam and (?) immediately
after some time after some days, they were also surprised
too, ‘cause what happened to her suppose to give her
problems, every problems. (2)> you know in Africa we have
children that this convulsions do worried<, but most of
us don’t know what it is, they don’t know how since this
convulsions can kill ‘cause when convulsions come, you
know how it is? ((she mimes trembling)) you have seen
before? It can kill ‘cause it can paralyze somebody (.)
so: they were surprised the way the baby pit up, you
know? Now there is no damage in her, they don’t discover
any damage any damage in her, in exams they have done.
(.) ‘cause the exam of the machine they did before, that
would check how the convulsions is going to damage, you
understand?
2. P1: [°°mm°°
3. P2: [((nods))
96 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

4. M: 
so: the way she just recovered immediately and now she’s
ok, she’s mo:ving, she’s eating by herse:lf (2) at the
beginning she was (.) I came here to visit her and I saw
her (.)and me too I was worried! <I tried to talk with you
just to try to relax you< so: when I saw her I was having
these fears, but thank God for (?) knowledge and knowledge
of her (.) Lord God that, you know, did everything and
now:: everything is ok
5. P1: °°Ye[:s°°
6. P2: [yes

Extract 4, too, is followed by a very long sequence (see extract 6 below) where the
mediator explains the screening system to the patient, informing her about those
tests that are free of charge and those that are not and the benefits that periodical
blood tests can give to pregnant women and their babies. This explanation goes
on for 12 turns (not shown here). In extract 6, we can see the sequence where the
mediator informs the patient about the possibility of taking amniocentesis, finally
getting to the rendition of the last item suggested by the doctor in extract 4. It can
be seen that the mediator presents this information to the patient very delicately,
saying that there is no specific indication for this patient to take the test and that
explanation about it is given “just to inform” the patient about the possibility she
has to take this additional test, if she wants to. The informative purpose of the
mediator’s explanation is repeated three times (in bold below), and reference is
made to the Italian (medical) culture, where the test is offered as a routine that may
not be taken up by all patients (“because in Italy they take it and then everybody
is free to take it or not, each person can decide if they want to have it,” see turn 1,
three lines from the top)

c5-q6(6) (continuation of extract 4)

1. M: 
W fih bitulik fahs ya’ni biyin’aml li lnisaa smiytu
fahs amniocentesi (.) ana ba’tiha kama’luma kawn ya’ni
kul imraa lazim ta’raf hadi l ma’luma kawn fi Italia
biyin’amal w ba’dha al insane huwa hur yi’ml li huwa
biyiqarar inu biti’milih aw ma biti’milih hada lfahs huwa
‘ibara ‘an fahs amniocentesi illi huwa ‘ibara ‘an unbub
daqiq bidakhluh biqarib min sirra biyakhdu maa min sail li
‘and tifl w biya’malu ‘alih analisi tahalil hatta yishufu
ida kan tifl mzian walla monghuli walla mush tabi’i (.)
hada lfahs biya’maluh likul nisaa li fuq khamsa wa talatin
sana bidun ma yidfa’u ‘alih fulus (.) nisaa li ‘amraha
taht khamsa wa talatin sana kama’luma bit’rfha (.) w fih
yalli mumkin bitfakar innu ta’malu halla’ ta’tina khabar
liannu nakhudlha maw’id ma’a tabibat aljinat almas’ula
bihadi lhaja fa antum kama’luma kafahs ya’ni ‘rftu ‘anu
(.) w lakin habin in ta’mlu had l fahs walla [mtamainin w
mtawklin ‘ala li Allah ba’t?
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 97


And then she is saying that there is another check-up that
they have for pregnant women it’s called the amniocentesis
(.) I give this to you as information because all pregnant
women should be informed about it, because in Italy they
take it and then everybody is free to take it or not,
each person can decide if they want to have it, this
amniocentesis consists in a small tube that is introduced
near the navel and is used to take some liquid around the
baby, with a diagnostic purpose to see if (the baby) is
normal or handicapped or retarded (.) this is a free test
for women over thirty-five (.) to take it women under
thirty-five, just to inform you, have to pay (.) if you
are interested in taking it, just tell us soon so that
we can make an appointment with the gynecologist who is
specialized in this area (.) this is an information that
you now have (.) so do you want to take it [or do you put
yourselves at the mercy of God?
2. PH: [mntamainin ‘ala illi Allah ba’tlina iyah
[we put ourselves at the mercy of God
3. PH: mntamainin ‘ala illi Allah ba’tlina iyah
we put ourselves at the mercy of God
4. M: illi Allah ba’atu
at the mercy of God
5. M: allora (.) come informazione l’abbiamo avuta poi:: (.)
quello che viene da dio::

okay (.) the information we had it then:: (.) what’s in
God’s mercy::
6. D: O::kay
7. M: senza problem
without any problem

In extracts 5 and 6, the rendition of the doctor’ contribution is designed as to

recontextualise a medical case or a screening routine in a way that makes the in-
formation more likely to be understood by the patients. This includes rewording
the baby’s treatment in simple words (e.g. “the way she just recovered immediate-
ly and now she’s ok, she’s mo:ving, she’s eating by herse:lf,” extract 5, turn 4) or
explanation of the amniocentesis procedure. It also includes mentioning possible
differences in understanding illnesses in the different cultures (in Africa, we be-
lieve epilepsy leads to paralysis; in Italy, they offer this test, but one is free to take
it or not). Probably, and most significantly, in both cases, we have rewordings
that make patients’ possible contextual assumptions relevant and such contextual
assumptions are raised to reassure the patient(s): seizures do not lead to paralysis
and can be cured; amniocentesis is just one of the many tests one can take and
there is no prescription to take it. The authorisation the mediator takes up from
the doctor allows her to “tell the patient” in ways she believes to be culturally
appropriate, and in these cases, mediators show ample autonomy in designing
98 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

renditions of doctors’ turns for the patients. While we cannot exclude that other
types of rendition may be more effective in facilitating the patients’ involvement,
interlocutors participate showing understanding and appreciation. It may be ob-
jected that simply “involving” the interlocutors is not enough and that if rendition
of contents is not accurate, interlocutors may participate on a wrong or misleading
track. While a lot is added in the mediators’ renditions, however, the medical con-
tent is not altered. In extract 5, the mediator possibly overstresses reassurance, but
a clear aim of reassuring the patient is undoubtedly in the doctor’s turn as well.
Our data show that what mediators do through their rewording is working on a
recontextualisation of information into what they interpret to be the perspective of
the patient. It is a perspective that, in the extracts shown here, encounters patients’
understanding and appreciation.

5. Cultural essentialism

Obstacles to patients’ participation seem instead to be found when mediators’

recontextualising actions orient to the epistemology of cultural essentialism.
Essentialism refers to cultural differences in terms of norm rather than choice,
and addresses behaviour as cultural dos and don’ts. Let us consider two examples.
Extract 7 is from a long sequence where a newborn baby is checked before
being discharged from hospital. In telling the patient that the baby is fine, the
mediator asks how many children she has and the patient answers she has five.
Possibly taking up the doctor’s surprised reaction about an unusually (for Italian
standards) large family, the mediator introduces the problem of contraception.
Instead of offering the patient a series of possibilities, as it occurs in other encoun-
ters in our data, here the mediator introduces contraception in terms of “what you
need to do if you do not want to get back to Ghana” (see turns 9 and 12 in bold)
and uses stereotypes about the African identity: “Africans don’t like condoms”
(see turn 15 in bold). Even the invitation to come and visit the healthcare service
for being informed about contraception alternatives (turns 12, 19 and 21) is given
in prescriptive terms, as it were a sort of an order.

c5-q7(7)
1. M: you know this problem they are talking to=
2. D: =be:ne.=
3. M: =(?) (.)
4. P: º(it’s[ true)º
5. M:  [so:: if your hu:sband is going to make love
go=an’=buy co:ndom.
6. P: ((smiles))
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 99

7. M: <or: you go on wid der::

8. P: it’s true (i: know::) (.)
9. M: 
you canno:t (face the baby) you ha:ve (at this point) this
pro:blem eh? <>.hhh< you want to (pack) the children and
go to ghana? (.)
10. P: ha >ha=ha<=[ah::
11. D: [eh?
(2.0)
12. M: o:kay. (.) so if you don’t want to go and (stay) in ghana

with these children, don’t stop (please) >.hhh< go- co:me
to: via Modena ((address of the women’s health service))
an’ we’ll gi:ve you what you will be taking (here), <so
that you don’t get pregn[a:nt.
13. ? [(?)
14. P: (no) i will
15. M: if your husband ca’ no use condom <i know a:frican maybe

dont li:ke con[doms.
16. P: [(yes)
(2.0)
17. M: 
if you ca’ no’ use, (.) der is pills dat you can (be
takin) or you come an’ (seek).
(6.0)
18. M: you understand? (.) <don’t stay too long eh?
19. P: I will do

It may be interesting to notice that the patient here aligns to the mediator’s orders
with promises that she will behave as indicated: “I will” (turn 14), “I will do”
(turn 19) and does not say anything after the mediator’s final recommendation
in turn 17 (see the long pause between turns 17 and 18). In this extract, then, the
mediator enhances a normative social construction of the differences between
the two cultures involved, which the patient has little alternative than complying
with. In fact, there is little participation from both the patient and the doctor,
and the cultural presuppositions about “African” behaviours and preferences and
“Italian” expectations are posed as hardly debatable. The mediator’s reference to
cultural differences thus promotes the interactional construction of prejudice and
is problematic in terms of interlocutors’ participation.
Extract 8 is taken from a sequence where a Ghanaian pregnant woman is
checked for a problem of heavy sickness, which has prevented her from eating
regularly. In order to check the patient’s weight gain, the doctor asks about her
weight before pregnancy. The patient’s answer (“eighty kilos”) is met with surprise
by the doctor since eighty kilos is more or less the same as the patient weights at
the moment of the examination. The mediator aligns with the doctor’s surprise
and, together, they attribute the patient a misunderstanding of the request or
a mis-knowledge of the requested detail (data not shown). Later on in the con-
versation, the sequence shown in extract 8 takes place. Here, again, the patient
100 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

is asked about specific information, her height in this case, and she answers she
does not know. This, together with another expression of surprise from the doctor
(“this is weird,” see turn 19 below), probably prompts the interpreter to explain
the “African” culture’s attitude in dealing with details like height and weight (see
turn 20 in bold below).

c5-q8(8)
1. D: quant’è alta la signora?
How tall is the lady?
2. M: do you know your height?
3. P: No.
4. M: ((laughs))
5. D: SAI QUALCOSA VIVIANA:? ((patients’ name))
DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING VIVIANA:?
6. ((laughter))
((13 turns omitted in which the patient is measured))
19. D: (questa è be:lla)
(this is weird)
20. M: ((laughs)) eh eh (.) no:: nessuno guarda questo in africa.
quanto è alta:, quanto pesi, no nessuno mai

((laughs)) eh eh (.) No:: nobody looks at this in Africa
how tall she is:, your weight, no nobody ever.

This explanation of a cultural difference is again provided in normative, undebat-

able terms, as “what Africans do,” which rules out the possibility for the patient (or
the doctor) to see alternatives or to be presented with choices. This, again, makes
the interlocutors’ participation very unlikely.
The contextual assumption that is addressed and explained by the mediator
in the extract above is a relevant cultural difference and is recurrently referred to
in our data. It can, though, be treated in different ways. In extract 1, as we have
seen, it was used to provide an alternative way to ask about dates in the patient’s
culture. Here, it is posed to categorise the patient’s behaviour as cultural behaviour
and reinforces a prejudice about the patient’s communicative competence: later
in the interaction, it will become clear that the weight measure the patient gave to
the doctor was correct and that rather than putting on weight, she lost two kilos
in the course of her nine-month pregnancy.
It is interesting to note that none of the mediators’ initiatives in extracts 7 and
8 is a rendition of a turn or a sequence. The explanations provided by the mediators
here seem to occur as a reply to a doctor’s surprised reaction to some patient be-
haviour (“Five children?,” “You don’t know about your height?”), a behaviour that
is thus signalled as “unfamiliar” to the doctor. The mediators’ replies account for
the patients’ behaviour, and, in so doing, they introduce an essentialist perspective
on cultural differences, which has relevant consequences for the interlocutors’
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 101

participation. The mediators’ explanations account for the patients’ perspectives,

still treating them as unfamiliar and diverse, and, since the mediator speaks “on
behalf of ” the patients, the patients have no option to contribute by displaying
their attitudes, behaviour or perspective. This form of mediation stresses cultural
differences in terms of the difference between a positive Us and a negative Them,
thus enhancing ethnocentric forms that recontextualise the interaction (Baraldi
& Gavioli 2008). While ethnocentrism is usually expected from institutions’ or
institutional representatives’ lack of interest or sensitivity for migrants, these data
show that it, in fact, can be a consequence of mediators’ initiatives.
What is interesting is that these initiatives are probably intended as providing
support to the patients, by explaining and thus making their behaviour acceptable;
instead, in the interaction, they suffocate their voices and construct stereotype.
The simple action of describing behaviour in terms of cultural differences ascribes
the interlocutors to a category and a set of fixed expectations that characterise that
category, depriving them of their personal contribution. These data then suggest
that ethnocentrism has more to do with impeding participation than with lack of
consideration and understanding of interlocutors’ behaviour. In this sense, it can
be considered a specific risk of (intercultural) mediation.

6. Conclusions: Achieving professionalism in interpreting

and intercultural mediation

Our results show that mediators who carry out interpreting work in Italian doctor-­
patient bilingual interactions address different contextual assumptions and design
them for the interlocutors. This work of recontextualisation is based on two dif-
ferent orientations. The first is what we have called intercultural adaptation and
the second has been described here as cultural essentialism. Within the first per-
spective, cultural differences are presented as an enriched choice, which doctors
and patients can take into account when making decisions. Within the second
perspective, cultural differences are presented as normative, and, although they
may account for some behaviour that has been observed in the interaction as
unfamiliar, this perspective does not open up the possibility for interlocutors (par-
ticularly patients) to deal with that behaviour directly. In this way, the mediators’
intervention impedes, rather than promotes, interlocutors’ participation and leads
to the interactional construction of stereotypes and prejudice. Thus, the risk in-
volved in the autonomous initiatives taken by mediators in the interaction consists
in the possibility that they orient to cultural essentialism in treating participants’
different assumptions. Cultural essentialism has the consequence of ascribing in-
terlocutors to a group rather than treating them as “individual participants,” a
102 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

burden which encumbers interlocutors’ active participation, thus causing possible

failure of an effective doctor–patient interaction.
Our data also show that a high degree of mediators’ autonomy is necessary
to deal with underdeterminacy of interactional contributions. We have seen that
the mediators’ interpreting work involves identifying possibly different cultural
assumptions in talk and making them explicit. This may prompt significant recon-
textualisation work in order to make culturally sensitive topics clear and accept-
able to the interlocutors. Mediators, in the interaction, make relevant a series of
assumptions that are offered, to patients in particular, to enable them to make their
(informed) choices or to be reassured about medical problems and procedures.
The importance of this work is acknowledged by the healthcare providers, who
authorise the mediators to explain medical issues in ways that are understandable
and acceptable for the patients. Our previous work has shown that doctors’ author-
isation to mediators to deal with contents “in their own terms” is frequent in inter-
preted doctor–patient interactions (Baraldi & Gavioli 2014; Gavioli 2015), which
may also encourage the mediators to deal with cultural issues autonomously. In
particular, our data show that although an essentialist outcome of the combination
between doctors’ authorisation and mediators’ initiative cannot be excluded, some
mediators’ autonomy is useful or even necessary for enhancing mutual adaptation
of cultural assumptions. This work on intercultural adaptation is relevant and
pursued in these types of interactions, and avoiding to cope with it may increase
problems of migrant patients’ participation in medical interaction, as highlighted
in the relevant literature (e.g. Meeuwesen et al. 2006; Schouten et al. 2007).
Some conclusions on the type of interpreter-mediator professionalism that
seems to be required in the interactions we have analysed here can be drawn at
this point. First, the mediators’ coordinating work that is involved in intercultural
adaptation suggests the reasons why interpreters’ professionalism, as prescribed
in codes of ethics, may convey attitudes that are too restrictive to adequately deal
with bilingual communication of the type we have seen here. Codes of ethics
seem to be more concerned with preventing interpreters’ interference than mak-
ing (cultural) issues clear, and they thus impose strong limits on the interpreter-­
mediators’ autonomy. As we have seen, such autonomy is necessary and sought for,
and preventing professionals to use it does not help them develop responsibility in
its management. As we have seen, mediators’ professionalism requires very serious
consideration of and capacity in handling their autonomy as coordinators in order
to orient their initiatives to intercultural adaptation rather than cultural essen-
tialism. In other words, it is not the amount of autonomy that makes mediation
less effective. Rather it is the mediators’ capacity of managing their autonomy. A
suggestion that interpreters can thus derive from the work of mediators is that
 Chapter 5. Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting 103

utmost attention is required in achieving a “professional” use of autonomy to work

on (effective) intercultural adaptation.
Second, a hint that emerges from the data discussed here is that intercultural
adaptation occurs within and as part of mediators’ work of rendition. On the con-
trary, extracts that show an orientation to cultural essentialism are non-renditions
contributed by the mediators in reply or as a reaction to a doctor’s observation
of a cultural difference. While the association of intercultural adaptation with
rendition work cannot be generalised and we cannot exclude that orientations to
cultural essentialism emerge when treating cultural differences in renditions, a
focus on rendering may make turn-design “in the other’s perspective” more like-
ly. This may suggest that a focus on rendition work, as indicated in professional
interpreters’ conduct, may help mediators adhere to the orientation of adaptation
and prevent them from getting into advocacy, with the consequent risk of an essen-
tialist defence strategy. A suggestion coming from interpreters’ work that should
not be overlooked in outlining profiles for professional community interpreters
and mediators is that rendition is an extremely important intercultural operation
that requires high professional achievement.
Third, mediators’ orientation to intercultural adaptation may entail forms of
empowerment of patients’ participation that are pursued as relevant achievements
in mediator-interpreted interaction between healthcare providers and migrant pa-
tients. This orientation is based on the patients’ personal needs for care. It therefore
seems that intercultural mediation can be culture-centred only if it is patient-cen-
tred, i.e. if it empowers patients’ participation, regardless of their specific cultural
identity. A suggestion that may be derived from this study, and which may affect
the professionalism of mediators and interpreters alike in this type of interaction,
is, then, that expertise in (intercultural) mediation seems to have to do more with
expertise in coordinating interlocutors’ participation and “room for speaking,”
rather than with knowing and treating their cultural presuppositions.
In conclusion, our data show that mediator-interpreted talk involves the in-
teractional management of a complex relationship among choices of coordination,
choices of rendition and treatment of cultural issues. Depending on their orien-
tations, mediators’ initiatives may recontextualise the interaction with different
consequences for migrant patients’ participation in talk. Promotion of patients’
participation is given priority with respect to knowledge and “understanding” of
their cultural attributions, and this is what, in fact, allows for intercultural com-
munication to be achieved effectively.
104 Claudio Baraldi and Laura Gavioli

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Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman.
 Chapter 6

More than mere translators

The identities of lay interpreters
in medical consultations

Anna Claudia Ticca

LabEx ASLAN, ICAR lab, Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon

Lay interpreters participating in medical consultations engage in several ac-

tivities that go beyond the mere translation of talk. This study aims to identify
some of such activities and the participants’ associated identity categories as
they emerge and are made relevant in these social encounters. The analysis
of a large corpus of video-recorded medical consultations in a rural clinic in
Yucatan (Mexico), where both Spanish and Yucatec Maya are spoken, shows
that lay interpreters engage not only in oral translation, which is the expected
activity, but also in other activities. In so doing, they display further social
identities, such as that of a “social peer” or an “expert,” with which their
co-participants might align or misalign. This study thus sheds lights on how lay
interpreters navigate through the medical consultation and on how they adjust
to local needs and their co-participants’ expectations as to their role in a given
situation during an encounter.

Keywords: conversation analysis, video recordings, lay interpreting, medical

consultations, identity, misalignment, positioning

1. Introduction

This study investigates the social identities displayed by lay interpreters 1 partici-
pating in face-to-face medical consultations in a rural Mexican village. In previous
work (Ticca 2008), I have described the background context of these consultations
and reported the analysis of medical visits occurring in the presence of bilingual
speakers doing translation. I have shown some of the complexity of the interaction

1. In this study, I will use the expression “lay interpreters” to refer to lay people participating in
bilingual interactions as translators due to their language competences.

doi 10.1075/btl.129.06tic
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
108 Anna Claudia Ticca

as the interpreter transits from translating linguistic meanings to bridging cul-

tural differences (Ticca 2013). In the present study, I will expand on this previous
research and describe some of the bilingual speakers’ identities as they emerge in
the course of the consultation. The guiding idea is that participants to an inter-
action do not carry one static and pre-established identity, whether societal (e.g.
gender, age, class, ethnicity, religion, etc.) or institutional (e.g. profession, academic
level, political activity, etc.). Rather, identities emerge as part of interactional work,
that is, they are locally constituted and exhibited in relation to the activity being
accomplished (Sacks 1972; 1992; Antaki & Widdicombe 1998; Greco et al. 2014).
In this view, participants display how they are to be seen, and accordingly, how
their actions should be interpreted. This implies a relationship between the way
participants orient towards each other and the membership categorisation they
are about to display (Sacks 1992).
This theoretical perspective on social identities, discussed in more detail in
Section 3, is particularly useful in describing the work of lay interpreters. This is
because the usual institutional identity associated with a participant’s profession,
in this case “professional interpreter,” is obviously ill-defined in the case of these
“lay interpreters” who have received no professional training and have little experi-
ence. In such a case, the relevant identities are developed through the interactional
work itself in the context of the broader array of socially available possibilities.
We know that both professional (Berk-Seligson 1990; Wadensjö 1998; Bolden
2000) and lay interpreters (Harris & Sherwood 1978; Lang 1976; Knapp-Potthoff
& Knapp 1987) are full and agentive participants in interaction. However, we still
need to understand when and why these participants step into the conversation,
what they do and how they do it, and how they are treated by their co-participants.
By studying lay interpreters’ work in actual situations, we are able to show that
these participants not only deal with practical problems of translation and organ-
isation of interaction (Wadensjö 1998; Baraldi & Gavioli 2012), but also initiate or
respond to other cognitive and interactional activities such as matching symptoms
to an illness or engaging in non-serious talk. These co-occurring events show
the heterogeneity of the lay interpreters’ job, which is to respond to the multiple
emerging contingencies and constraints of the unfolding interaction. In this sense,
studying lay interpreting in its discursive and interactional dimensions allows us
to weave a finer profile of these participants and to better articulate their functions
and roles as well as their efficacy in helping carry out bilingual consultations.
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 109

2. Identity in interaction: An emergent phenomenon

According to an ethnomethodological approach, participants in a social encoun-

ter are constantly engaged in locally interpreting the linguistic and interactional
practices of their everyday life, and simultaneously displaying this understanding,
in a reflexive way (Garfinkel 1967). Harvey Sacks’ empirical investigation of how
language practices are used to display and organise individuals’ everyday activ-
ities reveals what he calls membership categorisation devices (Sacks 1992). Such
“devices” describe the way members of a social group refer to social categories
to organise and understand the social world. The basic idea is that participants
display how they are to be seen and, accordingly, how their actions should be in-
terpreted. This implies a relationship between the way participants orient towards
each other and the categorisation they are about to display. The crucial aspect of
Sack’s perspective is that “categories” are not the result of the analyst’s speculation,
but are “members’ categories,” that is, they are made up and used by participants
in order to make sense of the activity underway. As has been extensively stated in
previous works (see Hester & Eglin 1997; Antaki & Widdicombe 1998), this per-
spective is in contrast to other socio-psychological approaches (see among others
Tajifel 1981), which consider people’s identity as the product of social phenomena
and identify individuals in terms of the macro socio-categories to which they are
ascribed (by analysts as well as other participants), enabling a sort of prediction
about an individual’s form of social action and self-interpretation. Bucholtz &
Hall (2005) offer a sociocultural linguistic approach to the study of identity, which
anchors identity to interaction and understands it as “an intersubjectively achieved
social and cultural phenomenon” (Bucholtz & Hall 2005: 607), thus echoing the
basic ideas described so far.
Inspired by Goffman’s (1981) concept of the participation framework, de-
veloped to articulate the participants’ roles and categories in conversation,
Zimmerman (1998) expands the idea that participants orient to identities situated
in the here and now of the interaction, which do not refer to, nor reflect, a macro
social structure.
From this perspective, then, “discourse” identities, that is, those assumed in
the course of an interaction in relation to those of the co-participants (e.g. the
current speaker, the recipient, the questioner, etc.), emerge within a context in
which participants gather together and interact to accomplish, among others, a
specific social activity (e.g. paying a family visit, seeking medical care, buying
bread at a boulangerie, etc.).
Such perspective is particularly appropriate for the analyses of interpreters and
for the description of the type of interactional and social work these participants
accomplish in medical consultations. The very same status of “non-professional”
110 Anna Claudia Ticca

or “untrained” attributed to bilingual participants poses some problems of cat-

egorisation. Such label makes reference to something these interpreters lack – a
certain level of professionalisation – but tells us very little about who they are,
what they (are supposed to) do, how they are to be treated by their co-participants
and what the latter expect from them. In very general terms, “non-professional”
interpreters are lay people invited to participate in a social encounter by virtue of
their language competences. In such context, only broad agendas and goals are set,
the main one being bridging language differences among participants who gather
together to accomplish a social activity (e.g. a medical consultation).
The aim of this study is to describe some of the recurrent activities these in-
terpreters accomplish in medical consultations, and therefore to reveal some of
the local identities they exhibit.

3. Lay interpreters in medical consultations

In multilingual countries where indigenous languages are spoken, lay interpreters

are very often the only resource available to facilitate communication, particular-
ly in healthcare communication (see Ticca 2015). Yet, investigations describing
the interpreting practice in such multilingual settings are still scarce (but see
Harvey 2013). More attention has been given to multilingual situations involving
migrant populations, where semi- and professionalised interpreters/mediators are
usually more available (see, among many others, Pöchhacker & Shlesinger 2007;
Pasquandrea 2011; Baraldi & Gavioli 2012).
One of the issues driving the researchers’ interest refers to the “quality” of
interpreting (for a literature review on studies in the medical domain, see Flores
2005). What emerges from this research is the negative impact of untrained in-
terpreters on patient care and a call for professional interpreters (Bührig & Meyer
2004; Valero-Garcés & Downing 2007). Studies on consultations in French hos-
pitals with untrained interpreters have shown partial and inaccurate translations
(Gajo & Traverso 2002) and episodes of the patients’ marginalisation (Traverso
2002). Further investigations in the same context have reported the systematic
mobilisation of the interpreters’ intercultural knowledge rather than their lin-
guistic skills, and thus the impact of culture-specific meanings in such encounters
(Traverso 2003).
Different results emerge from research in medical consultations in South
Africa, where English as well as several indigenous languages are spoken. Here,
there is a positive impact on the patients’ engagement in medical talk of interpret-
ers who share with the patient the same cultural and linguistic background (Penn
& Watermeyer 2012).
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 111

As part of my own research on untrained interpreting in the Yucatan region of

Mexico (Ticca 2008), I have analysed bilingual medical consultations interpreted
by bilingual members of the local community. One of the main results concerns
the complex interpretive work carried out by lay interpreters, who rely both on
the understanding of the interactional activities and on their cultural knowledge.
Although difficulties in understanding arise during talk, it is also evident that
their emergence depends in part on the background of the ongoing interaction.
On the whole, these studies reveal interpreting to be a multidimensional
phenomenon (i.e. multimodal – verbal and non-verbal –, interactional, cultural,
social), implying the accomplishment of social actions that respond to specific
interactional and social goals, and emerging constraints and troubles, whose in-
tricacy is still in need to be studied.

4. The setting, the data and the method

Inspired by the research tradition of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis,

the data analysed in this study consist of naturally occurring medical consulta-
tions video-recorded in a bilingual site in Mexico, where both Mexican Spanish
(MS) and Yucatec Maya (YM) are spoken. The data were collected during several
field trips (from 2006 to 2013) in the Yucatan. In the majority of the cases, the
doctors, who come from other areas of the country, have no knowledge of the
indigenous language, whereas the patients can be either monolingual (YM) or
bilingual. Given the language diversity, it is common for patients to arrive at the
clinic with a bilingual partner, usually a family member, or for a bilingual speaker
already present in the clinic (i.e. the cleaning lady) to participate in the consulta-
tion. These participants are members of the local community and live in the village
where the clinic is based.
To collect the data, one video camera was placed inside the doctor’s office. The
selected data have been transcribed by the author and the text in YM translated
with the aid of native speakers. 2 The transcription conventions, closely following
the symbols elaborated by G. Jefferson (in Atkinson & Heritage 1984), are illustrat-
ed in the Appendix. The excerpts are analysed by accounting of the participants’
multimodal (talk, gaze, gesture, body orientation, object manipulation) produc-
tion. In order to preserve the participants’ anonymity, their real names have been
changed and the images presented in the data have been blurred.

2. I thank Lorena Pool Balam, in particular, for her help in reviewing the data presented in this
paper.
112 Anna Claudia Ticca

5. Activities revealing the lay interpreter’s identities

The following sections will illustrate, through the analysis of excerpts of the video-­
recorded data, 3 some of the interpreter’s identities as they are displayed during
the medical consultation.

5.1 The lay interpreter as a “translator”

In the consultations observed, when patients display little understanding of MS,

doctors tend to rely on the language competence of bilingual speakers. Such par-
ticipants are primarily invited to take part in the consultations in order to help
mutual understanding, and therefore to translate talk when needed. Their identity
as “translators” is somehow expected, as the next case will show.
The doctor (DOC) is visiting a young mother (PAT) as part of her follow-up
series of consultations, during which she was prescribed a contraceptive therapy.
Since she suffers from headaches as result of such therapy, the doctor is inquiring
about her symptoms. A prior study (Ticca 2010) has shown that the doctor and
the patient often carry out their conversation in a dyadic format, even though
they do not speak the same language, and a bilingual speaker participates in the
consultation. In this case, the latter, Ada (ADA), is explicitly selected to translate
talk after a dyadic sequence in which the doctor and the patient have initially
displayed mutual understanding.

c6-q11. 06LOL_MAC6_12:38-12:57
01 DOC dó+nde te duele más la# cabeza. aquí atrás?
where does your head hurt the most back here?
I + gazes at DOC-->
Im. #1
02 PAT ju’+um# tak (l)e ’beya’+ doctora tak (l)e +beya’
yes here like this doctor here like this
I ->-+---gazes at PAT----+ at DOC-----------+at PAT->
Im. #2
03 yaj oor[ae xxx
it hurts now xxx
04 DOC [to:do #[para acá
all in here
05 PAT #[aha
yeah
Im. #3
06 (0.4)

3. The English translation offered after each turn of talk in both SM and YM does not follow
the syntactic construction of the source language.
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 113

07 PAT que [ya:j tak u neek’il in] wich beya’ +ya:j in&
(that) (it) hurts even my eyeballs like this I feel
ADA --> +-at DOC-->
08 DOC [has:ta tus:(.) ojos ]
even your (.) eyes
09 PAT &wu’uyika’
they hurt
10 (0.3)
11 PAT ya+an oorae’ tak in xikin kin beyo’ +wu’uyik# ya:j
there are times that even my ears I feel that hurt
ADA +-at PAT--------------------+-at-DOC-->
Im. #4
12 PAT tak °ku jach k’+i’in+am +in pool°
even my head hurts a lot
ADA -->------------+at PAT--+ at DOC-->
DOC + at ADA-->>
13 (0.3)
14 DOC °qué dice°
what does she say
15 (0.3) +(0.3)
ADA -->---+-at PAT-->
16 ADA que a veces que hasta +le duelen *sus ojos* [(°y
that sometimes that even her eyes hurt (and
17 sus (0.3) oidos también°)
her (0.3) ears as well)
ADA -->-------------------+-at DOC------------->>
18 DOC [hum hm
hm hm

In lines 01–12, the doctor and the patient collaboratively build the description of
the headache, localising it in the patient’s head. The use of gesture and embodied
talk contribute to facilitate this bilingual exchange, as the figures below illustrate
(circles indicate hand gesture):

Figure 1. Line 01
114 Anna Claudia Ticca

Figure 2. Line 02

Figure 3. Lines 04 and 05

Ada monitors the ongoing activity with her gaze, as indicated in the transcription,
but does not intervene in the interaction. In line 11, after locating the eyes as a site
where pain is felt (lines 07–09), the patient adds another hurting spot. She does
so multimodally, by mentioning her ears and touching one side of her head, as
illustrated below.

Figure 4. Line 11

She then reiterates the fact that her head hurts a lot (line 12) again touching it. Then
the doctor, who has shared gaze only with the patient, turns her head towards Ada
and, in a low voice, asks qué dice?, “what is she saying.” This turn prompts Ada’s
report of some of the patient’s previous talk (“that sometimes that even her eyes
hurt and her ears as well,” lines 16 and 17). The doctor acknowledges Ada’s report
and then resumes the dyadic interaction (data not shown).
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 115

Note that the doctor requests Ada’s intervention after a problematic turn at
talk, which she is unable to understand. Ada is therefore treated as the participant
in charge of delivering the patient’s talk into a language comprehensible to the
doctor. It is important to add that it is also Ada’s behaviour constantly monitoring
the unfolding interaction, which makes visible her identity as a “translator,” that is,
as somebody attentive to ongoing talk and available to translate it if needed. This
case shows the bilingual participant in her (proto) typical, expected role to play
in such interaction. However, the activity of lay interpreters is clearly not limited
to translation. The analysis of excerpt 2 below focuses on some other activities
occurring in sequences of interaction where translation would be expected. Here,
the interpreter evaluates an utterance without actually translating it to the doctor,
and positions himself as an “expert.”

5.2 The lay interpreter as an “expert”

Carmelo (CAR), the keeper of a little pharmacy in a clinic, is invited to take part
in the interaction once the doctor finds out that the patient does not speak MS
(data not shown). The patient suffers from seasonal troubles (sore throat, a cold).
During the history-taking phase of the visit, the doctor asks whether the patient
suffers from asthma:

c6-q22. 07LOL_PCP3_01:57-02:04
01 DOC usted no sufre de asma?
don’t you suffer from asthma?
02 (0.6)
03 PAT *(xxx +o’) túu +tsaaj inkaal beeyo’ mi’ wooje’
(xxx) my throat rumbled I don’t know if that is
DOC *stops writing and lifts head up twds PAT-->
PAT +gazes at CAR-->
CAR +gazes at PAT-->
04 wáa leti’
what she means
05 *(0.5)
DOC >* head down, resumes writing-->>
06 CAR °m:a’° ((keeps mouth open))
no
07 (0.3)
08 PAT [ma’?
no?
09 DOC [hu+m?
hum
DOC >-+gazes at CAR-->
CAR >-+gazes at DOC-->>
116 Anna Claudia Ticca

10 (0.2 *0.2 +0.1)

CAR *shakes head
DOC -->--------+withdraws gaze
11 CAR n[o
no
12 PAT [ha
hm
13 +(1.1)
PAT >+gazes down-->>

The doctor, while producing the opening turn of the sequence, is writing on the
patient’s file. Probably due to the gap between the two turns of the adjacency pairs
(line 02), she gazes at the patient at the very moment in which the latter begins
her response. Note that, even though the doctor shows her availability to receive
the reply, the patient selects Carmelo with her gaze and talk (line 03). She offers a
description of her symptoms (túu tsaaj inkaal, “my throat rumbled”) and then asks
whether that is the right answer to the doctor’s question (mi’wooje wáa leti’, “I don’t
know if that is what she means,” lines 03 and 04). Carmelo rejects the patient’s
understanding with a minimal and somehow hesitant negative response, and then
seems to indicate that more is to come (he keeps his mouth open as if he had not
finished talking, line 06). It is likely that the following doctor’s minimal request for
a reply/translation (line 09), produced in overlap with the patient’s understanding
check (ma’? “no?,” line 08), imposes a change in Carmelo’s talk trajectory. Indeed,
he next offers a multimodal negative response to the doctor (lines 10 and 11), and
abandons his engagement with the patient.
During this activity, Carmelo displays two different and simultaneous identi-
ties: he is treated both as a competent speaker of MS and as being knowledgeable
enough to respond to a specialised question about what asthma sounds like. This
requires a quick diagnosis of the referred trouble – asthma – on the basis of a
minimal description of symptoms (“my throat rumbled”). In so doing, Carmelo
displays another identity, that of “expert.” Interestingly, this identity is available
only to the patient, the sole participant sharing the interpreter’s language. But
Carmelo is also in charge of responding in MS to the doctor on the basis of the
patient’s replies in YM. 4 At the end of this sequence, the doctor restarts writing
and the co-participants stop talking. It is the patient who resumes talk, by intro-
ducing new symptoms (lines 13 and 14 in excerpt 3 below).

4. In contrast to the idea that each identity is mutually exclusive and manifested through the or-
dered accomplishment of actions anchored to their sequential development (Merlino & Mondada
2014: 108), this case shows that multiple and superposing identities can also occur.
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 117

c6-q33. (07LOL_PCP3_02:04-02:20)
13 PAT >yaan xan teen< le+je+sba# se’eno’ tin jéesba chéen
I also have congested cough (with) shortness of breath
CAR +gazes at PAT---------->
PAT +gazes at CAR------->
Im. #5
14 jo’ok’ol umaasta teen.
I gasp when it worsens
15 (1.3)
16 CAR úuchilake’ yaan ti’ teech?=
(and) long before did you have it (then)?
17 PAT =na’an ka’achi chéen taak le ja’ bejla’a’ chen u
never before only now when the rain (comes) it
18 tsa’ayak teen le se’en beey u mee+tko’
just gives me the congestion like this
CAR -->------------------------------+withdraws gaze
19 (0.6)
20 CAR ah::[:
hm
21 PAT [hu:m
yeah
22 (0.2)
23 DOC hu+m?
hm?
CAR ->+ at DOC-->
24 (0.4* *0.6*)
DOC *lifts head twds I-->
CAR *head shake*
25 CAR +no:
no
CAR >+withdraws gaze
26 *(0.5)
DOC *stops writing and moves from desk-->>
27 DOC $qué te anda contando y no me quieres decir$
what is she telling you and you don’t want to tell me
28 (0.3)
29 CAR $no. solamente [estaba] diciendo que-$
no she was just telling me that
30 DOC [he: ]
he ((laughs))

The word jesba in YM (line 13) is the equivalent of the MS asma (asthma). 5 The
patient here seems to be specifying her symptoms in order to respond the doctor’s

5. My local informants made clear that the word in SP asma (asthma) in this community of
speakers (and in that of Yucatan in general) is not always used to refer to the chronic disease but
sometimes just to describe objective symptoms, without ascribing any cause or illness behind it.
In this, it follows the meaning of YM jéesba, meaning “shortness of breath.”
118 Anna Claudia Ticca

prior question on the presence of asthma. Carmelo is the recipient of this turn
(see Figure 5):

Figure 5. Line 13

Then Carmelo and the patient engage in a new dyadic sequence (lines 16–21), after
which the doctor produces a request token (hum, line 23). Carmelo replies with
a headshake, saying no. At this point, the doctor smiles, stops writing and moves
away from her desk, asking him: qué te anda contando y no me quieres decir, “what
is she telling you that you don’t want to tell me” (line 27), a question that remains
virtually unanswered (line 29). Even though the visual and prosodic features,
such as the smile and the post-completion laugh particle (line 30), mitigate the
potentially troublesome impact of the doctor’s question (Shaw et al. 2013), the
doctor clearly orients to the unreported sequence in YM. This focus on the missed
action reveals, among other things, a misalignment of Carmelo’s situated identity
as a translator, whose related activities are in this case missing, as made relevant
by the doctor’s question.
If we wanted to speculate about the reason why the doctor’s effort to obtain
a report of what has just been said is unsuccessful, we should look at some de-
tails of the interaction. First, despite monitoring her co-participants’ actions (see
Pasquandrea 2011), she is visibly disengaged from what is going on and focused
on writing. This allows the two other speakers to carry on the conversation in
an autonomous way. Second, the minimal token (hum) used to solicit Carmelo’s
reporting in line 23, by not addressing a specific referent in the prior turns at talk,
fails to prompt a detailed reporting. In other words, the doctor’s effort to obtain
a rendition did not suffice to momentarily re-establish Carmelo’s identity as a
“translator.” 6

6. The interpreter here might also be avoiding a report that would somehow contradict his prior
response on the patient’s lack of asma.
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 119

The analysis has shown how the reconfiguration of the participation frame-
work, due to doctor’s momentary and apparent disengagement from the ongoing
problem presentation, has favoured the emergence of the interpreter’s new category
of “expert.” This alternation of activities explains why the expected category of
“translator” is constantly renegotiated in order to be re-established (see Merlino
& Mondada 2014).

5.3 The lay interpreter as a social “peer”

In these data, lay interpreters may have a close relationship both with the doctor,
who lives inside the clinic for most of the week, and other people living in the
village. This is the case of the following interaction, a follow-up visit to check the
patient’s high blood pressure. In the initial phase of such visit, the doctor gathers
anagraphic data and other information about the patient’s blood pressure, taken
by the nurse Marina just before the visit begins. During this phase of the consul-
tation, the patient initiates the presentation of a new concern (backache), visibly
on her agenda but not on the doctor’s. 7 As soon as the patient states having reuma
(rheumatism) problems, the doctor asks when the trouble began. After the patient’s
reply (data omitted), Rosa (ROS), the clinic’s cleaning lady who participates in the
consultation for her bilingual skills, asks when exactly the problem started (see
line 01 below), a piece of information that is missing in the patient’s response. 8

c6-q44. (09LOL_MBP_00:15-01:03)
01 ROS [ba’ax] k’inak lelo’
what day was that
02 PAT [xxx ]
xxx
03 PAT le a:jal ken in beetej ka tin wu’uye’ *<a’abeake’>
when I was waking up when I felt it last night
PAT *...>
04 ka’a tin wu’uye’ má*an yaaj [°in paach°
I felt a lot of pain in my back
PAT >..................*stands up
05 ROS [$como *dice Marina$# he
as Marina says heh
ROS *---leans twds
DOC and looks at her-->
Im. #6

7. The doctor greets the patient by mentioning the hypertension concern as the reason for the
visit.
8. For a detailed analysis of the interpreters’ repair sequences, see Ticca & Traverso (2015).
120 Anna Claudia Ticca

06 (0.2)
07 ROS [di(h)ce(h) [durmió mal he he [he he [he he
she says she slept badly heh heh heh heh heh heh
08 PAT [istikyaaj in [taal bin [istikyaj#&
with difficulty I come go with difficulty
Im. #7
09 DOC [hum
hm
10 PAT &*in xíimbal. is[tikyaj in tojtal]
I walk with difficulty I straighten
ROS *..........*-turns and looks at PAT--->
12 ROS [durmió *mal con su] ma::# [<he *en
she slept badly with her (hus-?)heh
ROS *---turns twd DOC------*
Im. #8
13 ROS su *hamáca>#
in her hammock
ROS *---turns twd PAT-->
Im. #9
14 PAT [úuch bin
it’s been
15 lek in paach. tuun ya’ako’ob tene’ reuma bin

a long time that my back hurts and they tell me it’s
rheumatism
16 (0.5)
17 DOC pero eres reumática?
but are you rheumatic?

The patient delivers the information required (“last night,” line 03) and then re-
iterates the presence of pain in her back in a multimodal format (she stands up,
touching her back). It is important to note that in overlap with the patient, Rosa
intervenes at a relevant transition space (line 05) to report the nurse’s commentary
(probably made during the pre-visit). Rosa does so by leaning towards the doctor in
order to catch her attention, which is oriented towards her writing (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Line 05
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 121

Rosa’s commentary, which continues in the following lines, is delivered with a

smile, then with a laughing voice, and then closed with several laugh particles
(line 07), clearly conveying the non-seriousness of her talk (note that she reports
how badly the patient slept in her hammock the previous night, slightly suggesting
the implication of the patient’s husband (lines 07, 12, and 13: “she slept badly with
her (hus-?) heh in her hammock”). Moreover, with her body movement, she seeks
to enter the doctor’s visual frame and, possibly, to invite her to share this laughter
and join her amusement (Jefferson 1979, Glenn 2003). In overlap with Rosa’s sto-
rytelling, the patient keeps describing her symptoms (her difficulty to straighten
and walk, lines 08 and 10). As for the doctor, she keeps writing and only once does
she verbally display her involvement in what is unfolding (line 09). Figures 7 and
8 illustrate this moment of the interaction.

Figure 7. Line 08

Figure 8. Line 12

Since the doctor in Figures 7 and 8 is off the frame, we cannot be sure whether Rosa
turns her gaze towards the patient (Figure 8) in order to find an available recipient
of her talk or to actually include her in the participation framework. As for the pa-
tient, despite the parallel talk, she keeps carrying out her description until line 15,
where she delivers information about the duration and the type of her problem.
Several observations can be made about this example. First, Rosa deliberately
reorients the trajectory of the current action – the problem presentation of an
“off-agenda” concern – into non-serious/funny talk. Even though laughter was
122 Anna Claudia Ticca

introduced by the doctor at the beginning of the visit (data not shown), conferring
the consultation a sort of informal tone, here the joking turn is somehow topically
and sequentially misplaced: it occurs during a formal phase of the visit, when a
serious matter is at issue. Moreover, and equally importantly, it occurs during
the other-initiated repair sequence (initiated by Rosa herself in line 01, which, as
already mentioned, solicits some information missing in the patient’s prior re-
sponse to the doctor, during which the patient delivers further information about
her symptoms (lines 03, 04 and 08). In this case, Rosa is manifesting at least two
different identities: that of the “translator,” in charge of advancing the medical
activity by delivering the right information to the doctor; and that of a “peer,” who
transits from serious to non-serious talk by reporting a laughable event. In other
words, Rosa is treating the patient’s problem as a non-serious issue, around which
she construes an amusing event, as peers would do.
It is worth adding that, as we observed in the prior episode, the doctor is
oriented towards a practical activity and only minimally does she acknowledge
Rosa’s non-serious talk (line 09). Nonetheless, she orients towards her co-partici-
pants as soon as she identifies a medical problem (line 17). 9 This seems to suggest
that even though she does not visibly engage with the patient, she is nonetheless
aware and responsive to the relevant information delivered by/about the patient.
It is finally worth mentioning that the patient’s talk overlapping this non-serious
activity will not be reported to the doctor, who at the end of the visit will (just)
prescribe paracetamol for her backache.
To sum up, in this case, the lay interpreter progressively navigates from her role
as a “translator” to that as a “peer.” Such dynamic development of the interpreter’s
identity responds to local factors, including the prior interaction with the nurse
as well as the doctor’s minimal engagement in the interaction.
The next and final section will present situations in which co-participants
momentarily misalign with the lay interpreter’s activity. The doctors’ marginal
involvement in the ongoing interaction seems, here again, to be favouring the
initiation of other activities, to which they have little or no access.

5.4 Participants’ misalignment from the lay interpreter’s activity

This section presents two different cases in which participants misalign with
the interpreter’s activity (see Straniero Sergio 2012). In the first one, the patient

9. Even if the turn is delivered in YM, a language mainly unknown to the doctor (personal
information), the use of loanwords from Spanish, such as reuma, seems to help her understand
the patient’s talk (see Ticca 2010).
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 123

code-switches from YM to MS during a somehow troubled problem presenta-

tion, which prevents the bilingual speaker from translating a spate of talk. In the
second case, it is the doctor who overtly misaligns with the interpreter’s original
contribution, by directly asking the patient to deliver the requested information.

5.4.1 The patient’s misalignment

In this excerpt, the patient begins the problem presentation in YM, and then,
after the interpreter’s translation and a further question asked by the doctor, she
switches to MS. The excerpt begins with Ada’s translation of the doctor’s initial
question (see line 01 below).

c6-q55. (07LOL_PAR_00:28-00)
01 ADA ba’ax úuchul bin tech
what happens to you she asks
02 0.3
03 PAT hu:m (2.2) este min in wojel ba’ax ku yuuchul ten
hem well I don’t know what happens to me
04 PAT beyo’ esten doctora
now hem doctor
05 (0.5)
06 PAT tsáaiten se’en tolajeiake’ (0.2) sniff pero
the other time I got a cough sniff but
07 beoora’ mina’anten se’en in wu’uyik?
now I feel that I have not a cough (anymore)
08 (1.8)
09 DOC ˚qué pasó˚
what happened
10 (0.3)
11 ADA ‘’h que hace tiempo: (0.8) tenía tos pero ahorita
‘’h that some time ago she had a cough but now
12 no tiene tos
she hasn’t a cough
13 (1.3)
14 PAT ha::
yeah
15 (0.2)
16 DOC y [qué más
and what else

The patient says that she does not know what is happening to her, and then adds
that she had a cough from which she has now recovered (lines 03–08). After Ada’s
reduced rendition (lines 11 and 12), the doctor asks for more information (y qué
más, “and what else,” line 16). At this point, the patient first offers a further de-
scription of her problem in YM (line 19) and then she switches to MS (lines 21 and
28), as illustrated in excerpt 6 below:
124 Anna Claudia Ticca

c6-q6. (07LOL_PAR_00:51-01:04)
17 PAT [xxx
xxx
18 +(0.6)
ADA + looks at PAT-->
19 PAT este: (0.8) tsáaiten se’en
well I had a cough
20 (0.2)
21 PAT tengo catarro desde:: (1)+ (0.8)+ desde
I have (had) catarrh since since
ADA -->----------------------+at DOC+turns eyes up--->
22 $tres sema+nas$ ahorita
three weeks ago now
ADA $smiles with a grimace$
ADA -->-------+eyes down-->
23 (0.5)
24 DOC uh hm
uh hm
25 (0.3)
26 PAT ha:
yeah
27 (0.5)
28 PAT pero este:: (.) +ya quedó: bien
but well it has passed well
ADA -->-------------+turns eyes left, up and gazes at DOC-->>
29 (0.7)

This multi-unit turn contains some new information (the duration of the problem),
but confirms the fact that the patient is now fine, thus making the presentation of
her concerns incomplete and problematic (no trouble has yet been presented). 10
The code-switching from YM to MS is here relevant in terms of the patient’s mis-
alignment from Ada’s situated identity as a translator, who is de facto momentarily
excluded from the activity. Interestingly, Ada signals such code-switching with
her own visual behaviour: she accompanies the patient’s talk by turning her eyes
up and down and smiling with a grimace (lines 21 and 22), and then by making
a circular eye movement during the next speech production (line 28). Whatever
prompted the patient’s use of the Spanish language, by presenting herself as a
(linguistically) competent interlocutor of the doctor, she is in fact challenging the
bilingual speaker’s role and identity as a “translator,” and ultimately her legitimacy

10. The difficulty in identifying the problem will not be easily solved. After several minutes of
conversation, it will turn out that the patient feels a bad smell coming from inside her mouth/
body, which the doctor eventually ascribes to a possible lung infection derived from her cooking
habits (wooden fire) and smoke breathing.
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 125

to participate in the consultation. 11 This might also explain Ada’s visual behaviour
responding to the code-switching described above.

5.4.2 The doctor’s misalignment

There are cases in which the doctor misaligns with the bilingual speaker’s initiative
to respond in the patient’s place. This situation is common with family interpret-
ers (Ticca & Traverso 2015), but somehow unusual with other lay interpreters. In
the following consultation, a lady (MOT) accompanies her two daughters to seek
medical care (two other daughters are present but would not take active part in
this visit). Excerpt 7 below refers to the consultation of one of the young girls, who
suffers from anaemia. Ada (ADA) participates in the consultation.

c6-q77. (07LOL_PAD2_00:34-00:44)
01 DOC desde cuando le dijeron que tenía anemia. ((writing))
since when did they tell you/her she had anemia
02 (1.7 +0.4)
DOC +lifts head and looks at MOT-->
03 MOT +chéen esten [jo’osa’ab-
just (since) uh when it (first) appeared.
MOT +looks at DOC-->
04 ADA [es-+ de: <hace> dos meses creo.
it’s si-(nce) (it’s )been two months I think
MOT -->--------------+looks at ADA-->
DOC -->--------------+looks at ADA-->>
05 (0.2 +0.2)
MOT -->--+at DOC-->>
06 DOC a ver pregúntale. desde cuando le dijeron
let’s see ask her since when did they tell (her)
07 que tiene anemia
that she has anemia

While writing, the doctor asks when the diagnosis of anaemia was made. After
a long gap (line 02), she looks up at the mother, who gives a non-specific an-
swer (line 03). At this point, Ada self-selects and overlaps with the mother who
stops talking, letting Ada offer her (tentative) reply (es- de: hace dos meses creo,
“it’s- fro(m)- (it’s) been two months I think,” line 04). The doctor, who could ac-
knowledge Ada’s reply, instead requests her to ask the patient the same question
(line 06). This explicit dismissal of the interpreter’s original contribution is very
uncommon in the data, and, in this case, clearly exhibits the doctor’s rejection of
Ada’s displayed access to knowledge, although modally framed (see the use of the

11. Ada’s identity as a translator as well as her legitimacy to be present at the consultation, will
be re-established a bit later, when the patient will again speak YM, requiring translation to MS.
126 Anna Claudia Ticca

opinion verb creo, “I think”). In other words, the doctor is here misaligning with
Ada’s interactional identity as a ratified participant legitimised to offer original
talk. At the same time, she is ratifying Ada as a “translator,” the same category
that the latter has momentarily dismissed in order to present herself as somebody
knowledgeable about local events.

6. Conclusions

This chapter has presented the analyses of a set of medical consultations and
showed how the multiple identities of lay interpreters are locally and interaction-
ally constituted. Recognising this diversity of identities, roles and activities is
important because it enhances our understanding of lay interpreting. Indeed, it
sheds light on lay interpreters’ ability to face challenges arising in interlinguistic
and intercultural communication, where they must both have language skills and
apply general and more specialised knowledge (i.e. medical), and then use these
to navigate through diverse interactional activities.
The close analysis of turns at talk and of the multimodal resources mobilised
in interaction has allowed us to observe the ordered and dynamic shifting of these
different identity categories. We have seen, for instance, that the expected inter-
preter’s identity as a “translator” is constantly renegotiated, and this is because
besides translating talk, the interpreter engages in other activities. Indeed, she
can invite co-participants in non-serious talk, thus positioning herself as a “peer,”
either vis-à-vis the patient as a community member, or with respect to the doctor
as a clinic regular, or both (excerpt 4). Or, as shown in excerpts 2 and 3, the in-
terpreter can act as the final addressee of the patient’s turn rather than as a mere
“conduit” for the other participants, further diversifying his role and positioning
himself as an “expert.”
This study has also explored situations in which the co-participants momen-
tarily misalign with the exhibited identity. This is the case of the patient in ex-
cerpt 6, who suddenly chooses to speak the doctor’s language, thus implying the
momentary misalignment with the interpreter as a translator, as well as of the
doctor in excerpt 7, who rejects the interpreter’s initiative of forfeiting her role as
a translator. This dynamicity of the bilingual speaker’s activity entails the doctor’s
intervention to construct the identity that she expects in a given situation.
In some cases, it is the doctor’s peripheral engagement with the ongoing line of
action that leaves space for the expression of such dynamism. This shows that some
of the “problems” that occur in interpreter-mediated situations do not necessarily
stem from language differences, but also from the negotiation of participants’
roles. As the analysis has shown, the participants’ engagement with co-occurring
 Chapter 6. Lay interpreters in medical consultations 127

lines of actions can interfere with the full understanding of the patient’s concerns
and therefore with the doctor’s diagnostic and finally the delivery of the treatment.
The cases explored in this paper thus render visible what the previous literature
on non-professional interpreting has generally suggested, but yet scarcely described
in detail in real-life situations, that is, that interpreting is not restricted to mere
translation, but involves other activities and associated identities. Interpreting is
generally challenging for participants involved in multilingual interactions, in-
cluding the (lay) interpreters themselves. Indeed, they need to adjust not only to
local interactional needs, but also to their co-participants’ expectations about the
interpreter’s role within a given activity.
More empirical research is needed to learn what interpreters do once they en-
ter the doctor’s room. While local institutions are beginning to respond to the need
of professional interpreting in indigenous realities such as the one observed here,
in most cases, lay interpreting still remains the sole resource available to enhance
mutual understanding when language differences emerge. Identifying the possible
difficulties of communicating through a third person, and also learning how in-
tercultural and interlinguistic encounters can benefit from the different positions
and identity categories exhibited by the bilingual speaker, will strongly contribute
to challenging our current theoretical understanding of “professional” identities
(see Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva 2012) and revising them accordingly.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the ASLAN project (ANR-10-LABX-0081) of Université de Lyon for its
financial support within the program “Investissements d’Avenir” (ANR-11-IDEX-0007) of the
French government operated by the National Research Agency (ANR).

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Appendix. Transcription conventions

Talk has been transcribed according to the orthographic conventions developed by Gail
Jefferson (Atkinson & Heritage 1984). An indicative translation is provided line per line (in ital-
ics). Multimodal details have been transcribed according to conventions developed by Mondada
(2008).

? rising intonation of the preceding segment

. falling intonation of the preceding segment
(1.5) timed pause in seconds and tenths of seconds
(.) pause of less than 0.2 seconds
[ beginning of overlap
xxx inaudible segment
() dubious hearing
((smiles)) transcriber’s comments
<> slowed down tempo
>< faster tempo
= contiguous utterances
VIDEO high volume
°video° low volume
: stretching of prior syllable
vid- cut-off
′h inbreath
he he he laughter
$ smiling voice
** each participant’s actions are delimited by the use of the same symbol
+ gaze
* body movement
… shows the preparation of the movement
---> action described continues across subsequent lines
--->> action described continues until and after the excerpt’s end
--->* action described continues until the same symbol is reached
im. image (screen shot)
# shows the moment in the transcription at which the screen shot has been taken
 Chapter 7

Issues of terminology in public service

interpreting
From affordability through psychotherapy
to waiting lists

Sonja Pöllabauer
University of Graz

This chapter focuses on interpreter-mediated institutional encounters and spe-

cialist language. Based on Niska’s (1998a; 1998b) and Valero-Garcés’(2005) tax-
onomies of strategies for translating specialist terminology, the author analyses
instances of specialist language in a corpus of recordings of institutional en-
counters, and discusses which strategies are used by the interpreters to render
specialist terms. The data were collected between 2007 and 2009 as part of an
interdisciplinary project called “Community Interpreting and Communication
Quality in Social Service and Healthcare Institutions.”

Keywords: community interpreting, institutional encounters, specialist

terminology

1. Introduction

This paper focuses on interpreter-mediated public service encounters, public ser-

vice interpreting (PSI) 1, and strategies that interpreters adopt in such settings in
order to render specialised terminology. If interpreters are part of institutional
encounters, the dyadic communication situation of service provider – client is
transformed into a triadic setting (Mason 2001: ii), with the interpreter present
as a visible and sometimes highly influential third interactant, both in a posi-
tive and negative sense. Institutional encounters can be viewed as gatekeeping
encounters: service providers are in a position to grant or deny their clients cer-
tain services, and decision-making processes are steered by specific institutional

1. The term is used here as a synonym for a practice that is also often referred to as “community
interpreting” (CI) (Pöllabauer 2013: 1).

doi 10.1075/btl.129.07pol
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
132 Sonja Pöllabauer

routines and regulations. In such constellations, interpreters may also assume a

gatekeeping function by facilitating or possibly thwarting successful communi-
cation (Pöllabauer 2012).
Language is a central element in gatekeeping and, as I will show, also often a
serious problem in interpreter-mediated encounters, which makes it difficult to
establish “institutionally defined truths,” which is one of the central objectives
of institutional routines (Sarangi & Slembrouk 1996: 48). According to a study
on the quality of dyadic institutional communication (Kukovetz & Sprung 2009;
Pöllabauer 2009), which will be partially presented in this chapter, some of the
factors that make the construction of institutionally valid facts and communi-
cation with “foreign” (in this case, non-German-speaking) clients challenging
include: lack of resources, lack of time, current socio-political context and emo-
tional factors such as “difficult” clients or aggression directed towards the service
providers (Kukovetz & Sprung 2009: 12–15). In addition to these factors, “language
problems,” i.e. not being able to communicate adequately with one’s clients, are
viewed as a major challenge by employees in the two social service and welfare
institutions that were part of the study presented in this chapter (see 5.1). Such
language “barrier” problems in institutional talk have been documented in a se-
ries of publications (e.g. Rehbein 1985; Wadensjö 1998, to name only two seminal
publications). In Rehbein’s study, for instance, language problems were solved,
among other makeshift solutions, by means of interpreters. In both institutions
under study, about 20–30% of all encounters with clients were interpreter-mediat-
ed. These interpreters were usually ad hoc interpreters with little or no training in
interpreting, and were often family members or friends of the clients, sometimes
even children (Kukovetz & Sprung 2009: 9, 22).

2. Public service interpreting and the language of institutional

encounters

Typically, interpreters are needed in a range of different public service institutions

(legal, medical, therapeutic and social settings) to facilitate communication be-
tween institutional representatives (IRs) and individuals with little or no language
proficiency in the official host language(s) (Pöllabauer 2013: 1). In all these settings,
the distinct institutional routines in force go hand in hand with a sometimes high-
ly specialised subject-specific terminology. Terminology, in general, can be defined
as both the “discipline concerned with the study and compilation of specialized
terms” (Cabré 1999: 1) and “part of the lexicon defined by subject matter and prag-
matic usages” (ibid.: 11). In the present context, terminology is mostly used in the
second meaning of the term. The context- and domain-specific pragmatic use of
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 133

language is part of any bureaucratic procedure: “Thus, bureaucratic encounters

can be seen as ‘language games’ in Wittgenstein’s (1958) sense, with attendant
language practices which conform to particular norms and conventions” (Sarangi
& Slembrouk 1996: 37). Service providers normally refer to concepts that are fa-
miliar to them and prototypical for their specific setting, but often unknown to
their clients and possibly also unknown to the interpreters, especially if they have
been living in the host country for only a short time and are not familiar with
the host country’s institutional system: “Some of the difficulties found can be
the lack of resources to transfer new, unknown concepts that are in the expert’s
language or the non-existence of equivalent terms for such concepts in the target
language” (Valero-Garcés 2005: 77). It can be assumed that trained interpreters
will have acquired a specific set of information-mining skills through their train-
ing, which allow them to prepare for interpreting assignments, as well as strategies
to adequately deal with specialist vocabulary on the job. Amateur interpreters are
at a disadvantage, as they will have to learn on the job how to cope with specialist
language and will, in most cases, only be able to rely on their practical interpreting
experience when dealing with a specialist language.
Although no single and generally accepted definition of “specialist language”
is yet available (Cabré 1999: 61), specialist languages can be defined as “linguistic
codes that differ from the general language and consist of specific rules and units”
(ibid.). Specialist language use is thus a variant of general language use employed
for specific purposes and characterised by specific vocabulary and constructions
(Niska 2003: 93). Such subject-specific texts may “include any text that contains
some elements of technical or specialized information” (Niedzielski & Chernovaty
1993: 124). In interpreting situations, the correct use of specialist terms is vital for
understanding. Although Newmark (1988: 160) suggested that specialist terminol-
ogy only accounts for approximately 5–10% of the total text, this 5–10% may be
crucial. Incorrect use of specific terms or failure to correctly interpret and translate
the meaning of specific concepts may have serious consequences for the outcome.
It is the interpreters’ task to interpret correctly and use terminology in their work-
ing languages. As most translators/interpreters are not experts in the fields they
work in, they themselves need to acquire the relevant domain-specific knowledge
necessary for a given assignment (Décombe 2008: 149), before (to prepare for an
interpreting assignment), during (to solve terminological problems that may arise)
and also after a job (to archive terms for later use): “In fact, solving terminology
problems and managing terminological data within a bilingual or multilingual
context is one of the greatest challenges a translator [or an interpreter] must face
in the course of his/her professional career” (Sanchez-Gijón et al. 2009: 107). Even
134 Sonja Pöllabauer

though the need for “terminological competence”2 (Sanchez-Gijón et al. 2009: 109)
is stressed in handbooks for PSI and CI (e.g. Corsellis 2008: 73; Bancroft & Rubio-
Fitzpatrick 2009: 209), it is usually not covered in great detail except for some
basic remarks on terminology work: “No community interpreter can become truly
accomplished without making special efforts to master terminology in the area(s)
in which they interpret” (Bancroft & Rubio-Fitzpatrick 2009: 209).
Rehbein (1985) drew attention to the importance of “institutional knowledge”
for interpreters in medical consultations as early as 1985, when research on PSI was
still in its infancy. Specific institutional knowledge expressed by the service pro-
vider needs to be “processed” by the interpreter depending on his/her understand-
ing of the content originally expressed by the service provider (Meyer 2006: 17). As
Meyer noted with respect to medical encounters, ad hoc interpreters in such cases
sometimes tend to “determinologise” specific terms, i.e. they paraphrase specific
terms by using less technical standard language constructions (Meyer 2006: 21)
(see also Cabré’s use of “banalization,” 1999:63). The kind of terminology work
practised by translators/interpreters can be defined as ad hoc terminology man-
agement (as opposed to systematic terminology management) (Wright & Wright
1997: 147), where they focus only on aspects that are relevant for the specific task
at hand. In translation pedagogy, the need for equipping students with the neces-
sary terminological skills has been accepted for quite some time: “an increasing
concern in current translation pedagogy is the preparation of students capable of
working with highly specialized material” (Maier & Massardier-Kenney 1993: 151).
Terminology plays a role in different interaction constellations. Niska
(2002: 40) differentiated between (1) expert – expert communication, (2) expert –
layman communication and (3) layman – layman communication. Valero-Garcés
(2005: 75) added the expert – semi-expert constellation as a fourth dimension.
Unlike the conference interpreting sector, where most participants are experts
with a similar degree of professional socialisation (Pöchhacker 1994: 216; Niska
2003: 92), many institutional encounters will be at the expert (service provider) –
lay (client) level, with the expert ideally taking into account the layperson’s limited
subject knowledge. In an interpreter-mediated institutional encounter, the inter-
preter may be both a layperson and/or (semi)expert. If ad hoc interpreters are em-
ployed, they may also be viewed as laypersons, similarly to their non-institutional
clients, with possibly a slightly better knowledge of the institutional background
and routines than the non-native clients for whom they interpret. In the case of

2. Other skills and competences that are generally considered as the essential components of a
translator’s/interpreter’s profile of competences are language skills, cultural competence, inter-
preting competence (interpreting techniques) and professional competence (professional ethics,
role behaviour) (see, e.g., Gentile et al. 1996: 65–68).
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 135

interpreters with many years of experience in specific institutional settings and

a high awareness of issues of terminology, they may sometimes even be viewed
as “semi-experts.” Niska (1998a: 13) suggested that subject knowledge may even
be more important in PSI than in CI “since conference participants are subject
experts” who will possibly be able to follow the line of argumentation even if the
interpreter does not always use the correct terms.

3. Terminology in translation and interpreting studies

While much attention has been paid to terminology and terminology work in
translation studies (TS), it has played a smaller role in interpreting studies (IS). In
translator training programmes, the aim is not to train students as terminologists
or documentation specialists (Montero Martínez & Faber Benítez 2009: 88), but
to enable them to acquire the necessary knowledge and strategies to adequately
and swiftly deal with specialised terms in a variety of texts, i.e. the focus is on
translation-oriented terminology (Cabré 1999: 13). Much of the TS literature there-
fore focuses on context-specific terminology work and aspects, such as identify-
ing adequate terminological equivalents in the target language (TL), translation
tools, use of new technological advances and the integration of terminology in
translation-specific workflows (Cabré 1999: 47; Hebenstreit & Soukup-Unterweger
2011: 301).
Most of the IS literature has focused on the use of terminology and termi-
nological tools for simultaneous (conference) interpreting (e.g. Stoll 2009; Will
2009), and although interpreter-oriented terminology work has received slightly
more attention recently, the range of topics treated remains limited (Hebenstreit
& Soukup-Unterweger 2011: 301). It would seem therefore that terminology still
has a higher status in translator training and practice than in interpreting studies
and practice (Soukup-Unterweger in an interview, see Witzel 2011: 3). Most of the
terminology-relevant publications in IS that are listed in bibliographic databases
focus on spoken language interpreting. There does not seem to be much cross-fer-
tilisation between spoken and sign language (SL) interpreting, although some
findings from the SL sector (e.g. Storey & Jamieson 2004; Hasenhütl 2012) might
also prove interesting for spoken language interpreting. The few topics discussed in
IS are software applications and electronic tools designed for interpreting-specific
terminology work and in-conference use (Rütten 2004; Stoll 2009: 133–136), termi-
nological preparation for interpreting assignments (Gile 1987; Stoll 2009: 67), drill
exercises and the use of typical text units, phrases and conference terminology
(Bertaccini et al. 2009), term extraction based on available corpora or term lists
(Sandrini 1997: 503), new methods of data presentation, such as mindmaps (Rütten
136 Sonja Pöllabauer

2004: 170; Stoll 2009), documentation in terms of collection, analysis, classification

and storage of subject-relevant material (Vanhecke 2010), and interpreting-specific
knowledge management (Fantinuoli 2009; Will 2009).

4. Terminology in public service interpreting

In PSI, terminology work is a less important topic (Hebenstreit & Soukup-

Unterweger 2011: 302). The importance of terminological competence is often
mentioned only in passing as an important skill interpreters need to have, often
with reference to translation pedagogy or specific curricula (Gorjanc 2011: 285),
without much more being said about it. Only a small number of authors focus
more extensively on specialist terminology used in public service settings and
strategies employed by interpreters to render such terms and compensate for lex-
ical gaps.
One of the first to focus specifically on interpreters’ strategies for dealing with
specialist language was Niska, the most prolific author focusing on terminology
in PSI (see Niska 1998a; 1998b; 1999; 2002; 2003). In an online survey conducted
among trained court interpreters (US, Canada), the author focused on the inter-
preters’ preferred strategies for dealing with TL specialist vocabulary and lexical
gaps (Niska 1998a). The results of this survey were then used as the basis for a
survey among Swedish public service interpreters (Niska 1998b).
His later publications (Niska 2002; 2003; in Spanish) are more theoretical
contributions to the general aspects of terminology, which also focus on termi-
nology management tools and available resources (Niska 2002; 2003) and present
the categories used in his earlier publications (Niska 2002), as well as some ex-
amples from his earlier studies (Niska 1998a; 1998b). One topic that comes up in
several of his publications is the role of interpreters as “language planners” (Niska
1998a; 2002; 2003). Creativity in translation, especially with regard to the creation
of neologisms, is another central topic (Niska 1998b). In one earlier publication,
Niska also focused on the production of terminological dictionaries for interpret-
ers (Niska 1999).
Valero-Garcés (2005) also focused extensively on the translation of special-
ist terms in interpreter-mediated public service encounters. In her corpus, she
compared the strategies used by trained (US medical interpreters) and untrained
Spanish interpreters in medical settings (based on transcripts of recordings).
Her resulting data and conclusions very much coincide with Niska’s (e.g. 2002)
findings.
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 137

Hebenstreit & Soukup-Unterweger (2011: 308) wrote a report on an expert

group interview conducted by Soukup-Unterweger, 3 in which she asked a group of
eight certified Austrian court interpreters about their strategies for compensating
for lexical gaps and dealing with TL specialist terms. What is interesting about
her data is that the group also discussed strategies not mentioned by Niska (1998
et passim) or Valero-Garcés (2005), i.e. the use of translational resources, such as
dictionaries, on the job, which was considered a sign of professionalism by the
respondents (Hebenstreit & Soukup-Unterweger 2011: 310).
Other publications with promising titles offer a less extensive overview of dif-
ferent strategies, but a stronger focus on terminology documentation and manage-
ment systems (Roos 1999) 4 and glossary production for public service interpreters
(Straker 2007). Witzel (2011), another publication found in bibliographic databases
under the search phrase “terminology management” in combination with PSI, is
not an academic paper per se, but presents an interview with Soukup-Unterweger
on the issues of terminology work in PSI.
A small number of publications have focused on terminology in medical set-
tings (Diaz 1994; Meyer 2006; Gorjanc 2009; Jurko 2009). 5 The most extensive of
these is Meyer (2006), who also discussed strategies used by interpreters to deal
with specialist terms. Gorjanc (2009) and Jurko (2009) again focused on more
technical aspects such as terminological resources and terminology management
(Gorjanc 2009) and terminological resources such as corpora, wordlists and dic-
tionaries (Jurko 2009) for medical interpreters. In another publication, Gorjanc
(2011) focused more specifically on the use of corpora as a resource for terminology
extraction and corpus-driven community interpreter training, with very detailed
information on corpus data management tools.
One interesting article from the field of SL interpreting, and the most recent
publication (in French) in this brief overview, with a rather extensive focus on
different strategies similar to Niska (1998a; 1998b) and Valero-Garcés (2005), is
Pointurier & Gile (2012). In their article, the authors focus on the tactics of French

3. So far, these data have only been reported in Hebenstreit & Soukup-Unterweger (2011) and
have not been presented in a separate publication.
4. Roos’ (1999) publication offers only a very superficial overview of central data categories and
general aspects of computer-assisted terminology work.
5. The medical sector also seems to be the field where we can find most manuals, glossary
workbooks or similar resources that can be used by interpreters to prepare for assignments or as
the basis for terminology extraction (e.g. Cross-Cultural Communications 2010; Mauleon 2011).
138 Sonja Pöllabauer

sign language 6 interpreters for rendering lexical gaps (missing signs) in French
sign language. Storey & Jamieson (2004) provide interesting data with a focus on
US SL educational interpreters’ resources for accessing new vocabulary, Internet
use and access levels. Other publications with a focus on SL interpreting are Beaton
& Hauser (2008) and Vega Lechermann (2003), which, despite their promising
titles, do not provide any new insights.

5. Empirical study: Specialist terminology in public service encounters

With reference to Niska (1998a; 1998b) and Valero-Garcés (2005), I will analyse
instances of specialist language taken from a corpus collected in an interdiscipli-
nary research project, and discuss which strategies the interpreters employed to
render specialist terms.

5.1 Project synopsis: Interpreting in social service and welfare institutions

PSI in Austria has a low degree of professionalisation, and training opportunities

for that specific field are scarce (Ertl & Pöllabauer 2010). As a result, many public
service institutions continue to rely on the services of ad hoc interpreters. This was
the backdrop for a project implemented between 2007 and 2009 by an interdis-
ciplinary research team with members from the fields of sociology, translation/
interpreting studies, education and pedagogics, journalism, and mediation. The
project, “Community Interpreting and Communication Quality in Social Service
and Healthcare Institutions,” 7 was a sub-project of a larger project, “Migration
Research,” and funded by Zukunftsfonds Steiermark, a Styrian research fund. It
focused on communication and interpreting practices in social service and wel-
fare institutions, with the research team investigating institutional encounters
and communication routines between IRs and non-German-speaking clients in
social service and welfare institutions as well as the interpreting processes in such
settings.
The study was conducted at two municipal social service and welfare insti-
tutions in the Austrian province of Styria. One was the Housing Department of

6. This contribution will not be used for the analysis presented in this paper as some of
Pointurier’s & Gile’s (2012) categories are too SL-specific (e.g. “labialisation,” “dactylologie,”
“scénarisation”).
7. The official German title was “Community Interpreting und Kommunikationsqualität im
Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen.”
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 139

the City of Graz, the provincial capital; the other was the Municipal Office of
Kapfenberg, a small town in Upper Styria, dealing with a wide range of different
municipal services. The main motivation of service providers for participation in
the study was that communication with non-German-speaking clients, the ma-
jority of whom were migrants, had become increasingly “challenging” recently,
according to staff members’ subjective assessment (Pöllabauer 2009: 3).

5.2 Methods

A triangulation of different methods was used for data collection and analysis:
(1) in-depth qualitative interviews with institutional staff, who provided an in-
ternal viewpoint, and staff/members of NGOs and migrant communities, who
represented an external viewpoint (coding and interpretation were done following
grounded theory, and the MAXQDA programme was used for the data analysis);
(2) recording, transcription and analysis of authentic interpreter-mediated situa-
tions (the HIAT transcription system was used; transcription was computer-based
using the EXMARaLDA programme). Apart from one encounter, in which the
language combination was Turkish – German, the language combination of the
recorded interpreted encounters was Chechen – German. In total, six recordings
were analysed in detail. All findings were discussed with the project partners in
feedback rounds and feedback was included in the final reports, as the active par-
ticipation and involvement of the project partners was one of the research team’s
main objectives in order to ensure a certain degree of “sustainability” (Kukovetz
& Sprung 2009: 4–6; Pöllabauer 2009: 3–5).

5.3 Project results

The project results have been outlined in research reports (Kukovetz & Sprung
2009; Pöllabauer 2009); some of the results have already been discussed with ref-
erence to translation culture (Pöllabauer 2010), gatekeeping theory (Pöllabauer
2012) and transdisciplinarity (Sprung 2010). I will only point out the findings of
the study that are relevant for the case study presented in this paper (for a more
extensive overview, see Pöllabauer 2012).
One problem that could be identified in the transcripts of the recordings of
authentic interviews was that the German-language proficiency of some inter-
preters was very low in both institutions and sometimes made communication
and interpretation challenging. Some of the NGO employees interviewed, for in-
stance, pointed out that the German-language competence of the interpreters used
by these two institutions often did not seem to be much higher than the clients’
140 Sonja Pöllabauer

own German-language skills. The analysis of the transcripts of the recordings

also seemed to support that view as, in some instances, the interpreters’ German-
language proficiency was in fact highly deficient. In several instances, the use
of specialist language, such as institutional terminology or technical terms, by
the service providers seemed to trigger translation problems and lead to mis-
understandings, less accurate interpretations or a higher degree of “vagueness.”
The language of some of the interpreters, on the contrary, was characterised by
formulaic expressions. Some did not even master basic politeness strategies. They
managed to make themselves understood when relaying relatively simple content,
but struggled with more complex topics.
None of the interpreters had undergone proper training as interpreters, though
some of them in one institution had received some training and tended to view
themselves as “trained.” A closer look at this training, however, showed that it only
consisted of a few hours of information on institutional aspects, with no specific
language or interpreting training (Kukovetz & Sprung 2009: 9).
One follow-up measure (Pöllabauer 2009: 59) of the project was that the
German-language proficiency of the interpreters at one institution was official-
ly tested. The results of this test showed that some of the interpreters who had
been regularly employed as interpreters did not even have B2 level according to
the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. What was also
found in recordings from both institutions was that the interpreters tended to
shift loyalties depending on to whom they were speaking; they acted as helpers or
spokespersons, but also as active third participants who seemed to have their own
agenda and motives (Pöllabauer 2009: 60–61).

5.4 Taxonomy of strategies

I will not present an exhaustive overview of Niska’s (particularly Niska 1998a;

1998b) and Valero-Garcés’ (2005) findings, but only refer to some central aspects
discussed in these studies. 8
Niska’s (1998a) first study was a two-part study. In the first part, he addressed
interpreters chosen from different Internet mailing lists with a list of strategies he
drew up based on a literature survey and analyses of authentic interpreting situ-
ations, and allowed them to comment freely on the different strategies. From the
comments, he developed the following five categories of strategy (Niska 1998a: 18):
(1) omission, (2) near equivalent, (3) explanation, (4) loan translation and (5) direct
translation. In the second part, he narrowed the group of respondents to court

8. For a more extensive overview, see Hebenstreit & Soukup-Unterweger (2011: 305–310).
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 141

interpreters and used a Web questionnaire. The results showed that the interpreters
preferred explanations and approximate equivalents, while omissions and direct
loans were least popular. Loan, and loan translations, however, were sometimes
used (ibid.: 18).
In his second study (Niska 1998b), 9 he presented these categories of strategy,
with a reduced number of answer alternatives, to Swedish public service interpret-
ers. Again, omissions were the least popular strategy. Approximate equivalences
were avoided slightly more often by the Swedish interpreters than by the court
interpreters, while explanations, loan translations and direct loans were found to
be used to a much higher extent by the Swedish interpreters 10 (Niska 1998a: 18).
In his 2002 publication, Niska (2002: 45–46) presented the following categories
of strategy for the translation of terms, with a particular focus on culture-specific
terms: (1) direct equivalence or “cultural equivalence,” (2) loan translation, (3) ex-
planations, (4) direct loans, (5) term creation and (6) translation couplets. 11 He
later (2003: 102) included “omission” and “approximate equivalence” but skipped
the “translation couplet,” i.e. a combination of two or more strategies.
In Valero-Garcés’ (2005) corpus, interpreters with (some) training and experi-
ence used the following strategies (ibid.: 86): direct loans, use of equivalent terms,
literal translation, explanation, omission, use of non-existing terms, unaccept-
able or incomplete renderings, erroneous translations and a mixture of strategies
(which corresponded to Niska’s “translation couplets”). The most preferred of these
strategies were literal translations, which often seemed to produce faulty or even
incomprehensible texts (including non-existing words), and direct loans.
Strategies used by untrained interpreters were equivalent translation, omis-
sion, erroneous translations, use of deictic elements and extralinguistic resources
(ibid.: 91). In the case of untrained interpreters, the most frequently used strategies
were omission and the use of deictic elements. 12 The use of direct loans, however,

9. In his second paper, Niska (1998b) concentrated on sociocultural, sociolinguistic and socio-­
professional variables of the Swedish interpreters who took part in the study. The concrete results
of their ranking of the different strategies were presented in Niska (1998a).
10. Niska commented on this finding (Niska 1998a: 23) by stating that such a survey only reports
on preferred behaviour and ideals of the respondents and cannot take into account all language
combinations, settings or possible situations.
11. “Translation couplet” is a term also used by Newmark (1988: 74) in his typology of translation
procedures.
12. Interestingly, the use of deictic or non-verbal markers (possibly in combination with other
visual means such as pictures) was also remarked upon in the expert group interview carried out
by Soukup-Unterweger (Hebenstreit &Soukup-Unterweger 2011: 309).
142 Sonja Pöllabauer

was also a common strategy among untrained interpreters (ibid.:92–93), a fact also
remarked upon by Niska (2002: 45).
Other strategies introduced by Hebenstreit & Soukup-Unterweger (2011: 309)
were simplification and paraphrasing, which will be subsumed in the following
taxonomy under explanation.
Based on this brief overview of the findings of previous studies, I will use the
following categories of strategy for the analysis of some passages of our corpus of
authentic institutional encounters:
1. Omission: complete omission of terms.
2. Direct equivalence (“approximate,” “cultural equivalent”): use of a term that
denotes (roughly) the same concept; if no exact equivalence is available, an
“approximate” equivalence may be used.
3. Loan translation (“literal translation”): direct (component-by-component)
translation of compound words or word combinations.
4. Direct loan: use of the source language (SL) terms in the TL, sometimes with
phonological/morphological adaptations to the TL.
5. Explanation (including paraphrasing): explanation of concepts, including par-
aphrasing of SL constructions in the TL.
6. Simplification: use of less-specific general language terms; this strategy might
also be referred to as “banalization” (Cabré 1999: 63) or “determinologisation”
(Meyer 2006: 21), i.e. the compensation of a specific term through a general
language term/phrase.
7. Term creation: either the coining of new words or the construction of new
compounds/constructions by using existing words/morphemes; the awarding
of a new meaning to existing (dialectal, old) words may also fall under this cat-
egory (Niska 2002: 45). Valero-Garcès’ category of “use of non-existing terms”
will also be subsumed under this heading.
8. Use of deixis and non-verbal communication: use of mimics/gestures (other
non-verbal cues) to confer the meaning; pointing/referring to other available
materials. (This category is included here only for the sake of completeness.
As no video material was available, it is not possible to establish whether the
interpreters in our corpus used deictic changes and non-verbal communica-
tion as a translation strategy.)
9. Use of dictionary and other resources: on-site use of electronic or other
resources.
10. Translation couplet (“strategy mix”): combination of two or more strategies,
e.g. combination of direct loan and explanation.
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 143

The analysis presented below is based on transcripts of our corpus of recorded

interpreter-mediated encounters (Pöllabauer 2009). The examples given are not
an exhaustive list of all specialist terms and phrases present in the corpus, but a
sample of passages in which specialist language seems to constitute a problem. 13
What is obvious throughout the entire corpus is that IRs often try to keep the level
of specificity, and very often the level of specialist language, as low as possible,
possibly to make the information as understandable as possible for their lay clients.

5.5 Examples of specialist language

One of the encounters at the Housing Office in Graz, one of the two institutions
that took part in the study, is the only encounter in our corpus of recordings
that is characterised by an extraordinarily large amount of specialist terminology.
Where an interpreter is needed, this institution relies solely on lay, usually ad hoc,
interpreters, i.e. anyone present who is willing to interpret, often accompany-
ing persons, and sometimes children too (Kukovetz & Sprung 2009: 9–24). Other
ad hoc solutions are also common, for instance the use of written material, the
use of English as a lingua franca or communication through non-verbal means
(Kukovetz & Sprung 2009: 18). The Housing Office mainly relies on their clients
to “bring” their own interpreters. In total, three encounters were recorded at the
housing department (one Turkish – German, two Chechen – German).
One of the services of the housing department is tenancy law consulting, and
some of the department’s employees specialise in this area. In the first example
(see Transcript Excerpt 1) 14, 15, 16 of specialist language, the client’s landlord has
filed an action for eviction with the court because the client is several months
behind on his rent. The client has thus come to the housing department to seek
legal support. Three interactants are involved in the encounter: the IR (a legal ex-
pert), the client (a Chechen man) and a friend of his who serves as his interpreter.
The legal expert seeks to explain the situation to the client and points out possible

13. Due to the scope of this article, the entire corpus has not been included in the analysis. An
extended analysis could be carried out by means of qualitative and quantitative data analysis
software.
14. The text in italics is the English translation of the speakers’ original utterance.
15. Speaker acronyms used in the transcripts are: IR, institutional representative; Int., interpreter;
client, client.
16. The Chechen text was transcribed and translated into German by an experienced Chechen –
German interpreter. For details regarding the transcription and translation of foreign-language
text, see Rehbein et al. (2004) and Pöllabauer (2009: 7–8).
144 Sonja Pöllabauer

solutions to him. The overall subject matter is rather complex with a significant
number of specialist legal terminology (Pöllabauer 2009: 53). In only 12.55 minutes
(total length of meeting), the IR uses 36 terms or phrases that can be classified
as specialist terminology. The IR does most of the talking. The interpreter has 60
conversational turns, compared to the 11 turns taken by the client, indicative of
the active role that the interpreter plays in this encounter.
What immediately becomes apparent is that the interpreter sees his role main-
ly as a helper. The encounter starts with the IR informing the client about the
current state of affairs. Over several turns, the conversation takes place exclusively
between the IR and the interpreter. The interpreter repeatedly signals to the IR
that he understands and also asks for either clarification or additional information
without informing the client. None of the pieces of information offered to the client
by the IR is translated by the interpreter. Over a span of several minutes, all the
IR’s contributions are left untranslated, i.e. are given “zero-renditions” (Wadenjsö
1998: 108). Only after he cannot answer one of the IR’s questions on his own does
the interpreter involve the client for the first time after several turns: “You have all
the/the, what are they called/payment slips you have paid, or?” (data not shown). 17
The interpreter applies the same strategy throughout the remainder of the
encounter. He rarely translates information for the client; it is entirely unclear
whether and how much the client understands of what is going on. Only if the in-
terpreter cannot answer a question on his own does he address the client to acquire
the missing information. He repeatedly addresses questions to the IR without be-
ing told to do so by the client (e.g. “When can you do that?”; data not shown), and
signals understanding to the IR (e.g. “Yes, I understand, but/”; data not shown).
Only when he is explicitly prompted by the IR (“Ask him if he/if he wants to do it
like that”; data or shown) to ask the client does he provide a “summarised rendi-
tion” (Wadensjö 1998: 108).
As only a few of the IR’s explanations are translated, most of the specialist
terminology used by the IR is omitted by the interpreter. It remains unclear how
much he really understands and whether he is able to adequately transfer the con-
cepts explained by the IR to the client. The only instance where specialist terms
are translated is in line 75, where the IR wants to confirm that the client has kept
the bank payment slips (“Belege”) to prove that he indeed transferred the rent.
The interpreter first answers on behalf of the client, and then translates the IR’s
question and simplifies “payment slips” into “confirmation” (“Bestätigung”).

17. For reasons of space, some of the examples discussed in this section are not included in the
excerpts shown. The full transcript can be obtained from the author upon request.
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 145

c7-ext1Transcript Excerpt 1
[75]
IR der hat er auch die Belege dafür?
he also has the slips?
Int. Ja, hat er schon. И я ма ю хьоьгахь юй ахь
Yes, he has. You have the confirmations for
[76]
Int. хьай переводш яш
the bank transfers, or?
Client Цигахь ю са, сациалле ю циг д а йаьхьан кхаъ
There, I have them, because I had to show them for the
last three

The interpreter provides a summarised rendition of what the IR had explained

over several turns, using a direct equivalent for “Anwalt” (“lawyer”) and “Klage
einbringen” (“file an action”; data not shown). These are the only two instances
where specialist terms are translated for the client. All the other terms (36 in total)
are omitted. It is unclear whether the client understands some German and is able
to get the gist of what is said. Towards the end of the conversation, he once replies
to an answer with “yes” (data not shown), which might be interpreted as a sign
that he has at least some knowledge of German.
In another encounter (see Transcript Excerpt 2) at the housing department, a
Chechen woman is accompanied by a female acquaintance who serves as an inter-
preter. The client has been on the waiting list for a bigger flat for some time. The
IR explains the procedure for the allocation of flats, which depends on the availa-
bility of flats (waiting lists are common), family income (affordability) and family
size. Here, again, the interpreter is more of a “helper” than a language mediator,
though she translates a larger amount of information than the interpreter in the
previous encounter. Overall, the IR seems to try to keep the information level as
simple as possible (Pöllabauer 2009: 45–53). Although the IR mostly seems to try
to adapt her level of technicality to the interpreter’s (and client’s) reduced language
competence, in three instances, the interpreter is faced with language that can be
classified as more specialist. In one example, the IR explains that the allocation
of flats depends on the family’s “income” (“Einkommen”) and the “family size”
(“Familiengröße”).
146 Sonja Pöllabauer

c7-ext2Transcript Excerpt 2
[27]
IR Bitte können Sie fragen, ob sich beim Einkommen was geändert hat oder ob
Can you please ask if something has changed in the income or if
[28]
IR das noch gleich ist, so wie ich das da hab’.
it is still the same, like I have it here.
Int. Мух ду хинц, хьуна луш долу ахч,
хинц сан дуй?
Now what, the money you get, is it the
same as now?

In line 27, the IR prompts the interpreter to deliver a translation for the client
(“Can you please ask…”). In line 28, the interpreter then translates “income” as
“the money you get.” The concept of “income” is then rendered in a simplified
manner once again (in line 33) with an additional explanation, a structure which
could be classified as a “translation couplet”: “How much money do you get?
Only then she can offer one [a flat]. You understand?” (data not shown). A few
minutes later, the interpreter is faced with the concept of “childcare allowance”
(“Kinderbetreuungsgeld”), which she translates as: “How much money does your
husband/do you get for the boy. Six hundred?” (data not shown).
The next set of examples is taken from an encounter at the Municipal Office
(“Bürgerbüro”) in Kapfenberg, which has established a pool of interpreters that
has officially been named “Pool of Interpreters and Mediators.” Interpreters in that
pool have, as already mentioned, received some kind of training and tend to view
themselves as “trained” interpreters. The Municipal Office usually provides clients
with interpreters from its pool when needed, though these interpreters are also
called upon to “mediate” in conflicts, which makes their role quite complicated
(Pöllabauer 2012: 222). In the following encounter (see Transcript Excerpt 3), the
interpreter is an acquaintance of a Chechen couple who wants to move into a new
flat together in. The man has already been awarded refugee status, whereas his
wife is still waiting for the asylum authority’s decision. The IR informs the couple
about their options for finding a flat and financial support. The interpreter is not
an interpreter from the pool, but an external interpreter who accompanied the
clients to the office (Pöllabauer 2009: 24). In several instances, the interpreter is
faced with specialist terminology. For example, the IR asks whether the couple has
already filed an application for a flat (“Wohnungsansuchen”) and whether they
have “called on” (“vorgesprochen”) one of the competent housing cooperatives for
a flat, employing a German expression often used in institutional contexts, but not
very common in general language use (data not shown). The interpreter’s rendition
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 147

is a simplified, though basically correct, translation of the concept conveyed by

the IR: “She asks if you, like now here, went somewhere, if you had a talk to find
a flat” (data not shown).
Several turns later, the IR explains to the couple that an organisation named
“Gemysag” is the largest housing agency in that city. She explains that this organ-
isation has the legal status of a “cooperative” (“Genossenschaft”), which is omitted
by the interpreter (data not shown).

c7-ext3Transcript Excerpt 3
[28]
IR
Int. цуннах зависеть деш ду бох шадеги Генизакках угаре йокхнаг из ю бох
Everything depends on Gemysag, she says. The Gemysag is the biggest there.

The concept of “consulting day” (“Sprechtag”) also seems to constitute a problem

(see Transcript Excerpt 4) and is rendered in an explanatory manner. The IR ex-
plains that the client needs to go to Gemysag to fill in an application for a flat and
arrange an appointment for the “consulting day” offered by Gemysag (lines 41‒42).

c7-ext4Transcript Excerpt 4
[41]
IR Termin für den Sprechtag holen. Könnten Sie das sagen?
Get an appointment for the con- Could you say that?
sulting day.
Int. Aha. Гемайнде т1еъ
She says to go to
[42]
Int. ваг1ан д1о цигахь цер къамелш деш из собрани циг термин якх бох хьайн
the municipality, there where they discuss things, to make an appointment and
then go to Gemysag

The interpreter sends her clients to the “municipality,” a faulty translation, perhaps
due to a phonological problem. “Consulting day” is paraphrased as “there, where
they discuss (things),” a phrase which will probably leave the client wondering
whether she means “Gemysag” or the “municipality,” which was introduced by
the interpreter. Overall, the interpreter’s translation is difficult to understand and
redundant in parts.
In one longer passage (see Transcript Excerpt 5), the IR provides a complex
explanation of the couple’s options for getting financial support and explains the
differences between different forms of support, e.g. “Grundversorgung” (an allow-
ance for food and basic daily expenses paid to asylum applicants) and “Sozialhilfe”
148 Sonja Pöllabauer

(social welfare benefits). These concepts are then taken up again later in the con-
versation. Neither “Grundversorgung” nor “Sozialhilfe” is rendered by the inter-
preter for her clients. The interpreter omits all complex information and provides
a very simplified explanation and summarised translation for the clients in line
69, which is very hard to follow. It remains unclear whether the clients can grasp
the meaning of what the IR has tried to explain to them.

c7-ext5Transcript Excerpt 5
[69]
IR Ja, aber das müssten Sie
nur sagen, bitte.
Yes, but you would have to
say that, please.
Int. Problem für Sie. Ja ja. Хьоьг хьо цуьнц
problem for you. She says, that you can move in with
[70]
Int. ваъ ял йиш ю бох квартире, ну хьун хаъ дез бох хьун лурдол ахч, хьа
him, but you have to know how much money you will get, that you will not have
left any.
[71]
Int. харжне ахч xxx хирдоцил нагахь хьай квартире ял лур елахь кхид1аъ
If you can move in, if you can afford that, then you can.

That same strategy of summarising complex information in one brief (sometimes

faulty) sentence can be observed in several instances in this transcript. Whenever
more complex information is provided, this is generally omitted by the interpreter.
The last set of examples comprises excerpts from another recording taken at
the Municipal Office. Two IRs try to advise the client (a Chechen man) on diverse
matters such as financial problems, financial support and payment of traffic tick-
ets. The interpreter is a Chechen woman from the Bürgerbüro’s pool of interpret-
ers, i.e. a “trained” interpreter.
In several instances, she seems to have problems with either her German-
language proficiency or interpreting techniques. Without being able to refer to
the original text, her translations are sometimes hard to understand. Specialist
terminology may be part of the problem (Pöllabauer 2009: 12–22).
One lengthy topic is the emotional problems of the client, which, according
to the IRs, should be treated by psychotherapy. The IRs show a high degree of cul-
tural awareness; it is obvious to them that for many Chechen men, conversational
therapy is a taboo and often avoided. In the following example (see Transcript
Excerpt 6), the interpreter renders the IR’s suggestion to seek “Gesprächstherapie”
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 149

(“conversational therapy”) in a more simplified manner (“go to a doctor”), possi-

bly also as a face-saving strategy so that the Chechen client does not need to feel
embarrassed.

c7-ext6Transcript Excerpt 6
[28]
IR2 Angebot anzunehmen, ah, aner Beratung.
take up the offer of, ah, counselling.
Int. кхузахь шен хьо цхьан лоьран т1е
She means that you should regularly see
[29]
Int. оьхш ву моьттар бох. Кхузахь циг больници д1аъ вахан хьоьж чуллаъ
a doctor here, she says. Here/there, than

That the interpreter also recognises that psychotherapy is a taboo topic is obvious
a few turn later (data not shown), where her translation signals the client’s and his
(as well as her own) culture through an inclusive “we”-structure identification.
The IR’s comment “In your culture it is not common, that I know already, that
you make use of psychological help” is converted into “That we don’t do such a
thing at home, I know that, she says, that for us that is somehow like/somehow a
bit strange, that I know, she says” (data not shown). In this construction, she again
leaves out the reference to “psychological help” and uses a more cryptic “that.” (The
redundancy that is obvious in this turn of her translation is also evident in many
other instances in this transcript.)
Paraphrases are also repeatedly used by the interpreter. In line 69, for instance,
she converts “official secrecy” (“Amtsverschwiegenheit”) into “That is kept among
us. Nothing will be told to others. You don’t need to keep anything back, she says.”
One last example from that encounter is again a term from the field of psy-
chotherapy that seems to pose a problem to the interpreter.

c7-extTranscript Excerpt 7
[127]
IR2 Das ist alles so tief im Unterbewussten, das
That is all deep down in the subconscious, that
Int. хилларш цунах т1аьхье ю бох
one can never completely forget.
[128]
IR2 is’ sicherlich a Problem. Und deshalb gibt’s ja Gott sei Dank diese Hilfe bei
surely is a problem. And that’s why, thank God, this help is offered by
150 Sonja Pöllabauer

[129]
IR2 uns.
us.
Int. мяллаъ г1о да мяллаъ жим-жим,жим-жим хуьлш ц1а г1о хил йиш
Help a bit/something step by step/to get some help, I find that
[130]
IR2 Und mein persönliches Anliegen wär’ wirklich,
And my personal wish would really be
Int. хилaр г1оле хет шен бох
better, she says.

The IR’s reference to the “subconscious” (“Unterbewusstsein”) is omitted. Instead,

the interpreter repeats information that has already been given before in a rather
confusing manner.
What can be seen from all these examples is that the interpreters in these
encounters generally assume a very active role. They do not restrict themselves to
translating the message, but see themselves as equal interlocutors who do not feel
compelled to translate (part of or the entire) information conveyed by the IR to
their clients. Specialist terminology is evident in the entire corpus of recordings.
The examples cited above are not an exhaustive list, but only some instances of
talk where specialist terms seem to have triggered a problem. Interestingly, all the
interpreters seem to favour the same strategies: the most common strategy is to
omit “difficult” terms. The second most frequently used strategy is to paraphrase
and simplify terms and phrases (determinologisation or banalization), an obser-
vation that has, for instance, also been made by Meyer (2006: 21) with regard to
amateur interpreter situations (see above). The use of direct equivalences is not
very common in the examples discussed above and only one “translation couplet”
was found. The data in our corpus also indicate that the strategies used by some of
the interpreters do indeed produce erroneous translations, as suggested by Valero-
Garcés (2005: 91).
Of my taxonomy of 10 different strategies, which was developed on the basis
of Niska’s (1998a; 1998b; 2002; 2003) and Valero-Garcés’ (2005) findings, only five
strategies were used by the interpreters in the sample of examples discussed in
this paper. A full analysis of the entire corpus may show whether the remaining
strategies were also used. The fact that all the interpreters in this small corpus
adopt the same strategies may be explained by the fact that all of them were ad
hoc interpreters with a very low proficiency in German, even though some viewed
themselves as “trained” interpreters, and a complete lack in interpreting strategies
or terminological competence such as research and information-mining skills.
 Chapter 7. Terminology in public service interpreting 151

What is evident in all the transcripts is that many of the translations provided
by the interpreters are more “vague” and less specific than the original, possibly
due to the omission of specific terms. Additionally, many translations through-
out the entire corpus are characterised by a high degree of redundancy. Another
common feature is that in most transcripts, we find instances of “two-part or
multi-part renditions” (Wadensjö 1998: 109), i.e. one original utterance is split into
several units by the interpreters; in our case, these were sometimes translated or
summarised only much later compared to information originally given. One last
aspect that is also evident in the examples presented here is that the interpreters
repeatedly change the deictic structure of utterances, a common feature in PSI.
They often use the third person to indicate the authorship of utterances (Pöllabauer
2009: 53). Sometimes, such deictic changes may also be part of a face-saving strat-
egy (ibid.: 21).
What is evident from this study is that my findings, with the exception of the
category “use of deictic markers,” coincide with Valero-Garcés’ (2005: 91) findings
regarding the strategies used by untrained interpreters.

6. Conclusion

This chapter has analysed a sample of authentic institutional encounters recorded

at two public service institutions in Austria. The analysis focuses on the strategies
adopted by interpreters with little or no interpreting training to render specialist
terminology used by the service providers, and the findings show similarities to
findings presented by other authors (Niska 1998a; 1998b; 2002; Valero-Garcés
2005).
The interpreters in the examples discussed here tend to omit, simplify or par-
aphrase specialist vocabulary. The result is that through the interpreters’ transla-
tions, the explanations offered by the service providers are often made less explicit
and more redundant than they originally were. Sometimes the interpreters pro-
duce faulty translations and many text passages are difficult to understand due to
their low language proficiency.
What we can conclude from the findings is that it would be important to point
out to the service providers that specialist terminology may pose a specific problem
to trained interpreters, and even more so to amateur interpreters. The corpus on
which this chapter is based does not allow for a comparison of strategies used by
trained and untrained interpreters, so we can only speculate that amateur inter-
preters will lack strategies that trained interpreters should have acquired through
their training. It would of course be preferable to use only trained interpreters or
at least offer in-house training to interpreters who are used on a regular basis by
152 Sonja Pöllabauer

certain institutions. In cases where this is not possible, service providers can do
nothing more than make sure that their messages are – in Gricean terms – clear,
unambiguous, not too complicated and contain as little specialist vocabulary as
possible – and hope that their interpreters ask for clarification and additional
explanations if something is not clear to them. Ultimately, a faulty translation is
more than a mere blemish in situations where much is at stake for clients, and a
flawed communication and little awareness of the needs of foreign-language clients
and their interpreters may tarnish an institution’s reputation.

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Gebärdensprachdolmetschen”. Mehr lernen. Gehörlose in der nachschulischen Bildung:
Beiträge zur Internationalen Fachtagung des EU-Leonardo-da-Vinci-Projekts MAS in Berlin,
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der Erich-Weinert-Buchhandlung.
Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998.Interpreting as Interaction. London & New York: Longman.
Will, Martin. 2009. Dolmetschorientierte Terminologiearbeit. Modell und Methode. Tübingen:
Narr.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Witzel, Jutta. 2011. “Wissen explizit machen. Terminologiemanagement für Fachdolmetscher”.
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Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/z.htm1.19wri
 Chapter 8

From confinement to community service

Migrant inmates mediating between languages
and cultures

Linda Rossato
University of Bologna

This paper presents a spin-off study from the research project In MedIO
PUER(I), launched at the University of Bologna in 2007 (see Antonini 2010a;
Antonini 2010b; Cirillo et al. 2010; Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Antonini this
volume), and sets out to investigate the under-researched phenomenon of
language and cultural brokering among migrant inmates. In countries such
as Italy, where immigration is still a recent experience and resources for insti-
tutional interpreting are scarce even in ordinary public contexts, professional
language services are virtually non-existent in secluded environments such as
prisons. Foreign inmates and jail personnel face linguistic problems that they
tend to handle through spontaneous forms of mediation: a convicted migrant,
who is fluent in Italian, may act as a mediator between fellow-country inmates
with poor knowledge of the host language and jail officers. This form of lan-
guage and cultural brokering is a common form of ad hoc interpreting that
responds to the communication needs of both inmates and detention institu-
tions. This paper sets out to map the phenomenon and to investigate whether
this practice has an impact on inmates’ self-perception and rehabilitation
process.

Keywords: migrant inmates, ad hoc interpreting, identity, rehabilitation,

integration

1. Introduction

Non-professional Interpreting and Translation has recently become an object of

study within research on translation and interpreting. Although specific volumes
on this subject are not common, authoritative reference material on child and
adult language brokering as well as ad hoc interpreting and translation is scat-
tered through specialized journals and other collective works. Still, the literature

doi 10.1075/btl.129.08ros
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
158 Linda Rossato

on non-professional interpreting in prisons and young offender institutions is,

to our knowledge, totally absent. Due to comprehensible difficulties in obtaining
permission to acquire first-hand data from these institutions (see also Baixauli-
Olmos 2013: 46–47), academic researchers have been inclined to neglect this very
productive field of research. Yet, in countries such as Italy, where the immigration
phenomenon is relatively recent, the scarcity of financial as well as logistic re-
sources devoted to professional interpreting services generates an imperative need
for ad hoc interpreting in many public institutions (e.g. hospitals, schools, police
headquarters). The linguistic situation in jails is particularly critical and therefore
worthy of study, specifically from the point of view of research on non-professional
interpreting.
In Italian jails, a composite mix of different migrant languages and regional
dialects is concentrated in a very limited space. Lacking adequate professional
interpreting resources, immigrant inmates and jail officers clearly face linguistic
problems in their daily routines that they need to cope with in makeshift ways.
Migrant inmates with a good command of Italian may be asked to mediate be-
tween newly arrived convicts, who speak the same native language and possess a
poorer knowledge of Italian, and the Italian jail officers who have no knowledge
of the offender’s mother tongue.
For the purpose of this paper, we will restrict our attention to the migrant
population confined in regular penal complexes or detention centers in Italy, i.e.
people who are sentenced to prison because of common offences.
Migrants and asylum seekers detained in centers for illegal immigration will
not be the focus of the present study, although a report by MSF (Médecins Sans
Frontières) published in 2010, expressing serious concern about healthcare assis-
tance in Italian detention centers for illegal immigrants, stated that: “Cultural me-
diators are often lacking and this creates dangerous misunderstandings between
doctors and patients.” 1
The present paper tackles the phenomenon of cultural and language brokering
among inmates in two different confinement centers based in northern Italy. The
experience of immigrant prisoners serving as language brokers in Italian penal
complexes will be presented through the results of a purpose-built questionnaire
administered to migrant inmates by Italian language teachers whom the research-
er met during field research activities for the research project In MedIO PUER(I).
Unlike the researcher, these teachers had free access to informants in the deten-
tion centers. All the data illustrated in this paper were collected over a time span
of 9 months (between September 2009 and June 2010), and are the preliminary

1. Information retrieved from http://www.exodus-network.org/2010/02/beyond-the-wall-msf-

returned-to-visit-italian-detention-centres/ (last viewed April 1, 2014).
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 159

outcomes of an exploratory study that was conducted through a closed and

open-ended question survey. Questionnaires were distributed and completed dur-
ing Italian classes in a young male offender institution and in a male prison, both
based in the Veneto region in northern Italy. The incarcerated population in this
region showed comparatively high proportions of first- and second-generation mi-
grant prisoners (58.3% in 2011), according to the Italian Independent Foundation
for Initiatives and Studies on Multi-Ethnicity (Fondazione ISMU 2011: 173).
The purposes of the present study are manifold. First, it substantiates the ex-
istence of the phenomenon of migrant inmates mediating between languages and
cultures for their fellow inmates. Second, it verifies whether these adult language
brokers have acquired an awareness of their role as linguistic and cultural me-
diators and whether they have developed specific translation strategies. Third, it
aims to investigate how this linguistic and cultural mediation practice is affecting
inmates’ self-perception and their identity reconstruction. Finally, it intends to
discover whether and how the language brokering practice has an impact on their
integration and rehabilitation process.

2. Review of the literature

Although valuable research has been conducted on public service interpreting

in prison facilities (Baixauli-Olmos 2013; 2012), 2 as mentioned above, very little
specific literature on non-professional interpreting among inmates in penitentiary
institutions yet exists (see Martínez-Gómez Gómez 2011). This paper, therefore,
draws on the more prolific research on natural translation (Harris & Sherwood
1978) and child and adolescent language brokering (Orellana et al. 2003; Hall
2004; Hall & Sham 2007; Antonini 2010a; Antonini 2014) for a sound theoretical
background. We found the studies on language and (intuitive) translation skills
of young bilinguals with no professional training (Valdés 2002) to be particularly
useful for the analysis of the brokers’ translational skills contained in this paper.
Research with an educational approach, focusing on the cognitive or relational and
psychological effects of language brokering activities in pupils’ school performance
(Orellana 2001; Orellana et al. 2003; Orellana 2009; Weisskirch & Alva 2002), was
valuable when drafting the questionnaire we used. Equally insightful to design
our research approach were studies with an ethnographic method that analyzed
adult retrospective reflections on their child language brokering experiences to

2. For a more comprehensive review of the literature on research into prison interpreting, see
Martínez-Gómez Gómez 2011: 67–70, 81–83).
160 Linda Rossato

identify language brokers as active citizens, social agents, and cultural mediators
(Bauer 2010, 2013, this volume).
Before outlining the research carried out for this paper, the following section
will provide a more general picture of the current situation in Italian prisons.

3. Appalling conditions of inmates in Italian prisons

The undignified and inhumane conditions of Italian prisons have been often
criticized and denounced by both Italian intellectuals and international human
rights organizations. Moreover, in 2013, the European Court of Human Rights
sentenced the Italian government to pay 100,000 euro to seven inmates held in two
different prisons in northern Italy, in compensation for the inhumane conditions
of their detention, and allowed Italy a period of one year to improve jail condi-
tions.3 According to Aebi & Delgrande (2012) who published the annual Council of
Europe Report 2012 4 which gathers the statistics of continental penal institutions,
Italy is one of the worst performing countries, second only to Serbia for prison
overcrowding; in 2012, some convicts were forced to live in an area of less than
three square meters, with more than 59,000 prisoners detained (the number raises
to 66,271 if we include pre-trial detainees) in 208 Italian confinement centers,
against a capacity of around 45,500 places. 5 In these overcrowded conditions,
thousands of cases of rape, innumerable cases of violent assault, and physical and
psychological abuse take place. This unbearable situation may well be responsi-
ble for the high number of suicides that are attempted and committed among
inmates every year. Over the past two decades, more than 1000 inmates have
committed suicide, while other 20,000 were the attempted suicides. 6 According

3. Retrieved from http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/29560/European-court-gives-

Italy-year-to-improve-prison-conditions.html (last viewed April 2, 2014).
4. The report was published on April 29, 2014. See the complete report on European Penal
Institutions at: http://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2014/05/Council-of-Europe_SPACE-I-2012-E_
Final_140507.pdf (last viewed April 1, 2015).
5. These data have not changed much since 2012, as confirmed by the Italian Ministry of Justice
in January 2014, information retrieved from http://www.west-info.eu/it/processi-­pendenti-e-
carceri-sovraffollate-i-problemi-della-giustizia-italiana/ (last viewed March 25, 2014). The num-
bers are also confirmed by ISTAT and can be retrieved from the website of the Italian Statistical
Research Institution at: www.istat.it.
6. Data retrieved from http://www.everyonegroup.com/EveryOne/MainPage/Entries/2011/6/
15_Italian_Prisons__Overcrowding,_Cases_of_Suicide,_Rape_and_Violence.html (last viewed
March 25, 2014).
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 161

to Everyonegroup, an activist association for international cooperation on human

rights culture, these estimates are unparalleled not only in democratic countries,
but also among fundamentalist regimes. 7 The situation in Italian prisons is also
very worrying as regards inmate healthcare.
According to the Non-for-Profit Organization SIMSPe (Italian Society for
Medicine and Healthcare in Confinement Institutions), a very high percentage
of convicts, between 60% and 80%, are suffering from either a psychiatric or a
physical disease: 48% of inmates suffer from infectious diseases and 32% from
mental disorders. Drug addiction also has a high incidence in the jail population
with around 300 cases every 1000 convicts. 8 If we consider that basic human rights
are not guaranteed in Italian prisons, it is no wonder that linguistic assistance for
foreign inmates is not a priority in Italian correctional institutions.

3.1 Crime perception in Italy

The Italian public opinion’s distorted perception that there has been an exponen-
tial increase in illegal actions committed by migrants in recent years may well
have originated from an overwhelming media coverage of crime and delinquency
among non-Italians, as well as from the relative scarcity of reliable and up-to-date
information on social phenomena connected to migrants.
Yet nothing could be further from the truth, while the overall number of
inmates has increased by 28% from 2007 to 2013, not only has the rate of crimes
committed by foreign citizens over the total number of crimes decreased since
2008, 9 but also infringements of criminal law carried out by migrants have gen-
erally tended to be of minor entity when compared to those committed by Italian
citizens. The actual amount of grave offences such as murder, attempted murder,
and robberies, committed by both migrants and Italians, has been slowly decreas-
ing since 2007. 10 Generally speaking, migrants are more involved in marginal
activities requiring “unskilled labor,” less profit-making, but much more visible.

7. Ibid.
8. Data retrieved from http://www.west-info.eu/it/allarme-carceri-malato-il-70-dei-detenuti/
(last viewed March 25, 2014).
9. As regards the incidence of migrant inmates in the prison population in Italy, latest statistics
provided by the Italian Ministry of Justice have registered a decrease from 37% in 2008 to 34%
in 2014. Data retrieved from: http://www.oasisociale.it/news/caritas-migrantes-un-terzo-dei-­
detenuti-sono-migranti.html (last viewed April 7, 2015).
10. Data retrieved from http://www.istat.it/it/files/2013/03/7_Sicurezza.pdf (last viewed March
22, 2015).
162 Linda Rossato

Migrants mainly have to do with infringements of property, migration, drugs, and

prostitution laws (Caritas-Migrantes 2014b: 22).
Underage convictions have followed a similar trend and fewer young migrants,
especially minors, are convicted today than in the past: while in 2006, the incidence
of non-Italian juvenile prisoners was close to 57%, by the end of 2010, the presence
of young migrants in juvenile prisons had shrunk to 29.9% (Caritas-Migrantes
2011: 171). Although these percentages have increased again since 2010, 11 the ma-
jority of convictions regarding crimes perpetrated by migrants still involve theft
and burglary, whereas bank robberies, murders, and other crimes against people
are mostly committed by Italians (Fondazione ISMU 2011: 169–172). Even if such
numbers can be very difficult to interpret, they do not justify the disproportionate
media coverage of migrants’ delinquency and crime relative to reports on offences
committed by Italians. 12 According to sociologist Ilvo Diamanti, quoted by Polchi
(2010: 15), there is no balanced proportion between the representation of crime in
Italian news and the actual number of penal offences. The coverage of crime on
the main Italian public television channel is double compared with the Spanish
counterpart, and 20 times more represented relative to the German counterpart
(Osservatorio Europeo sulla Sicurezza 2012: 30–35; Caritas-Migrantes 2010: 215;
see also Gonnella 2015; Tranchese 2008). Moreover, the Italian public opinion
may have a biased perception of migrants in relation to prison because there is
no awareness of some of the burdensome consequences of the Italian law against
illegal migration which provides that repatriated illegal migrants, who are found in
Italy again, are sentenced to prison (Caritas-Migrantes 2012: 199–201). These, and
many other aspects of migrants’ relation to crime, not least the conditions of pris-
oners in jail, are ignored by the general public and usually neglected by researchers.
Immigrants are rarely perceived as victims of crimes and abuse, despite the
spreading of very profitable businesses such as international smuggling and hu-
man trafficking crimes (Fondazione ISMU 2011: 173–180). Migrant inmates and
their needs as individual human beings, including their linguistic and communi-
cation needs, are very rarely considered or studied. Yet, with the help of some col-
laborative detention institutions, researchers should provide access to this hidden
“reservoir” of information. This chapter attempts to shed light on the phenomenon
of non-professional mediation, its contexts, and participants, in detention centers.

11. According to the updates contained in the Council of Europe’s 2012 Report (Aebi & Delgrande
2012) on penal institutions, non-Italian convicts accounted for 35.8% of the detainees in 2012,
while the rate of foreign pre-trial detainees was of 45%.
12. Information retrieved from http://www.integrazionemigranti.gov.it/archiviodocumenti/
aree-di-origine/Documents/detenuti%20stranieri%20in%20Italia.pdf (last viewed April 3, 2015).
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 163

3.2 Language and cultural mediation in detention centers:

A European issue

Although this is no justification, the difficulty in providing adequate professional

interpreting services in Italian penal complexes could be partly due to the assort-
ment of languages that are present in Italian jails, with 140 different nationalities
represented. Most foreign inmates come from Morocco (18,9%), Romania (16%),
Albania (12.4%), Tunisia (12.2%), and Nigeria (4%) (Caritas-Migrantes 2014b: 23).
Almost 46% of the convicted population of migrants comes from Africa and 42%
from Europe, while the Asian and American continents are equally represented
in the remaining 12%. 13 Communication barriers and shortcomings in detention
centers is not just an Italian issue, as reported by Jesuit Refugee Service-Europe
in a document published in 2013 about the vulnerability of detainees in detention
centers across the member states of the European Union:
The environment of detention has a negative impact on the level and quality of
social interaction among detainees and between detainees and staff. The mix of
cultures, nationalities and languages within the detention centre makes conflict
inevitable. Prolonged detainees more frequently report negative social interac-
tions than others do. An absence of language skills makes certain detainees vul-
nerable to other, more dominant, social groups. Minors and detainees aged 18 to
24 are frequently witness to arguments and physical violence.
 (Jesuit Refugee Service-Europe 2010: 11)

In the same report, prisoners were asked to describe the type of security staff they
were in contact with, and the quality of their interaction with them. The level and
quality of interaction with staff was deemed important by the researchers in rela-
tion to the vulnerability of detainees as they are clearly less empowered than staff
personnel. Inmates reported about their difficulties in interacting with detention
center staff in terms of low responsiveness as for healthcare and linguistic needs:
While the majority feel positive, almost one-third say that staff does not adequate-
ly support their needs. In these cases, detainees express frustration at not having
access to translators, having too little access to self-hygiene products or not being
able to receive special requests. Most detainees say that their opinions reflect

13. These data, provided by Fondazione Leone Moressa, a research institute based in the Veneto
region, whose focus is on the dynamics of economics related to migration, were published on
January 10th, 2014 and refer to the year 2013. They are elaborations on statistics provided by
the Italian Ministry of Justice. Available online at: http://www.fondazioneleonemoressa.org/
newsite/carceri-italiane-diminuiscono-gli-stranieri/ and http://www.fondazioneleonemoressa.
org/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Comunicato-stampa_Detenuti-stranieri.pdf (last
viewed April 8, 2015).
164 Linda Rossato

staff’s inability to fulfill the full range of their needs; others say that staff persons
do not address special circumstances. A 21-year-old Moroccan man detained in
Greece, for example, complains of not receiving staff support for his skin disease.
A 38-year-old Syrian man detained in Hungary says: “I got no answer about my
many requests to meet my lawyer.” An Ethiopian man of the same age detained
in The Netherlands states that the staff refused his many requests to meet with a
doctor. (Jesuit Refugee Service-Europe 2010: 46, my emphasis)

4. Study objectives and methodology

As previously highlighted, the present study draws on field research carried out
as part of the research project In MedIO PUER(I) on child language brokering, of
which the author is an active member. The background experience, research tools,
and methods are the same that have been employed in other studies of the same
group, and the research objectives and expected results fall within the common
aim of better understanding language brokering and non-professional transla-
tion and interpreting, especially in triadic face-to-face interactions (see Antonini
2010b; Cirillo et al. 2010; Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Antonini this volume; Cirillo
this volume; Torresi this volume).
More specifically, the study objectives of the present paper are: (1) to confirm
that language and cultural mediation is extremely common among migrant in-
mates belonging to all linguistic and ethnic communities; (2) to provide a detailed
description of the participants, the situations and contexts in which this practice
takes place in Italian prisons; (3) to gather data on both negative and positive at-
titudes towards this practice from both juvenile and adult migrant inmates; (4) to
verify whether inmate language brokers have developed translation and mediation
strategies and whether they have developed a certain awareness of their role and
responsibility as language and cultural mediators; and (5) to assess the impact that
language and cultural mediation has on various aspects of the non-Italian inmates’
life and identity (re)definition process.

4.1 Research design

The rehabilitation process of migrant inmates often follows progressive stages,

namely Italian language acquisition, professional training, and cultural, as well
as social and professional integration outside the prison. Fairly often, profession-
al training and coaching services are granted by not-for-profit organizations or
regional and local religious institutions. Universities are also involved in provid-
ing education, mainly through distant learning facilities. Moreover, inmates are
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 165

increasingly involved in creative projects, such as filmmaking, theatre and musical

performances, creative writing, and journalism, activities that are aimed at provid-
ing inmates with the opportunity to cooperate in constructive ways, and to make
good use of their time in confinement (Carmignani 2012: 382–396).
In the case of the present study, the researcher had access to informants
through a network of vocational schools that provide vocational training and
Italian classes in detention centers. These schools are supported by religious bodies
active in many Italian regions. Due to the impossibility for the researcher to have
direct access to respondents for participant observation, and to obtain permission
for video-recorded interviews or focus groups, the selected research method was
the distribution of written questionnaires entailing both closed and open-ended
questions. Given the respondents’ level of proficiency in Italian, the questionnaire
(in Italian) was the non-preferred tool. However, this was the only viable option
when the study took place due to the fact that respondents were solely accessible
via their Italian teachers who used the questionnaires as a class exercise, thus
avoiding very complex and time-consuming official bureaucracy that was neces-
sary had the researcher wished to enter the penitentiaries and administer the tool
herself. Moreover, as the respondents’ origins and language competence differed
considerably, and the present study was an unexpected spin-off part of the research
project In MedIO PUER(I), no specific budget for translations was available to
the researcher to cover the translation costs of many parallel text versions. This
of course negatively affected the quality and quantity of data that were ultimately
available to the researcher for analysis and influenced the approach to data inter-
pretation, which is therefore qualitative rather than quantitative in nature.
For the purpose of this paper, we considered the experience of immigrant
inmates serving as language brokers in two different prisons based, respectively,
in the towns of Vicenza and Treviso, both based in the Veneto region. Data were
collected between September 2009 and June 2010 through questionnaires that were
distributed by two Italian teachers who presented this task as an extra assignment
for inmates to carry out during their Italian classes.
Asymmetrical power relations between the respondents of the questionnaire
and the administrators needed to be taken into consideration, as they could influ-
ence the contents and interpretations of some of the answers given. It was expected
that respondents might present themselves in a positive way in order to obtain
praise from their teachers, or might put forward a profile that they thought would
be more acceptable to the institution in order to receive a positive evaluation for
good behavior. In order to reduce this sort of interferences, respondents were in-
formed that the questionnaire would not be evaluated by their teachers or by the
institution, but would be handed in to university researchers who had nothing to
do with the institution and would merely consider them for research purposes.
166 Linda Rossato

4.2 The survey

The tool adopted in this exploratory study to elicit information from inmates who
acted as language and cultural brokers for their fellow inmates was a question-
naire designed based on the model previously used for child language brokers,
which was disseminated in schools in the Veneto and in the Emilia Romagna
regions (see Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Cirillo this volume). For this present survey,
a purpose-built questionnaire was prepared with 32 closed questions, 30 multiple-­
choice questions, and 30 open-ended questions, all written in Italian. The protocols
for questionnaires contained different blocks of questions, which aimed to elicit:

–– personal information; including the participants’ sociodemographic back-

ground, such as number of years spent in Italy, languages spoken, number of
years spent at school, reasons for their immigration to Italy, family informa-
tion, occupation back home, etc.;
–– contexts/situations; the contexts and situations in which they recalled having
acted as intermediaries both for other inmates or in other contexts and who
the participants were in these interactions;
–– attitudes and individual experience; the brokers’ positive and negative feelings
about the mediation practice, both in general and relating to specific episodes.
Participants were also asked to relate anecdotes of successful or unsuccess-
ful instances of language mediation performed by them both in prison or
elsewhere;
–– awareness of their use of translation and mediation skills;
–– identity and social agency; information on whether and how the language
brokering practice had changed their personality or personal relationships
and how this related to the renegotiation of their identity or their perception
of themselves.

More specifically, the closed questions were related to sociodemographic data and
linguistic competence, and the multiple-choice questions concerned inmates’ ex-
perience as spontaneous mediators, ranging from frequency of occurrence, con-
texts, and general attitudes towards the practice, to previous experience with
language brokering before entering the confinement institution and during de-
tention. The open-ended questions were meant to elicit retrospective narratives of
their immigrant story and experience with language and ad hoc interpreting and
mediation, both in prison and outside.
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 167

4.3 The respondents

Questionnaires were administered to all immigrants participating in the Italian

classes provided in the two male detention institutions involved in the project. The
subjects’ different competence in Italian strongly affected their levels of coopera-
tion in answering the survey. A total of 20 filled-in questionnaires were returned,
but unfortunately, only 12 of them were usable for the purposes of this study, while
the others were ruled out as they only reported demographical details.
In general, respondents (except for one person) were not particularly keen
to write extensively about their life and brokering experiences. In fact, the most
cooperative informants were those who described their experience of language
brokering as a pleasure rather than a burden. Respondents had very different
backgrounds in terms of country of origin, education, and language competence.
Aged between 21 and 42 years, respondents were of mixed origin: three from
Nigeria, two from Albania, two from Romania, two from Morocco, one from
Tunisia, one from the Ivory Coast, and one from the Dominican Republic. They
had been living in Italy for 3 to 15 years at the time of the survey. Their educational
background also differed considerably: two had attended junior high school in
their home country, three had attended vocational schools, and two high school
in their home country, while five had graduated from university in their home
countries. Of the 12 respondents, seven stated that they had also received an Italian
junior high school diploma, either in the detention center or outside. For the other
five, the Italian classes they were attending in prison appeared to be the first kind
of Italian schooling experience.
As for the respondents’ language competence, all identified the official lan-
guage of their country of origin as their mother tongue, while acknowledging
some competence in Italian, plus in Venetian and/or other Italian dialects. Six
respondents stated that they had a third language, while two respondents had
some competence in four languages other than their mother tongue. As regards the
reasons for their migration to Italy, three respondents stated that they had joined
their parents already living in Italy, while nine had come to Italy on their own to
improve their life conditions and to seek better job opportunities.

5. Discussion

As mentioned in the “research design” section, the researcher had to take into
consideration the existence and possible interferences on the data of asymmet-
rical power relations between the respondents of the questionnaire and the ad-
ministrators. However, respondents were informed that the survey would solely
168 Linda Rossato

serve research purposes and would not be evaluated by their teachers or by the
institution. The fact that 8 out of 20 respondents felt free not to complete the task
and that some respondents expressed negative feelings as regards the practice of
language brokering, in the researcher’s view, argues for the overall reliability of
the answers given.

5.1 Frequency of occurrence of language brokering practice

Contradictory results about the practice of ad hoc interpreting emerged from this
survey. Five respondents stated that they had never mediated for other people,
but two of these then answered some of the questions related to the frequency of
occurrence and their feelings about mediating for other people. As the researcher
had no direct access to the respondents and could not provide extra information or
ask further questions, it is not possible to verify why this incongruence emerged,
although our hypothesis is that these respondents either served as brokers or were
the beneficiaries of language brokering activities offered by others. However, the
rest of the respondents acknowledged that they had mediated for other inmates
and jail personnel on a daily basis (three respondents), approximately once a week
(three respondents) or every month (one respondent). Three of them also stated
that they had started mediating for their family, relatives, and friends as children.
Inmates reported that they mediated both in formal and informal settings, and
most of the respondents stated that they were called on to act as mediators more
frequently when there were newcomers to the prison. As for their experience as
language brokers outside the prison, they reported that they brokered mainly in
family situations as well as between family and friends and the Italian institutions;
the latter cases included banks, public offices, hospitals, police headquarters, post
offices, and schools.

5.2 Attitudes and feelings towards the language brokering practice

Very mixed reactions concerning the respondents’ attitudes towards ad hoc me-
diation emerged from the present investigation, a result that is totally in line with
the outcomes from the survey administered to children and adolescents serving
as language brokers in Italy (Antonini 2014; Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Cirillo this
volume). In most cases, inmates considered the language brokering practice both
as a pleasure and a burden. They reported both a sense of pride in helping other
people and a feeling of shame, frustration, and uneasiness. Those most enthusi-
astic about the practice of mediation felt that brokering was amusing and did not
care about the burden of responsibility that this practice involved. Four subjects
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 169

responded that the mediation practice had definitely helped them become better
persons and three people totally agreed that the mediation practice had made
them more independent and mature. Except for one person who did not agree, and
another who did not express his opinion on the subject, all the other respondents
confirmed that the mediation practice had helped improve their competence in
the Italian language and culture. They were less convinced about mediation that
had helped them retain their mother tongue and cultural traditions.
As regards pros and cons of the language and cultural mediation, the positive
aspects reported far surpassed the negative ones, as one respondent admitted: in
the case of both child language brokering and adult language brokering, the prac-
tice of language and cultural mediation has positive aspects. Due to the limited
number of respondents and their confinement condition, quotations from the
respondents’ answers are not only anonymous, but are also deprived of demo-
graphic details that could lead to an identification of the subjects. The respondents
expressed themselves in broken Italian; therefore, for the purpose of this paper,
their answers were converted into standardized Italian. A translation from Italian
into English is provided below each quotation:

(1) Da bambino apprendi continuamente nuove cose. Da adulto aiuti gli altri. Tra
pro e contro credo che siano tutte situazioni positive.
When you are a child you are always learning new things. When you grow up
you help other people. Balancing pros and cons, I believe they are all positive
aspects.

The word aiutare (to help) was sometimes used as a synonym for “mediation,”
“interpreting,” or “language brokering,” which were undoubtedly less familiar
concepts for the informants, and less emotionally connoted. One respondent un-
derlined the beneficial effect he received from the language brokering practice
performed by others, and another expressed the wish to continue to perform as a
broker after his detention period was over. He used the word aiutare (to help) as
a synonym for “language brokering,” and seemed to infer that understanding the
language could also help people discern good from evil, as shown in example (3):

(2) Molte persone mi hanno aiutato… la mia esperienza con le lingue è stata molto
positiva.
Many people helped me… My experience with languages was very positive. 14

14. Here and in the following examples, emphasis is mine.

170 Linda Rossato

(3) Quando avrò terminato la pena, mi piacerebbe aiutare altre persone. Tutti
dovrebbero essere in grado di capire e riconoscere ciò che è buono da ciò che è
sbagliato.
When I finish my detention I’d like to help other people. Everyone should be
able to understand and discern what is good from what is wrong.

The researcher’s impression as regards the interpretation of excerpt (3) is that this
respondent may be referring to the language and cultural brokering practice as
a tool to prevent crime in that it could help fellow countrymen with insufficient
language competence to stay away from potentially illegal or criminal actions.
A discussion on the connection between language proficiency and inclination
to commit crime is beyond the scope of the present research, but the issue de-
serves serious consideration and is certainly worth examining in depth and from
a cross-disciplinary perspective in future research. Valuable research has been
produced, for example, in the domains of language education and pedagogy (see
Benucci 2007).

5.3 Translation strategies and awareness of the mediator’s role

Whenever asked directly, the survey respondents did not seem particularly aware
of adopting any specific translation strategy during language brokering events;
they tended to approach the practice in a rather intuitive way. Yet, when analyz-
ing their answers more in depth, it was possible to infer that they understood the
need to avoid confusion by keeping things simple, and the need to convey the
main message by deleting unnecessary details. They also admitted making use of
examples to get the message across and were familiar with the use of paraphrasing;
for example, apart from the word aiutare (help), which we have encountered in
the previous examples, the language brokering activity was also labeled as spiegare
(explain), as one respondent stated:

(4) Non mi sono mai preparato per una mediazione. Spiego quello che posso spiegare,
non spiego quello che non posso spiegare. Cerco di far passare il messaggio con
gli esempi […]. L’aspetto più importante è che devi essere onesto […]. Non devi
usare troppe parole, possono fare confusione.
I have never prepared for a mediation event. I explain what I can explain,
I don’t explain what I cannot explain. I try to get the message across with
examples […]. The most important aspect is you have to be honest […]. You
shouldn’t use too many words, they may cause confusion.

The ethical issue is also mentioned by respondents who definitely seemed more
concerned and conscious about their role and responsibility as intermediaries
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 171

and cultural mediators than with their language proficiency. They mentioned
some ethical aspects of the practice in relation to translation, such as “you have
to be honest,” in the example above. They also admitted that they had refused to
translate some expressions that were not respectful for one of the parties of the
conversation as shown in example (5):

(5) Mi sono rifiutato quando quello che si diceva non era rispettoso per la persona.
I refused [to translate] when what was said was not respectful for the person.

Respondents’ awareness of the complexity of the cultural aspects involved in trans-

lation and mediation practices clearly emerges from the following excerpt taken
from the answer to an open-ended question of the survey:

(6) Tradurre il contesto è più importante che tradurre parole, perché i modi di dire
possono cambiare da un paese a un altro.
Translating the context is more important than translating the words, because
idiomatic expressions may change from one country to another.

5.4 Identity issues

As highlighted in the literature on how child language brokering may influence

ethnic identity (Weisskirch 2005), language brokering activities appear to have
an impact on the inmate brokers’ self-perception and on their feelings about their
social and ethnic belonging. However, in contrast to the results of Weisskirch’s
study, where language brokering activities among sixth-grade Latino adolescents
seemed to cause “stronger feelings toward the ethnic group and greater ethnic
identity” (Weisskirch 2005: 286), our pilot survey seemed to point exactly in the
opposite direction.
When inmate brokers were invited to express their opinion on how the prac-
tice of brokering had changed their self-perception, it would seem that the changes
tended towards a more open-minded view of their personal role and identity, as
highlighted by the following quotations:

(7) Questa pratica mi ha fatto certamente diventare una persona migliore.

This practice has definitely helped me become a better person.
(8) Sono uno straniero-italiano.
I’m a foreigner-Italian.
(9) Sono uno straniero, europeo, anche se non mi vedono così, la discriminazione è
sempre esistita.
I’m a foreigner, a European, although I’m not perceived as a European, dis-
crimination has always existed.
172 Linda Rossato

(10) Mi sento cittadino del mondo.

I feel I am a citizen of the world.
(11) La mediazione aumenta l’integrazione perché favorisce gli incontri e diminuisce
i confini culturali.
Language mediation enhances integration in that it favors encounters and
reduces cultural barriers.

However, what was actually surprising in the researcher’s view, which is certainly
worth studying in depth in the future, was the ability of inmate language brokers
to reflect on the language and on its connection to a population’s cultural and
ethnic identity:

(12) Le lingue dovrebbero essere rispettate perché rappresentano l’essenza culturale di

un popolo. La mediazione comporta un carico di responsabilità e dovrebbe essere
fatta da persone serie, persone che conoscono bene la lingua. Ma a un livello non
professionale la mediazione è positiva per tutti noi.
Languages should be respected as they represent the cultural essence of a
people. Mediation implies a burden of responsibility and should therefore be
performed by reliable people who have robust language competence, but at a
non-professional level, mediation is always good for us all.

6. Conclusions

This study conducted in two male prisons in northern Italy clearly has some lim-
itations as regards the number and gender of respondents, as well as the incom-
pleteness of the answers and the research tool adopted. Therefore, only tentative
and cautious conclusions could be drawn on any of the aspects mentioned in the
analysis. Yet, due to the exceptional nature of the context where these data were
collected and the uniqueness of the information assembled from respondents who
are generally “out of bounds” for researchers outside the confinement institutions,
these are undoubtedly precious data.
First of all, the study helped the researcher build a more structured and user-­
friendly survey tool for broader dissemination. It also enhanced the construction
of a more solid network of collaborative local and regional institutions that could
support further steps of the research, i.e. its testing on a larger scale. We are con-
fident that this will help expand the effects of this research project, which, though
still undersized, has a great potential impact on the research into non-professional
translation.
I have already highlighted the difficulty in dealing with a research situation
that allowed neither participant observation, nor focus groups or other in-presence
 Chapter 8. From confinement to community service 173

research methods that had proved so satisfactory in the research project In MedIO
PUER(I). I have also mentioned the difficulty in interpreting the questionnaire
answers due to the communication gap between the researcher and the inform-
ants. At the beginning of the pilot research project, the objectives of the study were
very ambitious, but due to the linguistic problems encountered by the respondents
when completing their tasks, and the impossibility for the researcher to be phys-
ically present to help respondents, these objectives had to be progressively scaled
down. However, the study did manage to assess the existence of the phenomenon
of ad hoc interpreting and translating in Italian prisons, and although it could not
map it out on a large scale, it succeeded in providing a somewhat blurred descrip-
tion of the participants and the situations in which this practice may take place.
It was observed that the frequency of occurrence rose when new inmates arrived,
but individual language brokering activities may also depend on the fluency of the
broker in Italian, the number of years spent in Italy, and a personal predisposition
for languages as well as relational and transcultural skills.
The study also managed to provide information on immigrant inmates’ at-
titudes towards this practice and on how this affected their sense of identity and
self-perception. The paper also set out to study whether language brokers had
developed specific translation strategies. In the absence of real brokering event
recordings, the analysis had to rely on the declarations of inmate brokers and
could not be thoroughly verified. However, the researcher managed to infer that
the respondents had some awareness of what the mediator role implied in terms
of responsibility, ethics, and linguistic as well as cultural competence. Finally yet
importantly, the respondents gave some hints on how this linguistic and cultur-
al mediation practice was affecting their self-perception and their identity (re)
definition.
The fact that some respondents also mentioned the positive effects of lan-
guage brokering on their personality confirmed that this practice could be seen
as a potential integration and a positive rehabilitation tool within confinement
institutions. It also strengthened the researcher’s beliefs about the importance of
conducting such an investigation on a larger scale.

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 Chapter 9

The role and self-regulation

of non-professional interpreters
in religious settings
The VIRS project

Adelina Hild
University of Leicester

This chapter presents the results of an ethnographic study of non-profession-

al church interpreters, exploring how they regulate their behaviour in line
with their perceived role in religious settings. The Volunteer Interpreters in
Religious Settings (VIRS) project combines observational data (field notes,
audio and video recordings) with in-depth interviews in order to address ques-
tions concerning the motivational structure of native interpreters, the specific
strategies they apply in rendering the performative and linguistic aspects of
evangelical preaching, the role of social recognition and the process of effecting
emotional homeostasis. On the basis of these findings, the paper compares the
self-regulation processes of professional and volunteer interpreters and dis-
cusses how church interpreters perceive their role as visible co-constructors of
meaning in theological discourse.

Keywords: church interpreting, evangelical discourse, interpreting cognition,

ethnological study, performance, self-reflection

“Church interpreters aren’t as bad as people make out”

 (anonymous interpreter-blogger)

1. Introduction

Although interpreting in religious setting (IRS) is one of the earliest documented

types of interpreting (Kaufmann 2005: 975), it has emerged as a research topic only
in the last decade with just under half a dozen studies dedicated to the topic. The
majority of scholarship on interlingual mediation in the religious sphere focuses
on scripture interpreting (Karlik 2010) probably because of the strong links that

doi 10.1075/btl.129.09hil
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
178 Adelina Hild

scholars have with the bible translation community; however, less attention has
been paid to sermon interpreting or interpreting of other types of discourse. This
dearth of research and the consequent marginalization of church interpreting in
interpreting studies could be attributed to a number of reasons that have to do not
only with the nature of the subject of inquiry, but also with the current ideological
or professionalization agendas in the discipline, particularly given the fact that IRS
is performed primarily by non-professional interpreters.
It is difficult at this point to provide an estimate of how common the IRS prac-
tice is – we do not even have approximate estimates, but only clues which point to
the fact that IRS might be one of the most widespread types of interpreting activ-
ities in certain communities. In the last couple of years, the few researchers who
have ventured outside the traditional research “grounds” of interpreting studies
are catching glimpses of a surprisingly active community of volunteer interpreters
mediating different types of religious discourse, particularly in the services held
at the Free Churches. As the above quotation illustrates, they are frequently stig-
matized by the syndicated and trained members of the profession, though with
little justification. Harris (2009) finds volunteer church interpreters to be “Expert
Translators within their field,” despite their lack of any formal interpreter training.
What motivates these unrecognized non-professionals to devote considerable time
over the course of many years to church interpreting, to acquire and perfect a skill
on a volunteer basis? How do they effectively self-regulate in this specific setting?
How do they differ from professionals in other settings, if at all?
This focus on the individuals and their motivation, beliefs and goals was the
initial spark of the Volunteer Interpreters in Religious Settings (VIRS) project,
which quite logically triggered the next key questions – how do the interpreters
in religious settings perceive their role and how do these perceptions interact with
their social position and religious beliefs to shape their performative and linguistic
strategies? These questions placed the research at the intersection of interpreting
studies with theology (specifically New Homiletics), performance studies and an-
thropology. The latter naturally suggested the ethnographic method as the main
research method for the project, nested in a mixed-method design. Pragmatic
considerations (permission to conduct research, openness to the investigative pro-
cess, proximity) led to the choice of the specific setting where the research was
conducted – a Pentecostal urban community in Switzerland.
 Chapter 9. The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters 179

2. Globalization and expansion of religious spaces:

The Pentecostal koinonia

Interpreting studies has responded with heightened sensitivity to the profound

effects of globalization (economic, technological, political and cultural) on our
profession and the way interpreting services are provided in the contemporary
moment. Many studies have sought to situate professional and volunteer inter-lan-
guage mediators in the changing “ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financ-
escapes” (Appadurai 1990: 1) created by the dynamic of globality. Unrecognized,
however, remains another dimension of global interaction and flow, which reflects
the shifting religious maps of immigrant, diasporic or transnational communities.
These “religioscapes” (McAlister 2005) are difficult to discern because they are
not (exclusively) coextensive with political or physical space, or with ethnicity.
Another reason lies in the fact that they are relatively impermeable to “outsiders,”
“the religious others.”
Religious globalization tendencies are, as Elisabeth McAlister (2005) argues,
the earliest form of “production of space,” of extending and confirming expansion
in territorial terms that has historically given rise to the earliest documented forms
of interpreting (Kaufmann 2005) and the translation of the key cultural texts of
the Judeo-Christian tradition. These tendencies extend in modern history, and
perhaps the most prominent form of a contemporary transnational expansion
of “religious space” is the international evangelical movement. One of the salient
actors in this movement is the Pentecostal church and its concerned effort to create
a koinonia, a community of believers which spans over traditional geographies,
political and moral maps. According to recent estimates, the rapid growth of the
Pentecostal movement has made it the third largest Christian community with
over 115 million followers worldwide.
The expansion of the Pentecostal religioscape means not only moving into
non-Christian territories through organizing evangelical crusades and outreach
ministries. It also involves solidifying and expanding already established centres
through an exchange of ministers, preachers, prophets, fund-raisers, musicians
and members of parachurch groups, most of whom are US-based. Consequently,
provisions are made to facilitate inter-language mediation and meet the needs of
this intensive international exchange: some churches are fitted with fully equipped
interpreting booths (e.g. Helsinki Saalem Church); others have special equipment
for consecutive interpreting (e.g. the church where this study was based).
180 Adelina Hild

2.1 The semiotics of evangelical discourse

Evangelism is a big tent with nearly as many kinds of actors as there are people
in it: preachers, fund-raisers, soothsayers, prophets, raconteurs. Their persona
and presentation styles tend to differ, but they all exhibit a performance-sensitive
approach to evangelical preaching (understood in the widest possible sense that
encompasses delivery of sermons, prophecies and healing). What characteristics
of this approach set it apart from other forms of public speaking and how do they
impact the performance of church interpreters?
Charles Bartow, the driving force behind the New Homiletics movement,
which has shaped the current views of ministers and seminary teachers about
rhetoric and preaching, defines theological discourse as “God’s speech incarnate in
the lives, voices and bodies of men and women who preach God’s Word” (1997: 53).
He conceptualizes preaching as a dual act: a performative event (homo perfor-
mans) as well as an embodiment of divine presence (actio divina). McKenzie (2008)
summarized the consequences of this dynamic construal of the act of preaching
as a transformation from the delivery of concepts to the embodiment of divine
presence, which requires emotional investment from the minister and the ability
to engage the community in a dialogue and capture its imagination through enact-
ing narrative, through metaphor, imagery and all the tropes of human language.
This process of bringing to life the divine message is accomplished through the
interweaving of three elements: verbal (words that give precision to the thought),
vocal (voice that is applied as an instrument, even through silence) and physical
gestures (which always cue the others so that they can be heard and understood
precisely). The unity of these three elements creates the coherence of theological
meaning that the preachers deliver to their appreciative audience (see Figure 1).

Divine
presence

God’s message

homo performans
Preacher Congregation
co-creation

Figure 1. Meaning in preaching: the sermon as an embodiment of the divine presence

and homo performans as an act of co-creation
 Chapter 9. The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters 181

The delivery is not just a matter of the preacher performing the sermon or the
prophecies, albeit with God’s help. The sermon is created in the moment when the
worshippers, having received the performance, are participating in the process
of making meaning through their feedback in the form of expressions, laugh-
ter, attention, posture and so forth (Wilson 2008). So, from the point of view of
New Homiletics, the meaning of the religious discourse is always co-constructed
and participatory even when, in the case of the public event, the speaker is one
individual.
If the theological text is God’s self-disclosure achieved through performative
action, what are the implications of this construal of the evangelical event for the
interpreters involved in it? What are the practices adopted by the church interpret-
ers in enabling the constructive and participatory process of meaning generation?
What strategies do they use in rendering the duality (homo performans vs. actio
divina) of the evangelical discourse? The project outlined in Section 4 will attempt
to answer these questions by analysing the personal experience of volunteer church
interpreters.

2.2 Community of practice

The Pentecostal community where the VIRS project was conducted has over 600
members who go to worship regularly and the same number of sporadic visitors.
It welcomes believers from a wide variety of ethnic and language backgrounds;
the common language of communication is Swiss Standard German. The vis-
its of overseas evangelical preachers and performing groups are special events,
which attract guests from neighbouring communities and from abroad (Germany,
Lichtenstein and Austria). On these occasions, rituals from the standard service
are presented in the local dialect Schwyzerduetsch; the main part of the event,
however, is conducted in Swiss Standard German in order to accommodate the
guests and visitors. This sets apart the event as a very significant occurrence in
the life of the community, requiring special preparation and organization, which
may extend over a period of several months up to a year.
Unlike other studies of church interpreting where the audience completely
relies on the interpreter to follow the service, in the VIRS project, approximately
half of the community members are very proficient in English; a quarter might
rely on the target text (TT) to better understand the meaning and 25% will be
completely reliant on the TT (estimates provided by the local pastor). I am grate-
ful to the community for the permission to record these events and conduct my
research in their church.
182 Adelina Hild

3. Self-regulation and interpreting cognition

Self-regulation (SR) is an elusive construct, and scholars have lamented time and
again the lack of conceptual clarity surrounding the use of the term in the psycho-
logical and educational literature (see Alexander 2008; Dinsmore et al. 2008). The
present research adopts a broad definition of SR: SR is defined as a collection of
processes that control various aspects of human behaviour and involve metacog-
nition (e.g. goal-setting, planning, monitoring one’s cognitive processes and prob-
lem-solving behaviour) as well as motivational and affective components (e.g.
keeping up one’s attention focus or inhibiting irrelevant thoughts and emotions).
It is guided and constrained by the performer’s goals and the contextual features
of the environment (see Boekaerts 1999; Zimmerman 2001; Forgas et al. 2009).
In an effort to capture how these processes are deployed during performance
and the long-term effect of SR (i.e. learning), Zimmerman (2008) proposed a cy-
clical model outlining the following three phases of SR:
1. Forethought refers to processes engaged in prior to the actual task, whose
objective is to facilitate and control subsequent performance.
2. The performance phase involves self-monitoring and depends on observation
and control processes, such as self-instruction, attention focusing and switch-
ing in multitasking and the regulation of concurrent affective states.
3. The self-reflective phase encompasses the post-performance processes of
self-judgment and self-reaction, which contribute to long-term learning and
affect individuals’ construction of their self-image and their motivation to
engage in subsequent tasks. The outcomes of self-reflective processes in turn
have an impact on subsequent instances of training or performance, thus
completing the self-regulatory cycle.

Evidence in support of the cyclical model has come from a variety of domains (e.g.
sports – Kitsantas & Zimmerman 2002 and Kitsantas & Kavussanu 2011; music –
McPherson & Renwick 2011). The model was applied to interpreting in a study
that examined the interaction between self-regulatory competence and interpret-
ing expertise (Hild 2014). The research focused on simultaneous interpreting and
outlined four areas of SR competence: (1) reliance on metacognitive strategies
that were formulated during the forethought phase; (2) the ability to efficiently
regulate emotions to maintain task-focus through enforcing positive self-image;
(3) the ability to accurately self-assess during the self-reflective phase; and (4) the
formation of causal attributions that encourage further striving to attain goals and
improve strategies as an element of deliberate practice.
 Chapter 9. The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters 183

4. The VIRS project: Methodology and analysis

4.1 Method

The VIRS project is an ethnographic study in the course of which the research-
er observed and interacted with the community of practice for over 15 months.
During this period, six interpreter-mediated events took place and they represent
four different types of religious discourse: prophecies (two events), preaching (two
events), healing and musical happening. A total of 11 hours of consecutive inter-
preting were recorded, supplemented by observational notes and video recording
(some events were also partially video-recorded for further analysis and use as
illustrative material). This was triangulated with semi-structured interviews with
the interpreters that took place a couple of weeks after the event. All of the four
volunteer interpreters agreed to participate in the study. Prior to the interviews,
they were presented with a participant information sheet and a consent form.
The interviews were conducted in a manner which encouraged the participants
to reflect upon their personal experience as interpreters in general, rather than
on the specific events they mediated. Three of the interviews took place at the
Pentecostal church, and one was conducted over the telephone because the inter-
preter resided abroad.
The participants were also presented with a standard personality question-
naire on SR and self-efficacy (Schwarzer & Jerusalem 1999), which they were asked
to fill in during their spare time. However, some of them expressed concerns about
losing face, which can explain the fact that only one of the questionnaires has been
returned to date.
The interviews were fully transcribed and analysed using the discourse analyt-
ical approach known as discursive psychology. The audio recordings were analysed
and examples that relate to the topic of the project were selectively transcribed.
Following the analysis of the first event in our project, it was also decided to
selectively videotape episodes, which could be subsequently used to analyse the
performative aspect of interpreting.

4.2 Participants

Four volunteer interpreters worked in the community during the observational

period; two of them are members of the local community.
Esther, the only female participant in the study, is an early bilingual who,
having spent her childhood in an English-speaking country, now resides with
her family in Switzerland. She is generally asked to interpret female visitors, and
184 Adelina Hild

in the period under observation, she was involved with a parachurch musical/
preaching group.
Bernd, who learned English later in life, interprets and translates oftentimes,
and has a theological background. In the course of the project, he was repeatedly
involved with charismatic evangelists and interpreted sermons and prophecies.
Both Esther and Bernd are involved in the management of church life and
enjoy a special status within the community, one which awards them trust and
respect, but also authority.
Helmut is a member of a neighbouring Pentecostal congregation, and at
the time of observation, he was accompanying a prophetic preacher on his trip
through Switzerland.
Alex, the only participant who does not reside in the country, is very fluent in
English and travels as a volunteer interpreter with a parachurch fund-raising or-
ganization to German-speaking countries. He is the youngest of the participants.

4.3 Analysis of the self-regulatory processes of VIRS

4.3.1 Forethought phase

Forethought encompasses the cognitive processes involved in the strategic plan-
ning of subsequent performance and in identifying concrete goals for the exe-
cution of the task in task analysis. In addition, the first SR phase also involves
self-motivational beliefs such as task valuing, interest, goal orientation and self-ef-
ficacy (Zimmerman 2008).
To find information on this group of processes, the interpreters were asked
to recall in detail how they had organized and experienced their latest interpret-
ing session. However, no one mentioned specific activities other than the prayer
meeting that immediately preceded the religious event. This suggested the need
to probe with concrete questions about how they prepared for the assignment. In
their responses, the interpreters unanimously stated that they do not consider it
necessary to prepare in anyway, linguistically or otherwise. They emphasized that
they often work with preachers with whom they are well acquainted; should that
not be the case, they seek an opportunity to get to know the guest they will be
working with in the days prior to the interpreted event. Esther stated that her goal
during such encounters is establishing a rapport and that she would not discuss
issues related to her interpreting task. This was also confirmed by the observation
that environmental changes, such as adjusting the volume of either the speaker’s
or the interpreter’s microphone to avoid interference, or adjusting the intensity
and direction of light, were oftentimes made in the course of the event in front of
the congregation. These observations indirectly suggest that the VIRS interpreters
 Chapter 9. The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters 185

were not involved in strategically planning their future performance, in terms of

either anticipating linguistic difficulties or optimizing the environment in order
to facilitate performance.
In a voluntary activity such as language brokering in the church, the interpret-
ers’ interest, as well as their perception of the importance of the activity, and its
usefulness are crucial in motivating them to engage in this effortful and long task
(the interpreting session that we followed ranged between 90 and 150 minutes in
duration), in order to perform efficiently and be willing to become involved again.
The interviews clearly showed that all the participants viewed interpreting first
and foremost as a service to the community and its goal was defined as “helping
people understand the message” (Esther) or “making [everyone] aware that God
speaks to them everywhere…” (Bernd). Consequently, the interpreting act is pri-
marily extrinsically motivated – its value lies not in the activity per se, but in its
association with a more important external goal, in this particular case – service to
the community, God and his Word. Nevertheless, Esther and Alex report enjoying
interpreting for its own sake (Esther says that she finds it “interesting”), although
in their motivational structure, the pleasure derived from it ultimately carries but
a secondary weight to their commitment to serve.

4.3.2 Regulation of performance

4.3.2.1 Performative strategies
“Performance” is used interchangeably in the interpreting literature to refer to the
activity of inter-language transfer and to its verbal product. While this meaning
will be retained herein, the paper adopts a wider interpretation, which, in line
with our discussion of theological meaning, also includes the vocal and physi-
cal embodiment of the message. In this sense, performance will denote aspects
of person-to-person interaction that involve “acting out” and demonstrate the
participant’s processes of managing their body awareness, i.e. “all the activity of
an individual […] marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of
observers and which has some influence on the observers” (Goffman 1956). The
wider sense attached to “performance” highlights the legitimate importance of
non-verbal communication in consecutive interpreting in addition to language
mediation – an aspect that has merited a limited attention in interpreting research.
Goffman’s definition of performance (1956) emphasizes the idea of an agent
who through her/his visibility communicates with the audience, and it under-
scores the analysis of performative strategies in this section. If performative ac-
tion is the heart of preaching (its verbal shape and physical embodiment as homo
performans), to what extent, if at all, does church interpreting seek to recreate
homo performans? Do church interpreters, similarly to preachers, consider the
primary locus of their performative action actio divina? The analysis of the video
186 Adelina Hild

and interview material purported to articulate the interpreters’ views concerning

the nature of their role and contribution in the preaching event.
The audio data shows that interpreters strive to remain faithful to the vocal
gesture of the preacher, particularly when it is clearly marked. The four partici-
pants vary in the volume and level of vocal expressiveness, but they unanimously
strive to render the source text (ST) emphasis that is constructed through prosodic
variation. For example, Bernd and Alex display considerable skills in using their
voice to embody the message in a manner that follows closely that of the speaker.
This might reflect the fact that both of them have had a long experience in face-
to-face encounter with audience. Bernd’s preferred vocal gesture (McKenzie 2008)
is emphasis, whereas Alex also uses a wider range of pitch variation. The output
of the other two interpreters is less prosodically marked: while Esther prefers a
calm and even delivery, which echoes her personal style, Helmut’s is even, but
somewhat hesitant.
The interpreters’ kinetic activity (physical gestures, positioning and movement
in space) is somewhat limited and constrained in comparison with that of the
charismatic preachers. The latter use various techniques to expand their speaking
space: rather than standing behind the lectern, they position themselves on either
side of it, move freely on the podium and step among the congregation in an at-
tempt to engage them. Interpreters’ proxemic behaviour varies and is generally
centred around the lectern, and they make little attempt to follow the speaker
and/or to seek contact with the congregation. Alex, the most experienced among
the interpreters, shadowed the physical movements of the speaker most closely –
moving around on the stage, using similar spiritual gestures such as kneeling and
hand-raising. Bernd, however, felt that a “backgrounding” of the interpreter is
imperative: “the prophecy should be left to work from the mouth of the man who
has the vision.” So while, in practice, he also uses physical space, his movement is
restricted. Doing otherwise, according to him, could lead to a compromising loss
of immediacy and even betray the nature of the spiritual experience. By repeat-
ing the physical gesture in interpreting, therefore, Bernd felt that he would draw
attention to the homo performans aspect of the religious discourse – an act which,
in the words of Shuster, could result in “violating the truthfulness of the preacher’s
presence, the particular magnetism felt in fine speakers” (Shuster 2008: 30). Of the
four interpreters, only Esther preferred to remain invisible, saying that she would
usually position herself in a corner of the stage not illuminated by the spotlight.
Interpreters’ gestures are less frequent than those of the speakers, and they
tend to be constrained to the vertical plane immediately in front and to the left
of them. Semiotically, they reinforce prosody to effectively convey rhetorical em-
phasis. The use of narrative gestures (e.g. imitating the way a character walks
with a hand gesture while telling a scripture story) differs among the participants:
 Chapter 9. The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters 187

Bernd and Alex are more likely to use such gestures, although it is not clear on
what grounds they make a decision to transfer the speaker’s gesture or to simply
disregard it. This requires further exploration as the interviews and the video
recordings from this study could not shed any light on the reasons for the inter-
preters’ choices.
The interpreters’ performative strategies, the fact that they recreate aspects of
the speaker’s performance in the co-construction of theological meaning through
their vocal, verbal and, in a more restricted sense, physical gestures testifies to the
agency they possess. It is not constrained by set norms or expectations – rather
their personal styles determined to what extent they were prepared to be visible. In
any case, being visible through emphasis on the performative aspect of interpret-
ing was not sanctioned by either the speaker or the community of worshippers:
the latter responded equally enthusiastically to Alex’s homo performans-oriented
interpreting style and to Esther’s more discrete interpreting of the musical hap-
pening. Bernd’s idea of backgrounding, however, suggests that their agent role
is circumscribed by the primacy of the source language (SL) text, which is con-
sidered the true “embodiment of God’s speech” (Bartow 1997: 53). The perform-
ative strategies of church interpreters seem to grant them maximum visibility,
well beyond what has already been documented in settings where interpreters are
directly engaged in a one-to-one communication such as medical interpreting
(Angelelli 2004).

4.3.2.2 Interpreting strategies

Among the existing research on church interpreting, the linguistic analysis of
the interpreting product has received very little attention. A notable exception is
Karlik’s study (2010) where she analysed the verbal output of consecutive inter-
preters during Bible readings and concluded that volunteers typically employ the
strategy of lexical simplification. This strategy is also used by the VIRS volunteers:
for example, “momentous occasion” is interpreted by Bernd as a more neutral
phrase “spezieles moment,” i.e. a special moment. It is, however, not prevalent in
our data, possibly due to the fact that the VIRS interpreters were working with
non-scripted spontaneous speeches that tend to be linguistically less complex than
scripture passages. Similarly, specialized theological vocabulary (e.g. “seeing in the
Spirit,” “walking in Christ,” “Grace,” etc.) was rendered consistently and with ease
by Bernd, Alex and Esther. As far as the strategy of lexical simplification is con-
cerned, this has been documented in other interpreting and translation domains
and cannot therefore be considered specific to the religious setting.
The audio recordings also contained many instances of self-corrections, which
suggest that the volunteers monitor their target language (TL) output. The majority
of these are immediate lexical substitutions when more than one TL rendition was
188 Adelina Hild

consecutively offered to the congregation. Long-range substitutions, of which there

are a few examples in the data, include cases when interpreters add additional in-
formation to explicate the meaning of a TL word/phrase on subsequent mention
as in the following example:

(1) a. SL: your church is at the cutting edge (English)

TL: diese Kirche steht an der Spitze (German)
this church stands at the forefront
(2) b. SL: you are a cutting edge church
TL: sie sind an der Spitze der neuesten Entwicklungen
you are at the edge of the new developments

In Example 2, Bernd is looking for a more appropriate way of rendering the idiom
“cutting edge” into German and expands on his earlier attempt (Example 1) by
adding additional information implicit in the metaphor in order to highlight the
innovative and progressive activities of his church. Another category of correc-
tions occurred when intertextual equivalence was at stake during Biblical story
telling or when allusions were made to specific scripture passages. In some cases,
the exact German translation of the story related by the preacher differed linguis-
tically from the published German version. Having provided a literal translation
of it, the interpreters initiated corrections, seeking to remain faithful to the word-
ing of the Testament that is familiar to the worshippers. This strategy was clearly
guided by the awareness that the written version of the Word has primacy over
their oral renditions.
All this said, the efficiency of monitoring processes decreased with time and
was overall not very reliable. We identified and transcribed many cases of calques,
slips of the tongue, borrowings, misunderstood words and phrases and misin-
terpreted grammatical information. The frequency of these errors increased as
fatigue set in, approximately after 35 minutes of interpreting in Bernd’s case, and
for Helmut (the least experienced among the interpreters) – after 15 minutes. For
example, in one of the TT produced by Bernd, we identified six serious distortions
of sentence meaning that snowballed as the ST unravelled and disrupted the with-
in-segment coherence. Only in one of these cases did the interpreter discover the
disruption while working on a subsequent statement and employed strategies to
renegotiate meaning. It does appear that monitoring, whenever employed by the
VIRS interpreters, functions primarily at a local level (i.e. being limited to single
words or phrases) and less so when meaning is constructed over longer stretches
of talk.
A separate category of behaviours relates to how the VIRS interpreters man-
aged turn-taking. Generally, they all worked in the short consecutive mode, but
 Chapter 9. The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters 189

the segments they interpreted differed in length from a phrase to a couple of sen-
tences. Even in interpreter – preacher dyads who had previously worked together
(as was the case with Bernd), the volunteers frequently needed to use a number of
different strategies in order to claim their turn.
The need to actively manage turn-taking arose from the unpredictability of
the preacher’s segmentation strategies. These were largely performance-driven, i.e.
the preachers sought to maximize the rhetorical effect of their discourse, which
led them at times to pause after a short noun phrase; at others, when they were
carried away by the pathos of their delivery, to pause after several sentences. In
the latter case, the interpreters would move to claim their turn and even, in rare
instances, ask for parts of the segment to be repeated.
In the dyad, turn-taking was managed by both the preacher and the inter-
preter. On the part of the preacher, this might involve turning to establish eye
contact with the interpreter. On the part of the interpreter, eye contact was also
the preferred means of requesting a turn, but often it was not possible to use this
unobtrusive strategy because the preachers tended to move closer to the audience
and further away from the interpreter. In such cases, the volunteer might interrupt
the speaker and “jump in” with her/his TL version. This interaction between the
speaker and the interpreter suggests that they both shared the responsibility for
the success of the sermon, working together in an equitable power relationship to
manage the delivery of theological message.

4.3.3 Self-reflective processes

The third phase of SR, self-reflection, can occur in four ways: self-evaluation,
self-satisfaction, causal attributions and adaptivity. The present research project
focused on the first two processes. In response to the question about how they
generally feel after completing an interpreting session, the VIRS participants re-
ported that they were satisfied with their work; on the whole, they evaluated their
performance positively. Esther and Helmut mentioned that sometimes they would
recall the mistakes they had made, or experience a flashback to a solution they
could not find while still engaged in the task. They, however, experienced no em-
barrassment or frustration when they spoke about these episodes with me; they
were indeed happy to discuss these experiences with somebody they perceived to
be an “expert.” Obviously, having completed the task, the volunteers assessed and
consolidated what had been experienced and learned during performance. The
examples they discussed with me were only word translation problems, and, as
such, they remain at the lowest level of complexity. Also, their narratives do not
contain thoughts about how their lapses and failures can be used to improve future
efforts to perform and to hone in their interpreting skills.
190 Adelina Hild

Even though interpreters’ self-evaluation was positive, it did not constitute the
primary factor that determined how they assessed and experienced their voluntary
work. Our analysis of the interview data clearly showed that social appreciation
played a much bigger role in determining how the interpreters viewed their per-
formance and how likely they were to want to engage again in interpreting. They
recalled the feeling of contentment after receiving positive feedback from the other
community members at the end of the religious event (Esther and Alex). Moreover,
recognition and positive feedback were also explicitly given by the charismatic
preachers who worked together with the interpreters during two of the events (e.g.
“he (Helmut) is doing a great job,” for Bernd “he is a good translator […] he knows
what I am teaching”). Naturally, the community’s high regard and recognition of
their work is a powerful incentive to the participants to persist in their volunteer
efforts. Thus, their motivation to work as volunteer interpreters does not stem from
“self-evaluative reactions to behavioural outcomes” (Zimmerman 2001: 23), but
from the sense that the community judges this work to be worthy of praise and
from the lofty goals that it serves. This is an important way in which volunteers
differ from elite interpreters (see Hild 2014) and from experts in other domains
(McPherson & Renwick 2011), all of whom were motivated by the activity per se
and experienced a sense of deep self-satisfaction when engaging in it.
By the same token, social appreciation received during and after the event
enhances the experience of well-being reported by the participants in the study.
Even in episodes where interpreters are faced with the danger of loss of face (e.g.
hesitations, inability to recall TT expression, persistent technical problems such
as microphone echo and broken re-transmission unit), the sense of support mod-
ifies or eliminates negative affect. This proceeds from the understanding that the
community is tolerant and non-judgmental, but also from the experience that the
audience oftentimes helpfully suggests words and expressions to the struggling
volunteer (indeed all interpreters received helpful prompting from the audience
at one point or another). Thus, Esther recalls that sometimes she feels anxious and
nervous prior to interpreting, but that the thought that she can rely on help from
her community helps take on the task and achieve “emotional homeostasis” during
performance (Forgas & Ciarocchi 2002). Consequently, the social support and ap-
preciation was instrumental in helping church interpreters regulate their emotions
effectively and in coping with averse emotional states. In contrast, professional
interpreters resort to strategies such as re-appraisal, positive re-enforcement or
lowering of acceptability standards in an effort to optimize the regulation of their
emotions (Hild 2014).
The positive emotions derived from being involved in interpreting also modu-
lated the effect of fatigue, which sets in under the conditions of prolonged and in-
tensive work. For the VIRS interpreters, their interpreting experience generated an
 Chapter 9. The role and self-regulation of non-professional interpreters 191

enhanced sense of well-being, which they described as follows: “elated” (Helmut);

“quite well, content” (Esther); “energized” (Alex); “joyful to be preaching” (Bernd).
Pastor Bernd describes his interpreting experiences as “flowing of words and sen-
timent,” “being in the flow,” a metaphor which evokes the famous definition of
happiness as an optimum state of flow (Csíkszentmihályi 1990). We see, therefore,
with volunteers as well as with professional interpreters (Hild 2014) that they both
experience a state of flow created by their complete immersion in a task that re-
flects their life purpose and generates satisfaction that is re-enforced by extrinsic
recognition (in the case of the volunteers) or by positive self-evaluation (for expert
interpreters).

5. Conclusions

The VIRS study explored how non-professional church interpreters regulate their
behaviour in line with the perception of their own role in the religious setting.
The present paper characterized their self-regulatory practices in relation to the
SR of professional interpreters, and discussed the differences between volunteers
and professionals. The research also considered the socially constructed nature
of these processes (motivation, performance strategies, evaluation and self-ap-
praisal). Several major conclusions emerged from the study that highlight the
characteristics of church interpreting that are specific for this setting.
The first unique feature concerns the importance that the interpreters and, by
extension, the preachers attributed to establishing rapport, to “getting to know”
each other prior to the interpreted event. For both interpreters and preacher,
the duality of their performative action required that they should act as a team
and they accordingly placed a high value on fostering a relationship that would
support the team effort. Balcı Tison (2008) highlighted the fact that preachers
place high importance on establishing a relationship of trust with their interpret-
ers; in Karlik’s study (2013), preacher also spoke of a “partnership” between the
preacher and the interpreter. The present research reflects the interpreters’ point
of view, which confirms the idea that this is a relationship of partnership – the
VIRS interpreters felt responsible for the embodying through their performance
the actio divina inherent in the religious event. A similar level of rapport exists
between the interpreter and the worshipping community, which motivates the
volunteers to engage in the tasks and helps them to self-regulate more efficiently.
Neutrality, which some professionals consider to be the hallmark of interpreting
(see argument against the notion of neutrality in Angelelli 2004), is untenable in
religious settings, where involvement and activism is valued by all the parties to
the interaction.
192 Adelina Hild

Secondly, the analyses of the performative and interpreting strategies in the

study suggest that church interpreters seem to be involved in co-participating in
and in co-constructing theological meaning. In the words of Bernd, they “preach
through interpreting.” Their agentive role is socially negotiated – this falls in line
with Karlik’s (2013) suggestion that preachers also view interpreters as co-­creators
of the sermon and the audience considers them responsible for the general recep-
tion of the religious event.
Involvement, responsibility as well as transference of performative gestures
renders church interpreters visible and powerful interlocutors. Wielding and ex-
ploring their power in a rhetorically effective way is a challenge, which the par-
ticipants in this study faced when they selected their performative strategies. The
VIRS project suggests that their choice on how visible their performance would
be was unconstrained by external pressures, imposed by either the speaker or by
norms. These features might as well render the interpreter in religious settings the
most visible type of interpreters and one who most radically differs from the profile
of the assumed interpreter par excellence – the conference interpreter.
Finally, the volunteers did not perceive interpreting as a task separate from the
sermon; rather, it was construed as an extension of the preaching act, motivated
by the idea of “service” to the community and, most importantly, to God. The
analysis of the interviews also highlighted the importance of extrinsic recognition
during the post-performance phase of SR. Through aligning the language broker-
ing activity with more abstract spiritual goals and by relying on the support and
encouragement of the community, native interpreters are not only able to regulate
efficiently and to overcome anxiety and fatigue, but they also experience a state of
“flow,” which motivates them to continue their language brokering effort.
The present research studied four similar types of religious events in the
Pentecostal church in one cultural context. The great variety of events subsumed
under the term “religious settings” and the varied roles assumed by the partic-
ipants in them, including those who provide inter-language mediation, require
further exploration, which should directly address the question of how theological,
contextual and cultural variation might have an impact on interpreting.

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 Chapter 10

Simultaneous interpreting
and religious experience
Volunteer interpreting in a Finnish
Pentecostal church

Sari Hokkanen
University of Tampere

In this paper, I discuss the volunteer simultaneous church interpreting I con-

duct as a professionally trained interpreter, using autoethnography as my
methodological approach. The aim is to examine how my professional identity
and my identity as a Pentecostal Christian coexist in this non-professional in-
terpreting context. Pentecostalism emphasizes personal religious experience,
defined as encountering God, making it a salient feature of the social context
of the volunteer interpreting context. Therefore, I study spiritual and practical
levels of preparation related to simultaneous interpreting at church. In addi-
tion, I examine the ways in which a personal religious experience, especially
“hearing from God,” can take place while interpreting, which speaks of my
active participation in the interpreted service. This paper thus highlights the
dynamics of professional and non-professional interpreting as social contexts
carrying meaning over to personal practice.

Keywords: church interpreting, autoethnography, Pentecostalism, identity

1. Introduction

The field of non-professional interpreting and translation encompasses a myriad

of different kinds of actors and practices, even though for many translation and
interpreting scholars and professionals, the term non-professional seems to pri-
marily connote a set of antitheses and negatives: it refers to untrained people who
are outside of the professional circles and thus unaware of what interpreting and
translation really is and what it requires, inescapably leading to poor-quality trans-
lation and interpreting. These connotations are hardly justifiable in most cases of
real-life non-professional translation and interpreting practices, which, despite

doi 10.1075/btl.129.10hok
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
196 Sari Hokkanen

being ubiquitous, have not received much scholarly attention until recently. This
paper adopts the definitions of the terms professional and non-professional inter-
preting and translation put forth by Brian Harris (2012; 2010; 2009). According to
Harris, professional interpreting and translation refers to interpreting and trans-
lation that is remunerated. This differs from expert interpreting and translation,
which denotes the high quality of the practice acquired through formal train-
ing and/or mentoring and experience. Thus, non-professional interpreting and
translation refers neither to the quality of the end product nor necessarily to the
qualifications of the interpreter or translator, but merely to the fact that such work
is not paid for.
In this paper, I describe one non-professional interpreting setting in which
a professionally trained interpreter volunteers. The setting that I focus on is re-
ligious in nature, more specifically a Pentecostal church situated in Seinäjoki,
Finland. The study of interpreting in any religious setting, whether professional
or non-professional, has been scarce so far (Harris 2012), giving further reason to
include religious settings in research on non-professional practices, even though
religious settings may have characteristics that cannot be generalized across all
non-­professional settings. Nevertheless, religious interpreting settings may have
plenty of similarities with non-religious settings that have a strong ideology
(Hokkanen 2012). With autoethnography as the method of this study, I use as data
my own experiences as a church interpreter. I have a Master’s degree in English
translation, which includes interpreting training, and have worked professional-
ly as a translator and interpreter. Thus, I could be described as a professionally
trained interpreter, but in my church, I interpret without remuneration.
The services in the Pentecostal Church of Seinäjoki are conducted mainly
in Finnish. Nevertheless, the attendants and speakers in the church, as in many
other Finnish Pentecostal churches, do not form a monolingual speech commu-
nity, which is why interpreting, often practiced by volunteer church members, is
present in several modes: often, the sermons given by guest speakers from abroad
are interpreted consecutively into Finnish, and many of the weekly services are
interpreted simultaneously into English and/or other languages to cater to the
needs of immigrants and visitors who do not speak Finnish. In addition to these
mostly volunteer practices, the services are interpreted into Finnish sign language
by professional (i.e., paid) interpreters who are usually not members of the church.
This paper, however, focuses on the non-professional simultaneous interpreting
of services into English. I have been involved in this practice since 2007, first in
the Tampere Pentecostal Church and from 2009 in the Pentecostal Church of
Seinäjoki, where I continue the practice to this day.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the way in which my identities as a pro-
fessionally trained interpreter and as an active member of the religious community
 Chapter 10. Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience 197

coexist in the non-professional interpreting setting during the interpreted event.

This is done by examining the concept of religious experience, defined as en-
countering God, and by describing the ways in which I prepare to mediate re-
ligious experience to others in services as a volunteer simultaneous interpreter.
Furthermore, my aim is to describe how a personal religious experience, more
specifically “hearing from God,” can occur even during simultaneous interpreting.
Thus, my aim is to illustrate the primary position of church interpreters’ social self
compared to their “interpreter self,” by describing the interpreter in this setting as
an active participant who engages in the service spiritually, much the same way
as any attendant.
The paper proceeds from a description of the methodology employed in the
study in Section 2, to a description of the denominational and ideational context
of the interpreting practice being studied in Section 3. Section 4 provides a data-­
oriented discussion of simultaneous church interpreting, focusing on preparation
and religious experience, whereas Section 5 presents some concluding remarks.

2. Methodology

Autoethnography, the method used in this study, refers to an approach that fol-
lows the ethnographic tradition, but also differs from more traditional types of
ethnographic research, as described by Chang (2008: 48–49). Similarly to other
forms of ethnography, autoethnography uses systematically collected data from
“the field” acquired through the personal participation of the researcher in the life
of the group being studied. These data are then analyzed and interpreted in order
to form a cultural understanding of the life of this group. However, autoethnogra-
phy differs from some other ethnographic approaches in that it uses the personal
experiences of the researcher as the primary data (ibid.), which is complemented
with interviews with other members of the group, research literature or the ex-
amination of cultural artifacts to varying degrees (Ellis et al. 2011). Although au-
toethnography thus relies on the person of the researcher even more heavily than
other forms of ethnography, its aim is nevertheless to acquire knowledge of the
social group in which the researcher operates (Chang 2008; Chang & Boyd 2011).
Thus, autoethnographers “use personal experience to illustrate facets of cultural
experience” (Ellis et al. 2011).
This aim of autoethnography – to access the cultural through the personal – is
made possible by an understanding of the individual as “an extension of a com-
munity” rather than “an independent, self-sufficient being” (Chang 2008: 26). This
is not to say that individuals are mere prisoners of their community or mindless
robots whose thoughts and behavior are dictated by the “scripts” of their culture.
198 Sari Hokkanen

Rather, individuals do have the power to oppose the norms of their culture and
to influence and help transform their social communities. Consequently, there is
always some diversity within any social group (Chang 2008: 21). Even so, as Chang
argues, “culture is inherently collectivistic,” and not purely individual (ibid.). The
individual does not exist in a vacuum, but in relation to a social context, or culture,
constituted of different “others” that are in contact with the individual: those who
have similar views and experiences and those who have differing or opposing ones
(Chang 2008).
Because the autoethnographer is “both a ‘subject’ (researcher who does inves-
tigation) and an ‘object’ (participant who is investigated)” in the research (Chang &
Boyd 2011: 15), autoethnographies seldom strive towards “objectivity,” but openly
acknowledge and utilize the subjectivity of the approach (see also Ellis & Bochner
2000). This is often misunderstood as self-indulgence or narcissism (Sparkes 2002;
Chang & Boyd 2011: 15). Nevertheless, the aim of autoethnography, as understood
here, is to acquire and report an understanding of cultural phenomena, not to
engage in self-revelation for its own sake.
Although different ethnographic approaches, in general, have become increas-
ingly popular among translation and interpreting scholars in recent years (Flynn
2010; see also Saldanha & O’Brien 2013; Hale & Napier 2013; Angelelli 2015), au-
toethnography as such does not seem to be very widely used as of yet. However, I
would argue that it forms a useful extension of the long tradition in translation and
interpreting studies of practitioners themselves conducting research. In fact, ac-
cording to Miriam Shlesinger, “most of us [researchers] are, or have ourselves been
at some point, translators or interpreters, or both” (2009: 1). Shlesinger admits that
the experiences and insights gained from either personal practice or practicing
colleagues “are arguably our most valuable resource” when conducting research
on translation or interpreting, but she goes on to assert that “they are not enough
in themselves” (2009: 14). Admittedly, if the researcher’s personal experience is
left in a state of unprocessed intuition and not subjected to systematic analysis
and interpretation, it hardly constitutes serious research (see also Napier 2011).
One such systematic and analytical way for translation and interpreting scholars
to tap into this “our most valuable resource” of personal experience is provided
by autoethnography. It offers one approach to bringing the personal experiences
of the researcher to light, articulating the insights gained from these experiences
and reporting their influence in research. As these influences are stated explicitly,
it may render the research process more transparent and, potentially, more ethical.
The data used in this study comprises a record of my experiences as a vol-
unteer interpreter in the Pentecostal Church of Seinäjoki, collected in 2012, as
well as of my memories of church interpreting dating back to 2007 and informal
discussions with other interpreters and listeners of interpreting. In addition, I
 Chapter 10. Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience 199

have used personal journals I have kept since 2001 when I was first introduced to
Pentecostalism, 1 as well as the data I gathered in the Tampere Pentecostal Church
on church interpreting in 2009 and 2010 in the form of field notes and docu-
ments. The data gathered in the Tampere Pentecostal Church were also used in
my Master’s thesis (Hokkanen 2010) as well as in Hokkanen (2012). All in all, this
study is informed by my experience of Finnish Pentecostalism ranging well over a
decade, including several forms of participation and volunteering in the activities
of the two churches whose member I have been.

3. Pentecostalism and religious experience

Both of the churches, the Pentecostal Church of Seinäjoki and the Tampere
Pentecostal Church, in which I have collected data, represent Pentecostalism,
which in Finland is not organized as a national Church, but the local church-
es form autonomous entities (Kärkkäinen 2005). Even so, there is cooperation
between the different local churches, for instance, in the form of a summer con-
ference, a newspaper and an annual gathering of pastors and elders, and Finnish
Pentecostalism is generally conceptualized as a denomination (e.g., Terho 2006).
A well-known researcher of Pentecostalism, Walter Hollenweger (1997: 329),
has pointed out that Pentecostalism, at a global level, is a denomination that is
not tied together by a specific doctrine, but by an experiential, oral and ecumen-
ical way of doing theology that emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit. As Miller
and Yamamori have articulated this point, “Pentecostalism is not simply a set of
beliefs; it is an experience” (2007: 14). This emphasis on experience and lack of
written doctrine has been a central feature of Pentecostalism from its beginning
(Kärkkäinen 2001: 102). Also according to the self-understanding of Pentecostals,
the claim of having personal and regular experiences of God through the Holy
Spirit is a characteristic that most distinguishes the denomination from other
Christian groups (Cross 2009: 6). It is clear, then, that religious experience plays
a central role in Pentecostalism, making it an important aspect of the cultural
context of the interpreting practice studied in this paper.
According to theologian David Brown, religious experience is essentially “God
being encountered in Himself” (2007: 171), and this notion of “encounter” as the
core of religious experience seems to be well established in the literature (e.g.,
Geertz 1973/1993; Nelson 2005). It is also adopted in this paper. Furthermore, re-
ligious experience can be described as being both subjective and highly dependent

1. Until then, like the majority of Finns, I had been a member of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church, although a relatively passive one.
200 Sari Hokkanen

on the social context; the subjective attribution of an event as a religious experience

is dependent on the collective belief system the individual has adopted (Nelson
2005: 54; Bowie 2003: 56; Hornsby-Smith 1998). Clifford Geertz (1973/1993: 123–
124) in his seminal work The Interpretation of Cultures goes, perhaps, a bit further,
stating that the collective beliefs adopted by an individual help not only to interpret
and give meaning to a wide range of experiences, but also to shape them, be they
intellectual, emotional or moral ones. For Geertz, religious beliefs are a culture
pattern, and as any culture pattern, they give meaning to and shape not only sub-
jective experience, but also the social reality (ibid.: 93).
Pentecostalism is known to emphasize personal experience, for instance, as
regards salvation; the saying “God has no grandchildren” is sometimes used to
highlight the belief that no one is saved by their parents’ or anyone else’s faith, but
each person must accept Jesus as their Savior personally in order to be saved. Even
so, Pentecostals do acknowledge the socialization or “learning process” (Hornsby-
Smith 1998: 416, drawing on Wilson 1996) involved in religious experience, even
if not explicitly. One indication of the socialization process involved in “learning”
religious experience in Pentecostalism is provided in a hand-out given in a course
in the Tampere Pentecostal Church. This document explains how any experience
a Pentecostal might have requires faith, which in turn is preceded by “correct”
knowledge of the Bible. Thus, knowledge of the Bible comes first, and this should
be acquired by both personally reading the Bible and listening to or reading the
teachings provided by “trusted” sources, such as the local church. This knowledge,
then, creates faith, which will lead to experience.
Religious experience is social not only in the sense that it is dependent on doc-
trine or the collective belief system adopted by the individual, but also in the sense
that it can take place in a social setting and be shared (Hornsby-Smith 1998), such
as in a collective service or meeting, as services are often called in Pentecostalism.
This is in line with my understanding, as a Pentecostal, on the purpose of meetings
– we come together to encounter God. Nevertheless, Pentecostals do not take this
shared religious experience as a given: mere attendance to a meeting is insufficient.
Rather, it usually requires a deliberate choice of wanting to encounter God and
having a specific mental disposition in order to have a religious experience. During
the services, this is often put in words like “opening one’s heart” or “turning one’s
eyes” towards God. This could, in part, be conceptualized as a type of preparation,
which, according to Brown (2007: 173), is an inextricable part of any religious
experience. Some means of preparation mentioned by Brown are prayer and the
calming of mind and body, that is, controlling one’s breathing and posture.
Preparation, by whatever means, highlights another aspect of religious ex-
perience: it is mediated, either by mental processes, as discussed above, or by
the senses, by observing something external to oneself such as architecture or by
 Chapter 10. Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience 201

participating in an activity such as singing (Brown 2007: 173). The Pentecostal

tradition affirms this notion. Often nature is mentioned as something that speaks
of the Creator and therefore can lead to an encounter with Him. Another means of
preparation that is traditional in Pentecostalism is music, which is usually always
included in meetings and understood as a channel through which God can be
encountered. However, one type of mediation that is important in the Pentecostal
tradition is not mentioned by Brown: other people. Pentecostals believe that God
uses other Christians as channels; that through the service provided by believ-
ers in meetings and other gatherings – be it in the form of music, preaching or
prayer – they can encounter God. Importantly, for Pentecostals, these other people
are by no means regarded as the source of the experience. Nor is it thought that
people can “give” others a religious experience at will. Rather, those functioning
as channels as well as those receiving can only align themselves so that God can
do what He wishes to – encounter His children.

4. Interpreting for and through religious experience

In this section, my aim is to examine the coexistence of simultaneous interpreting

and religious experience in the volunteer interpreting of a Pentecostal service.
First, in Section 4.1, I provide a short description of the interpreting practice I
have studied. Then, in Section 4.2, I focus on preparation in terms of religious
experience, on the one hand, and the simultaneous interpreting task, on the other
hand, with the intention of highlighting the way in which my interpreting is aimed
at aiding others’ encounter with God. In Section 4.3, I move on to describe inter-
preting that is carried out through, or together with, a type of religious experience
called “hearing” from God.

4.1 Description of the interpreting practice

When I conducted fieldwork in the Pentecostal Church of Seinäjoki (2010–

2014), the church offered simultaneous interpreting regularly twice a week: on
Wednesday evenings and on Sunday mornings. The Wednesday meetings usu-
ally lasted for two hours – a bit longer than the Sunday services – and they also
usually featured more contemporary worship music. The Wednesday meetings
also attracted many people from other denominations in the area as well as from
elsewhere in Finland, because they had gained a reputation as gatherings in which
the Spirit of God moves powerfully. These meetings also often included a call for
conversion, and were thus seen as more evangelizing in their purpose than the
202 Sari Hokkanen

Sunday services, which were sometimes seen mainly as a gathering of the church
family, even though non-members were welcome to both.
For the purposes of simultaneous interpreting, the church has two built-in
booths with visual access to the stage and parts of the main hall. One booth was
used for English interpreting, the other for Russian, at the time the fieldwork was
conducted. In both languages, only one interpreter worked at a time. The interpret-
ing equipment used in the church is not identical with what is used in professional
conference interpreting settings, although it has the same features – in addition to
many unnecessary ones, making the equipment overly complicated for its purpose
according to some interpreters. There were eight regular English interpreters at
the church with about as many reserve interpreters. The people listening to the in-
terpreting were usually immigrants and exchange students, mostly African, along
with occasional visitors. In any given meeting in which interpreting was offered,
there were usually between five and fifteen listeners, the majority of which listening
to English interpreting.
An important starting point in the present discussion of church interpret-
ing is the conceptualization of volunteer interpreting in the church as a form of
Christian service (Hokkanen 2012). In this sense, interpreting does not differ from
other tasks that I may perform voluntarily in church, be it preaching or leading
worship; I am there to serve God and the church. This concept of service, then,
partially defines my understanding of what it means to be a church interpreter,
which is why a brief discussion of the notion is provided here. In Pentecostalism,
serving is understood as the voluntary (and usually non-paid) work one does in
and for the church, thus helping to “build up” the church – to maintain its many
activities and develop them further. Serving, as a concept, is close to volunteer
work, but the two are not entirely synonymous, as serving can also take place in
non-institutional settings outside the church and be unorganized, as when help-
ing a neighbor. A further difference between serving and volunteering is that
sometimes Pentecostals regard the work they do for a living as service to God
and humankind, if one is a nurse, for example, or to the church, if one is a pastor.
The ultimate motivation to serve is thought to rise from a personal relationship
with God and a sense of gratitude for His love and Christ’s sacrifice. The ability to
serve is seen as the result of personalized gifts or skills that God has provided for
each individual. This also means that Pentecostals believe that there is a certain
“place” for each individual, in which he or she is designed to serve, although it is
thought that one person may be meant to serve in more than one place at once or
consecutively during their lifetime.
 Chapter 10. Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience 203

4.2 Preparing to interpret in a Pentecostal meeting

When church interpreting is seen as a form of Christian service, the church in-
terpreter’s task and role receives a spiritual meaning that may not be relevant in
other settings. This spiritual meaning is influenced by the religious goals of the
interpreted event, and, as discussed in Section 3, in a Pentecostal church, these
goals revolve around religious experience. As also discussed in Section 3, one im-
portant aspect of religious experience is preparation. Therefore, this section will
examine different levels of preparation related to both religious experience and
simultaneous church interpreting.
Regarding preparation, I have made use of Brown’s (2007) understanding of
preparation as the individual “techniques” that one does more or less immediately
before a religious experience, such as prayer, with the intention of them helping
one to encounter God. However, in this discussion, the concept of preparation
also encompasses more practical activities, such as familiarizing oneself with
the portions of Scripture to be featured in the interpreted sermon or organizing
the interpreting booth. For the purposes of this analysis, I call these two aspects
spiritual preparation and practical preparation, although the distinction is some-
what artificial; when performing practical tasks within my place of service, they
have spiritual significance. A further differentiation from Brown is that, in this
discussion, the goal of preparation is not only to achieve a personal religious ex-
perience, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to mediate religious experience
to others – to help create a framework for others’ encounter with God (see also
Miller & Yamamori 2007).
The importance of preparation for religious experience not only arises from
the literature, but is also seen as an important part of service within the church.
The crucial role of spiritual preparation, mostly in the form of prayer, but also
in the form of speaking in tongues and reading the Bible, is often discussed in
sermons and in conversations between members, since service, in whatever form,
is seen as a spiritual activity. However, as regards practical preparation, I have
observed two somewhat conflicting lines of thought within Pentecostalism. The
first emphasizes spiritual preparation in expense of the practical. Pentecostals
value spontaneity in collective services, which is seen as a sign of the Holy Spirit
being allowed to move freely among the congregation, making rigid schedules
and plans a sign of religiosity: rituals without relationship. Thus, what is seen as
most important is that whoever serves be “open” to the Holy Spirit, making other
“human” effort redundant or, at worst, detrimental to the work of the Spirit. The
second line of thought values both spiritual and practical preparation, acknowl-
edging that practical preparation is not only necessary for most places of service,
but that it, too, is spiritual and does not hinder the work of the Spirit when done
204 Sari Hokkanen

with prayer. 2 I follow this second line of thought, which is reflected in the inclusion
of practical preparation in this discussion.
Furthermore, I have chosen preparation as an object of analysis because it
is seen as an important part of the work of professional interpreters, as well. An
adequate preparation for interpreting assignments, for example in the form of
making sure that material is sent to the interpreter in advance, is mentioned in
national and international professional codes of conduct (SKTL 1994; AIIC 2015).
Preparation was also chosen as one area of comparison between simultaneous in-
terpreters of different levels of experience in Vik-Tuovinen (2006) and mentioned
as “an indispensable part of [simultaneous interpreters’] professional practice” by
Jiang (2013: 88), who focused on interpreters’ glossaries. Thus, the analysis and the
importance of the concept of preparation to me testify to my socialization into
both Pentecostalism and the professional interpreting community.
The following narrative, example (1), illustrates the interplay of these different
levels of preparation in a church service that I interpreted. This and subsequent
examples are all derived from the field journal I kept during fieldwork in the
Pentecostal Church of Seinäjoki, between 2011 and 2014, but they have been re-
constructed into a new narrative in order to reflect the cultural understandings I
have arrived at after analyzing the research material as a whole (see Bochner 2012).
Example (1) is based on two separate interpreting occasions (one in January, 2012,
the other in May, 2014):

(1) In the process of hanging my coat in the church lobby, I hear a familiar voice
call my name. It’s Tiina, a fellow church interpreter. After we’ve exchanged
pleasantries, I tell her I have to get moving soon, because I’m interpreting the
service today. “What, again?” she asks. “It feels like it’s your shift all the time.”
“Yeah, I guess I’m here pretty often,” I say with a smile. “But then again, I think
interpreting is fun, so I don’t mind.” Tiina agrees, and adds, “Interpreting is
also great because you don’t really have to prepare. All you have to do is show
up.”
So, I showed up, I think as I get to the booth. Does that mean I’m ready?
The booth at least isn’t ready. I pick up half a dozen headphones and insert
into them the rechargeable batteries waiting in the charger. I switch on the
equipment and adjust the microphone standing on the table. Then I take out

2. A joke on the importance of practical preparation is told among Pentecostals: a preacher had
prepared spiritually for his sermon, but had neglected practical preparation. Thus, he had no
notes or even an idea on what he would say, but wanted to give the Holy Spirit as much room as
possible to say what He wanted him to say. While sitting in the meeting before his time to speak
came, he prayed and prayed, asking God to give him a word and getting more and more anxious.
When he took his place behind the microphone, God finally gave him a word: “Lazy.”
 Chapter 10. Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience 205

a bottle of water from my purse, together with my smartphone that holds the
Bible app I use when I interpret and the notebook I use for field notes. Okay,
now I’m ready, I think and proceed to check if I would have enough change
to buy a cup of coffee from the cafeteria. Sadly, I don’t, so instead I make a
few notes in my notebook.
I remember that when I started interpreting in church, still studying for my
Master’s, I used to do vocal exercises at home and read the Bible in English out
loud. Back then, in Tampere, we also sometimes got the preacher’s notes for
the sermon beforehand, so I’d do a prima vista on them and check the Bible
references, sometimes even writing them down. Seven years later, I don’t find
that important anymore. Or necessary, to be more precise.
Still mulling over the topic of preparation, I stare at what I wrote last in the
notebook: “5 cents short for coffee” and wince out of guilt. Why do I spend
these few minutes before service writing down trivial “observations from the
field,” instead of making sure my heart is ready to serve God? Why am I not
praying?

There are two details in example (1) that I would like to highlight. First, the narra-
tive illustrates that simultaneous interpreting in church may include both practical
and spiritual preparation. However, the actual tasks required for practical prepa-
ration (e.g. inserting batteries into headphones) are fairly small and only instru-
mentally related to simultaneous interpreting. Indeed, I would argue that this is
why Tiina (a pseudonym) claimed that interpreting at church does not require
preparation at all. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that for her, what I have
here called spiritual preparation seemingly did not count as preparation, if one
truly only needs to “show up.” Alternatively, it may be argued that she did not find
spiritual preparation important for interpreting. Because I did not have the chance
to discuss this topic again with Tiina, I cannot provide a reliable interpretation of
her intention. However, knowing the context of meaning of the social setting, I
would suggest her comment could also be seen as indicating the close relationship
between a church interpreter’s “Christian self ” and “interpreter self.” Ideally, a
church member would engage in the “techniques” of spiritual preparation, such
as prayer, as a matter of course in their everyday life, whether or not they would
serve in church.
The second detail in example (1) on which I would like to elaborate relates
to the changes in practical preparation that have occurred in my own history of
church interpreting. When I began interpreting in church, I employed standard
preparation techniques learned in interpreting classes (e.g. prima vista). However,
these techniques have become less necessary as I have become more familiar
with the speech event, even though Pentecostal services do not follow a prede-
fined (let alone written) liturgy. This trend of me preparing for interpreting less
206 Sari Hokkanen

as experience grows seems to be in accordance with what Vik-Tuovinen (2006)

observed when comparing interpreters with different levels of experience. Many
of the more experienced interpreters did not put as much weight on making, for
example, glossaries as they did on situational factors and information on the topic
of the interpreted event. Jiang (2013: 90) also points out that professional and es-
pecially freelance interpreters participate temporarily and as “lay persons” in an
interpreted event. Thus, their practice of compiling glossaries is necessary in order
to learn both vocabulary and relevant concepts. However, I as a church interpreter
am in church neither temporarily nor as a “lay person” in the sense that I would not
share in the specialized area of knowledge with the other participants. In addition,
I have also gained knowledge about most of the speakers, another possible area of
preparation mentioned by Vik-Tuovinen (2006). Thus, years of experience have
given me a fairly thorough familiarity with the interpreted event, its topic, com-
monly used terms and phrases as well as its speakers. This accumulated knowledge
has decreased my need to prepare for interpreting at church.
As discussed above in Section 3, spiritual preparation is an important as-
pect of religious experience, which, in turn, is embedded in the goals of church
interpreting as an instance of Christian service. Therefore, example (2) aims to
illustrate the ways in which the social meanings attached in the church to service
and religious experience are reflected in the practices of preparing for church
interpreting. Example (2) is derived from two entries of field notes, both written
in February, 2012:

(2) Too often I come to interpret in church late. Or rather not late, nor even at
the last minute, but later than I would like to. Later than I would need to.
Like today. My usual half-verbalized prayer spoken quietly in the booth just
moments before the service starts doesn’t quite take me all the way to feeling
ready or qualified to serve.
The question is: if I have not encountered God recently, how can I help
others encounter Him? Luckily, no one needs interpreting at the start of the
service, so I can focus on the worship. I sing along with the band in a hushed
voice: “Father, take me into Your arms/before darkness takes over the land/I
find rest here before Your face/You take all my burdens away.” I let out a deep
breath.
It comes gradually, the realization of how little this has to do with me and
how much it is His work. How much it is grace. I can never be really sure of the
extent to which my interpreting aids a listener to encounter the Holy Spirit.
In the end, that’s not in my hands. What is in my hands is to surrender to His
use and pray that I won’t stand in the way. And that’s what I do.
When the first listener takes a set of headphones and nods in my direction
through the glass, I smile back and switch on the microphone. I’m ready.
 Chapter 10. Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience 207

Example (2) discusses two typical means often mentioned in church for preparing
to encounter God: prayer and worship music. Here, I as a church interpreter engage
in both techniques in order to realign myself with the social meaning attributed
to the task of church interpreting, that is, as service rendered to God, in order to
participate in the construction of a framework for the listeners’ religious experi-
ence. Thus, these “techniques” of spiritual preparation become constitutive for the
success of church interpreting; if I as a church interpreter am not “surrendered,”
I can provide a linguistic but not a spiritual service for the church.

4.3 Hearing from God: Religious experience during simultaneous

interpreting

Deep familiarity with the interpreted event may not only lead to a lessened need
to prepare for interpreting, as discussed above, but also to an increased capacity to
engage with the spiritual goals of the service. Such engagement entails that church
interpreters not only serve God and the church, helping others to gain a religious
experience, but may also take a position similar to the other attendants by seeking
and receiving personal religious experiences. In this section, my aim is to describe
religious experiences during simultaneous church interpreting and to discuss this
spiritual participation in light of my identity as a professionally trained interpreter.
The type of religious experience I focus on here is “hearing” from God, which
in Pentecostalism is usually explained as hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit in
one’s heart or spirit, more rarely as hearing an audible voice with one’s physical
ears. Thus, the “hearing” to which I refer is a conviction that a message heard in a
sermon or testimony or an insight gained during a meeting is, in fact, a personal
message from God. Often, though not always, such a conviction has its origin
in the timing of the message heard: there may be a problem or a topic current in
my life and the message seems to answer to it directly. At other times, the feeling
of conviction does not seem to have any apparent reason. Hearing from God or
receiving a word from Him differs as an experience from receiving information,
even if that information concerned God or had its origin in the Bible. Rather, it
could be described as somewhat of a revelation that becomes experientially true
(see also Wynn 2012). Thus, one may hear (as in receive information concerning
the fact) that God loves everyone, but when one hears (in the sense used in this
discussion) from God that He loves everyone, one is convinced that it is true and
can personally feel loved by Him (see also Brown 2007). The revelation, or what
one hears from God, in a meeting may, furthermore, seem to be independent of
what is said in public by the speakers. In a meeting, when one is in the presence
of the Holy Spirit, it is believed that He can communicate directly to believers
irrespective of what is discussed aloud.
208 Sari Hokkanen

Example (3) below describes one experience of “hearing” from God that took
place in the middle of simultaneous interpreting. The example derives from a
single event recorded in field notes in June, 2012:

(3) At the beginning of the meeting, I notice a few listeners I have not seen before. I
want them to have a good impression of God and our church, so I hope I’m able
to serve them to the best of my ability. I interpret the worship songs, enjoying
the worship myself, even though I cannot sing along or stand up as I would if
I did not interpret. But I feel revived, anyway.
In the middle of the sermon, the preacher asks the congregation to take a
moment and bless whoever is next to them as a demonstration of the love that
Christ has called us to show one another. No one speaks into the microphone
during the prayer, so I, too, decide to join the prayer. I mute my microphone
and bless an elderly woman sitting in front of the booth window, raising my
hand towards her and praying in Finnish and in tongues. Soon the sermon
continues, and I feel moved by the message I interpret. After the sermon, the
worship begins again, but very soon all who listen to the interpreting take
their headphones off and I end my interpreting.
I remain sitting in the booth for a while, listening to the worship on my
headphones, and I just enjoy the presence of God. I feel uplifted and at peace. I
felt the message of showing the love of Christ to our neighbors as God speak-
ing to me, but I feel I encountered God on a deeper, more personal level, as
well. Somehow and at some point during the meeting, God took away the fear
I had for my unborn baby – I am five months pregnant with my first child. I
now feel at ease and am convinced that God will take care of me and the baby,
even though I cannot say how it happened.

Example (3) illustrates the many ways in which I engaged in the interpreted event:
the messages I interpreted became personally meaningful, attested by my partic-
ipation in prayer and worship, although the forms of participation were different
in the two. I prayed like I would as a regular attendant to the service, but was not
able to join the worship as I would normally. In addition, the sermon was not only a
message I conveyed to others, but I also received it myself. Furthermore, even while
I interpreted, I had a personally meaningful encounter with God. Thus, the task
of simultaneous interpreting in church was embedded in my personal spirituality.
Taking such an active participant role is in stark contrast with the professional
ideal of neutrality or impartiality, understood here as a striving towards person-
al non-engagement in the social situation that is interpreted. The discussion of
professionalism in interpreting often highlights the ideal of impartiality in terms
of interpreters not allowing their person to affect their work and attitudes to-
wards their clients (e.g., Jacobsen 2013). However, as established by scholars such
 Chapter 10. Simultaneous interpreting and religious experience 209

as Wadensjö (1998), Diriker (2004) and Angelelli (2004), the interpreter always
plays a social role in the interpreted event and does not become “non-present”
even when adhering to professional codes of ethics and conduct. Indeed, as argued
by Wadensjö (1998), interpreted discussions are always impacted by the presence
and the coordinating activity of interpreters, who unavoidably bring their other
social selves into the situation.
Nevertheless, I would argue that in the setting studied here, church interpret-
ers’ social selves are primary, unlike in professional interpreting settings, where
the occupational self is, naturally, foregrounded (see Wadensjö 1998: 185–186). In
professional settings, interpreters’ social selves do not usually define their ability
to function as interpreters. In the church studied here, however, a person may not
function as an interpreter without the social self of being a church member or, at
least, committed to the ideology of the church (Hokkanen 2012). Thus, the active
engagement of the church interpreter in the interpreted event and its spiritual goals
are intrinsic to the task of volunteer simultaneous interpreting in the church, as
exemplified by the above narratives (see also Balcı Tison 2016).

5. Conclusions

The autoethnographic examination of my experiences as a simultaneous interpret-

er in the Pentecostal Church of Seinäjoki provided in this paper illustrates the ways
in which my identity as a Pentecostal Christian volunteering at my church coexists
with my identity as a professionally trained interpreter. Regarding preparation,
this coexistence seems fairly harmonious: I find it important to prepare before
interpreting at church, even though the mode of preparation is mainly spiritual. I
have also made practical preparations before interpreting at church, in much the
same way as I would for a professional assignment. However, such practical prepa-
ration used to carry more importance for me in the past than it does currently.
As my experience of church interpreting has accumulated, I have found that my
need for practical preparation has diminished. This can be interpreted as being
congruent to professional practice: as the interpreter becomes intimately familiar
with the characteristics of and the area of specialized knowledge within the inter-
preted event, the need for extensive prior preparation may become less important.
However, as regards the role of religious experience during the interpreted
service, my identities as a Pentecostal and as a professionally trained interpreter
are not as easily compatible. First, the responsibility of the church interpreter in
the setting studied here extends beyond linguistic and cultural mediation into the
mediation of religious experience. In other words, church interpreters’ task is seen
to carry religious significance in that their service is intended to help the listeners
210 Sari Hokkanen

to encounter God. Second, church interpreters’ active engagement in the inter-

preted service attests to the significance of their social selves as church members.
Church interpreters not only provide a service, but also engage in the interpreted
event as primary participants. Thus, they may seek and receive personal religious
experiences even while interpreting simultaneously.
When examined with the help of identifications and disidentifications, as done
in this paper, the notions of professionalism and non-professionalism become
much more complex than the simplified and dualistic assertion that professional
interpreting equals training, ethics and quality and non-professional interpreting
a lack thereof. Instead, the notions of professionalism and non-professionalism
can be seen from a more social perspective as certain contexts of practice carrying
certain meanings and values that are filtered into the person of the interpreter
operating within these contexts. The autoethnographic lens through which this
social perspective was acquired here thus brings into view a professionally trained
interpreter serving her church as a simultaneous interpreter incorporating parts
of both worlds into her interpreting experience and practice.

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 Chapter 11

Beyond the professional scope?

Sign language translation as a new challenge
in the field

Nadja Grbić
University of Graz

Traditionally, research on interlingual occurrences of sign language has fo-

cused on sign language interpreting. However, social practice has changed, not
least as a result of the development in communication technologies and the
increasing accessibility of audiovisual media. In this context, sign language
translation, i.e. the production of recorded signed texts based on written source
texts, has witnessed a steady increase, particularly in translations of websites,
tests, literature, etc. This paper begins with a short description of the devel-
opment of sign language translation, leading to a presentation of some typo-
logical questions related to sign language translation with a focus on some of
the problems that arise when activities span the supposed boundary between
translation and interpreting. The second part of the paper is a presentation of a
case study demonstrating the textual and social challenges faced by a team of
untrained and inexperienced sign language translators in the course of their
first translation assignment. The project in question was the translation of the
Austrian Jewish Museum’s website into Austrian Sign Language.

Keywords: sign language translation, website translation, self-perception

1. Introduction

Sign language (SL) translation is a relatively new category in the field of translation
and interpreting. It comprises the interlingual and inter-modal transfer of fixed
or frozen (written) texts into fixed or frozen signed texts (on video). Although
scholars have used the term “sign language translation,” there is no consensus
within the academic community as yet with regard to the term’s usage, which can
be ascribed to the fact that academic research in this field is still in its infancy.
Traditionally, research on interlingual occurrences of SL has focused primarily
on interpreting. However, social practice has changed over the course of time, not

doi 10.1075/btl.129.11grb
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
214 Nadja Grbić

least as a result of the increasing accessibility of audiovisual media. In the aca-

demic realm of translation studies, this field of practice remains largely uncharted
territory, and practitioners often have little, if any, formal translation training.
The paper is divided into two sections. The first describes the development of
SL translation and presents some of the typological questions related to SL trans-
lation as a research topic. The second part focuses on textual and social challenges
that can arise in the translation process. The discussion and analysis of these chal-
lenges is based on a case study of a translation assignment for the Austrian Jewish
Museum in Eisenstadt, which was carried out by a team of four non-professional
translators in 2005.

2. Sign language translation

Although there are very few historical records, we know that both private and
institutional SL interpreting have been performed ever since hearing and deaf
people without a common language have needed to communicate, e.g. in church,
at school or in court (see, e.g., Stone & Woll 2008). SL translation, on the contrary,
i.e. the production of recorded signed texts based on written source texts (ST), is
a relatively new practice in everyday life.

2.1 Development

One of the reasons for the steady increase in SL translation assignments is the gen-
eral growth in socio-political awareness. Since 1999, the European Commission
and the European Council have undertaken a number of measures pertaining to
Web accessibility in order to encourage inclusion and the provision of better public
services through information and communications technology (ICT). The Council
Resolution “eAccessibility – improving the access of people with disabilities to
the knowledge based society,” for example, was approved on 6 February 2003
(European Union 2003). In June 2006, 34 European ministers committed to re-
ducing the digital divide by 2010 in a declaration made in Riga in 2006 (IP/06/769)
and in December 2008, the European Commission adopted policies from the com-
munication “Towards an accessible Information Society,” which suggests ways of
improving Web accessibility (for more information, see European Commission
n.d.; Kemppainen 2011: 323).
On 13 December 2006, the “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Dis­
abilities” was adopted by the United Nations. Parties to the convention are required
to promote, protect and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by people with
 Chapter 11. SLT as a new challenge 215

disabilities, e.g. access “to information and communication, including informa-

tion and communications technologies.” 1 As of 3 May 2012, the convention has
had 112 ratifications and 153 signatories, including the European Union (United
Nations 2008–2012). In Austria, the E-Government Law passed in January 2008
(Pils et al. 2009) decrees that government and official public service Internet sites
have to meet international standards pertaining to Web accessibility for people
with disabilities.
SL translations are not, however, limited to official websites and those of mu-
seums, universities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and companies. As a
result of technological developments, especially in relation to visual media such as
video and DVD, a range of written resources can be translated into SL, including
tests, children’s books, the Bible, and training resources.
Some might ask why such endeavours to translate texts into SL are undertaken
when the target audience belongs to the same linguistic community as the local
majority. Apart from a basic political responsibility for the linguistic rights of
minority groups, which is fundamentally linked to a public recognition of cultur-
al identity and social justice, there is another reason for the necessary provision
of SL translation. Some deaf people are not very confident in their own literacy,
and there are a number of cases showing high levels of functional illiteracy in
the vernacular written language. Studies have shown that an average 18-year-old
deaf student reads at a level comparable to that of an 8-year-old hearing student
(Trezek et al. 2011: 99). These difficulties that some deaf people have with reading
are primarily caused by education systems that subscribe to the myth that expo-
sure to SL harms deaf children’s speech acquisition. In fact, the exclusion of SL
in education is an “unnatural impediment to language acquisition” (Marschark
et al. 2002: 37–38). As a result, many deaf people struggle in day-to-day life and
in the workplace with tasks that require reading skills beyond a very basic level.
Although SL translation has a rather short history, the market has experienced
explosive growth in the last few years, which is attributable to socio-political and
technological developments. Although no statistical data on the development of
the translation market is currently available, the fact that efsli, the European Forum

1. Article 9: “To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in
all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disa-
bilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to
information and communications including information and communications technologies and
systems and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in
rural areas.”
216 Nadja Grbić

of Sign Language Interpreters, 2 devoted its 2011 conference to SL translation and

sight translation indicates that SL interpreting professionals in various European
countries had observed such changes in the market (Cardinaletti 2012). In Austria,
members of the Deaf Association founded the organisation Servicecenter ÖGS
barrierefrei in 2005, advocating equal opportunities for the deaf in social and
economic affairs. Amongst other goals, they provide website translation services
for public authorities, educational institutions, museums, etc. (Servicecenter ÖGS
barrierefrei 2013). However, as Leneham (2007: 14) indicates, “the phenomenon
[…] is something quite unfamiliar to most interpreting and translation profession-
als – even those working within the field of sign language interpreting.” This was
true in Austria until very recently, and it raises the question: who were and are the
people doing this work? Since Austrian curricula only offer interpreting courses
to hearing students, and since the first part-time course for deaf interpreters and
translators has started as recently as the autumn of 2013, it is fair to suppose that
most translators tend to be either self-taught deaf non- or semi-professionals or,
to a lesser extent, trained hearing interpreters with little or no translation experi-
ence (Grbić 2009; Logo n.d.). Although hardly any research has been conducted
in this regard, a few Master’s theses have shown that translators often work in
teams and tend to perform translation as a side job (Gansinger 2008; Wiener 2010;
Hajek 2011). As a result, we find a range of highly divergent views on the concept
of translation and the translation process, and the quality of the final target texts
(TT) also varies considerably.

2.2 Research and typology

It is, therefore, hardly surprising that SL translation has been largely unacknowl-
edged in the academic sphere of translation/interpreting studies. Several papers
have been published discussing individual translation assignments, such as chil-
dren’s books and resources (Conlon & Napier 2004), primary school assessments
tools (Tate et al. 2003), psychiatric assessment tools (Montoya et al. 2004; Cornes

2. The name of the association also points to the fact that translation was not considered to
be a possible area of activity for a long time. The interpreters’ association in Austria, which was
founded in 1998, changed its name to “Österreichischen Gebärdensprach-DolmetscherInnen-
und -ÜbersetzerInnen-Verband” in 2013 to include the field of translation. Membership of the
association is contingent on passing an exam. At the time of the study, there were 90 hearing
members. The first two deaf candidates took the exam in 2014. There are no statistical data on
sign language users in Austria. In a survey on impairment by STATISTIK AUSTRIA in 2007/2008,
202,000 people declared that they have hearing problems, of which 2,000 described themselves
as deaf and 62,000 said they had severe hearing problems (Leitner 2008).
 Chapter 11. SLT as a new challenge 217

et al. 2006), learning software for driving tests (Gansinger 2009a, 2009b), drama/
theatre translation (Turner & Pollitt 2002; Banna 2004; Leneham 2005) and news
broadcasting (Stone 2007). Some of them discuss and apply functional approaches
with reference to Christiane Nord and Hans Vermeer (e.g. Tate et al. 2003; Banna
2004; Conlon & Napier 2004), whose frameworks seem to be particularly useful
for the description and analysis of authentic assignments. Considering that SL
translation always involves an element of power and control, Venuti’s concept
of “minoritizing translation” (Venuti 1996) has also been discussed in relation
to SL translation (e.g. Gresswell 2001; Banna 2004; Leneham 2007). In 2012, the
European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters (efsli) published a booklet with a
few papers on the topic following a conference held in 2011.
With the advances of ICT, the process of SL translation can occur in both
directions, from spoken/written languages into signed languages and vice versa.
Taking different modalities and technical options into account, Leneham (2007)
suggests six SL translation types:
1. Signed ST (video) → spoken TT: e.g. voice-overs for deaf TV programmes;
2. Spoken ST (audio) → signed TT (video): e.g. translation of a song, such as
national anthem;
3. Signed ST (video) → signed TT (video): e.g. translation of a signed narrative
into another SL on video;
4. Written ST → signed TT (live): e.g. sight translation of medical information
leaflets, theatre interpreting;
5. Written ST → signed TT (video): e.g. translations of children’s books, assess-
ment tools, websites, the bible, literature;
6. Signed ST (video) → written TT: e.g. TV captions, witness testimonies, con-
ference papers.

Of course, this typology could be refined further, as it only takes into account the
shift of channel (written/spoken into signed and vice versa) and not the symbolic
organisation of a text, which might involve different cognitive operations in the
process of translating. We know that the difference between speech and writing
is complex and that the mode of discourse (Hatim & Mason 1990: 49) involves
differentiation between phenomena such as texts that are written to be spoken or
texts that are written to be read; a speech that is delivered spontaneously or one
that is prepared. With regard to reading and comprehending, there is a difference
between written texts that are permanently available during the translation/in-
terpreting process and that are delivered as scrolling visual texts via teleprompter.
However, Leneham’s typology still shows us a range of phenomena that could be
described as SL translations.
218 Nadja Grbić

In this paper, we focus on type 5, the translation of written ST as we find them

on websites into signed and video-recorded TT. However, can we actually talk
about “translation” in this case, which Banna (2004: 103) described as “prepared
recorded interpretation”? Most researchers in the field of translation and inter-
preting studies refer to Kade’s (1968) classification of translation and interpreting.
For Kade, a translation process is one in which the translator works without time
constraints, which means that the ST is permanently available, and the TT is
usually subject to revision. Interpreting, on the contrary, occurs in real time, the
ST is only presented once and the TT is created under time pressure, with little
chance for correction or revision. This indicates that the central distinctive fea-
tures seem to relate to the immediacy of the situation, the iterative nature of the
ST and the possibility of correcting the TT. It has also been stated that in the case
of a translation, the TT can become an independent resource in the target culture
(see Leneham 2005: 82–83, 85). In addition to translation and interpreting, sight
translation/sight interpreting has always been a phenomenon that does not fit into
the simple dichotomous division between translation and interpreting. For Kade,
sight translation is a transitional or mixed form, which he refers to as “simulated
interpreting.” He never, however, ventures beyond the presumed fundamental di-
chotomy between translation and interpreting, even when he suggests 10 different
forms of translation based on the criteria graphic versus phonetic and permanent
versus one-off presentations (see Kade 1980: 162; Salevsky 2009: 260; Griesel 2009).
Given the fact that a classification into discrete insular entities is hardly possi-
ble and keeping in mind that translation and interpreting phenomena are subject
to constant change, not least in relation to technological developments, there are in
fact a number of activities which cannot simply be labelled as either translation or
interpreting. Some of these mixed or intermediate forms such as sight translation/
interpreting, live-subtitling, live translation of Internet chats and SL translation
have therefore been referred to as “hybrids” by some scholars (e.g. O’Hagan &
Ashworth 2002: 14; Turner & Pollitt 2002: 41; Griesel 2007: 114–116, 2009). Others
(e.g. Stone 2007: 65–66) prefer to talk about a continuum reaching from translation
to interpreting.
Although intermediate translational phenomena such as SL translation seem
to be growing in practice, there has not yet been sufficient profound theoretical and
empirically informed typological research in the field, but there are a few excep-
tions. Wiener’s Master’s thesis (2010, 2011) is a complex feature analysis, in which
she discusses no less than 48 parameters to differentiate translation from inter-
preting that she found in academic literature. She divides them into three groups:
parameters referring to ST and TT; parameters referring to workplace and working
conditions and parameters pertaining to processes and strategies. Applying these
parameters to an analysis of a SL translation and supplementing it with interviews
 Chapter 11. SLT as a new challenge 219

with the translators, she concludes that the resulting object exhibits more features
pertaining to translations rather than to the products of an interpreting process.
In her PhD dissertation, Wurm (2010, 2014) demonstrates that the SL translation
process in question is notably steered by the translator, rather than simply by mo-
dalities of ST and TT based on observations, document analysis and interviews.
She concludes that the event she analysed is neither a form of prototypical transla-
tion nor of prototypical interpreting. Therefore, traditional prototypical and multi-­
parameter models for the description and classification of translational activities
do not account for the complexity of the case in hand, which she describes as “a
TP’s [translational practitioner’s] individualised, socially embedded history that
directs a TE [translational event]” (Wurm 2010: 207). Translation should therefore
be regarded “as a fluid, dynamic concept” (ibid.: 208). Both studies draw attention
to a significant need that is currently missing from the body of scholarly research
in the field: the analysis and comparison of “hybrid” translational events and the
bridging of the increasingly blurred boundaries between translation and inter-
preting studies (see Grbić & Wolf 2012). We know that categories are contingent,
insofar as they do not exist independently of space and time, and they are often
ideologically charged. Although things only become meaningful to us only when
placed in a certain category, ambiguities and composites challenge the illusion of
discrete compartments (Grbić 2010: 110–113).

3. Challenges

As a new type in the field, SL translation assignments can present a major challenge
to non- or semi-professional translators and interpreters. As mentioned above,
most of the practitioners have not undergone formal SL translation training, as
academic programmes do not yet include the provision of such training. After a
short presentation of the case and methodology, the author will discuss two issues,
of particular importance to the translational event: textual and social challenges.

3.1 Case study and method

The discussion is based on a translation assignment that was carried out in

2005. It comprised the translation of the website of the Austrian Jewish Museum
(Österreichisches Jüdisches Museum Eisenstadt 2005–2014) into Austrian Sign
Language (ÖGS) and was conducted by a team of two hearing and two deaf people,
who will be referred to as translators in the discussion, although they assumed
diverse roles in the course of the assignment, as will be illustrated in more detail
220 Nadja Grbić

in Section 3.3. The two hearing team members had already been working as SL in-
terpreters and trainers, one of the deaf people is a multi-generational deaf linguist
and SL teacher, the second deaf person was employed as video technician for the
production of SL videos at the time. All of them had collaborated before, albeit in
other areas such as linguistic research, SL teaching, or development of teaching
materials for ÖGS. It was the first and last time they performed a collaborative
written text to SL translation. Furthermore, they neither perceived themselves to
be translators at the time of the assignment nor would they consider themselves
translators today. 3 All of them have once been or are still colleagues of the author.
The following discussion is based on a minor extent on a semi-structured
interview conducted by Anna Wiener (2010) for her Master’s thesis, although the
work had a different research focus. The interview was conducted as a group in-
terview with one of the hearing and one of the deaf translators in ÖGS, video-­
recorded and then summarised in German, as a transcription would have been
too time consuming, given the fact that there is no standard writing system (van
der Hulst & Channon 2010). For the purpose of this study, the author conducted
two semi-structured interviews in ÖGS with the same two people in 2011. The first
focused on areas of cooperation and the second on features of the TT. During the
discussions, field notes were taken directly into the computer. In addition, the two
colleagues were asked to discuss and evaluate their translation retrospectively (in
the absence of the author) before the second interview and to take notes. Finally,
the colleagues were provided with the text of this paper for review and their com-
ments have been integrated into the present analysis.

3.2 Textual challenges: What should the text look like?

Signed languages have their own particular grammatical structures, vocabulary,

discourse patterns and dia-, socio-, and idiolectal variations and registers, all of
which are properties they share with spoken languages. Research on SL has found
that there are similarities and differences between types of discourse and between
the conventions used in signed and spoken languages. Furthermore, a number of
different features typical to spatial grammar have been observed and described
(Metzger & Bahan 2001), and Ingram (2000) identified six major discourse types,
which he defined according to the following functions: narrative; procedural; ex-
planatory; argumentative; hortatory (with a view to exercising influence on the
other) and conversational. However, there has not yet been sufficient research into
SL texts that are recorded on video. The differences to spoken languages that are

3. Personal communication.
 Chapter 11. SLT as a new challenge 221

typically identified are the visual-spatial modality and the lack of a written mode.
Although there have been several attempts to introduce writing, transcription and
coding systems for signed languages, none of these systems has found acceptance
as a standard “writing system” for daily use (van der Hulst & Channon 2010).
Hence, we might be tempted to conclude that SL translation as a written form
of linguistic transfer is practically impossible. However, this is a much too hasty
conclusion, as it is based on the simplistic presumption that the only difference
between orality and literality is medium or modality.
Even though we do not have sufficient reliable research results yet, we can
nevertheless proceed from the assumption that the discourse pertaining to SL
translations or fixed SL texts is fundamentally different to both SL interpreta-
tions and spontaneous communication. Maas’ (2004, 2010) theoretical concepts
of orate and literate styles, which he applies to an analysis of spoken and written
languages, support this assumption. Whilst the focus on written versus spoken
modes emphasises the empirical materiality of texts, Maas’ typology is functional
and takes into account the different social and cognitive operations pertaining
to direct and indirect communication. In both the spoken and written medium,
orate structures serve a predominantly communicative purpose, whilst literate
structures are predominantly representational. Orate and literate structures are
not discrete categories but should be seen as poles along a continuum.
Orate forms:

–– are predominantly communicative, in that a speaker has a counterpart to

whom he/she speaks;
–– require the speaker to plan and produce language simultaneously;
–– allow the listener to ask for something to be repeated or explained;
–– make use of a maximum of para- and extralinguistic resources and a mini-
mum of complex linguistic structures.

In contrast to orate forms, in literate forms:

–– the focus is usually on representation and not on communication; there is no

shared situation or action;
–– the producer plans the text before producing it;
–– with regard to cognitive operations, such texts can be decoded without refer-
ence to a specific situational context;
–– a maximum of (complex) linguistic structures are used; typical resources of
orate styles are employed to a lesser extent.

The major problem that SL translators in Austria face is that no text models or
reliable parallel texts exist; rather, there is a huge volume of signed texts on the
222 Nadja Grbić

internet, but it is hard to find a satisfactory common denominator as the discourse

patterns differ enormously between producers.
When we take a closer look at ÖGS-translations on the Web or on DVDs we
find an interesting feature common to many of the texts: Texts which are produced
in situations where the communicative function is less important than the repre-
sentative function often tend to be influenced by the syntax of the written ST. The
translators of such texts use a word-for-word or transcoding strategy. The problem
with transcoded ÖGS-texts is that they do not correspond to SL grammar and
are therefore sometimes barely comprehensible to the deaf audience. We can only
guess at why deaf translators might use such a strategy: either it is simply a sign
of a lack of skills or experience (De Groot 2011: 320) or it reflects an estimation of
how a literate SL text ought to be structured.
In the retrospective evaluation of their translation, the two translators of the
Jewish Museum’s website, the hearing interpreter and the deaf linguist, identi-
fied several features in their TT, which differentiate it from an orate discourse
and presented their findings to the author in the second interview: the personal
linguistic style has been neutralised, i.e. the signer uses fewer facial expressions
than he would have used in direct communication; the discourse is formal and less
expressive (e.g. the signer uses fewer constructed actions than he would have used
in an orate narrative; constructed actions are constructions of another’s actions,
combining grammatical and gestural features of SL); the translation contains
more rhetorical pauses and less blinking than a spontaneous communication;
the signing space is smaller, meaning that the signer’s stance is somewhat stiff and
constrained to a fixed position, with his view directed straight into the camera.
Furthermore, in the interview, the translators suggested some revisions that would
improve the TT: they would change the macro-structure, use more pragmatic
explicitations (Klaudy 1998: 83) and reduce the frequency of fingerspelling for
personal names.

3.3 Social challenges: Who should the translator be?

Another major challenge that SL translators and interpreters face, which came up
in the course of the interviews with the two translators of the museum’s website,
pertains to questions of power and control in the relationship between the deaf
and the hearing. Considering that deaf communities look back on a long history
of marginalisation in the Western world, it is hardly surprising that hearing people
will sometimes find that they are encountered in a spirit of caution and reserve. As
Harlan Lane (1986: 2) puts it, language has always been an instant of hegemony to
create homogeneity, and in the case of the deaf this strategy has been successful
for centuries. Not only have SLs been excluded from deaf education, they have
 Chapter 11. SLT as a new challenge 223

moreover been dismissed as pictorial and therefore primitive (ibid.: 9). On the
basis of the iconic features of SLs, people claimed that they were not fully natural
languages. Instead, they were seen as a kind of pantomime at best, incapable of
expressing abstract concepts and complex ideas (see Taub 2001: 3). Furthermore,
hearing occupations working with the deaf often expressed an attitude of pater-
nalism towards the deaf, maintaining their dependence by upholding a certain
supremacy over all the important decisions in life (Lane 1986). Lane (1992) speaks
in this context about the “mask of benevolence” and Ladd (2003: 17) adopts the
terms “linguistic colonialism” and “welfare colonialism” when discussing the his-
tory of the social oppression of the deaf in the Western world.
What does this have to do with translators and interpreters? Hearing SL in-
terpreters possess two features that differentiate them from other interpreters who
typically work in community and educational settings. One is that SL interpret-
ing is not terminal – deaf people will stay deaf and are unlikely to start to hear
one day, whereas a migrant can learn the majority language and might one day
no longer be dependent on interpreters. The other feature is that SL interpreters,
including children of deaf adults (the so-called CODA), will never entirely belong
to or be a part of the deaf community, insofar as they are able to hear and will
therefore always belong to the powerful majority (see Grbić & Pöllabauer 2006).
These two characteristics, as well as some other reasons pertaining to the historical
development of professionalism, which are too complex to discuss here (see, e.g.,
Cokely 2005; Baker-Shenk 1986), play a vital part in contributing to the lack of
trust towards hearing interpreters who are furthermore educated in institutions
“belonging to” the majority, which are unfamiliar and inaccessible to a large part
of the deaf community.
In the case of the translation of the Jewish Museum’s website, as mentioned
above, the assignment was produced in a collaborative effort by a team comprising
two hearing SL interpreters, a deaf linguist and a deaf technician, fulfilling differ-
ent roles in the production chain. There was a conscious decision based on reasons
of equality that the team should include an equal number of deaf and hearing
members. The first interview reconstructed the team’s cooperation at all stages,
i.e. in the pre-translation phase, the translation phase, and the post-translation
phase, including the following steps:

–– a discussion of each of the team members’ roles;

–– a macro-analysis of the ST and situational context (by one deaf and two hear-
ing members of the group);
–– a micro-analysis of the ST, reading and comparing written parallel texts and
other documents, in addition to direct contact with the museum (this stage
included a division of work on vocabulary by one deaf member and work
224 Nadja Grbić

on the historical facts, background, location of the museum, etc., by the two
hearing members);
–– a discussion leading to the definition of the skopos of the translation and the
intended target group (by the entire team);
–– the development of macro- and micro-strategies including variety/dialect;
structural changes to the text; discussion of grammatical features such as lo-
calisation and tense and analysis of the fundamental challenge of transferring
three-dimensional language to two-dimensional video (by one deaf and one
hearing team member);
–– a first rough translation (one deaf team member presents a rough translation,
the other deaf team member checks whether text will be understood by as
many deaf people as possible and the hearing team members check for com-
pleteness, accuracy and terminology);
–– the presentation and filming (paragraph by paragraph; one deaf team member
presenting the translation, the other deaf team member acting as video tech-
nician and one hearing team member assisting the deaf presenter);
–– the final editing and revision of the TT by the entire team.

Since the members of the team were not familiar with the requirements, challenges
and possibilities of a written to sign translation, the definition of the stages, pre-
sented systematically above, were in fact the result of a series of lengthy discus-
sions, wrong decisions, adjustments and compromises.
As mentioned above, the formation of the team was a deliberate decision.
Having worked in deaf/hearing teams for long time, each participant was well
aware of the potential risks concerning the acceptance of their translation in the
deaf community. In the first interview, one hearing team member noted that it
was especially important for the hearing members to distribute the tasks and
responsibilities as collaboratively and evenly as possible. At one of the last stages
of the translation process, the prepared TT was signed by one of the deaf team
members. In the course of the analysis of the interviews, it became clear that this
decision was based on not only linguistic but also social reasons, to counteract
the continuous effect of linguistic and welfare colonialism. This was confirmed
by both interviewees in a personal communication. Thus, the deaf member not
only presented the signed text on the museum’s website, but also represented and
embodied the work of the team. The fact that signed languages do not have a
written form creates the situation specific to signed texts that they can neither be
separated from nor perceived without the person producing them.
When we look at the museum’s website, only the deaf linguist (“Gebärden
sprachübersetzer” = sign language translator) and the deaf technician (“Video­
aufnahme” = video recording) are mentioned by name (Österreichisches Jüdisches
 Chapter 11. SLT as a new challenge 225

Museum Eisenstadt 2005–2012). The two hearing members do not appear as agents
and as such remain invisible, having delegated their symbolic power to their deaf
colleagues, especially to the deaf presenter. With reference to Bourdieu’s field theo-
ry, we could describe this conscious decision to stay invisible as active institutional
self-censorship for the sake of the functioning of the field, insofar as every field
has its own political interests. The deaf signer, in contrast to the invisible hearing
members of the team, operates as an authorised speaker in the field (Bourdieu
1984: 139); his linguistic competence is legitimate and attributed to him by his
status as native and multi-generational deaf. As such, he is authorised to appear
as a representative of the language in the public sphere.

4. Conclusion

As demonstrated above, the translation of written texts into ÖGS is a complex task.
When the translators were commissioned to work on the Jewish Museum’s web-
site, they felt that they did not have enough experience with this type of language
transfer and decided to share the responsibility and tackle the task as a team com-
prising both hearing and deaf translators. This decision was based on the group’s
uncertainty regarding the appropriate features of a fixed signed text as well as on
the attention paid to the social and political implications of the respective role and
the status of the hearing and deaf agents involved in the translation process. It is
a matter of pure speculation whether their self-perception as “non-professional”
translators and their choice to work in a deaf/hearing team might also have been
influenced by the fact that they were professional in other, neighbouring areas,
such as SL interpreting, linguistics and teaching. As professionals in these related
areas, they might have been aware of their professional boundaries and therefore
especially cautions with regard to imperfection and unprofessional behaviour.
The team’s approach to the translation assignment, their translation strategies
and the final product, which have been discussed in this paper, represent just one
single case study. This individual assignment has nevertheless led to the identifi-
cation of two major challenges in relation to SL translation. One is connected to
a newly emerging type of literate discourse in ÖGS; the other to the delicate and
historically fraught relationship between the hearing and the deaf. Furthermore,
it has been shown that there are cases where the boundaries between professional
and non-professional translation/interpreting become blurred. Thus, it seems that
professional and non-professional translation/interpreting are not in fact discrete
categories but ought rather to be seen as dynamic concepts, and that a range of his-
torical, social and linguistic variables can influence a practitioner’s self-perception
with regard to professionalism and professional behaviour. The emergence of new
226 Nadja Grbić

translation/interpreting activities therefore provides a promising research object

with regard to the investigation of (non)professional translation and interpreting
concepts.

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 Chapter 12

Language-related disaster relief in Haiti

Volunteer translator networks and language
technologies in disaster aid

Regina Rogl
University of Graz

After Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake in January 2010, the disaster
relief community saw the unprecedented response of thousands of spontane-
ous helpers – among them many multilinguals. Translators and interpreters
were urgently needed to help establish communication within the disaster
relief community, to assist in coordinating crisis intervention and above all,
to provide urgent language services for those affected. Because of the chaotic
situation in the aftermath of the earthquake, volunteers were able to mobilize
only by massive use of social media and Internet technologies. This paper in-
vestigates the efforts of volunteer translators/interpreters to meet the needs of
multilingual communication of the international disaster relief community. It
explores how language volunteers mobilised and organised in spontaneous net-
works, what type of (translation) projects they launched and engaged in, which
language technologies they used or helped to develop and which challenges
they met during their work.

Keywords: volunteer interpreters/translators, disaster relief, humanitarian

field, online networks, language technologies

1. Introduction

Non-professional translation and interpreting has become the focus of increasing

academic attention in the last few years, emerging from the auspices of professional
translation and interpreting as a field in its own right. Non-professional practic-
es span a wide scope of activities ranging from child language brokering to fan
subbing, from the provision of interpreting services in military conflict and war
settings to civilian areas such as church interpreting, and as such these practices
cover an immense field of research, which is far too complex to be defined or ex-
plored in a brief summary.

doi 10.1075/btl.129.12rog
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
232 Regina Rogl

This extension of translation studies leads to new, uncharted research terri-

tories, one of which is the provision and practice of translation and interpreting
services in the humanitarian field. This paper focuses on a specific aspect of the
humanitarian field: The exceptional circumstances of natural or artificial disasters,
where it is likely that a large number of people are directly affected either as victims
of a given catastrophe or become involved as members of aid organizations from
various professional backgrounds. All are likely to be confronted by the challenge
of arranging effective planning and communication strategies between individuals
and organisations despite a collapse of local infrastructure. The complexity of the
situation itself makes translation and interpreting in or following major disasters
and emergencies a unique practice, a highly specific and complex setting that
deserves closer attention and analysis.
Pioneering research on emergency and disaster interpreting has been car-
ried out by a team of Turkish scholars, whose work continues to lead towards an
increasing professionalization of the field (see Section 2). Since the late 1990s,
however, only very few translation and interpreting case studies have addressed
disasters beyond those investigated by Kurultay, Bulut, Kahraman, Doğan and
colleagues (Bulut & Kurultay 2001; Kurultay et al. 2006; Doğan & Kahraman 2011).
In an effort to redress this balance, I analysed the language-specific relief efforts
following the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. Although the publications
mentioned above tend to focus on hands-on practice and the professionalization
of the field, this study aims to provide an additional, somewhat broader perspec-
tive of the setting and portray the complexity of disaster-related translation and
interpreting practices as interdependent and increasingly technology-mediated
cooperative processes. This investigation therefore focuses on the networks of
individual actors and groups involved in the response to the emergency in Haiti,
on the coordination of information flows and needs assessment, the mobilization
of volunteers and resources, the assignment of specific tasks and the collaborative
project planning. As the continuing development of information and communi-
cation technologies has had a profound impact on both the work of humanitarian
workers and that of translators/interpreters, special attention will be paid to the
role of digital media and the use of online networks in the coordination and real-
isation of translatorial disaster aid.

2. Translation and interpreting in the humanitarian field

In this exploration of translation and interpreting in the context of humanitarian

aid, it is essential to note the recent publication of some remarkable studies on
translation and interpreting in crisis zones, although these tend to use the term
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 233

“crisis” either somewhat unclearly or in a very broad sense. Such studies, however,
are only partially relevant to this study, as they refer exclusively to interpreting
in war zones or explicitly violent conflict situations (see, e.g., Salama-Carr 2007;
Inghilleri 2008; 2009; 2010; Baker 2010) and address issues such as an interpreter’s
involvement in military or ideological circumstances, or conflicts pertaining to the
role of the interpreter or to his/her loyalty. These issues are hardly comparable to
the circumstances encountered in disaster areas. Some articles resort to broader
terms that encompass both political conflicts and natural disasters, for instance,
Thicke (2002), who gives preference to the term “humanitarian translation.” In
a similar vein, Edwards (2002) investigates interpreting in the context of negoti-
ations for peace-keeping and relief missions, highlighting the demands on local
interpreters from a military perspective.
Although we might be able to identify some parallels between translation and
interpreting in military and in disaster settings and a closer look into the other
setting could prove to be valuable for both fields, it seems that a persisting lack of
clear-cut separation between war/violent conflict situations on the one hand, and
disaster areas on the other, has obstructed a focused investigation into the specif-
icities of language-related disaster relief and the role played by translators/inter-
preters in multilingual and multicultural communication in the context of natural
and artificial disasters. The only extensive research papers with an exclusive focus
on interpreting in disaster zones have been published by the Interpreters-in-Aid
at Disasters (ARÇ) 1 project, which was launched in the aftermath of the earth-
quakes in Turkey’s Marmara region in 1999. The project addresses issues such as
the characteristics of disaster settings, the role of relief interpreters, efforts towards
institutionalization, ethical issues and the development of curricula for training
courses. In one of their early publications, Kurultay, Bulut and Kahraman define
relief interpreting as “the voluntary public service interpreting provided for the for-
eign search and rescue teams in a country at times of disasters such as earthquakes,
floods, fires or avalanches” (Kurultay et al. 2006: 233), thus clearly excluding all
types of crisis other than natural disasters. After the first 10 years of ARÇ presence,
once the team had been involved in a series of disaster interventions, they started
referring to emergency and disaster interpreting in their publications. This notion
is extended to include relief efforts following artificial disasters such as nuclear or
chemical incidents and even seems to broaden the ARÇ’s scope to include wars
and violent conflicts (Doğan & Kahraman 2011: 64).
To Bulut & Kurultay (2001: 258), the exigencies of interpreting in disaster
zones correlate to challenges that community interpreters in other settings might

1. Commonly used Turkish acronym.

234 Regina Rogl

face, which explains their approach towards disaster interpreting as a sub-field of

community interpreting, albeit as one of its least institutionalized forms. There
is, however, a strong case for arguing that the very nature of emergency and dis-
aster situations entails a series of unique challenges that make this setting worthy
of further empirical consideration (Bulut & Kurultay 2001: 251). Each disaster is
unique with regard to situational factors and the ensuing challenges and con-
straints, which combine to influence the requirements and demands on disaster
management teams. The most important and at the same time least influenceable
aspect to be taken into account is the unpredictability of events in any catastro-
phe. This in many ways decisive factor has been addressed by Bulut & Kurultay
(2001: 258), but has not been systematically examined to date. When considered in
the light of the data collected for this study, this element of unpredictability could
be examined in terms of chronology, location and scale. In what follows, these three
dimensions and their consequences for translation and interpreting in and after
disasters are explored in more detail.

2.1 Chronology

It is seldom the case that any disaster scenario is preceded by early warning sys-
tems that might allow for an effective and comprehensive preparation of vulnera-
ble regions. Disasters (such as the earthquake in Haiti, which is described below)
often strike at a time when the affected region is not sufficiently prepared, even
if there are alerts or an early warning system. (A similar observation was made
by Bulut & Kurultay 2001: 253). When large-scale crises occur, time is crucial
and official disaster management plans that can be implemented immediately can
help to accelerate the first response considerably. However, multilingual disaster
management is seldom taken into account and even regions that are otherwise
very well prepared often have no developed strategies for recruiting interpreters,
assigning them to aid agencies, or deploying them in the field. Research assessing
recent humanitarian missions has found that decision makers and members of aid
agencies have repeatedly failed to recognize the need for translation and interpret-
ing services in the first moments of disaster response, when every minute counts
and decisions have to be made rapidly (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative 2011:24).

2.2 Location

Another important factor that can have a profound influence on relief opera-
tions is the geographical location of the disaster area. When a disaster occurs in
a densely populated area, thousands of people can be affected and supra-regional
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 235

infrastructures such as municipal, regional or national authorities or local civil de-

fence offices and medical facilities might be destroyed. If, on the contrary, disaster
strikes in a remote place, such infrastructures might not even exist and the relief
workers (together with their interpreters) and supplies have to be transported to
the site. Access might, however, also be hindered by the disaster itself and present
a grave challenge to aid workers, considerably delaying the commencement of
disaster operations (de Silva & Prustalis 2010: 112).

2.3 Scale

The scale of a disaster is the factor that determines the degree of destruction, the
number of victims and other people affected and also, as de Silva & Prustalis (ibid.)
ascertained, the extent to which coordination problems are to be expected:
To effectively handle the scale of the situation, therefore, the response needs to
be quickly supplemented with foreign and local donations, support from civil
society, and often the very victims acting as first-responders. Though support
is often forth coming, coordinating chaos ensures because each relief group on
scene has little idea what the other is actually doing. As a result there is a waste
of pledged support, imbalances in aid distribution and a lack of proper coverage
of support and services. (ibid.)

The same is true of the implementation of translation and interpreting services

at a disaster site, which have to be provided for not only the members of various
language communities amongst the victims, but also and above all the interna-
tional aid agencies and relief workers who are called up to alleviate the effects of
a large-scale catastrophe. In such situations, translators and interpreters become
essential agents in the process of facilitating effective coordination, but as a result
of insufficient planning or a lack of pre-existing relief interpreters’ pools, the aris-
ing needs often exceed the resources available (Bulut & Kurultay 2001: 250–251).
Moreover, the initial chaos can confuse the efforts of humanitarian actors to de-
termine which languages are needed, where translators or interpreters ought to be
assigned and which specialties and qualifications they should bring along.
These elements of unpredictability call for the consideration of translation
and interpreting services in preparatory crisis management frameworks and for a
continuous institutionalization and professionalization of emergency and disaster
interpreting, as achieved by Bulut & Kurultay in the project mentioned above,
where they substantiate that “[w]hat is new in this project is not providing com-
munity interpreting at disasters but transforming an existing form of commu-
nity interpreting into a professionalized field of translation” (Bulut & Kurultay
2001: 251), a process they fostered by providing specialized training programmes
236 Regina Rogl

to volunteer interpreters of relief missions, by implementing ethical norms and by

signing protocols with national authorities in charge of disaster management and
the National Medical Rescue Teams (Doğan & Kahraman 2011: 64).
Although the researchers involved in the Turkish ARÇ project focus primarily
on the practice of interpreting in the context of relief work, multilingual disaster
communication also involves large volumes of written translation, particularly in
order to ensure efficient coordination between the large number of actors involved.
Translatorial relief efforts are not, however, limited to translation and interpret-
ing alone, but might also encompass an element of coordination and coopera-
tion among the individual groups and agents involved and the use of technology
to provide vital resources, mobilize volunteers and develop innovative language
technologies. This paper therefore aims to go one step further and illustrate the
variety of tasks performed in and beyond the field based on a particular instance
of response to a natural disaster, involving a very heterogeneous relief community,
which comprised professionals and non-professionals, volunteers and full-time
staff members, in both paid and unpaid positions.

3. The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs)

The major difference between the earthquakes in Haiti and the Turkish earth-
quakes in the 1990s lies in the role played by technology. Bulut and Kurultay
(2001: 254) mention “a kind of unprecedented ‘social revolution’” that evolved
shortly after the earthquake they were studying, where both the people who were
directly affected as well as thousands of volunteers managed to organize them-
selves, taking matters into their own hands in order to provide help wherever they
could. Experts in disaster relief have often stressed the importance of such grass
root movements and neighbourly help in an emergency context, since “to respond
to major disasters as a community, a community needs collective efficacy” (Jaeger
et al. 2007: 594). However, in the past, these initiatives have tended to form on a
very local level, the advent of mobile ICTs now allows for a much broader scope in
the process of community mobilization, enabling more and more people to follow
certain events or even to participate from a distance within a very short time. As
outlined by Huang, Chan and Hyder (2010: 3), social media have become an im-
portant “platform in resource gathering, logistics allocation and the distribution
of relief supplies.” They also help to inform the public and spread the word about
opportunities to participate in relief efforts. As a major part of these activities
can be carried out online, ICTs allow geographical distances, which posed obsta-
cles to volunteer work in the past, to be bridged. The disaster response following
the earthquake in Haiti is an excellent example of increasingly technology-based
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 237

community mobilization, which led to the emergence of the notion of a “digital

revolution” that grew out of the idea of a “social revolution” in reference to the
lessons learnt from the relief efforts in Haiti.
As will be discussed below, the possibilities opened up by online networking
are immense, not only with regard to community response but also in the con-
text of institutionalized disaster and emergency aid. It is well-nigh impossible for
relief workers today to imagine having to work without tools such as Web-based
cartographic material, or online portals ensuring direct coordination between the
large number of international and local actors involved and providing real-time
disaster information. 2
These developments in the realm of digital technologies have not left the field
of translation and interpreting unaffected. ICTs and especially the Internet are
among today’s translators’ most important tools. They provide access to online
dictionaries and glossaries, parallel texts or Web-based platforms for online trans-
lation project groups; allow worldwide sharing of translation memories and offer
more powerful machine translation (MT) engines. In addition to this instrumental
task fulfilled by ICTs, they also perform communicative and networking func-
tions. Translators and interpreters resort increasingly to online marketing, offer-
ing their services to a global customer pool either through their own websites or
through social media networks (Pieloth 2010: 28–29). There are also a number of
practice-­oriented online translators’ networks such as proZ.com or Translators
Café, where users can exchange their experiences on translation-related topics,
post jobs, help one another out with translation problems and share glossaries,
thus establishing powerful Webs of translatorial knowledge (Witzel 2008: 19). 3
As Gouadec (2007: 298) notes with reference to the impact technology has on
the world of translation, “There is a real ‘cultural’ revolution taking place in the
translation profession, with a complete change in know-how and translation
techniques.”
There is, however, a tendency to be too quick in talking about revolutions
in this context and it is advisable to exercise caution so as not to overempha-
sise the potential of digital media in general. The attribution of revolutionary or
even democratising power to Internet technology, as suggested in several recently

2. For a general account on the use of ICTs in disaster relief, see Ziesche (2007), Jaeger et al.
(2007) or Huang, Chan & Hyder (2010). An overview of ICT innovations in the context of the
Haitian earthquake is provided by sources such as the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (2011)
or by Marini (2012).
3. An analysis of online translators’ communities as virtual knowledge networks can be found
in Risku & Dickinson (2009), for a classification of translators’ networks see McDonough (2007).
238 Regina Rogl

published studies, has been identified as too simplistic by a number of leading

Internet theorists:
Technologies tend to overpromise and underdeliver, […]. Which of the forces
unleashed by the Web will prevail in a particular social and political context is
impossible to tell without first getting a thorough theoretical understanding of
that context. (Morozov 2011: 21)

The Internet should therefore be treated in any analytical study as the technical
architecture it is, which does not in any way detract from an acknowledgement of
its functions and applications, but emphasizes the fact that the Internet is devoid
of any social power in itself. Solow-Niederman (2010: 30) suggests that “moving
away from an optimistic versus pessimistic dichotomy” in the study of online
movements will enable us “to see that the effects of the Internet may be ambiguous
and variable.” The powerful effects of Internet-based mobilization that we observe
and that many spectators get excited about in fact only occur in a very specific
context and in relation to a certain deliberate use of communication technologies.
Thus, all the impressive possibilities digital media open up – speed of interaction,
coordination, even mass mobilization – do not exist per se, but require an online
community to make deliberate use of these technologies (Tarkowski et al. 2011: 1).
Similarly, spontaneous online networks do not evolve because the technology
is available but because their members all support a given cause. In most cases,
this cause is already extant before participants start to search for ways to connect
with like-minded people. Therefore “online activity is always preceded by offline
organizing” (ibid.: 2) and no online movement can persist without at least some
offline personal encounters or social relationships, which is also true of the case
presented in this study. The impulses and the basic motivation that brought the
members of various communities together and encouraged them to spend day and
night volunteering their time and efforts were fundamentally altruistic and char-
itable. 4 There were also a number of existing physical and virtual organisational
structures prior to the earthquakes, and many network members who participated
in online relief work made use of their own private and/or professional networks
(both online and offline) in order to extend and support the newly formed com-
munities. In the following sections, I will try to sketch a profile of this outstanding
and highly committed community.

4. Doğan, Bulut & Kahraman (2005: 8), however, call for a more comprehensive term for de-
noting the motivation of relief workers and propose the term “prosocial behaviour.”
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 239

4. Case study: Haiti earthquake 2010

This study was conducted in 2010, several months after the earthquake struck
Haiti. It is aimed at providing a retrospective analysis of the translators’ and inter-
preters’ online networks, which mobilised volunteers for relief-related translation
and interpreting services and came up with solutions for language-related chal-
lenges reported to these networks by the relief community. This was a research
endeavour that would ideally be undertaken by investigating the very place where
the activities in question happened and analysing the communication and in-
formation flows between the people involved. I, therefore, opted for an online
ethnographic approach, adopting a method called netnography, which was devel-
oped by Robert Kozinets (1998; 2002) for the study of virtual communities. The
decisive advantage that netnography offered for this particular case study was its
suitability for the analysis of relatively large volumes of online data, which in the
case of this study amounted to approximately 1,300 entries gathered from social
media networks such as Facebook, the micro-blogging platform Twitter, various
profession-oriented networks such as proZ.com as well as various blogs and wikis.
The selected entries had been published between January and August 2010 and
were retrieved for analysis in September 2010. Considering that none of the online
comments was collected from platforms that require Internet users to log in with
a password in order to view them, the posts selected for this study are considered
to be public content according to the criteria postulated by Langer & Beckmann
(2005: 194–195), with further implication that there was no explicit need to ask the
communities studied for permission to collate data from the various Internet plat-
forms. 5 The posts have been anonymized and all personal data (phone numbers,
addresses etc.) have been removed. If not indicated otherwise, all examples pro-
vided in the following text are based on the data collected for this particular study.
An important aspect to bear in mind when looking at the findings presented
below is the fact that my focus also to some extent restricted the perspective of my
work. I set out with the intention of trying to get a grasp of the processes behind
the online mobilization of the community of translators and interpreters who were
willing to help in the disaster relief operations and the communication between
various members of this network. Thus, I was looking primarily at the online
side of the relief efforts, examining the role of Internet communities as groups
established in order to share information regarding specific needs for human and
material resources and as platforms which supported the development of language
technologies. As mentioned above, there is nonetheless no such thing as online

5. The entries collected from Facebook groups were made in public pages and could therefore
be viewed by anyone, including non-members of Facebook, without any restriction.
240 Regina Rogl

mobilization without offline organizational structures. In the networks and plat-

forms under study, then, there was obviously always someone, an individual or an
organization with contacts to search and rescue teams, an agency planning a field
trip etc., standing behind each implemented initiative, each solution to an acute
problem or each job posting. In this case study, it was not, however, possible to
follow the people behind the platforms through the entire communication process,
since social media networks are not used for the documentation of every step of
a humanitarian mission but for mobilizing additional resources. Thus, this study
cannot tell us much about issues such as the actual work in the field, the work-
ing conditions that interpreters and translators faced, the quality of the language
technologies used or other important aspects of translation and interpreting in a
disaster setting, which continue to await further research.
In the following sections, I will provide a rough timeline of the developments
as I could observe them via the online communities that I selected for this purpose.
Before elaborating on the concrete mobilization efforts and on the projects devel-
oped by the community of translators and interpreters, it is important to recall the
conditions that brought forth such unprecedented international response both on
the ground and via online networks.

4.1 Haiti 2010

On 12 January 2010, Haiti was hit by an earthquake that claimed more than 316,000
lives 6 and left 1 million people homeless (DARA 2010: 161 and N. N. 2011). Several
sources see this high number of victims as an indirect consequence of political
instability prevailing in Haiti for decades (United Nations 2011: 4; Rencoret et al.
2010: 9–10). The political situation in the country had been marked by numerous
changes in government and was profoundly affected by widespread corruption,
which left the authorities incapable of coordinated action when disaster struck.
Moreover, 13 out of the 15 government ministries were left in ruins and many
high-ranking members of the government and other authorities were among the
victims. There were hardly any local resources available for the relief efforts, which
meant that reconstruction was barely possible, and that Haiti was almost entirely
dependent on international aid. The situation on the ground was severe. As the
earthquake had occurred in a very densely populated area near the cities of Port-
au-Prince, Leogane and Jacmel, large parts of the most important infrastructure
were rendered unusable. The main harbour and airport of Port-au-Prince were

6. Immediately after the earthquake, the Haitian government had estimated the loss of approx-
imately 200,000 victims; the tragic total of 316,000 was established a year after the earthquake.
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 241

completely destroyed and had to be cleared before planes and ships could eventu-
ally bring in military units, doctors, paramedics and disaster management experts
and deliver the humanitarian goods so desperately needed.
According to UN reports, the international disaster aid operation in Haiti
was “one of the largest of its kind ever mounted” (UN Office of the Special Envoy
for Haiti & UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti 2010: 3). In the first weeks following
the earthquake, Haiti was overrun by international organizations, relief agen-
cies, search and rescue teams and non-governmental organisations. The numbers,
however, vary significantly from source to source: 3 weeks after the earthquake,
the OCHA estimated the presence of about 400 humanitarian organizations, the
Inter-Agency Standing Committee calculated a number of approximately 2,000
operational agencies and the BBC reported “there may be 8000 national and in-
ternational humanitarian aid agencies in Port-au-Prince, perhaps giving Haiti the
highest number per capita of any country” (DARA 2010: 162; see also Doyle 2010).
Whatever the exact number, it is clear that this immense presence meant that
careful coordination between all the parties involved was imperative. Translators
and interpreters were therefore needed from the outset to facilitate communication
between the various groups and individuals, to assist in coordinating the crisis
intervention measures and, above all, to provide urgent language services to the
locals on site.

4.2 Coordination

On the basis of its key role as a tool in crisis coordination, the Internet is one of the
first things to be re-established in a disaster operation when conventional com-
munication channels such as telephone lines fail (Ziesche 2007). Apart from being
used by first responders, online services and especially Web-based media or social
networks for citizens are also central tools through which real-time disaster infor-
mation about the developments on the ground can be disseminated. The results of
this study indicate the existence of patterns that emerge, demonstrating how these
services are used according to the various phases of the disaster relief operation
and to the tasks required in a given phase. Similar observations have been made
in the past by Hessert and colleagues (Hessert et al. 2010: 16) in their analysis of
a virtual disaster exercise. I will borrow their categorization of disaster phases to
describe the mobilization processes before, during and after the Haiti earthquake.
Pre-crisis: Although in some foreseeable natural catastrophes, the days and hours
preceding a disaster might ideally be used to provide early warnings that are
circulated on blogs, Facebook or Twitter, this was not the case before the earth-
quake struck in Haiti. The first attempts in coordination within the international
242 Regina Rogl

translators’ and interpreters’ community could therefore only be observed after

the first news about the earthquake had been announced in the media.
Acute crisis (the first dramatic moments during and immediately after the disas-
ter): Hessert et al. (ibid., highlights removed) suggest that we can “expect repeti-
tive, chaotic information sharing” in this phase, with “more traffic from YouTube
& photo sharing sites with visual impact.” The main body of information is shared
via Twitter, which allows for easy forwarding and the rapid multiplication of in-
formation in real time and via Facebook, where users tend to post more detailed
information (Hessert et al. 2010: 16).

Facebook and Twitter were also the first platforms, where translators and inter-
preters tended to look for information and sought possibilities to put their skills to
use in order to help with relief work once the news of the devastating earthquake
had reached them:
Any ideas on how to get the word out to the people who need support? It’s easy
to pledge, but who do we pledge to? (TW1: 009a, 15.01.2010, 09:46h) 7

Great question. At this point I believe we need to consolidate and get organized,
then approach. (TW1: 009b, 15.01.2010, 21:09h)

Within a few hours after the earthquake struck, translators and localization ex-
perts had already founded the first translation-specific Facebook groups, 8 which
rapidly became important crisis information hubs for language-related issues.
These groups grew to hundreds of members within a matter of hours, including not
only trained translators or interpreters but also multi-lingual people from outside
the profession and members with very different occupational backgrounds such
as computer programmers or logistics experts. Some members of these groups al-
ready maintained profiles on other social networks, for private or professional use
or both, and also circulated the information collected from the Facebook groups
through these other platforms, thus reaching out to more and more people, open-
ing up various different types of communication channels and creating a highly
complex information network. This enabled professional networks like proZ.com
to receive regular updates on the latest discussions and projects that were being
developed in and by the Facebook groups. Other users preferred to use their per-
sonal Twitter account to disseminate information and some created additional

7. As a consequence of their frequency on online discussion boards, misspellings and typing

errors are not marked as such in quotations from Internet platforms.
8. The most important groups considered in this study were Together we can find 100,000 trans-
lators and interpreters (not exclusively dedicated to Haiti relief), Interpreters and Translators for
Haiti, and 4636 Ushahidi Volunteer Translators & Location Specialists.
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 243

profiles dedicated exclusively to the coordination of language-specific projects.

In this way, a lively exchange was taking place through various communication
channels, involving a rapidly growing community of users.
Naturally, professional associations (such as the IMIA, the NAJIT and the
ATA supported by the GALA and many others) played a central role in the relief
operations and were contacted directly by aid organizations at the outset of the re-
lief efforts. Unfortunately, though, their information channels (website, telephone
lists, newsletters) were not sufficiently equipped to cope with such an immense
demand for translators and interpreters within just a few hours. For this reason
they, too, forwarded their information and requirements to the newly formed
networks in an effort to get the word out in any way they could. A more detailed
analysis of the achievements of these communities, and of the challenges they met
in the process of expanding their networks, mobilising volunteers and meeting the
requirements on the ground as they emerged is provided in Section 4.3 and 4.4.
Another key actor was the organisation Translators Without Borders, which
coordinated an immense proportion of all the translation work required and
which selected hundreds of volunteer translators within a few days. They, too, used
networks like Facebook and Twitter to stay in contact with everyone else involved.
Chronic crisis (the phase in which disaster operations become increasingly or-
ganized and better coordinated): Although Hessert and colleagues (Hessert et al.
2010: 16) found that Facebook and blogs gain importance in this phase, findings
of this study showed a high volume of traffic 9 on a broader range of social me-
dia, above all Facebook, Twitter and wikis, whereby the latter were employed in
order to share and coordinate tasks in the context of large and interdisciplinary
projects, bringing experts from different fields together.
Resolution (when media interest has turned towards other topics and the search
and rescue teams have left the field): As in the disaster exercise referred to above
(ibid.), most information was published in blogs in this final phase of disaster re-
sponse. Interestingly, many members of operational teams seem to have remained
in contact with their field interpreters via online networks. Often, the interpreters
in the field were also drivers and guides to their clients, which meant that they
assumed a role comparable to that of the so-called “fixers” as described by Palmer
(2007) in relation to Afghan interpreters working for Western media. This close
relationship between interpreters and their clients elevated the interpreters to a
level of essential information provider to the journalists they accompanied, even
after they had already left the field:

9. As a result of the vast and dynamic nature of the Internet, it was impossible to exactly quan-
tify the number of posts relevant to this study, especially those published on Twitter. As this is a
retrospective study, social media analysis tools could only provide approximate results.
244 Regina Rogl

Near tears as I chat on Facebook w/ a translator I met n #Haiti. He’s working so

hard to help his people. Not 1 complaint – just praise to God. (TW2: 258)

In this way, they were able to make the voices of victims of the earthquake disaster
heard outside Haiti even once the international community and the media had
started to forget.

4.3 Needs assessment and mobilisation: Achievements

As the online communities began to gain more and more followers, their members
started collecting ideas on how they could help. Initially, it was not easy to discern
how and where to become active. As a result, several members of the Facebook
groups started to contact humanitarian organizations, informing them about the
newly created online networks and offering their assistance. In the first few days,
the situation on the ground and the language-specific needs arising from it still
could not be assessed adequately, but as these new networks grew, their organ-
ization improved and their connection to the relief community was optimized,
enabling them to coordinate more systematically the demand for interpreters/
translators on the one hand, and the messages of volunteers offering their help
on the other.
The information posted on the discussion boards or wikis pertained primarily
to job offers and volunteering opportunities, paid staff positions or individual
translation projects and was updated continuously, especially when professional
associations became involved in the online activities. Once their presence was es-
tablished and they had achieved a certain level of publicity, these platforms began
to be used by humanitarian actors to publicize their needs directly:
I need interpreters on the ground at the Jacmel airport. If you know anybody in
the area tell them to find the Seattle medics at the airport aid station.
 (FB2: 088)

It soon became clear with regard to the language combinations required for inter-
preting and translation services that they were strongly dependent on the prove-
nance of the civil or military operational teams. Not all of them were anglophone;
some came from various different parts of Latin America, others from Asia. So
apart from Haitian Creole, English, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese,
there was also a need for Mandarin, Cantonese and American Sign Language in-
terpreters. Furthermore, members of the relief community sometimes mistakenly
thought of Haiti as an entirely bilingual country. This was a particularly mislead-
ing assumption, considering that Haitian Creole is actually spoken by about 90% of
the total population, whereas only a small percentage speak French or both official
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 245

languages (see Dejean 1993 for a more detailed discussion). Whilst a large part of
the written translation assignments were French to English translations, Creole to
English interpreters were needed for field operations. With regard to deployment
areas, many of the interpreters needed on the disaster site were assigned to national
Red Cross teams from various different countries or to the military. One example
worth mentioning is the military hospital ship U.S.S. Comfort, which recruited
34 Creole interpreters per 30-day shift (IMIA 2010a):
Volunteers will remain on the ship throughout the duration of the assignment
and will not deploy to the mainland of Haiti. […] assignments are on a volunteer
basis and the American Red Cross will cover all travel expenses.

Although interpreters with prior experience in emergency situations or who had

“some experience in direct patient care or medical/military background” were
preferred (IMIA 2010b: 2), the demand for Creole speakers in the field was so high
that ultimately people without any interpreting training or medical qualifications
had to be recruited:
Again, no skills are required beyond speaking both Creole and English. Anyone
interested in this opportunity will be contacted ASAP with additional steps.
Please communicate to me immediately if you have persons who can do this and
contact information. (FB2: 085)

Apart from medical interpreting, interpreters were also hired during the recon-
struction period. Others worked for the media or accompanied journalists into
the field.
Translators were recruited for various in-house positions at aid agencies or
NGOs or volunteered for a range of individual projects, e.g. the translation of re-
construction manuals for a given organization. They were also intensely involved
in technology-based projects, such as the crowdsourced translation of emergency
messages (“Mission 4636,” described below) or the Google Person Finder, which
was a platform that provided access to an existing database with information on
missing persons in Haiti. These data, however, had first to be copied from a CNN
archive and were then translated, which shows that the volunteers involved were
engaged in not only translation work in a narrow sense, but also a wide range of
related activities that were necessary to the disaster aid operations:
URGENT – We need help to copy 6000 records from the CNN missing person
database to the Google apps. CNN just woke up and decided to share the data,
we are transferring the info, so it is on one site for people to find or report on love
one from Haiti. Please forward to as many as possible as we want this done asap.
 (FB2: 086)
246 Regina Rogl

From the beginning of the disaster relief efforts, a large part of the translation work
was passed on to Translators Without Borders, which coordinated a burgeoning
volume of translation projects. A few days after the earthquake, they had to ex-
tend their pool of translators radically and called for applications via the newly
established online platforms:
PLEASE RETWEET: #TranslatorswithoutBorders has an urgent/immediate need:
French translators. Please send DM @IT4H for info. #Haiti #IT4H
 (TW4: 025; 18.01.2010, 20:45h)
So many volunteers called Translators W/O Borders that offers have overwhelmed
the need! No others needed until further notice. #Haiti
 (TW4: 030; 19.01.2010, 17:16h)

Later, when new volunteers’ applications did not cease to come in, a group of pro-
fessional translators, which had formed on proZ.com, helped out by designing an
online platform to facilitate the easier screening of applications and test the can-
didates’ language skills. Companies such as MediLingua, SDL, Rubric and Argos
offered to carry out the evaluation of these tests. In this way, Translators Without
Borders managed to engage more than 1,000 additional professional translators
within 10 days, which “was more than twice the number recruited by TWB in over
a decade” (Coles & Botkin 2010: 51). Another important mission for translators,
particularly in the later phases of the disaster response, was a series of subtitling
assignments for webcasts and documentaries reporting on the earthquake.
Members of online communities volunteered both as individuals and as
companies. Individual offers of help were mostly posted on one of the discussion
boards and typically included the languages spoken by the person and references
to past experience deemed relevant to collaborating on either translation or inter-
preting projects. Not all the volunteers were professional translators, many of them
came from related or sometimes completely unrelated professional backgrounds
but spoke one of the languages needed or had other qualifications that would be
helpful in the humanitarian field, primarily in relation to medical, psychological
or military training, technical or engineering skills or they had previously partic-
ipated in humanitarian missions:
Hello. Here are the combinations I work with: English-Spanish, Spanish-English,
French-Spanish. If there’s anything I can do, please write me: [e-mail]
 (FB1: 068)
I am fluent in Creole and French. I have been to Haiti on three occasions as a
translator for medical teams. (FB1: 030)

Some also listed more general details, such as a good knowledge of Haiti, flexibility
or even vaccinations:
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 247

Would love to volunteer at any orphanage. I speak Spanish, French and English
fluently. I am a medical translator/interpreter with 5 years of experience. I was
recently vaccinated against Hepatitis B, Polio, Meningitis, Yellow fever, Typhoid
fever and Tetanus due to a recent humanitarian trip to Africa. (FB1: 023)

Others highlighted their proximity to the operation site or in some cases their
good contacts in Haiti, which, although it might sound unusual in another context,
can be of paramount importance for work in the field, where rapid decisions have
to be made and, as Bulut & Kurultay (2001: 255) point out, where interpreters “may
acquire a role in the overall coordination, other than in terms of the communica-
tion services they provide.”
Professional associations or companies (mostly translation and interpreting
agencies or localisation firms) offered translations for victims and relief agencies,
telephone interpreting for Creole speakers, or language training, either for free
or at special rates (e.g. Pacific Interpreters, Seprotec, One Hour Translation, Life
Links, Language Line Services, Ccaps, etc.). Moreover, commercial or licensed
resources were made available to the relief community, e.g. a company-owned
collaborative online translation platform (Lingotek), pre-translated medical termi-
nology (T-Systems) and even archived Creole to English linguistic data and medi-
cal terminology combined with audio files that had been collected by the Carnegie
Mellon Language Technologies Institute in the 1990s and was reused for devel-
oping rudimentary MT systems in the first weeks of the emergency operations.
These examples demonstrate how online networking can contribute substan-
tially to a faster mobilization of people and resources in the case of a natural or
humanitarian disaster. However, the simple fact that more people can be reached
in this way does not imply that anyone involved was actually prepared for the tasks
they carried out or that the circumstances necessarily allowed them to go to Haiti
to help. As will be shown in the next section, volunteers encountered a range of
challenges in the process of looking for opportunities to offer active assistance,
which led to a number of helpers ultimately deciding to participate from a distance.

4.4 Needs assessment and mobilization: Problems and challenges

Humanitarian aid experts and translators’ associations repeatedly warned the

volunteers willing to come to Haiti not to be too naïve about the situation in the
field, attempting to prepare them for the fact that working with severely injured
people in the aftermath of a natural disaster can be an immense physical and
psychological burden:
If you don’t speak Creole/Kreyol AND/OR don’t have the ability to work with
injured people – you should NOT come. (FB1: 017)
248 Regina Rogl

You will be exposed to severely injured patients on a regular basis, expect hard
emotional cases. Volunteers should be aware that this work is difficult emotion-
ally, mentally, and physically. Only those of stable emotional status are suitable
for this mission. (IMIA 2010b: 3)

This advice is corroborated by a study carried out after the Bam earthquake in
Iran, which indicates that volunteers involved in disaster relief without any pri-
or medical or psychological emergency training are significantly more likely to
develop post-traumatic stress symptoms than, for example, members of the Red
Cross or firemen (Hagh-Shenas et al. 2005: 478). This, again, raises the question
of qualification or aptitude for “disaster interpreting.” It is clear that formal lan-
guage and translatorial training are not enough and traditional training courses
for interpreters do not include any preparation for extreme situations. Bulut and
Kurultay (2001: 251) therefore claim that “[t]he members of S&R [search and res-
cue] teams who know foreign languages are the most valuable interpreters, since
they transfer messages that fall totally within their field of practice and expertise,”
an observation that led them to develop a specialized training program for emer-
gency and disaster interpreting.
For some of those interested in volunteering in the field, financial and ad-
ministrative issues became a major obstacle. As humanitarian organizations and
NGOs have very limited financial resources, they could usually only offer their
interpreters very little if any payment. Some volunteers could not leave work at
such short notice, or were their families’ sole providers, or simply could not afford
to incur extra expenses for the trip and supplies. Moreover, in post-earthquake
Haiti, space, water and supplies were so scarce that each relief worker coming
in was to some extent in fact a further burden on the local population and the
limited resources available. Some operational agencies therefore only sought to
recruit local workers:
Related, the director of the Japan Red Cross is looking for one Haitian Creole >
English interpreter who is already in Haiti or has lodging in Haiti and wants to
assist on a voluntary basis under their supervision. (B1: 02)

Some aid organisations also asked their volunteers to bring their own food and
water when coming to Haiti:
Pack personal food and empty water bags, fill them before the last hop, as much
as the flight crew will allow. Coordinate through the fb group Jacmel Airport Aid
Station if you are going to try to join up with them. (FB2: 101a)

As mentioned in Section 4.2, important infrastructure in Haiti was destroyed

and the disaster site could only be reached with great difficulty, mostly either on
military flights or vessels that started from Florida at very short notice. Once the
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 249

decision to go to Haiti had been made, volunteers had to react immediately. They
were usually asked to reach Florida within a few hours, where they then had to be
prepared to take off at any moment:
While on the discussion board, you will see the American Red Cross is looking for
volunteer interpreters to work for 30 days on a medical assistance vessel. If you are
willing to travel, this is an opportunity you should look into. Esp. in your case, as I
believe the expedition is leaving from south Florida within the next 24–48 hours.
 (FB2: 113a)

There were also administrative obstacles, such as specific requirements volunteers

had to fulfil when applying for certain positions, the most frequent requirement
being membership of a given organisation. This was only a formality when job
offers were requesting, for example, Red Cross membership. In the case of job of-
fers circulated by professional translators’ associations, these requirements might
have been an attempt to guarantee a certain level of qualification; a measure which
did not always find support within the online communities. Major criticism was
triggered by assignments that were addressed exclusively to US citizens or Green
Card holders.
Those who could not go to Haiti or simply did not speak Creole soon found
ways to participate in the relief efforts without travelling, either by participating
in online translation projects or by spreading important information through
various different networks and keeping one another updated. Others signed up
for telephone or Skype interpreting services. In this case, online mobilization was
instrumental in creating the possibility of “distance volunteering,” allowing people
to participate from anywhere in the world, at any time and for as many hours as
they were available, as the following tweet shows:
In Tanzania, in an internet cafe they are keeping open just for me at midnight,
working on #haiti response. (TW4: 005)

Thus, the widespread and unprecedented use of ICTs made it possible to transfer
enormous amounts of work to the newly formed online communities, which was
all the more valuable in the light of the fact that it could have done more harm
than good to bring more, possibly unprepared, people to Haiti.

4.5 Project planning and implementation

By constantly sharing information about specific needs and problems on various

different networks, people involved in relief work were able to come up with in-
novative solutions such as implementing Skype interpreting services or designing
online application forms for a more efficient management and coordination of
250 Regina Rogl

people interested in volunteering. For the projects carried out primarily through
online collaboration, platforms were needed where people could work together,
leave messages to one another and comment on the current stage of work. The
platforms that proved to be most effective for this purpose were project-specific
wikis, which often turned into veritable Web-based think tanks.
These language-specific relief projects can be divided into translation projects
per se and Internet-based projects, whereby the latter were characterized by a par-
ticularly fruitful cross-sector cooperation between translators, computer linguists,
programmers, cartographers and relief experts.
Amongst the numerous projects, two particularly stood out. The first of these,
“Mission 4636,” was a crowdsourcing service, which processed emergency text
messages. When it became clear shortly after the earthquake that some text mes-
sages were still coming through, a free telephone number was implemented to
which Haitians could text emergency messages using their mobile phones. These
messages were automatically uploaded to an online platform where multilingual
volunteers first translated them from Creole and French into English and then
categorized them, adding cluster identifiers (“shelter,” “water,” “injured person,”
etc.). Before transmitting the emergency information to the rescue teams in charge,
translators could also add the coordinates of the place the message was sent from
by clicking on an integrated map. The messages and maps processed by Mission
4636 were used by numerous aid agencies, military units, institutions and NGOs,
including “the Red Cross, Plan International, Charity Water, US State Department,
International Medical Corps, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group,
(AIDG), USAID, FEMA, US Coast Guard Task Force, World Food Program (WFP),
USSOUTHCOM, OFDA and UNDP” (Wells & Hardy 2010: 6). Preliminary eval-
uations of this work flow measured a time span of a mere 10 min from receiving
a message to passing on all the relevant information including the exact location
to foreign rescue teams (Munro 2010: 2). It can, however, be assumed that as the
use of the service increased, it was not possible to maintain the initial speed when
processing a vastly higher volume of messages. A series of posts calling for stronger
participation in translation and geo-mapping work indicates that there might have
been peak times when the volunteers could no longer cope with the work load:
Right now there are messages in the queue that no one can act upon because they
can’t understand them. In other words, people are begging for help, and people
want to help them, and CAN help them, but can’t understand the messages. This
is unbearable. (FB2: 119b)

The outcome of the project was remarkable. According to Munro (2010: 3), about
1,000 volunteers were involved in this project in the first week of its implemen-
tation alone and more than 40,000 messages were handled in the first 6 weeks.
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 251

The other outstanding project that provided further proof of unprecedented

cooperation between the realms of information technology, computer linguistics
and translation was the rapid development of customized machine translation
engines for computer and smartphone operating systems. 10 The first obstacle
to overcome was the problem of how few linguistic data were available. Haitian
Creole has only been a written language for a few decades and it continues to lack
standardized orthography. This meant that developers had to be creative and resort
to uncommon sources in their search for parallel texts to train these statistical MT
engines, referring to archived data compiled by linguists in the late 1990s (Allen
2010), pre-translated medical terms for the rescue teams, the Creole to English
versions of the emergency text messages from Mission 4636 and even the Bible.
Various calls for the submission of parallel texts were circulated on Twitter and
Facebook:
We need a good quality source of monolingual Haitian Creole text. URLs, plan
text etc. all good. #IT4H (TW4: 037)

The first, still very basic, MT engine developed by Microsoft was ready for release
after only 5 days, which is a remarkable result, considering that the development of
machine translation systems and especially speech technologies usually takes sev-
eral years rather than days or weeks (see also Chapman 2007: 27–28). The versions
that followed the first Microsoft release were then adapted by various different
companies and teams of programmers for specific use in emergency aid. Some
were developed to be compatible with mobile phones (which use less battery than
other devices), important contents were made available offline (for field work),
speech output was added (because of the high rate of illiteracy in Haiti and in order
to avoid misunderstandings based on pronunciation or dialect) and pictograms
were integrated so people could just point at symbols if necessary.
These achievements were only possible thanks to the fast and efficient commu-
nication between the individuals and organisations involved. Licenses were lifted
from a number of data sources and volunteers from a variety of different fields
including translators, computer linguists, programmers, and doctors, dedicated
their time to ensuring that the newly developed MT systems could help to attain
acceptable results in as short a time as possible. The use of ICTs in relief work in
the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti is therefore a perfect example of how
interdisciplinary collaboration can bring forth creative and rapid solutions.

10. For more details on MT-based translation and interpreting systems developed for Haiti relief,
see Allen (2010), Lewis (2010) and Lewis, Munro & Vogel (2011).
252 Regina Rogl

5. Concluding remarks

This paper shows that Web services that enable online networking and broad
participation open up an immense range of possibilities for professionals and
non-professionals to get involved in language-specific relief work. Not only did
the volunteers have easier access to the crisis-related source material that had to be
translated, they also found rapid and case-specific solutions to needs arising with-
in the relief community by constantly exchanging information with the people
who were working in the field. By participating in these highly interdisciplinary
task forces, any volunteer could contribute according to his/her knowledge and
skills. Thus, in disaster relief, various different forms of activity ranging from
voluntary to paid work, performed by amateurs or highly trained professionals,
can be valuable and can complement each other effectively and efficiently if only
they are put to use in a coordinated and creative way.
The full potential of these initiatives can, however, only be optimized further
if they are supplemented with insights gleaned from continued empirical research
from a translation studies perspective. This could include best practice studies and
the development of institutionalization strategies for disaster translation and in-
terpreting services, an evaluation of the usability or quality of the newly developed
technologies, on-the-ground research into working conditions and coordination
in the field and a debate on the ethical issues involved in disaster translation and
interpreting as a unique setting. In this way, “a perennial hidden issue” (Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative 2011: 24) in disaster management processes can be made
visible and can be effectively incorporated in disaster relief frameworks. Although
these efforts will not reduce the unpredictability inherent in this setting, they
might help to develop strategies for better preparedness for other disasters from
a translatorial perspective.
The merits of empirical research in this field are not, however, limited to an
elaboration of best practices in language-related relief work, but can also provide a
more universally relevant theoretical contribution by deepening our understand-
ing of the cooperative processes at work in complex, interdisciplinary translation
networks and offering valuable insights into the interplay between technology
and social interaction.
 Chapter 12. Language-related disaster relief in Haiti 253

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Part 3

NPIT performed by children

 Chapter 13

Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions

of their role as family interpreters
Why should their views be measured?
Why should they count?

Claudia V. Angelelli
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

Bilingual youngsters play a crucial role in brokering communication for mono-

lingual adults. The truth is that this role has not been measured. This paper
discusses the scientific measurement of bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of
their role as family interpreters/translators. After reviewing the relevant liter-
ature and the sociological factors that result in bilingual youngsters engaging
in language brokering, we discuss the construction, adaptation, and potential
administration of a valid and reliable instrument, IPRI Junior. This instrument
could reveal important information on bilinguals who have had experiences in
language brokering. It is important to obtain this information empirically as
various conversations on access, education, and future career may be based on
this unique ability that gifted bilinguals possess. Most importantly, learning
about the choices that bilinguals make when brokering communication will
reveal their perceptions of their agency and talent in detail.

Keywords: bilingual youngsters, cognitive skills, metalinguistic skills, IPRI,

Latino communities, questionnaire survey

1. Introduction

The phenomenon of bilingual youngsters interpreting for older monolinguals or

low-proficient bilinguals is certainly not new. Indeed, evidence suggests that as
early as the era of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 16th century, young
interpreters played a crucial role in facilitating communication between the new-
ly arrived Spanish conquistadores and the native inhabitants of Mesoamerica.
Nevertheless, the systematic study of these young people and their role in ad hoc
interpreting for family members and other acquaintances has been limited and

doi 10.1075/btl.129.13ang
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
260 Claudia V. Angelelli

began only in the 1990s. The majority of the early literature on the phenomenon
focuses on the linguistic or cognitive abilities of young bilingual interpreters. Even
though the effects of such a large responsibility on the self-esteem and stress levels
of these youngsters have been referred to in the literature as part of the discussion
on benefits and problems for the bilingual youngsters, these effects have not been
systematically studied. Most importantly, the self-perceptions of these individuals
about their role have never been measured. This paper aims to further contribute
to this emerging field and shed some light on the role of young interpreters within
immigrant societies.
The study of ad hoc interpreters has begun to establish itself as a field of re-
search in its own right. Within the continuum of ad hoc interpreting, the case
of bilingual youngsters and children who have interpreted for their families and
immediate communities has been the focus of various studies. Research on cir-
cumstantial bilinguals who become young interpreters for their families and com-
munities contributes to our understanding of the life experiences of individuals
who begin to interpret early in their lives (Valdés & Angelelli 2003). With the
exception of early work on young interpreters (Harris 1977; 1978; 1980; 1992;
Toury 1984; 1995) and recent work on translation and interpreting skills of bi-
lingual youngsters (Valdés et al. 2003; Borrero 2006), very few studies have been
conducted on the life experiences of these interpreters. Since most of the current
community interpreters were interpreters in their late childhood and adolescence,
getting a glimpse into their lives and experiences may help researchers and teach-
ers understand the habits and ideology of these individuals who may populate
interpreter classrooms and workplaces in the future (Angelelli 2010b). In addition,
research on circumstantial bilinguals who become family interpreters, while not
focused particularly on the development of translation and interpreting abilities,
contributes to our understanding of the life experiences of individuals who begin
to interpret early in their lives (Valdés & Angelelli 2003).

2. From the Spanish conquest to the 21st century

While research on bilingual language brokers is scarce and is a relatively new field
of study (Valdés et al. 2000 and 2003; Borrero 2006; Angelelli 2010b) – currently
also included in non-professional translation/interpreting – language brokering
has been known since time immemorial. One example is the historical episode
of La Malinche, the Nahua woman who played a role in the Spanish conquest of
Mexico by acting as interpreter, advisor, lover, and intermediary for Hernán Cortés
in the 16th century (Cypess 1991). From 1495 to 1518, communication between
the Spaniards and the Natives were enabled by a generation of Native interpreters
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 261

who acted as bilingual brokers. Those natives ranged from young boys to mature
adults. Sometimes the demands on the language brokers exceeded those posed by
simply having to speak Spanish and a Native language. For example, it was docu-
mented (Baker 1998) that once Hernán Cortés required as many as three language
brokers to work together. He would speak in Spanish to Aguilar, who would then
interpret into Maya for the Yucatec natives, and Malinche would interpret from
Yucatec into Nahuatl for the Mexican tribes. Interestingly, Orteguita, a young
Mexican boy who understood Spanish, would listen to Malinche’s words and see
that they corresponded to what Cortés had originally said. One may argue that
this incident is a clear example of the concern for accuracy and the mistrust of
the more dominant party. Because of the power Cortés had, he was able to expect
accuracy and to verify that it was possible. Orteguita was responsible for reporting
to Cortés. One can wonder how he must have felt being charged with such a re-
sponsibility at such a young age or if he was even aware of the trust placed in him
or the importance of his role in communication between the indigenous tribes
and the Spanish conqueror. Unfortunately, no one at that time looked at the role
of Orteguita from a sociolinguistic and communicative point of view. There are
no recorded interviews of Orteguita speaking about his perception of the work he
was doing and no statistical instrument to learn more about his role as a young in-
terpreter helping his community. Today, however, we have the chance to ask those
questions to the young interpreters who on a daily basis play an equally important
role in helping their families and communities gain access to information when
there is no adult interpreter available.
As in the time of Cortés, Malinche and Orteguita, in the 21st century, we
continue to see bilingual youngsters brokering communication for family and
friends. One may hypothesize that they continue to do so for at least two reasons:
(1) to gain access when the society cannot accommodate the linguistic needs of
all its members and (2) the trust factor involved with having a family member
interpret as opposed to an outside interpreter. In the following sections, we will
explore these two reasons for the status quo.

3. Sociolinguistic environment: The need for access

At present, in the United States, there are over 300 spoken and signed languages
(Modern Language Association [MLA] 2011). Among minority groups, Latinos are
the fastest growing in the country with a population that increased by 28% making
up 37.6% of California’s total population (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). According
to current projections, 25% of US residents will be of Latino origin/heritage by
2030 (Tienda & Mitchell 2006). In 2008, there were approximately 16.3 million
262 Claudia V. Angelelli

young people aged 17 years and under living in the United States with at least one
immigrant parent. This accounted for 23.2% of the 70 million youngsters in that
age group residing in the United States. Furthermore, the number of youngsters
with immigrant parents has continued to grow over the past years. For example,
between 1990 and 2000, the number of children with immigrant parents grew
59.7%, meaning a jump from 8.2 to 13.1 million. In comparison, between 2000
and 2008, the number grew 24.2% from 13.1 to 16.3 million. Many immigrants
live in households that are linguistically isolated. In California, 32% of immigrants
live in households where no member older than age 13 speaks English “very well.”
Nationally, the percentage is similar at 31%. Among households living in linguis-
tic isolation in California, Spanish is the most common language spoken (68%),
followed by Chinese (8%) and Vietnamese (5%) (Baldassare et al. 2008).

4. Latino youngsters providing “access”

The rise in the Latino population has increasingly affected the delivery of servic-
es in the United States as well as this linguistic minority group’s access to them
(Angelelli 2004a). Despite the mandated government-funded language services
offered to the limited-English-proficiency population (Angelelli 2010a), immigrant
families are confronted daily with substantial challenges. When attempting to
access information/services, be it in educational, social, legal or healthcare areas,
immigrant families remain underserved. Without enough professional interpret-
ers and translators to address linguistic minorities’ communicative needs, lan-
guage diversity continues to pose challenges when accessing services, impeding
clear communication between the service provider and those requiring assistance
(Torres 1998). Given that many of the parents, grandparents, and other elderly
members of immigrant families neither speak nor understand English very well,
once they arrive the United States, they often rely on their children to interpret
and translate for them (Valdés et al. 2000). They must either rely on the help of the
youngsters or remain ostracized. These young interpreters support their families’
needs and play a crucial role in actively facilitating communication for them with
varying degrees of success (Angelelli 2010b).
Clearly, it is not capriciously that adults rely on youngsters or children for
their communicative needs in a host society, and it is not by chance that bilin-
gual youngsters can play this role. Children tend to acquire a second language
much more quickly than adults. In addition, bilingual youngsters attending school
are immersed into the culture of the host country and surrounded by peers who
are native speakers. This facilitates their acculturation and language acquisition.
Immigrant families often find themselves struggling in the acculturation process
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 263

in the United States (Borrero 2006) and their ability to access public and private
resources and services. The children of these families are thrust into playing an in-
strumental role in the family’s survival. Language brokers facilitate their parents’
acculturation process (Buriel et al. 2006; Valenzuela 1999), as well as advocating
for them during interactions with a variety of monolingual English speakers.

5. Review of relevant literature

A review of studies conducted on bilingual youngsters facilitating communication

for their families and friends illustrates the different language brokering interac-
tions in which youngsters engage, the common characteristics among language
brokers, and the types of documents they translate as well as the type of situations
they encounter (Orellana 2003; 2009; Valdés et al. 2003; Zentella 1997; Tse 1995b;
1996b). In addition, studies rooted in cognitive psychology and education show
how language brokering affects a child’s cognitive development, academic success,
and parent – child relationships (Borrero 2006; Bialystok & Hakuta 1999; Orellana
2003; Halgunseth 2003).

5.1 Children and youngsters as language brokers

Statistics reflect that there are two groups within the immigrant population who
arrive between early childhood and young adulthood. They are either children of
highly educated professionals, usually from industrialized countries, or children
of uneducated laborers from some of the poorest countries (Valdés et al. 2003).
Immigrant parents who do not speak the societal language often rely on their
children to function as the representative of the family in American society. This
helps lighten the burden and stress of the transition (Baptise 1987; Rumbaut 1994)
into a new culture with different values and customs as well as into a new linguistic
environment (DeMent & Buriel 1999).
Child language brokering can occur in a variety of settings (e.g., stores,
schools, banks, post office, restaurants, offices, and home) and children often
translate and interpret for their parents, siblings, peers, and teachers (Shannon
1990; McQuillan & Tse 1995; Tse 1995b; DeMent & Buriel 1999; Orellana 2003;
Orellana et al. 2003; Valdés 2003; Valdés et al. 2003). They often start brokering
shortly after their arrival to the United States (Cohen et al. 1999). Studies revealed
language brokering as a common phenomenon among many immigrant children
and adolescents (McQuillan & Tse 1995; Tse 1995a; 1995b; 1996a; Orellana 2003;
Valdés 2003). Children tend to begin brokering within 1–5 years after their arrival
264 Claudia V. Angelelli

to the United States (Cummins 1989; McQuillan & Tse 1995; Tse 1995a; 1995b;
1996b) because of their ability to acquire the societal language at a higher rate.
Language brokering can start as young as 8 or 9 years of age (McQuillan & Tse
1995; Tse 1995a; 1995b; 1996b). In light of the research conducted in the past two
decades, there is still important information to uncover, specifically regarding
the perceptions that bilingual youngsters have about their roles as interpreters for
family/friends, as well as their perceptions about the development, practice, and
impact of language brokering (Morales & Hanson 2005).
Language brokering spans from word-to-word translation, to interpreting a
parent – teacher conference, to understanding a menu at a restaurant (Orellana
et al. 2003) and is a common occurrence among immigrant families (Orellana
2003). Children satisfy the need for our changing demographics in the United
States. They often serve as language brokers when qualified interpreters are not
available (Cohen et al. 1999; Angelelli 2010b). Children often serve as brokers
between parents and teachers in schools. The teachers benefit from a student’s
bilingualism when directing a parent – teacher conference (Tse 1996b) or writing
a note home in the minority language (Gullingsrud 1998; Tse 1996b; Weisskirch
& Alva 2002). The “help” of bilingual youngsters is not requested in school set-
tings with which they are familiar. For example, in a qualitative study conducted
by Cohen et al. (1999), doctors used children to interpret for patients during a
medical examination.

5.2 Areas of tension

Results and reports on the effect that language brokering has on children are con-
flicting. In various studies, children assert not only a desire to help their parents,
but also feelings of distress and inadequacy (McQuillan & Tse 1995; Ng 1998;
DeMent & Buriel 1999; Villanueva & Buriel 2010). Children, at times, feel it is their
obligation and duty to broker communication for their families. In addition, it
has been reported that language brokering can influence the normal dynamics of
the parent – child relationship (Cohen et al. 1999). This role reversal, many times,
could be similar to what occurs when assigning to the eldest child responsibilities
to babysit younger siblings. Qualitative study data, however, indicate that child
language brokering correlated with more positive feelings within the parent – child
relationship (Straits 2010) and significantly added to the quality of the relationship.
Young brokers asserted that they formed a stronger and more trusting bond with
their parents through language brokering (McQuillan & Tse 1995; Straits 2010).
For example, within the legal realm, children use their linguistic abilities to defend
the interests of their families (Orellana et al. 2003; Valdés et al. 2003).
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 265

Some studies suggest that children felt uncomfortable while interpreting and
translating (Weisskirch & Alva 2002). Others comment on their self-perceptions
of maturity level. Some children stated that they felt more like adults while in-
terpreting and translating (Tse 1995b; Santiago 2003). Young language brokers
assume complex and demanding responsibilities and aid decisions that affect the
whole family (Tse 1995b). This can at times be stressful for them. In some cases,
parents note that language brokering creates stress on the child (Shannon 1990;
Tse 1996b). For example, participants of the study conducted by Orellana et al.
(2003) expressed embarrassment and shame when translating or interpreting in
public commercial environments. Furthermore, researchers assert that children
who broker are at risk of lower academic results (Umaña-Taylor 2003). The adult re-
sponsibilities the child supplies to the family may limit the time and focus the child
assigns toward education. Ethnographic studies conducted by Borrero (2006) and
Valdés et al. (2003) provided contrasting results. The ethnographic study conduct-
ed by Valdés et al. identified giftedness through cultural and linguistic lenses. Each
of the 25 students whose interpreting skills were measured toward the end of the
study demonstrated success in conveying the meaning of the message, including
tone. The students also relayed all information accurately and in a timely manner.
Through accomplishing the interpreting assignment, the young language brokers
displayed sophisticated abilities that are rarely exhibited by bilingual minority
children. Their ability, talent, and competence also point toward the definitions
of giftedness. These skill sets mirror the characteristics that educators look for in
accomplished and gifted students. The study concluded that young language bro-
kers who enroll in the program specially designed for their talents and capabilities
performed at exceedingly higher levels than other students of their age.
Children acting as language brokers, who assist their parents in problem-solv-
ing and decision-making, are placed in mature and adult situations (McQuillan
& Tse 1995). In a qualitative study of child interpreters in a medical environment,
participating doctors and general practitioners noted that children who helped
their parents might not have the ability to accurately translate or interpret medical
terminology (Cohen et al. 1999; Umaña-Taylor 2003). Doctors and nurse practi-
tioners in the study also objected involving children in discussions of sensitive in-
formation (Cohen et al. 1999), such as intimate problems or gender-specific issues.
Children may also reveal stress when learning about a parent’s health problems.
In addition to placing children into adult situations, another effect of language
brokering that needs to be addressed is role reversal. The parent – child relation-
ship can become altered when children are depended on to guide, advise, and
help make final decisions for the parent (Umaña-Taylor 2003). Although language
brokering is at times stressful for child language brokers, the act of helping their
266 Claudia V. Angelelli

parents gives children a sense of pride (Tse 1996a; Orellana et al. 2003; Valdés
et al. 2003; Borrero 2006).

5.3 Academic achievement through language brokering

A promising result from various studies discussed above is the correlation between
academic achievement and language brokering. In general, children who act as
language brokers perform better academically and have increased self-confidence
(Buriel et al. 1998; Valenzuela 1999; Halgunseth 2003; Orellana 2003), as well as a
better positive relationship with their own biculturalism (Buriel et al. 1998; Chao
2002; Halgunseth 2003). Studies also conclude that when children broker at school
with school-related vocabulary, these interactions help develop their lexicons and
enhance their school performance (Halgunseth 2003). Language brokering also
aids in learning English at a faster pace than standard schooling. Nevertheless,
schools often times fail to capture the real capabilities of young language brokers
(Morales & Hanson 2005). Traditional educational assessment instruments fre-
quently overshadow language brokers’ academic performance.
Guidelines for a curriculum in translation and interpreting were created for
young, high school-level bilinguals who interpreted for their families and com-
munity (Angelelli et al. 2002; Valdés et al. 2003). Researchers working with Valdés
on the first ethnographic study conducted on language brokering (2003) discuss
the various linguistic, sociolinguistic, and strategic skills that young language
brokers developed. Their goal (also evident in Borrero 2006) is to support im-
migrant students through a translation/interpreting program, which allows the
students to pursue both English and their native language in the classroom. This
idea as well the pilot implementation of the curricular guidelines (Angelelli et al.
2002) was pursued by Borrero (2006). In addition, Orellana (2003) demonstrated
that children who functioned as translators and interpreters performed better on
standardized testing in reading and math. Moreover, Dorner et al. (2007) found
that language brokering was significantly correlated to fifth- and sixth-graders’
higher standardized reading test scores. Similar studies concluded that students
who served as language brokers received higher Grade Point Averages (GPAs)
than their non-brokering language minority peers (Acoach & Webb 2004). In
addition, language brokering facilitates the children’s contact with both languages
(Shannon 1990), allowing them to expand their first language as well as helping
with the acquisition of their second language (Krashen 1985; Tse 1996a; Angelelli
2010a). Language brokers have consistently been shown to outperform their non-­
brokering English Language Learner (ELL) peers in the classroom.
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 267

Another element of academic success through language brokering is the sup-

portive environment found in Borrero’s (2006) Bay School program. The stim-
ulating community within the program offered an inspirational and gratifying
environment not necessarily connected to interpreting interactions that are gen-
erally considered stressful. In the program, a friendly environment was generated
and students from a Spanish-speaking home were shown appreciation and valued
rather than only discussing their variable English proficiency as “problematic.”
The program also allowed students to re-think their roles and skills as they prac-
ticed interpreting. This space for reflection allowed students to expand their views
on interpreting in addition to facilitating the communication between teachers
and parents. Borrero’s study successfully implemented translation/interpreting
curricular guidelines (Angelelli et al. 2002), which promoted a context for bilin-
gual young adolescents to enhance their bilingualism and communicative skills.
Bilingualism is a key factor in these young language brokers’ success (Valdés et al.
2002; Borrero 2006). Overall, the Young Interpreters Program at the Bay School
in the San Francisco Bay Area provided students the chance to develop skills in
both English and Spanish through interpreting and translation training. Students
defined as language brokers or young translators, rather than as English language
learners, display a different identity at school when awarded new opportunities
to succeed. The students reported feelings of happiness and pride when aiding in
communication and playing a productive and unique role in the school (Borrero
2006). In addition to positive feelings, constructive cognitive and linguistic factors
surrounding the findings of language brokering were also present.

5.4 Development of cognitive and metalinguistic skills

Child language brokers often interact in adult contexts requiring the use of ad-
vanced vocabulary and cognitive abilities (Acoach & Webb 2004; Bialystok &
Hakuta 1999). Language brokering improves the development of higher cogni-
tive abilities, enabling youngsters to increase their linguistic aptitudes and im-
prove their interpersonal and social skills (McQuillan & Tse 1995; Tse 1995a;
Tse 1996a; DeMent & Buriel 1999; Halgunseth 2003). Language brokers develop
metalinguistic skills that enable them to produce messages in a meaningful way.
They do not just communicate a message in another language. They do so tak-
ing into account context, intention, tone, interlocutors, and role (to name a few
elements of a communicative event). Interpreting at a government institution or
translating a medical bill requires more specialized terminology than that used
for communicating in their own environment with their peers, as well as the
ability to clarify, challenge, and explain information (which are examples of more
268 Claudia V. Angelelli

complex communicative functions). Language brokers use metalinguistic and cog-

nitive abilities, such as their intensified and continuous attention and awareness
of non-verbal behaviors. Non-verbal behaviors consist of facial expressions, body
language, signals based on the context of the interactions as well as those used in
the communication of culturally sensitive and culturally appropriate messages.
As they interpret, bilingual youngsters assess whether they have understood and
expressed the meaning of the message accurately, and if not, they ask for clarifi-
cation. Language brokers who engage in a vast number of settings develop more
sophisticated language abilities than those who broker in only one setting (Buriel
et al. 1998).
In addition, bilingual youngsters who read and interpret written documents
acquire several reading strategies that are beneficial in school. Some of these strat-
egies involve paraphrasing (Orellana 2009), skimming, and re-reading for par-
ticular information, utilizing their knowledge of cognates, and understanding
their own limitations as well as when to ask for help (Orellana & Reynolds 2008).
Furthermore, bilingual youngsters with daily exposure to balancing checkbooks
and reading a financial or bank statement demonstrate a better understanding of
real-world math. With increased cognitive and metalinguistic skills, language bro-
kers exhibit a higher ability in standardized testing for reading and math (Orellana
2003 & 2009). It has been argued that these metalinguistic and cognitive skills can
also ultimately materialize into higher academic achievement (Acoach & Webb
2004; Buriel et al. 1998; Dorner et al. 2007; Tse 1995).
Overall, as is evident from the literature in interpreting, research that initial-
ly focused primarily on linguistic and cognitive aspects of processing informa-
tion has expanded in the last 15 years to include interpersonal and social areas.
Questions about the interpreter as a co-participant in the interpreted communica-
tive event shifted the conceptualization of the role of the interpreter. By studying
interpreters’ turn-taking (Roy 2000) and interaction during face-to-face inter-
preting (Wadensjö 1998) in the hospital (Metzger 1999; Angelelli, 2004a, 2011 and
2012), in the courts (Berk-Seligson 1990) and while interacting with the police
(Berk-Seligson 2011) as well as interpreters’ perceptions about their role, behaviors,
and beliefs in all of these settings (Angelelli 2004b), the field as a whole has become
more inclusive of a continuum of possibilities. These include the ways interactions
are studied and the ways in which roles are played. The ad hoc interpreting has
begun to receive more attention since the first international conference was held
in Italy in 2012.
Studies focusing on youngsters (including children) who broker cross-lin-
guistic communication for their families and friends have followed the same
trend, also initially limited to cognitive and linguistic aspects of interpreting. In
the last decade, we have witnessed other fields such as education, sociology, and
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 269

psychology, exploring the interpersonal and social aspects of ad hoc interpreting.

Except Valdés et al. (2002), most of the research conducted obtained data from a
limited number of participants using interview techniques and focused on per-
ceptions and recall.
As researchers in interpreting problematized the interaction of the parties,
the notion of a visible interpreter began to emerge (especially in Metzger 1999 and
Angelelli 2004a and 2004b), and agency and social factors that trigger such visibil-
ity were addressed (Angelelli 2004b). Underneath the evidence of co-participation
and co-participant lies the notion of empowerment or agency (Angelelli 2004a and
2004b). In the study of bilingual youngsters, however, this specific notion of agency
has been overlooked, assumed or ill defined. In many studies, it has been assumed
that youngsters had no agency and were brokering communication simply because
they were told to do so. Their perceptions of their role and beliefs were addressed
tangentially through interviews of a limited number of participants. Those studies
yielded mixed conclusions. The youngsters portrayed either a sense of pride in
helping their families (Valdés et al. 2002) or feelings of pressure and inadequacy.
The truth is that young bilinguals’ perceptions and beliefs concerning their roles
have remained unquestioned. Measurement and analysis of bilingual youngsters’
attitudes toward their role as family interpreters can yield invaluable information
and should not be assumed. The purpose of this study and the instrument used is
precisely to shed light on the various aspects of using young interpreters, from the
perception of their work, their role, and the difficulties and challenges they face,
to the strengths and weaknesses they bring to the task.
In the next section, we will discuss the development of an instrument to meas-
ure the role of bilingual students who have performed as interpreters for their
families and immediate communities in order to explore participants’ perceptions
of their role.

6. Adaptation of a measurement instrument

On the basis of social and sociological theories, this research will use the Interpreter
Interpersonal Role Inventory (IPRI, Angelelli 2004b: 52 and 101–105) and adapt
it to identify bilinguals’ views on their roles along four axes: personal/ interper-
sonal (concept of self and self in social relations) and socio/cultural (situational/
contextual and cross-cultural). Since many bilinguals populate translation and
interpreting university classrooms today, understanding bilinguals’ perceptions
about their roles will help determine more efficient and effective pedagogies to
educate this group. In addition, participants’ views on their behaviors in practice
and their perceptions of their role will shed light on bilinguals’ own perspectives
270 Claudia V. Angelelli

on cross-linguistic/cultural communication. Furthermore, getting a glimpse of

bilinguals’ conceptualizations of their role and agency in helping out members of
their families and immediate communities will contribute to a current controver-
sial debate about professional and non-professional interpreters.
To study young bilingual interpreters’ perceptions or beliefs regarding their
role in a cross-linguistic communicative event, we turn to the literature in role
measurement. In 2004, Angelelli reported on the first attempt to measure the
perceptions and beliefs of interpreters using a valid and reliable instrument con-
structed for this specific purpose. The instrument is called IPRI (Interpreters
Interpersonal Role Inventory). The construction of IPRI allowed variable meas-
urement of the interpersonal/social aspect of interpreting in instances of cross-­
cultural communication across settings. The challenge discussed in this paper
is the adaptation and re-calibration of IPRI to measure the interpreters’ role of
bilingual youngsters. The resulting instrument is named IPRI Junior after the pop-
ulation for which it is developed. Replicating the scientific method of construction
of measurement instruments for IPRI, in the adaptation for IPRI Junior, I revisit
the external and internal validity of the instrument. To demonstrate the external
validity of IPRI Junior, I searched for similar instruments or instruments of the
same construct but found none. I contacted the US Department of Education to
see how they test linguistically gifted students for cross-cultural awareness and the
role of bilingual students as interpreters. No tests were available at that time. I was
referred to the study on young bilinguals interpreting for their families (Valdés
et al. 2000) and the interpreting task developed to measure interpreting ability
(Valdés et al. 2002). I then surveyed published and unpublished psychological tests.
On the basis of the reports and scales published in Measures of Personality and
Social Psychological Attitudes (Robinson et al. 1991), it appears that all measures
bear some relation to the five basic emotional factors identified in multidimen-
sional research as the study conducted by Slaver et al. (1987 in Robinson et al.
1991): love (liking), happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. One could argue that
several items designed to measure self-esteem, interaction with others, anxiety,
pride or fear, to name just a few, could be adapted and used in the construction of
an instrument that would measure some of the areas that have begun to surface in
the literature on bilingual youngsters brokering communication for their families.
However, at present, there has been no attempt to do so. Specifically regarding
linguistic, interpersonal, social, and cognitive abilities as those displayed by young
interpreters, no instrument was found. The lack of any other similar instrument
has led me to work on a modified version of IPRI (Angelelli 2004b) and use it
as a starting point. Since no relevant measurements of interpersonal role were
found, validation of IPRI Junior relied upon content-related validity evidence,
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 271

confirmation of predicted differences across ages, and theoretically relevant pat-

terns of correlation with measures of other constructs.

6.1 Instrument design: Adaptation of IPRI

6.1.1 Description of construct

IPRI Junior was designed to measure the bilingual youngsters’ attitudes toward
their agency, or the visibility/invisibility continuum of the interpersonal role. An
interpreter who conceptualizes his or her role as visible perceives the role as be-
yond that of language switching and recognizes agency within the interaction.
While exercising agency, the interpreter’s “visibility” becomes evident as the inter-
preter helps parties understand concepts and terms, bridges linguistic and cultural
gaps, communicates affect as well as language, facilitates mutual respect, controls
the flow of communication traffic or even aligns with one of the parties resulting
in gate-keeping or channeling opportunities. Bilingual youngsters do have a voice
when it comes to speaking about what they do and how they broker communica-
tion when they interpret for their families. It is important to capture and measure
these perceptions/opinions using a valid and reliable measurement instrument.

6.1.2 Adaptation of target population

IPRI was designed for an international administration to adult interpreters work-
ing across settings. The survey was administered to interpreters in the United
States, Canada, and Mexico. All settings (when available) and language combi-
nations were included. Participants surveyed practiced the following: conference,
court, medical/community, and over-the-telephone interpreting. For some settings
(such as conference or court), there are organizations in place at the international
and/or national level to which interpreters belong. Such membership allowed for
a systematic sampling. In other cases (medical/ community), organizations do not
exist either at the international or the national level.
An effort was made to represent all settings in the three target countries. A
random and stratified sample allowed the replication of the target population
conditions and therefore the sample was representative. With IPRI Junior, we start
at the pilot level to analyze items. The adaptation of items for the different popu-
lations was applied primarily in the first part (Part A) of the instrument (as it was
previously adapted to localize IPRI for use in Australia and Switzerland and cur-
rently in Turkey). Questions related to demographics, education, and experience
were carefully worded and validated with Spanish, Cantonese, Hmong, German,
and French students to assure understanding across languages.
272 Claudia V. Angelelli

6.1.3 Test blueprint

In order to avoid a completely subjective writing and categorization of the items,
diverse sources of information were used in their initial drafting. Among those
were:
1. A review of the literature on bilingual youngsters/language brokers who fa-
cilitate communication for their families and communities focusing on the
portrayal, description, and prescription of the role of bilingual youngsters as
interpreters.
2. A series of interviews I conducted with bilinguals who interpret for their fam-
ilies and friends for a pilot study in spring 2013. Seven bilingual English/
Spanish graduate students participated. They represented various types of
bilinguals (circumstantial, elective, late, and early based on the taxonomy
of Valdés & Figueroa 1994). Interviews followed a semi-structured protocol.
Informants were asked to reflect on their practices and give examples of both
successful and stressful moments. During those interviews, informants re-
ferred to the cross-cultural communication challenges they faced and their
role within them.
3. A series of blueprints on the role of the interpreter in different settings (school,
market, clinic, bank, department of motor vehicles, and government offices
such as social security and housing offices). The information was organized
following the original IPRI (Angelelli 2004b).
4. A survey conducted for “Identifying, Teaching, and Assessing the Gifted through
Cultural Lenses,” part of a research project co-directed by Valdés and Heath
titled Developing the Talents and Abilities of Linguistically Gifted Bilingual
Students: Guidelines for Developing Curriculum at the High School Level (in
Angelelli et al. 2002). Bilinguals were interviewed and asked to rank skills
necessary to perform interpreting. A total of 25 informants participated repre-
senting both circumstantial and elective bilinguals (Valdés & Figueroa 1994).
As a result, sections were developed on personal/interpersonal skills as well
as social skills. This section identified over 20 skills, which were used as an
empirical source for the creation of items.
5. My education and 29 years of experience in the trenches of translation and
interpreting (as a practitioner, teacher and researcher).

These five sources were used to adapt the items for the initial item pool.

6.1.4 Small-scale trial

The survey was administered to seven Spanish/English bilingual students (four
circumstantial and three elective bilinguals) who reported significant experience
in interpreting/translating for their families and communities.
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 273

The respondents first completed the survey under realistic administration con-
ditions, and then perused the document with me. I requested that the participants
identify items they found problematic. I also asked about issues of readability,
wording, and use of jargon, among others. The seven respondents reported no
issues with the instructions but did make several suggestions regarding terms and
item-wording. The second draft of the instrument incorporated feedback from the
small-scale trial. On the basis of this feedback, I reworded the items and added
background questions, and then had a (non-interpreter) native speaker of English
edit this draft and incorporated her comments on Version I of the IPRI Junior
survey, which I used for the pilot.
Each Likert-scale item response was coded 1–6, with the highest value as-
signed to the end of the scale representing the more strongly visible perspective.
The respondents were asked to rank each item on a Likert-type scale ranging from
1 (Completely Agree) to 6 (Completely Disagree). 1 The items covered attitudes
and beliefs concerning four different dimensions: the self; the self with others;
the self in a context or situation; and the self in a cross-cultural interaction. The
items had undergone three facets of examination for the original IPRI (Angelelli
2004b: 60–62). Those were item difficulty (average response for each item) and item
discrimination (i.e., the relationship of an individual item to the remainder of the
items in aggregate and inter-item consistency of the responses to one another).
Since the 34 items in Part B were borrowed from the original IPRI intact and no
modification/adaptation was performed, IPRI Junior preserved the .9 reliability
of the original instrument.
The following table illustrates the number of items per subcomponent of IPRI
Junior:

Table 1. Visibility variable sub-components

Sub-component Number of items
Align with one of the parties 7
Establish trust/facilitate mutual respect 7
Communicate affect as well as message 8
Explain cultural gaps/interpret culture 8
Establish communication rules 4

Table 2 below shows the results of the reliability analysis for the IPRI, the final
scale of 34 items. Results are reported on a scale from one to six, i.e., average item

1. The issue of presenting or not presenting a middle position to informants has been extensively
discussed (Schuman & Presser 1981; Fishman & Galguera 2003; Payne 1951). There is enough
evidence to support both claims.
274 Claudia V. Angelelli

response. The decision to drop items, shortening the instrument, allowed time for
background items and minimized respondent burden.

Table 2. Final scale of 34 items: reliability analysis

n Mean Std. Deviation r Std. Error of
measurement
50 1.79 .33 .90 .10

Revisions were also made to the format and the scale based on feedback from the
small-scale trial as well as from various experts. The format chosen continues to be
a four-page booklet. The scale appears on the top of each page where it is required
(pages two, three, and four). The numerical scale (1–6) was changed to letters that
represent the first initial/s of the word/s (e.g., SD for strongly disagree).
In sum, revisions resulted in a two-part instrument. Part A consists of 12
background questions and Part B consists of 38 items (34 + 4 distractors). Part
A asks respondents to circle all options that apply to them. Part B asks them to
circle only the option that best represents their position. The total time required
to complete IPRI is approximately 20 min.

7. Conclusion

In this paper, we have discussed the crucial role that bilingual youngsters play in
brokering communication for monolingual adults. Through a brief survey of the
relevant literature, we have looked at the sociological factors that result in bilingual
youngsters engaging in interpreting for their families and friends, the gap they fill,
the role they play, as well as the emotional and cognitive consequences resulting
from those experiences.
While the research conducted so far allows us to begin to explore many impor-
tant issues and experiences related to language brokers, it does not allow us to draw
conclusions and/or ascertain with any degree of certainty that the experiences
of some can be transferred to others. This chapter argues for the scientific meas-
urement of bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their life experiences as family
interpreters/translators. It discusses the construction and potential administration
of a valid and reliable instrument, IPRI Junior. This instrument and others to be
developed for the measurement of different facets of ad hoc interpreting would
reveal important information on bilinguals who have had experiences in language
brokering interpreters. It is important to know this information rather than to
simply assume, as various conversations on access, education, and future career
may be based on this unique ability that gifted bilinguals possess.
 Chapter 13. Bilingual youngsters’ perceptions of their role as family interpreters 275

In addition, many of the student interpreters populating translation/interpret-

ing classes today are circumstantial bilinguals (Valdés & Figueroa 1994; Angelelli
2010a) who have experienced interpreting for family members and friends. This
implies that they come to class with various pre-conceptions of the subject matter
they are about to learn or the practice in which they are engaging. Using IPRI
Junior as a pre-test/post-test, interpreting educators and researchers could meas-
ure changes in candidates’ ideas or perceptions regarding the role that interpret-
ers play. After teaching about rights and responsibilities of interpreters, ethics,
standards of practice, etc., programs could measure the impact of teaching on
interpreters’ perceptions of their roles. This means that programs would explicitly
address the multiplicity of roles interpreters can play as well as their consequences.
This measurement of role could also contribute to interpreter testing becoming
more integrative of all the dimensions present in any interpreting event. Instead of
neglecting or taking for granted social and interpersonal skills, they could instead
be tested side-by-side with cognitive and linguistic abilities. This encompassing
approach to testing would provide a more thorough view of the candidates’ abili-
ties and affect their instruction. Most importantly, learning about the choices that
bilinguals make when brokering communication will reveal their perceptions of
their agency and talent in detail.

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 Chapter 14

Child language brokers’ representations

of parent–child relationships

Tony Cline, Sarah Crafter, Guida de Abreu and Lindsay O’Dell

University College London / Open University, Milton Keynes /
Oxford Brookes University / Open University, Milton Keynes

This paper reports the analysis of qualitative data from a broader study of
young people’s representations of conflicting roles in child development. Just
over a quarter of the group, bilingual students who spoke a variety of first
languages had had personal experience of child language brokering (CLB).
Employing vignette methodology, they were invited to reflect on the impli-
cations of an adolescent boy’s language brokering activities for, among oth-
er things, his relationships within his family. In this paper, we will present
brief case studies to illustrate different positions that members of the group
adopted in relation to developmental scripts emphasizing independence and
interdependence between young people and their parents (Dorner et al. 2008).
Through an analysis of individual CLB case studies, we illustrate various ways
in which individual young people reported the balancing of the demands of
autonomy and connectedness in their analysis of relationships between young
people and their parents.

Keywords: case studies, child development, family dynamics, semi-structured

interviews, vignettes

1. Introduction

In public and academic debates, child language brokering (CLB) activities are
sometimes portrayed negatively as imposing excessive burdens of responsibility
on the young people (e.g. Wu & Kim 2009; Tse 1996). In addition, critics have
expressed concern that translation errors will be more likely to occur than in
interactions with trained interpreters, interviews may focus on family or per-
sonal matters that are not appropriate to share with children, young people may
find the experience stressful and will miss time at school, and, in particular, the
arrangement may lead to a reversal of roles between children and parents within

doi 10.1075/btl.129.14cli
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
282 Tony Cline et al.

families (Morales and Hanson 2005). Previous research has suggested that, while
many immigrant parents prefer their own children as translators to any profes-
sional or non-professional alternative (e.g. Cohen et al. 1999), the young people
themselves hold diverse and sometimes ambivalent views on the issue. Surveys of
young people on the subject have not generally attempted to explore the underly-
ing reasons for different views (e.g. Free et al. 2003). However, a study of a small
sample of Mexican American college students by Weisskirch (2006) indicated that
self-reports of negative emotions while language brokering such as feeling angry,
anxious, frustrated, guilty, or uncomfortable were associated with scores on an
Index of Family Relations, which suggested significant disharmony in the family.
In this paper, we report on the analysis of qualitative data from a broader
study of young people’s representations of conflicting roles in child development.
Previous reports on this study have focused on young people’s representations of
“work” (Crafter et al. 2009) and the early assumption of adult-like responsibilities
as a young carer (O’Dell et al. 2010). We examined young people’s representations
of language brokering in a study that investigated how people’s direct experience
of that activity and of bilingualism might have influenced the views that are de-
veloped (Cline et al. 2011). The aim of that analysis was to clarify the impact of
personal experience of the CLB process by comparing the views of young people
who reported that they had performed CLB activities with those of a group of
bilingual speakers who had not, and also with those of a group of monolingual
speakers living in the same areas of England where there had been significant re-
cent immigration. It became clear that in our sample young people who had had
varying levels of personal experience of language brokering and bilingualism did
indeed represent language brokering in predictably different ways. While partici-
pants generally represented the personal qualities, skills, and feelings of a language
broker as mainly positive, a small number of those with language brokering ex-
perience offered more searching analyses of specific issues (e.g. of what a teenager
might learn from the experience). A small number of those with no experience
as a language broker, in particular those who spoke only one language, adopted a
negative emphasis, suggesting a demeaning view of the parent for whom a young
person was acting as translator.
The groups differed radically in how they thought teenage language brokers
might be seen by those around them. Participants with experience of language
brokering were more likely to suggest that friends would see language brokering as
“normal” or “not unusual.” Those who saw it as “strange” or uncommon or had a
negative view of it mostly came from the other two groups. We noted that, when a
girl in the language broker group spoke in those terms, she explicitly attached that
view to “someone who only speaks one language.” For people like her, language
brokering duties were just a normal obligation of life in an immigrant family. The
 Chapter 14. Child language brokers’ representations 283

position was asymmetrical: she could appreciate how those outside her community
might perceive such activities, but her monolingual peers appeared to have only
a vague understanding of what multilingualism might mean in practice in the
lives of their fellow students. However, all the participants shared a broad view of
CLB that tolerated some interruption of schooling in the interest of supporting
one’s family. They agreed with the normative view in UK society that childhood
should usually be a period when a person’s chief responsibilities are to meet school
requirements and (limited) family obligations. Most of them accepted that new
immigrant families might encounter exceptional circumstances where that norm
should be ignored and a parent would be justified in asking for help from his/her
child. At the same time, a parent should move on from that position as quickly
as possible, so that he/she no longer needs his/her child’s support during school
time. We concluded that the views expressed by the students participating in that
study were compatible with the notion espoused by Dorner et al. (2008) that de-
velopmental scripts emphasizing both independence and interdependence are re-
quired to understand the phenomenon of language brokering by young people. In
this paper, we wish to take this analysis further by examining the dynamics that
influenced individual participants who described different positions in balancing
the competing demands of autonomy and connectedness in relationships between
parents and children.

2. Methodology

2.1 Procedure

The data reported here were collected during the second phase of a project con-
ducted in six schools and colleges in the South East and South Coast of England.
On the basis of a questionnaire survey about their working activities, 46 young
people aged 15–18 years were selected, who agreed to individual interviews at
school or college (O’Dell et al. 2006). Some of the schools or colleges were mainly
White British with a smaller representation of a linguistic minority group and
others were multiethnic with substantial representations of students from linguis-
tic minority communities and a high proportion of recent arrivals in the United
Kingdom. The students who are the focus of this paper all lived in metropolitan
or urban areas that had substantial numbers of recent adult immigrants. The sam-
ple selected for interview in the main study included students with experiences
of work activities that could be considered “atypical” such as acting as a young
carer or language broker and students who had engaged in working activities that
could be considered “typical” such as delivering newspapers or serving in a shop
284 Tony Cline et al.

on Saturdays. The analysis conducted for this paper concentrated on a small group
of bilingual students who had had experience of acting as language brokers for
one or both of their parents.
The semi-structured interviews, which were conducted individually by one of
two members of the research team, used a series of four story vignettes to structure
the discussion and provide prompts for participants. The characters were 14 years
old, slightly younger than the research participants to allow them to identify with
the characters and feel that they were familiar (a point confirmed by the pilot par-
ticipants). The vignettes implied a variety of cultural backgrounds (indicated by
culturally specific or ambiguous names such as Samuel and Mira). Two vignettes
depicted young people engaging in “typical” work roles such as babysitting and
having a Saturday job and two depicted the “atypical” work roles in which we were
interested – language broker and young carer. The analysis reported in this paper
concentrates mainly but not exclusively on the vignette of a language broker who
was given the name “Eduardo”:

(1) Eduardo is 14 years old. He speaks English and Portuguese. Eduardo’s mum can’t
speak English, so she often asks him to help her. Eduardo is proud and pleased
to help his mum but is embarrassed when he translates for her at the doctors.
Eduardo misses school some days because his mum needs him to help translate
for her.

The other vignettes, which are mentioned in the analysis below, concern “Mary”
and “Mira”:

(2) Mary is 14 years old and lives with her dad and her brother who is 15 years
old. Mary’s dad is disabled and needs help during the day with activities such as
getting out of bed, getting dressed and making lunch. Mary loves her dad and is
happy to be there for him. However, she also misses school some days if her dad
has a bad day and needs extra help. Sometimes Mary wishes that she could see
her friends after school like her brother does.
(3) Mira is 14 years old. To earn some extra money she does babysitting for some of
her parents’ friends at the weekends. She feels it is her responsibility to contribute
to the household and when she can, gives some money to her mum to help towards
food. The rest she spends on music and going to the cinema with friends. Mira
also helps in the house such as the dusting and vacuuming.

For each vignette character, respondents were asked questions designed to explore
their perceptions of the character’s attributes as individuals, their position within
their family and the impact of their activities on how others around them might
see them:
 Chapter 14. Child language brokers’ representations 285

–– What do you think about what Eduardo is doing?

–– What would their teacher/parent/friends think?
–– What do you think about Eduardo’s mum?
–– Would you change anything about Eduardo’s life?
–– What advice would you give if Eduardo were your friend?
–– What do you think will happen when Eduardo grows up?

2.2 Composition of the sample for this study

Reports on the interviews with the full sample of 46 participants may be found
in O’Dell et al. (2006) and Crafter et al. (2009). For the purposes of this paper, a
subsample of 11 was selected, in which the available information enabled us to
identify that they lived in bilingual or multilingual families and had been in-
volved in language brokering themselves (n = 11). Three were aged 15–16 years and
eight aged 17–18, and three were male and eight female, reflecting the commonly
reported pattern that girls act as language brokers for their families more often
than boys do.

3. Analysis

After the full interviews had been transcribed, a Framework Analysis strategy
was used to investigate variation within the sample (Pope et al. 2006). The key
findings from the analysis of group differences in the full sample may be studied
in detail in Cline et al. (2011). For this paper, we selected a purposive sample of
four students whose personal histories and family situations were typical of those
represented in the larger group in the original sample. Each of the selected students
had had relevant CLB experience and expressed clear views on their CLB activities
during their interviews. Among them, four appeared to illustrate key aspects of
the range of perspectives on parent – child relationships that emerged from what
members of the group had to say during their interviews. For each of these four,
a case study analysis was conducted with the aim of identifying ways in which
their CLB experiences and their family relationships might have influenced their
representations of CLB as an activity.

3.1 Case study 1: Bana

Bana was 16 years old when interviewed. She had come to England with her par-
ents from Albania when she was 11. Her mother had been a teacher in Albania
and her father a chemist, but they had more menial jobs in the large town where
286 Tony Cline et al.

the family now lived. Both were studying English at college with a view to further
professional training and returning to the types of jobs they had had before they
migrated. “They don’t like being vulnerable… So here they have values to learn
for themselves, trying to learn English.” She and her brother had translated for
their parents at the beginning “just for a while until they learn English.” They
could soon understand but they could not speak very well. “So um, when they
went to a doctor they could find the doctor, but they couldn’t describe how they
felt but now they can speak on their own.” She had not found it embarrassing as
Eduardo did but “I just feel it’s quite boring.” It was “not really a big deal, I feel
good helping my parents… Well, it wasn’t, well it got quite tiring but it wasn’t a
big deal because, you know, I have my brother so when I wasn’t able to translate
my brother went with them.”
There were some places where professional interpreters were available, and
their parents would use them. However, Bana suggested that her parents tended
to feel “more comfortable” with their own children in the role. At the same time
she described how they felt “quite frustrated” and felt “the pressure because they
couldn’t speak themselves but all the time they learn.” Asked about Eduardo’s
mother, she assumed that “she might be quite frustrated that she had to take her
son out of school sometimes.” She thought that everyone would want to learn
English and not want their children to speak for them. But “it depends how quick
they pick it up or what sort of things they do.” There was an implicit contrast with
some other parents who learned English fairly quickly, because they had learned
other foreign languages in the past. Their experience of travel to other countries
meant that they were familiar with the situation, knew it was “no big deal” (one of
Bana’s favorite phrases) and that it was “just temporary. They are learning English
now and then don’t really need me.”
Bana empathized with Mary, the young carer in another vignette, but also
with her disabled father. “…probably, he might feel quite vulnerable, might feel
quite embarrassed because he has to be so weak and he has to expect some of the
things from his daughter.” Ideally, she should be given more help from her family
and friends, even from teachers, “so she can have more of a life.” In the long term,
however, while her education could suffer, “possibly this situation could make her
stronger, more, you know, strong.” However, Bana returned to the dilemma later
with a more cautious view: “possibly in life, possibly in life this experience will
make her stronger but she will find it much more harder to grow up if she continues
looking after her father long.” She contrasted Mary’s situation with Eduardo’s and
her own. “Eduardo has a smaller responsibility and it might be temporary, you
know, and it’s not very difficult and it’s not a very big job. But for Mary this might
be temporary, you know, for a couple of years or it might be a long time. Plus she
has the biggest responsibility because she has to look after someone, an adult and
 Chapter 14. Child language brokers’ representations 287

she’s only fourteen years old.” It was clear that Bana gave attention to not only the
serious nature of Mary’s duties but also the potential length of the commitment
that might be required of her. Her own experience was of supporting her parents
in a dependent role for a relatively short period, which was seen from the outset
by all those involved as planned to be temporary.

3.2 Case study 2: Elena

Elena was 16 years old when interviewed. She was born in Ecuador where she
lived until age 9. Her parents worked as cleaners in London, but in Ecuador her
father had been a college principal and her mother an office secretary. She hoped
to go to college and train as a midwife. She acknowledged that she missed school
quite often. When this was because she needed to translate for her mother, she
felt there was a justifiable reason. Asked about Eduardo’s CLB activity, she said:
“It’s good because at least you’re helping your mum but at the same time it’s bad
‘cause you’re missing school and then you get behind on your studies.” Asked how
she felt about it, she said: “Well, I feel quite happy because at least I’m helping my
mum but of course I feel, well not sad, but, how can I say it? I feel upset because
my mum doesn’t talk English and I have to miss school and my work is behind
because I have to concentrate on my mum.” She discussed with the interviewer
the dilemma of having to miss school in order to help one’s family, balancing the
two and suggesting she would put her mum first. “If it was mum and my mum
was proper sick and she need something, it was an emergency then of course my
mum, it’s my family. But if it’s like something not really important, well er school
‘cause it’s gonna help with my future.” Her perspective on CLB was limited. She did
not see Eduardo as learning anything from translating for his mother. His future
would be dependent on whether he attended school more regularly, committed
himself to studying and caught up with the work. “It’s up to him. Like if he studies,
of course he will get a good job but if he doesn’t study then he ain’t gonna go far
in his future.”
At one point, Elena’s mother had gone to college to learn English but she
did not continue with her classes. The reasons for this were not made clear in
the interview. She does now understand a little English but spends a lot of time
watching TV in Spanish. “Cause we’ve got um the TV channels in Spanish. So she’s
twenty-four hours watching Spanish.” Returning to that college course was “some-
thing I would secretly quite like her to do. No she doesn’t do, she used to but not
anymore.” Explaining embarrassment at the doctor’s Elena saw it as arising from
the child’s omniscient perspective on the situation, having insight into what is
going on in the meeting when neither the doctor nor the parent fully understands
288 Tony Cline et al.

it. She feels embarrassed for herself because it is hard to translate, but she feels
embarrassed for her mother because “she thinks she understands something but
she doesn’t and all that.” This sense of her mother’s inadequacy was a frequent
theme in the interview. Elena said that her mother assumed that taking one’s child
out of school to help was “normal” and “she doesn’t understand….” Of Eduardo’s
mother she said: “I don’t think she even realises, I don’t think she realises that he
shouldn’t miss school… she’ll think that if you miss school it’s like normal, fine,
nothing is gonna happen. Maybe she might think the same as my mum.” Elena
recognized that some parents whose own experience of schooling had been very
different from what their children experienced after migration might be unaware
of the extent of their misunderstandings of the system in their new country. A
similar perspective emerged during an earlier study of mathematics learning in
multiethnic primary schools (Abreu et al. 2002).

3.3 Case study 3: Rosana

When Rosana was interviewed at age 19, she had a place at university to study ac-
counting and finance and then auditing. The family came to the United Kingdom
from Brazil. Her mother had always worked as a hairdresser and now had her own
business, which was expanding. Her father had left his job and was now helping
with the administration of the business. In the past, Rosana had translated not
only for her mother but also for other adults in the family and their network of
friends. She did not miss school or college very much though, as she tried to make
people arrange appointments around her schedule and just took an hour or two
off if that was impossible. She enjoyed translating, partly because of learning new
words, but on the downside also had some difficulty in finding the words that were
needed. “You do get, get confused and I… I don’t know, it depends how often you
do it…’cause you, you don’t always speak two languages, you, you know, it’s not
that easy to feel, you feel all roped up and… (Interviewer: So is it difficult kind of
moving from one to the other or knowing the words?) Well, the words, and also
how to put them in phrases that would make sense.” She thought Eduardo might
be embarrassed because he could not follow the meaning of what was said at the
doctor’s or could not explain it in Portuguese. In her own life, her mother did
not need her so much now as she did at first. She could manage on her own at the
doctor’s, e.g., but “some… like business matters she’ll ask me to do it for her… yeah
but she does and she learns as well after doing it… after when we go out she’s like
oh… what do you say again? You know she learns… well.” She enjoyed teaching
her mother in this way. At the same time, she was often asked by family friends and
would usually do it if she could. “If it’s for my mum I would miss college but if it’s
 Chapter 14. Child language brokers’ representations 289

for other people they have to use… because I don’t, I don’t get paid or anything; I
just like to help.” By contrast, her younger sister disliked being involved. “I usually
do it, she doesn’t really like it I think she, she feels like him… (Laughs)… Takes
time and she’s like… you know… having to think a lot and she doesn’t know what
it means and then she gets like angry.”
Rosana was not sure how to judge Eduardo’s mother. “It depends how long
she’s been here… if it’s been a long time, then she should feel bad because she
doesn’t understand anything… Because you know maybe she, she, the next time
she, she should be able to understand. She’s a erm, when you you’re new, then it’s
okay. But I’ve seen that situation before. Some people they’ve been here like for ten
years twenty years and they still sound….” She thinks Eduardo should encourage
his mother to learn English more quickly and not rely on him. Missing school a
little is OK but not if you miss a lot of school. “I think that he could, could talk
to his mum about it. But I don’t know how she would react.” She anticipates that
otherwise his mother could go on relying on him, “because erm some people they,
they like, they depend on their sons they get used to it, they get used of they doing
all the work all the translating, and so on. Sometimes they do understand it but
they because it’s easier for them to keep up the help.”
A repeated theme in Rosana’s interview was her appreciation that having extra
responsibility when one is young, as Eduardo did and as Mary, the young carer in
our vignettes did, may be difficult but may also have a positive impact. Of Mary
she said: “She’ll know more about life than any other 14 years old is ‘cause she’s
got more responsibility now… So when she’s older she’ll you know… she’ll look…
more mature.” On her own translating activities, she commented: “Yeah, you do
learn a lot when you’re translating… like the doctor’s, I’ve learned a lot of illness,
the effect on people. For my mum’s business things I didn’t know before… You
do learn things that you never thought you would had done, I should mean have
done, or exist.”
A second theme was her commitment to mutual support within a family.
She laid less emphasis on a teenager’s rights and more emphasis on family values.
She celebrated the sacrifice that a 14 year old might be making by helping their
parents inside or outside the home and was less critical than some other partici-
pants of the adults who made that sacrifice necessary. Of Mira, another vignette
character who contributed to the household budget from her part-time earnings
and helped with the housework, Rosana said: “I think it’s good, I used to do that
and my mum used to be really pleased. I mean I still do but my mum was really
pleased and all her friends kept saying how they wish their daughter was like that
(laughs). So I think it’s good.” When Mira grows up, she thought “she’s gonna feel
really proud of herself when she comes to be just your other 14 years old and…
all that the life is computers and TV and you know you didn’t I dunno not really
290 Tony Cline et al.

worry about that because the parents do everything for them. I think she’s gonna
be really, really proud.”

3.4 Case study 4: Joăo

Joăo was 17 years old when interviewed. He had come to England with his mother
and sister some years ago. Their father had left them in Portugal when he was 5 and
established a home in England. After they joined him there, he and his elder sister
often had to translate for their mother because of their father’s working hours. He
was working as a courier and now training to be a driving instructor. His mother
worked in a restaurant where her use of English was slowly improving. His sister
was at university, and he hoped to go on to higher education after college, possibly
studying computer graphics.
Joăo was impressed with what Eduardo was doing: “I think it’s very noble, I
mean, you know he’s helping his mum and she can’t do something, it’s kind of
like giving back what she done when he was young.” Missing school was all right
in his eyes, because it was for his mother. “It’s not like he’s skiving off school.” His
judgment of Eduardo’s mother was uncertain: “Honestly she should do something
about not speaking English, being here and not speaking English. But um, if she
can’t help it she can’t help it. (Interviewer: So it’s just one of those things in life.)
And you’ve got to deal with it.” However, he went on later to add: “Well, I would
feel that if a member of my family is in need then I would take care of them for as
long as they need. But I also think that if she is not gonna learn English then he’s
got to sort it out, obviously, ‘cause you can’t just be dependent on anyone forever.”
Like Rosana, he saw advantages to a boy translating for his mother when young.
“I mean, it gives him more of an, it could be seen as an advantage, because you
know he’s learning to be with other people and he’s learning at a young age to
deal with different things that a fourteen year old boys don’t usually have to deal
with.” His own memories of translating for his mother were not entirely positive
though. He could empathize with Eduardo becoming embarrassed at the doctor’s.
“As he said it’s really, really embarrassing when you have to go to the doctor with
your parents, it’s just so embarrassing and you’re like ‘please, I don’t want to know
about this sort of thing’.”
Joăo’s awareness of a distance between adults and children influenced his
evaluation of some of the other vignettes. He thought that Mary who cared for
her disabled father was being put upon. “She doesn’t really have a real life, she’s
got school and then home to help her dad, school and home, school and home,
so no social life and well, hardly any.” Of Mira, the vignette character who gave
her earnings from babysitting to her impoverished parents, he said: “This is too
 Chapter 14. Child language brokers’ representations 291

good for a fourteen year old, I think… I would knock some sense into her and say
‘keep the money, don’t give it to your parents’.” He showed a strong sense of what
he thought a normal teenager’s experience of life should be and was reluctant to
accept the special circumstances that young people like Eduardo and Mary find
themselves in. While acknowledging the priority that they gave to family obli-
gations, he wanted the situation to be changed without the child being involved.
Eduardo’s mother should just get on and learn English; Mary’s father’s disability
should be cured by magic; Mira’s parents should refuse the money.

4. Discussion

In previous research that examined family relationships and language brokering,

Weisskirch (2006) noted that feeling angry, anxious, frustrated, guilty, and un-
comfortable when language brokering was associated in his sample of college stu-
dents with reporting more problematic family relationships. The Index of Family
Relations (Hudson 1982), which was used in that study, measured perceived diffi-
culties in family members’ relationships along a single dimension. In this paper,
we aimed to take this analysis further by examining the dynamics that influenced
individual participants who described different positions in balancing the com-
peting demands of autonomy and connectedness in relationships between parents
and children. The qualitative research that is reported here confirms that there
are subtle and complex family dynamics that influence the perspectives on CLB
activities adopted by those involved. Our findings suggest that there is more than
a single dimension of “difficulty” at play when an individual adolescent evaluates
a parent’s reliance on their child as a language broker.
The responses to our vignettes indicated that the young people evaluated lan-
guage brokering requirements that were laid on them and their peers in the light
of how they perceived the overall family situation at that time. A factor of particu-
lar importance was how they viewed the relevant parent’s position on a path of
adjustment to their new country. Thus, Elena belittled her mother in an unhappy
frame of mind, offering a limited view of translating and expressing a bleak sense
that the demands on her for support would not diminish over time. She saw her
mother as retreating from the challenge of learning English (“24 hours watching
Spanish”), lacking the resources even to appreciate the limits of her understand-
ing. Bana, on the contrary, saw her mother as following a trajectory that would
lead to her being settled in this country quite quickly. She would then no longer
need to be dependent on her daughter in the way that she was at the beginning.
She thought of both her parents as bringing to their new situation considerable
resources from multiple previous experiences of migration – an awareness of what
292 Tony Cline et al.

was needed to make settling in possible and a readiness to learn a new language.
Rosana was aware that her mother had a longer struggle than that ahead of her,
but she was optimistic. She saw her mother as a committed learner and herself as
a resource for help. She enjoyed assisting her mother to learn and was sympathetic
to the difficulties she faced.
While these children of immigrants saw the language brokering process
through the prism of their perception of their parents, they also, like any ado-
lescent, were aware of what their peers might think. Distinctive positions on that
spectrum were adopted by Joăo and Rosana with the former laying greater empha-
sis on the (“Western”) rights of teenagers and the latter highlighting the benefits
of family approval and (“South American”) interdependence. A degree of cultural
adjustment is built into a young person’s ability to act as a language broker: not
only do they speak the main local language, but in addition at that point in time
they understand some aspects of the host society more clearly and confidently
than their parent. The importance of cultural brokering has been recognized since
the beginning of the recent growth in research interest in child language brokers,
but the emphasis has often been on their cross-cultural knowledge and skills or
on the stress this engenders (McQuillan & Tse 1995). The analysis of the final two
case studies in this report suggests that the adoption or rejection of local cultural
values will have an impact on how young people evaluate the need for language
brokering in their families. Joăo appeared to distance himself from the situation
in which his mother had needed this help, while Rosana remained committed to
mutual support within a family and saw language brokering as one expression of it.

5. Conclusion

In our earlier paper (Cline et al. 2011), we concluded that the findings about stu-
dents’ views that were reported there supported the argument that developmental
scripts, emphasizing both independence and interdependence, are required to un-
derstand the phenomenon of language brokering by young people (Dorner et al.
2008). In this chapter, we have focused more closely on individuals’ perspectives on
the relationships between parents and children. The young language brokers who
responded to the vignettes in this research appeared to adopt different positions
when balancing the competing demands of autonomy and connectedness within
a family. Their responses to the study vignettes could not be explained solely in
terms of a simple developmental script for adolescence that focuses on the dimen-
sions of independence and interdependence. First, the assumptions in that script
may vary when families come from different cultural backgrounds. In addition,
when a family migrates from one cultural milieu to another, the developmental
 Chapter 14. Child language brokers’ representations 293

script of adolescence interacts with an overlapping developmental script of cultural

adjustment. The analysis of individual stances on CLB has proved to be a fruitful
approach to unpicking the complex dynamics that operate in this situation.

References

de Abreu, Guida, Tony Cline & Tatheer Shamsi. 2002. “Exploring Ways Parents Participate in
Their Children’s School Mathematical Learning: Cases Studies in Multiethnic Primary
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J. Bishop and Norma C. Presmeg, 123–148. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers. doi: 10.1007/0-306-47674-6_6
Cline, Tony, Sarah Crafter, Lindsay O’Dell & Guida de Abreu. 2011. “Young People’s Representa­
tions of Language Brokering”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32: 3.
207–220. doi: 10.1080/01434632.2011.558901
Cohen, Suzanne, Jo Moran-Ellis & Chris Smaje. 1999. “Children as Informal Interpreters in GP
Consultations: Pragmatics and Ideology”. Sociology of Health and Illness 21: 2. 163–186.
doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00148
Crafter, Sarah, Lindsay O’Dell, Guida de Abreu & Tony Cline. 2009. “Young Peoples’ Represen­
tations of ‘Atypical’ Work in English Society”. Children and Society 23. 176–188.
doi: 10.1111/j.1099-0860.2008.00165.x
Dorner, Lisa M., Marjorie F. Orellana & Rosa Jiménez. 2008. “It’s One of Those Things That
You Do to Help the Family”: Language Brokering and the Development of Immigrant
Adolescents”. Journal of Adolescent Research 23: 5. 515–543. doi: 10.1177/0743558408317563
Free, Caroline, Green, J., Bhavani, V. & Newman, A. 2003. “Bilingual Young People’s Experiences
of Interpreting in Primary Care”. British Journal of General Practice 53. 530–535.
Morales, Alejandro & William E. Hanson. 2005. “Language Brokering: An Integrative Review of
the Literature”. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 27: 4. 471–503.
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O’Dell, Lindsay, Guida de Abreu, Tony Cline & Sarah Crafter. 2006. Young People’s Representations
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0549. http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk (last viewed February 2, 2014).
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doi: 10.1136/bmj.320.7227.114
Tse, Lucy. 1996. “Language Brokering in Linguistic Minority Communities: The Case of Chinese-
and Vietnamese-American Students”. The Bilingual Research Journal 20. 485–498.
Weisskirch, Robert S. 2006. “Emotional Aspects of Language Brokering among Mexican
American Adults”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27: 4. 332–343.
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Brokering Experience as a Sense of Burden and Sense of Efficacy”. Journal of Youth and
Adolescence 38. 703–718. doi: 10.1007/s10964-008-9379-3
 Chapter 15

Child language brokering in private

and public settings
Perspectives from young brokers and their teachers

Letizia Cirillo
University of Siena

This paper presents the results of a survey on child language brokering (CLB)
conducted in junior high schools of Emilia Romagna (Northern Italy). Two
questionnaires were drafted to investigate the perceptions of young brokers and
their teachers on CLB-related issues. The responses gathered so far contribute
to shed light on the who, where, when, and what of CLB in Italy, and generally
confirm the results obtained by previous studies at both national and interna-
tional levels. A comparison between the two sets of responses reveals brokers’
and teachers’ somehow different attitudes toward CLB, which deserve further
investigation.

Keywords: language brokering, junior high schools, attitudes of brokers and

teachers

1. Aims and method of the study

The aim of this study is to duplicate and extend the results obtained by previous
studies on child language brokering (CLB) conducted within the research project
InMedIO PUER(I) in the Northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna (Antonini
2010; Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Cirillo et al. 2010; Antonini 2011; Cirillo & Torresi
2013; Antonini 2014; Bucaria 2014; Rossato 2014). In particular, this study aims
to: (1) investigate contextual variables of CLB activities, including where and how
often these are carried out, whom young brokers translate for, and what type of
texts they translate and (2) explore brokers’ and teachers’ attitudes toward CLB. 1
To these aims, between 2011 and 2012, two different questionnaires – one
for young brokers and one for teachers – were administered in seven junior high

1. For a thorough review of the literature on CLB, see Orellana (this volume).

doi 10.1075/btl.129.15cir
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
296 Letizia Cirillo

schools (scuole medie), of which five are in the province of Forlì-Cesena and two
in the province of Bologna. The broker questionnaire consists of 34 items roughly
divided into two sections. The first section (items 1–17) requires young brokers to
provide personal details like their date and place of birth, as well as details about
their families (e.g., number of siblings and parents’ occupations). In the second
section (item 18–34), brokers are asked about the languages spoken in their fami-
lies, as well as about their brokering experience, including the where, when, what,
and how of language brokering and their feelings about it. The teacher question-
naire is made up of 27 items, mainly addressing teachers’ perceptions of CLB (as
opposed to professional language brokering) in the school setting. The teacher
questionnaire and the broker questionnaire were drafted based on the informa-
tion gathered during previous ethnographic research through a) interviews with
schoolteachers, b) focus groups with teenage former brokers, and c) written and
visual narratives by brokers aged 6–14 years collected through a contest (Bucaria
& Rossato 2010; Antonini 2011; 2014; this volume; Torresi this volume). Both ques-
tionnaires were carefully worded to avoid technicalities; specially trained research
assistants were present during questionnaire filling to give instructions, clarify
doubts, and collect answers; and, before questionnaire administration, consent
forms were signed by teachers and the young brokers’ parents. 2
The questionnaire for teachers received 49 valid responses, whereas that for
young brokers totaled 277. Young respondents had either volunteered or had been
selected by school staff to fill in the questionnaire during class hours in a separate
room (as agreed with school staff and parents). Schools were selected based on their
willingness to participate in the study; in particular, some of the classes involved
had taken part in the contest mentioned above (whereby narratives on CLB had
been previously collected), and/or had already started discussing brokering in em-
powering terms. These selection criteria may be seen as possible contextual biases
toward either a positive attitude to CLB in general or a special attention to items
(or parts thereof) concerning specifically the school. However, the questionnaire
was not centered on the school setting, and questions were designed in such a way
to address the various circumstances under which CLB takes place and to elicit
as many insights as possible. Despite the possible biases mentioned above, and
although the number of respondents is not high enough to be representative of the
total population of secondary school children and teachers experiencing brokering
activities in Emilia Romagna (let alone Italy), some observations can be made
based on the available data, while awaiting the questionnaires to be administered
in other junior high schools of the region and of the country.

2. The consent form for brokers’ parents was preliminarily translated into each of the languages
spoken by the latter.
 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 297

2. The who, where, when, and what of CLB

As mentioned in Section 1, the broker questionnaire was completed by 277 brokers.

Of them, 46% were females and 54% males with age range of 11–17 years, but with
over 79% of respondents ranging between 12 and 14 years of age. As expected, re-
spondents’ profiles were mixed, particularly in terms of place of birth and number
of years spent in Italy, as shown in Figures 1 and 2.

16
15
13
11
10 9
percent

6
5
5
3 3 3 3 3

0
Al

Ba

Bu

Ch

Ita

Ph

Ro

Se

Uk
ol

or
b

ne
ng

ly

ilip

m
rk

ra
in
an

do

oc
in

an

in
ga
la

pi
ia

co
aF

va

e
de

ia

l
ne
as
sh

s
o

Figure 1. Broker questionnaire: places of birth

Less than 1 year

1%
9% More than 1 year
16%
More than 2 years

11% More than 3 years

I was born in Italy
I was born in Italy but grew
up in my parents’ country
9%
of origin

55%

Figure 2. Broker questionnaire: number of years spent in Italy

298 Letizia Cirillo

Overall, respondents came from 39 different countries, with Burkina Faso,

Moldova, the Philippines, Senegal, and Ukraine totaling 3% each, 5% of young
brokers born in Bangladesh, 6% in Albania, 9% in China, 11% in Morocco, 13%
in Romania, and Italy ranking first as the country in which 16% of respondents
were born. Of all respondents who were not born in Italy, 55% had been living in
Italy for more than 3 years. As to education, 36% of respondents started school
in Italy between the ages of 3 and 5 (preschool), 31% between 6 and 9 years, and
33% after 9 years.
Moving specifically to language brokering, 52% of respondents reported start-
ing brokering between 8 and 12 years of age, although some reported starting as
early as age 5. When asked how often they normally do language brokering, 27%
of respondents selected “every day,” 18% “once a week,” 10% “once a month,” and
45% “rarely.” Moreover, 70% were still brokering at the time the questionnaire
was administered, while 30% had stopped for different reasons, including “I was
not asked anymore” (44%), “I didn’t like it” (20%), and “it was too tiring” (12%).

100
YES
86 NO
79 81
80 77 76
72
63
60 56
(%)
44
40 37

28
23 24
21 19
20 14

0
Parents Grand- Siblings Aunts/ Cousins Friends School- Teachers
parents Uncles mates

Figure 3. Broker questionnaire: the “who” of CLB

The “who” of CLB includes a wide range of non-mutually exclusive options, with
14% of respondents reporting brokering for teachers, 24% for schoolmates, 37%
for friends other than schoolmates, 21% for siblings, 19% for cousins, 23% for
grandparents, 28% for aunts and uncles, and 56% for parents (Figure 3). This latter
datum seems to be in line with responses on the frequency with which young bro-
kers’ parents speak Italian, which reveal an overall 43% of mothers and an overall
 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 299

33% of fathers using Italian either “always” or “often,” and thus presumably not
counting as part of the aforementioned 56%. 3

100 YES
NO
84 86
80 79
72 73
70 70 69

60 54
(%) 46
40
30 30 31
28 27
21
20 16 14

0
At home Phone On the In At Teacher- Bank/ Police Doctors’/
(TV/radio) calls street shops school parent Post station Hospital
meetings Office

Figure 4. Broker questionnaire: the “where” of CLB

The “where” of brokering also comprises a number of different private and pub-
lic settings (Figure 4), ranging from “home-based” translation of TV and radio
programs (46%), brokering at doctors’ practices and hospitals (31%), at school, i.e.,
both in the classroom (30%) and during teacher – parent conferences (21%), in
shops and on the street (30% and 27%, respectively), at the bank and/or the post
office (16%), at the police station (14%), and finally in unspecified settings involving
brokering over the phone (28%).
Finally, when asked “what” sorts of written texts they translate (either orally
or in writing) or fill in on behalf of others, young brokers replied by choosing a
variety of options (Figure 5) ranging from teachers’ notes (51%) to prescriptions
and medicine leaflets (27%), from parts of books and newspaper articles (27% and
24%, respectively) to forms from parents’ employers and job centers/employment
agencies (20% and 18%), from documentation issued by the police headquarters

3. On the link between the frequency of brokering activities involving parents and the latter’s
proficiency in Italian, see also Bucaria & Rossato (2010).
300 Letizia Cirillo

(22%) 4 to bank documents (20%), and from product labels at supermarkets (20%)
to shop signs and publicity boards in the streets (19%).

100 YES
NO
80 82 80 80 81
80 78 76
73 73

60
51 49
(%)
40
27 27
22 24
20 18 20 20 19
20

0
Notes Prescrip- Bank Police Employ- Forms Labels at Shop signs/ News- Parts of
from tions docu- docu- ment from super- publicity paper books
teacher /Info ments ments office/ parents’ market boards articles
leaflets /forms agencies workplace
forms

Figure 5. Broker questionnaire: the “what” of CLB

As highlighted by the data presented above (see especially Figures 3–5), the school
is one of the settings where CLB occurs most frequently. This is confirmed by the
data gathered through the teacher questionnaire, with 33 teachers out of 49 stating
that schools regularly resort to child brokers, particularly to communicate with
children who are not fluent in Italian. 5
According to teachers, CLB activities take place above all in the following situ-
ations: when children from migrant families first arrive and other school children
speaking the same language but already fluent in Italian support their induction

4. The Italian Police local headquarters (Questure) are in charge of issuing immigration-related
documents like residence permits.
5. CLB is resorted to even when a professional service would in fact be available. In particular,
36 teachers stated that schools can count on professional cultural brokers and 12 said that schools
can count on professional language brokers. In Italy, a variety of (partially overlapping) terms
are used to refer to professionally trained brokers, although “intercultural mediator” (mediatore
interculturale) has now become the most commonly used phrase. The use of various terms de-
pends to a considerable extent on the tasks these professionals are expected to perform, which
include not just bridging the language gap, but also mediating in situations of conflict and acting
as advocates helping immigrants to access and use services like healthcare and housing (see Aluffi
Pentini 2004; Luatti 2006; Merlini 2009; Casadei & Franceschetti 2009; Albertini & Capitani
2010).
 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 301

into school (86% of respondents); during parent – teacher conferences (57%); when
notes written by teachers on ordinary school matters need to be translated for par-
ents (51%); when notes written by teachers on extraordinary school matters need to
be translated for parents (41%); when teachers and children from migrant families
cannot understand each other at all and therefore need the help of other children
to communicate (33%); and in the case of frequent truancy (26%). Teachers who
had direct experience of CLB in at least one of the situations mentioned above
were 30 out of 49.
Overall, 29 teachers out of 49 reported CLB activities having increased in
the past few years. Of these, 24 (49%) accounted for this increase in terms of an
increasing number of schoolchildren from migrant families, 14 (29%) in terms of
the insufficient number of hours professional language and cultural brokers are
available for schools, 10 (20%) in terms of a greater ease of communication between
child brokers and other schoolchildren than between the latter and professional
brokers, and 5 (10%) in terms of a greater ease of communication between child
brokers and their families than between the latter and professional brokers.

3. CLB viewed by young brokers and their teachers

Children reported mixed feelings when asked about their brokering experience
at school with teachers and schoolmates on the one hand and in situations in-
volving their families on the other. As to the classroom, 43% of respondents are
happy to broker in this context, 30% like helping schoolmates who cannot speak
Italian very well, 18% enjoy doing it, 16% do not know, 15% do not like it, 6% feel
different from their schoolmates when they act as brokers, and 5% would rather
not do it (Figure 6).
Similarly mixed feelings, although with different percentages, were report-
ed regarding language brokering for family members. A proportion of 60% of
respondents are happy to broker for their families, 39% feel proud to help family
members, 21% enjoy doing it, 10% do not know, 8% do not like it, 7% feel they have
to do it even though they do not like it, and 5% would rather not do it (Figure 7).
Teachers’ perceptions of how children experience their brokering role toward
schoolmates and instructors on the one hand and family members on the other
seem to be in line with young brokers’ responses, as can be seen in Figures 8 and
9, although teachers’ perceptions are rather more homogeneous regarding specific
options, as we shall see in Section 4. In particular, brokers are thought to play
their role peacefully toward both school and family by respectively 41% and 43%
of the teachers who answered the questionnaire. Pride is the second most widely
perceived feeling associated to young brokers translating for their instructors and
302 Letizia Cirillo

How do you feel when you translate between

the teacher and one of your schoolmates?
100 YES
95 94
NO
85 84
82
80

70

60 57

(%)
43
40

30

20 18
15 16

5 6

0
I’m I enjoy I like I’d rather It I don’t I don’t
happy It helping not do makes like it know
to do it those it me feel
who different
cannot from
speak my
Italian school-
mates

Figure 6. Broker questionnaire: reported feelings when brokering between teachers and
schoolmates

schoolmates as well as for their families (by 20% and 14% of teachers, respectively).
When asked about CLB at school, 20% of teachers stated that young brokers feel
they have a different role from their schoolmates. In addition, 12% of teachers
said children feel morally obliged to help their instructors, while 8% stated they
feel morally obliged to help their schoolmates. Another 12% of teachers think that
children feel morally obliged to help their families. A small proportion of teachers
(4%) stated that “children feel forced to broker for their families and would rather
not do it,” while another 2% perceived that they “feel unfit and would rather not do
it;” interestingly, no teacher selected the same two options when asked about CLB
in the school setting (i.e., performed between teachers and schoolmates). Finally,
children were perceived as indifferent to brokering at school by 4% of teachers,
and as indifferent to brokering for their families by 10%. Responses classified as
“Other” obtained 6% and 12%, respectively.
 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 303

How do you feel when you translate for your family?

100 95 YES
93
90 90 NO

79
80

60 61
60

(%)
40 39
40

21
20
7 8 10
5

0
I’m I enjoy I’m I’d I have I don’t I don’t
happy it proud rather to do it like it know
to do it to help not do even
my it though
family I don't
like it

Figure 7. Broker questionnaire: reported feelings when brokering for families

Overall, responses by both young brokers and their teachers denote a fair amount
of (self)awareness on the part of the former, which also emerges when consider-
ing their approaches to the task of translating. One item of the broker question-
naire focused specifically on the strategies adopted by young brokers to cope with
translation difficulties. When asked which one(s) of the listed options they would
choose whenever in doubt about how to translate something, they responded as
follows: 58% would translate only what they do understand, 35% would ask for
an explanation, 11% would refuse to translate, 6 9% would pretend they are not
having any difficulty and just invent, and 2% would ask someone else to help them
(Figure 10).

6. Interestingly, when asked if children ever refused to broker at school, only two teachers
responded affirmatively: one of them accounted for such refusal in terms of “feeling unfit for the
task” and the other one in terms of “feeling forced to do it.”
304 Letizia Cirillo

How do young brokers live their role towards school?

100 96 YES
94
92 NO
88

80 80
80

60 59

(%)
41
40

20 20
20
12
8
6
4
0
Peacefully With They They With They Other
pride feel feel indifference feel
morally morally they
obliged obliged have a
to help to help different
their their role
mates teacher

Figure 8. Teacher questionnaire: perceptions of brokers’ feelings toward teachers and

schoolmates

How do young brokers live their role towards their families?

100 98
96 YES
90 NO
86 88 88

80

60 57

(%)
43
40

20
14
12 10 12

2 4
0
Peacefully With They They They With Other
pride feel feel feel indifference
morally unfit forced
obliged and and
to help would would
their rather rather
family not do not do
it it

Figure 9. Teacher questionnaire: perceptions of brokers’ feelings toward families

 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 305

When you don't know how to translate something,

what do you do?
YES
NO

I don’t I ask for I pretend I translate I ask

translate an nothing only what someone
explanation has I do else to
happened understand translate
and invent

Figure 10. Broker questionnaire: language brokering strategies

Teachers were also asked if they thought that CLB should be avoided under specific
circumstances. A total of 25 out of 49 replied affirmatively and mentioned the fol-
lowing: (a) when reporting on family problems (100%); (b) in delicate situations,
as for example during medical consultations (80%); (c) in official situations, as for
example service encounters with office clerks (72%); and (d) when reporting on
brokers’ own school performance (64%). 7
In fact, some instructors associated a number of problems with CLB per-
formed for teachers, schoolmates, and family members. As to CLB at school for
the benefit of instructors and schoolmates, 27 (55%) of the teachers who took part
in our survey pointed out that it is difficult to ascertain what young brokers tell
their schoolmates when they translate, 15 (31%) highlighted the fact that children
brokering for their mates tend to lag behind at school, 3 (6%) said that CLB involves
the risk of privacy violations, 1 (2%) reported young brokers feeling unfit for the
task, and 5 (10%) opted for “other” unspecified problems (Figure 11). As to CLB
with family members, teachers identified the following problems: difficulty in
ascertaining what children tell their family when they translate (28 respondents,

7. These circumstances coincide with some of the contexts and situations in which CLB most
frequently occurs (see Figure 4).
306 Letizia Cirillo

What are the main problems of CLB in the classroom?

100 99
94 YES
90 NO

80
69

60 55
(%)
45
40
31

20
10
6
1
0
Checking Brokers Privacy Brokers Other
what tend to lag violations feel unfit
brokers behind at for the
tell mates school task

Figure 11. Teacher questionnaire: perceived problems associated with CLB in the
classroom

What are the main problems of CLB with family members?

100 96 YES
NO

80
74 76
71
65
60 57

(%)
43
40
35
29
26 24
20

4
0
Checking Dealing Dealing Dealing Rendering Other
what with with with cultural
brokers specialised official delicate differences
tell terminology situations situations
family
members

Figure 12. Teacher questionnaire: perceived problems associated with CLB with family
members
 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 307

i.e., 57%); difficulty in dealing with topics requiring specialized terminology (17
respondents, i.e., 35%); difficulty in dealing with official situations, as for example
service encounters with office clerks (14 respondents, i.e., 29%); difficulty in ren-
dering cultural differences (13 respondents, i.e., 26%); difficulty in dealing with
delicate situations, as for example medical consultations (12 respondents, i.e., 24%);
and “other” unspecified problems (two respondents, i.e., 4%) (Figure 12).
However, teachers also see advantages in CLB, especially in the school en-
vironment, where CLB is reported to foster children’s mutual help (for 57% of
respondents), encourage them to socialize (according to 43%), guarantee imme-
diacy (47%), soon turn into a spontaneous activity (20%), improve understanding
between children (20%), and increase intimacy between them (12%) (Figure 13).
Finally, teachers’ overall expectations toward child brokers range from “they
enable communication with foreign children” (61%) to “they are readily availa-
ble” (41%), through “they provide a rough translation but can convey main ideas”
(33%), “they translate word for word” (6%), “can only translate in practical situa-
tions” (2%), and “other” (6%) (Figure 14). 8

8. By contrast, respondents’ expectations toward professional brokers include the following:

“know the language perfectly” (41%), “know the culture of children and their families” (55%),
“provide practical information” (29%), “can also communicate emotions” (20%), “can cope with
difficult situations” (18%), “no expectations” (8%), “other” (6%) and “do not translate word for
word” (2%).
308 Letizia Cirillo

What are the main advantages of CLB?

98
100
YES
NO
88

80 80
80

60 57 57
53

(%) 47
43 43

40

20 20
20
12

2
0
It It It It It It soon Other
fosters encourages improves increases guarantees turns
children's socialization under- intimacy immediacy into a
mutual standing spontaneous
help activity

Figure 13. Teacher questionnaire: advantages of CLB

What do you expect from child language brokers?

100 98
94 94 YES
NO

80

67
61
59
60

(%)
39 41
40
33

20

6 6
2
0
They They can They can they They are Other
translate convey only enable readily
word for main translate communi- available
word ideas in cation
practical with
situations foreign
children

Figure 14. Teacher questionnaire: expectations toward child language brokers

 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 309

4. Discussion

This section summarizes the findings illustrated above by discussing them in light
of the literature on CLB and by offering some suggestions for future research in
the field.
Although, given the limited sample size of questionnaires collected so far, the
data analyzed are not yet statistically significant at national level, some general
observations can be made. First, and despite the mixed profiles of the brokers who
compiled the questionnaires, some patterns can be identified as to the personal
and social features of their language brokering experience. In particular, at the
time the questionnaire was administered, 70% of our young respondents reported
being actively involved in brokering activities, 55% reported brokering with some
regularity, i.e., from at least once a month to every day, and 52% started brokering
between 8 and 12 years of age.
In line with previous studies (e.g., Tse 1996; Weisskirch & Alva 2002; Bucaria
& Rossato 2010), responses to the questionnaire item regarding the people bro-
kered for revealed that the category ranking first is parents (56%). Similarly, lan-
guage brokering activities tend to occur most often at home (46%), as also noted,
although with different percentages, by Orellana et al. (1999) and Orellana (2010).
However, and again in line with previous research (e.g., Tse 1996; Orellana 2009;
Hall and Guéry 2010), children also broker in a whole range of public settings,
including schools (both in the classroom and during parent – teacher conferences),
hospitals and medical practices, banks and post offices, and even police stations.
Brokering activities and modes, as well as brokered text types, also vary consider-
ably – from interpreting encounters and phone calls of different types to filling in
forms by translating spoken words into writing, through orally translating written
texts ranging from signs and labels to teachers’ notes (which rank first among the
most often translated texts in our survey).
Responses to the broker questionnaire also denoted a fair amount of me-
ta-linguistic and meta-translational awareness on the part of young respondents
who reported resorting to the same strategies when facing difficulties. In particu-
lar, and in line with what emerged from focus groups and interviews previously
conducted with former brokers attending either senior high school or univer-
sity (see Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Bucaria 2014), they seem to prefer translating
what they understand (implying summarizing, rephrasing, and even omitting
information) and asking for clarification. The issue of translation choices and
brokering strategies definitely deserves a specific focus within research on CLB
310 Letizia Cirillo

and requires a methodological shift toward the microanalysis of video-recorded

natural interactions. 9
As to brokers’ attitudes toward CLB, youngsters seem to prefer brokering in
the family rather than in a school environment: 60% of respondents said they are
happy to broker (at home) for their parents, as opposed to 43% who are happy to
do it at school for their teachers and classmates. One possible interpretation is
that at school, children may be afraid of not being able to meet their teachers’ and
peers’ expectations in terms of brokering performance, and may thus lose their
face in front of them. One further interpretation is that the practical implications
of brokering for your family are crucial for the material well-being of the people
involved and are therefore more immediately tangible than the effects of brokering
in the classroom. In other words, if only by making a phone call from home, child
brokers guarantee access to resources and opportunities that their families would
otherwise hardly benefit from.
Clearly, children are not always happy to serve as interpreters and translators
for their parents, as is evident from the findings of Section 3. Brokers’ feelings are
in fact many and varied in both the family and school contexts, ranging from pride
and enjoyment to a sense of obligation and dislike. Mixed feelings were also noted
in previous and concurrent data collections, especially focus groups with former
brokers (see Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Bucaria 2014) and a writing and drawing
contest organized for primary and secondary schools (see Section 1, Antonini
2011; 2014; this volume; Torresi this volume).
As pointed out by Orellana (2009 this volume), it is no wonder that children
may experience CLB in several different ways, given the diversity involved in this
practice (e.g., of participants, situations, and tasks). Such a wide array of feelings
is more understandable if we consider the “status” of young brokers who are not
bilingual by choice, but by circumstances (see Angelelli 2010), and, by providing
language and cultural support of various types on an ad hoc but regular basis,
in fact routinely “work” as interpreters and translators (see Hall & Sham 2007;
Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva 2012). Unacknowledged as it still may be, the
practice of CLB is in fact accounted for by young brokers themselves as some sort
of normal duty and described as “chores,” “no big deal,” etc. (see Orellana 2009
and Bucaria & Rossato 2010, among others).

9. The only analysis of this type of which we are aware is an unpublished study by Rosa Pugliese
on classroom interactions occurring at an Italian primary school and involving young bilinguals
speaking Italian and Chinese. Orellana (this volume) also advocates for a greater attention to
brokering episodes, in order to better investigate the sociolinguistic and ethnographic aspects of
CLB.
 Chapter 15. Child language brokering in private and public settings 311

As to teachers, their overall perceptions of how young brokers play their role
in the two “macro-environments” under examination are rather more homoge-
neous than those of the brokers. In particular, teachers’ questionnaires yielded
slightly higher percentages for the feelings of enjoyment and pride associated to
brokering at school, which can probably be explained by the fact that the school
is the setting in which they can actually see young brokers in action, at least on a
regular basis. This datum, however, can also be accounted for in terms of a posi-
tive bias related to the fact that brokers undeniably facilitate the communication
between teachers and children who are not proficient in Italian – which also co-
incides with what teachers expect from young brokers (as shown by the number
of preferences obtained by the options “they enable communication with foreign
children” and “they are readily available”; see Section 3). Specifically, according to
the vast majority of the instructors who took part in our survey, child brokers play
a crucial role in guaranteeing a smooth introduction of newly arrived classmates
speaking the same language, and this finding complies with the results obtained
through previous interviews and focus groups with different cohorts of teachers
(see Rossato 2014).
Teachers’ responses also evidenced that CLB activities in the classroom are on
the increase. This is in line with the data presented by Caritas-Migrantes (2013)
on the incidence of migrant children in Italian schools, particularly in Emilia
Romagna (where the data analyzed in this paper were collected), which is the
Italian region with the highest share of migrant children enrolled in schools (with
an average of 14.6% for the preschool to secondary school span). Accordingly,
and given the chronic lack of professional brokers in Italian educational settings,
teachers consider child brokers as precious resources in day-by-day teacher – pu-
pil interaction and regard CLB as beneficial to the small-scale social system of
the classroom, particularly in terms of enhanced cooperation and understanding
among classmates (see Section 3; Rossato 2014).
Despite these relational advantages, teachers also pointed out a number of
problems associated to brokering activities by children. Well over half of the
respondents seem to be concerned about not being able to double-check what
young brokers tell either their classmates or families (depending on the situation)
while translating. However, most of their concerns seem to focus on children’s
alleged difficulties in coping with the assigned task at various levels (e.g., linguistic-­
terminological, situational-transactional, and psychological-relational). In this re-
spect, it is interesting to note that, when specifically asked about young brokers’
feelings toward CLB, teachers perceived “feeling different from their mates” and
“feeling morally obliged to broker for their families” as bigger problems than what
brokers themselves reported (see Section 3).
312 Letizia Cirillo

Moreover, teachers think CLB should be avoided, whenever possible, in spe-

cific circumstances, namely those involving talk on family problems or otherwise
delicate issues and/or formal institutional encounters (see Section 3, Rossato 2014).
Concerns and opinions of this type reflect a die-hard non-normative attitude to-
ward CLB, which is common to teachers as well as representatives of other in-
stitutions, such as doctors, as shown by previous studies (e.g., Cohen et al. 1999;
Cirillo et al. 2010; Cirillo & Torresi 2013; Cirillo 2014; Torresi 2014). This attitude,
which goes as far back as early studies on CLB, consists in viewing CLB activities
as generally detrimental to children’s psychological development as well as family
relationships, and therefore as something children should not do (see Orellana
this volume). Arguably, however, CLB cannot be totally avoided, not just because
children see it as one of their “normal” duties, but also because the resources al-
located for interlinguistic and intercultural communication are still poor. In fact,
one of the merits of CLB is precisely to have raised awareness on this paucity and
inadequacy, as well as on the complex role of language brokers, as highlighted by
different scholars in different countries (e.g., Foulquié Rubio et al. 2013; Gustafsson
et al. 2013, to mention but two recent contributions). However, this is a different
topic, which requires a different paper. It can be concluded that, 30 years after the
publication of the first studies on CLB, not only is CLB considered “normal” or
even “normative” (at least by brokers themselves), but it is also definitely no longer
invisible.

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 Chapter 16

Through the children’s voice

An analysis of language brokering experiences

Rachele Antonini
University of Bologna

Because of the lack of provision of language services and for cultural reasons,
immigrants very often choose to entrust their children with the task of trans-
lating for them. In this paper, we will discuss results from a wide-scale study
carried out by the In MedIO PUER(I) research group 1 of the University of
Bologna aimed at assessing the main attitudes towards and opinions on child
language brokering (CLB) held by the primary actors involved in this form
of linguistic and cultural mediation: children of immigrant families attend-
ing primary and middle schools in the Forlì-Cesena province of the Emilia
Romagna region. The analysis of the narratives they produced and submitted
will provide a detailed description of the language brokering activities, in
which children are involved, and will illustrate their feelings towards CLB, thus
providing an insight into the impact that CLB has on their lives.

Keywords: CLB, In MedIO PUER(I) project, narrative research, research with

children, school competition, school setting

1. Introduction

Translation and interpreting are ancient practices, and they can probably be con-
sidered two of the oldest human activities. Ever since the need to overcome lan-
guage barriers emerged, communities and peoples have had the need to rely on
the skills of individuals (adults and children) who are able to speak two or more
languages. Nonetheless, it was only with the onset of the demographic chang-
es triggered by mass migration and globalisation processes in the past century

1. The In MedIO PUER(I) research group is constituted by Rachele Antonini (the coordina-
tor), Chiara Bucaria, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato, Ira Torresi and by former members, Michela
Giorgio Marrano and Cristina Valentini.

doi 10.1075/btl.129.16ant
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
316 Rachele Antonini

that the provision of language services became a pressing issue and, regrettably,
a problem often ignored by the central and local governments of many countries.
Translation and interpreting studies have traditionally approached this prac-
tice with a partial eye to “the linguistic and social interactional processes involved
in an interpreted [and translated] event” (Antonini 2008: 246) and to professional
interpreting and translation.
By contrast, non-professional interpreting and translation (NPIT), despite be-
ing a huge and largely submerged reality, which involves people translating and
interpreting on a regular or ad hoc basis in a huge variety of formal and informal
settings ranging from tourism, the media, public services, activism, conflicts, etc.,
was considered, until very recently, the poor relative of translation and interpreting
studies and hence constituted a widely ignored area of research. One of the main
reasons at the basis of this neglect may be ascribed to the fact that it was and still
is generally regarded, by both the professional category and the academia, as a
dangerous practice both in terms of ethical issues and of the impact it may have
on the people who need to resort to the services of a linguistic mediator and thus
a matter of concern. 2 Yet, NPIT is a reality in every country that is subject to lan-
guage contact brought about by a number of factors, one of which is migration.
NPIT performed by children and adolescents is commonly defined as child
language brokering (CLB). This widespread practice of linguistic and cultural me-
diation or brokering has generated the bulk of academic production and research
on NPIT and has developed into a self-contained area of study (Orellana 2009).
For the purposes of the research project In MedIO PUER(I), together with many
other researchers and scholars (and the contributors in this volume), the term
“child language brokering” is preferred for two main reasons. First, because it
includes the word “child,” which immediately focuses on the age of the mediators
and, second, because, as Hall and Sham noted, the term “brokering” captures the
complexity of this activity whereby children not only translate or interpret but also
“exert agency,” thus displaying a high level of cognitive and social responsibility
(Hall & Sham 2007: 18), by handling complex technical, legal and administrative
problems and making decisions on behalf and for the benefit of their families
(Shannon 1990). 3

2. Only very recently was NPIT granted official recognition within interpreting and translation
studies with the inclusion in 2011 of an entry devoted to the Natural Translator and Interpreter in
the Translation Studies Reader (Gambier & Van Doorslaer 2012) and of two entries (“non-profes-
sional interpreting and translation” and “child language brokering”) in the forthcoming edition
of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies (Pöchhacker 2015).
3. For a detailed analysis of the state of art of research on CLB, see Orellana (in this volume)
and Hall & Guéry (2010).
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 317

This paper will illustrate and discuss the data collected by means of a school
competition that enabled the In MedIO PUER(I) project to collect written and
visual narratives 4 from primary and secondary level education students. After
introducing the research project, this paper will discuss the ethics involved in
conducting research with/on children and will provide a description of the main
methodologies used. The second part of the paper will focus on the school compe-
tition and the analysis of the who, what and where of CLB in Italy as well as how
the children perceive their role as language mediators.

2. The In MedIO PUER(I) project

The study of CLB in Italy is still in its infancy. Before 2007 (the year in which the
In MedIO PUER(I) project started), any data or observation on this practice was
simply a by-product, an accidental and marginal discovery within studies focusing
mostly on the teaching/learning of Italian as a second language and migration. 5
Hence, the In MedIO PUER(I) project started with the aim of not only mapping
out this practice in Italy but also

–– to confirm that CLB is extremely common among all the linguistic and ethnic
communities that live in Emilia Romagna and Italy at large;
–– to provide a detailed description of the participants, the situations and con-
texts in which CLB takes place;
–– to assess the impact that CLB has on various aspects of life and the develop-
ment of language brokers, and on public institutions’ policies;
–– to gather data on children’s, parents’, teachers’ and institutional representa-
tives’ attitudes towards CLB.

In order to achieve such aims, a multi-method approach (combining qualitative

and quantitative methodologies) was adopted to observe the phenomenon from the
widest perspective possible. The research methodologies employed for the purpose
of studying CLB in Italy comprised semi-structured interviews and focus groups,
participant observation in classrooms, the administration of questionnaires and
the collection of written and visual narratives. The targeted population includ-
ed former language brokers, primary and secondary level education teachers,

4. For an analysis of the visual narratives, see Torresi in this volume.

5. The only study that preceded the In MedIO PUER(I) research project is Valtolina’s (2010)
analysis of the relationship between language brokering and the psychological well-being of a
sample of Italian-born Filipino adolescents.
318 Rachele Antonini

representatives and operators of a variety of public institutions and healthcare

operators. Moreover, contrary to other studies on CLB, the In MedIO PUER(I)
project did not single out one specific linguistic and ethnic group but focused on
all linguistic and ethnic groups present in the region, thus providing a complete
and nuanced depiction of CLB as obtained in the province of Forlì-Cesena.
The following section will provide a description of the issues involved in con-
ducting research on and with children.

2.1 Research on/with children and the use of narratives

Before moving on with the analysis of the narratives collected by means of the
school contest, it is important to discuss the issue of the involvement of minors in
research, in terms of both their rights and the difficulties involved in the presence
of a particularly stringent legislation as is the case in Italy.
Research on and with children is generally viewed within the context of the
international rights-based framework within which minors, who are defined by
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC 1989) as “hu-
man being[s] below the age of 18 years,” were granted the right to express their own
opinion. Article 12 of the UNCRC states that all minors who are capable of form-
ing their own views have also a right to express those views freely in all matters
affecting them, with the views of the child being given due weight in accordance
with their age and maturity, thus gaining the right to be heard. 6
Stemming from the subsequent ratification of the UNCRC by many states, the
past two decades have witnessed an important shift in the perception of children
and childhood and, consequently, a growing attention to the acknowledgement of
the children’s right to be considered as active participants in society (Lansdown
1994; Hall & Sham 2007). This, in turn, has resulted in a great number of stud-
ies and publications aiming at reconstructing childhood (Prout & James 1990;

6. The 54 articles contained in the UNCRC cover a wide array of rights for children and young
people, which fall under the rubric of (i) empowerment, that is, advocating for children as au-
tonomous people under the law; (ii) the right of protection, that is, claiming on society and
the state for protection from harms perpetrated on children because of their dependency; (iii)
economic, social and cultural rights, which are related to the conditions that are essential to meet
basic human needs, access to education, housing, food, work, health; (iv) environmental, cultural
and developmental rights, which include the right to live in safe and healthy environments and
the right to cultural, political and economic development. Besides these physical and collective
rights, children are also entitled to individual rights that “allow them to grow up healthy and
free” (Calkins 1972: 327), namely ownership over one’s body, freedom of speech, thought and
choice, freedom from fear and the right to make decisions. All these rights should be safeguarded
whenever children are involved in research.
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 319

James & Prout 1997) and uncovering those elements of childhood that until then
had remained invisible to acknowledged social actors and agents such as public
institutions and service providers, academic research, i.e. to adults (Books 1998;
Morrow 1995). This new sociology of childhood has contributed to a shift from the
established dominant approaches, which perceived minors exclusively as (passive)
objects of enquiry, to a theoretical and methodological paradigm that views mi-
nors as social actors and active agents with a unique perspective and insight into
the reality that is the object of study (Moran-Ellis 2010; Tisdall & Punch 2012).
While in the relevant literature many studies provide examples of children and
young people as competent social actors and emphasise their agency (e.g. Hutchby
& Moran Ellis 1998), it is more difficult to find interpretations and explanations as
to what children and young people make of and how they perceive such agency:
anthropologists have both asserted and clearly documented children’s agency,
singly and in groups, in a number of situations. What is less clear is the degree of
agency, the impact of that agency, let alone the nature of that agency.
 (Bluebond-Langner & Korbin 2007: 242)

Prout and James’s (1990:8) definition of the children’s role as social actors which
describes them as “active in the construction of their own lives, the lives of those
around them and of the societies in which they live” is particularly true for the role
they play as language brokers to help their families and communities integrate in
their new country of residence. 7
Following the paradigmatic shift in the perception of childhood and children’s
agency, research on CLB has been able to provide evidence that supports the view
that when children and young people interpret and translate for others, they are
actively participating in decision-making processes that have an impact on both
their own and their families’ lives (Shannon 1990; Hall & Guéry 2010). This also
entails that when and while they act as mediators, they will need to interpret
and resolve any misunderstandings, ambiguities and difficulties they come across
when they are brokering for others (James 2009: 41).
Nonetheless, despite the new way in which children’s roles and statuses are
perceived, researchers and scholars do not entirely agree on how research with/on
children should be approached and conducted. Hence, while it has been observed,

7. Mayall builds on James and Prout’s definition by distinguishing between actor and agent and
specifying that
A social actor does something, perhaps something arising from a subjective wish. The
term “agent” suggests a further dimension: negotiation with others, with the effect that
the interaction makes a difference – to a relationship or to a decision, to the workings of
a set of social assumptions or constraints. (Mayall 2002: 21)
320 Rachele Antonini

for instance, that “to carry out research with children does not necessarily entail
adopting different or particular methods, [because] like adults” they can take part
in most data collection methods (e.g. interviews, questionnaires and participant
observation) (Christensen & James 2000: 2), “adult perceptions of children and
children’s marginalized position in adult society” (Punch 2002: 321) are still in-
fluencing how research with children is viewed and approached.
Research with/on children, just like any other type of research, has potential
benefits and drawbacks. It is therefore important to be aware of the fact that, in
reality, both from an ethical and methodological point of view, the added concern
is for the children themselves, not just the science.
The availability of guidelines and standards that regulate research involving
minors represents a valuable support for researchers. The ethics of research with
children is an issue addressed by various research councils and professional bod-
ies in their ethical guidelines and codes of practice with the purpose of helping
researchers carry out their research in an ethical manner (Morrow 1995). They
also provide useful guidance for the drafting of informed consent, a fundamental
instrument aimed at obtaining the consent of parents (or adults acting in loco par-
entis) to carry out research with their children. Once informed consent has been
obtained, children themselves must be put in the condition of providing their as-
sent so that they know that they can choose whether to participate in the research. 8
After this initial stage of fieldwork, researchers must also deal with several
issues that arise during research. The first one concerns how the subject matter is
introduced to the participants and, when children are involved, all sensible precau-
tions must be taken in order to ensure that they will not be harmed or negatively
affected by participating in the research. Second, children should be informed that
they have the right to withdraw from the research at any stage. Thirdly, the subject
matter should be explained in a way that does not generate any apprehension,

8. The issue of informed consent is central in discussions on research on/with children. Con-
sent is usually interpreted and defined as permission from parents or adults acting in loco par-
entis. In the past, children were not seen as entitled of the right to say “no” to research. In more
recent years, this situation has changed. However, researchers are still required to obtain consent
from a wide range of adult gatekeepers (e.g. parents, school teachers, head teachers, local educa-
tional authorities).
Informed consent is based on three features: (i) disclosure of the knowledge and informa-
tion on the research that must be provided to the participants in a form they can understand;
(ii) their voluntarily consent and (iii) their competence to give this consent (Beresford 1997).
Since children do not have the same cognitive capacities as adults, informed consent should
be developed so as to provide information that is customized in a form that children can
understand.
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 321

confusion or misunderstanding and which avoids any type of condescension on

behalf of the adults involved in the research.
Good planning and the use of ethical guidelines are a useful support for solv-
ing general ethical dilemmas; however, more specific ethical issues may arise at
any stage of the research, hence researchers should be prepared to deal with them.
In the case of data collection for the In MedIO PUER(I) project, as Morrow
and Richards (1996) reported for the United Kingdom, obtaining the signed con-
sent from the parents was just one of the final, and time-consuming, steps of the
preliminary stages of the study. Consent was also obtained from the local educa-
tional authority, the schools managers and principals and the teachers. Yet, despite
collecting all these consents, we were not granted the permission to video record,
and in some cases even to audio record, the children involved in the research
project. The idea of the school competition emerged from the need to find a way
to collect the children’s opinions and narratives of their experiences as language
brokers. The choice of having the children write about their experiences with CLB
relied on the fact that narratives are particularly adaptable for the purposes of eth-
nographic and qualitative research since “a narrative is a story that tells a sequence
of events that is significant for the narrator or her or his audience” (Moen 2006: 3).
The following section will illustrate the use of narratives as a method of qual-
itative research.

2.2 Narrative research

Narrative research is a relatively recent interpretive method of enquiry and it is

mostly situated within qualitative and interpretive research traditions. However, it
is increasingly used in the social sciences in a variety of disciplines including inter
alia, anthropology, conversation analysis, educational practice and experience,
(socio)linguistics and sociology. Its expediency in qualitative research relies on
the fact that “the story becomes an object of study, focusing on how individuals or
groups make sense of events and actions in their lives” (Mitchell & Egudo 2003: 1).
Various researchers have provided many definitions of narratives and narrative
research, which tend to differ according to the methodological emphasis applied.
However, as Moen (2006) argues, it is possible to describe narrative research ac-
cording to three basic assertions: (i) that human beings are inextricably connected
to the context (i.e. the social, cultural and institutional setting) and the situation
they experience and, thus, the stories they tell help capture both the individual
and his/her context; (ii) that narratives and the story they tell are shaped and in-
fluenced by a number of personal and interactional factors (e.g. personal values,
past and present experiences, interlocutors and addressees and the place and time
322 Rachele Antonini

when the stories are told; and (iii) that narratives are characterised by a multivoic-
edness that is shaped by the teller, the addressees and the researchers. This study
follows Lieblich et al.’s comprehensive definition that best summarises the nature
and complexity of narrative research by defining it as:
Any study that uses or analyses narrative materials. The data can be collected as
a story […] or in a different manner […]. It can be the object of the research or a
means for the study of another question. It may be used for comparison among
groups, to learn about a social phenomenon or historical period, or to explore a
personality. (Lieblich et al. 1998: 2)

Data collection methods in narrative research include field notes, in-depth inter-
views, the researcher’s observations, storytelling, letter writing, autobiographical
writing, pictures and drawings. In CLB research, the main narrative methods that
have been used are interview (Bauer 2010; this volume; Cirillo et al. 2010) and focus
group transcripts (Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Rossato 2014), journal entries (Orellana
et al. 2003; Orellana & Reynolds 2008; Orellana 2009), the analysis of visual nar-
ratives (Torresi this volume) and the transcript of simulations. In general terms,
the use of one or more of the methods listed above is dependent on the research
object and objectives and can also be influenced by ethical and pragmatic issues.
In the case of data collection in primary schools, the decision to choose narra-
tives over other methods of quantitative and qualitative research was determined
by two main reasons. The first one was to promote the In MedIO PUER(I) project
in schools so as to gain the interest and cooperation of teachers. The second was
represented by school principals’ opposition to granting the permission (especially
in primary schools) to either audio or video record children during interviews or
field observation. The latter represented a significant methodological problem for
the researchers who decided to opt for the school competition and the collection
of written and visual narratives in order to obtain the children’s accounts of their
experiences as language brokers.
The following section will describe the school competition in detail.

3. The school competition: Traduttori in Erba (Budding Translators/

Interpreters)

Emilia Romagna is one of the Italian regions with the highest number of immi-
grants and the first in terms of the percentage of foreign minors enrolled in primary
and secondary schools (see Antonini 2014 and Rossato 2014 for a detailed analysis
of current migration trends to Italy). It was thus only natural for the In MedIO
PUER(I) research group to choose to engage the schools in their data collection
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 323

activities. The aim of the school competition was, therefore, twofold. First of all, it
was considered instrumental in making the research project known to the teachers
of primary and middle schools in the province of Forlì-Cesena, which is situated
in the south-east of the northern region Emilia Romagna. Secondly, it was also
devised to give children who engage in CLB activities or who witness them an
opportunity to illustrate their experiences by describing in their own words or
drawings the translation and interpreting activities they are asked to perform, as
well as their feelings towards CLB, thus giving visibility to the huge contribution
they make to their families and the Italian society.
Two editions were organised in 2010 and 2011. The schools involved were pri-
mary schools (children aged 6–10) and middle schools (children aged 11–14) in the
province of Forlì-Cesena. The children taking part in the competition were asked
to write a short composition or present a drawing in which they either described
their experience as a language broker or illustrated a language brokering event
that they had witnessed. This latter point was introduced in order to allow Italian
children to take part in the competition.
Great care was used in the wording of the rules of the competition, which
included a definition of the practice of linguistic and cultural mediation, as well
as the topic of the competition. A great advantage was represented by the fact that
teachers were entrusted with the task of explaining the competition and the subject
matter to the children in words and terms that they could easily understand and
relate to their own experiences.
The competition had an official framework comprising a set of rules, a jury
and an official ceremony that took place at the town hall and during which the
Mayor of Forlì-Cesena, in the presence of other authorities, handed out the awards
to the winners. The main awards consisted in vouchers for school material for
the winners of each category (first two years and last three years of primary
school, and middle school), but also for the schools they represented. Smaller
awards (University of Bologna gadgets) were also presented to second, third and
fourth place for all the categories. All the winners also received a plaque bearing
the engraving “Translator ad honorem.” The ceremony was covered by the local
newspapers.
In all, we received 200 contributions, which helped us understand the exten-
sion of the CLB phenomenon as well as a wide range of issues and factors that are
related to it and which are summed up in the following list:

–– the where and when of CLB;

–– identity issues;
–– bi/multilingualism factors;
–– the positive and/or emotional impact of CLB;
324 Rachele Antonini

–– the often traumatic experience of the first day of school;

–– the difficulty of learning Italian;
–– translating strategies adopted by the language brokers;
–– parentification and adultification issues;
–– the role played by peer Italian mediators;
–– (in)voluntary humour.

All the aspects described by the children in their narratives contribute to paint a
multifaceted picture of what it means to mediate linguistically and culturally for
other people and in a huge variety of situations and contexts, and most of them
are well documented in the literature on CLB practices. Other aspects, like, for
instance, the description of the first day of school or the role played by young
Italian mediators, have not been addressed in other studies and would certainly
deserve more attention. What is certainly worth mentioning is that the diversity
of aspects and issues that emerged from the narratives help us to understand that
CLB is just one element of the complex process of adjustment and acculturation
that is part of the language brokers’ life.
The following sections will focus on two of these aspects that the children
chose to describe in their written narratives: the situations and contexts in which
they are asked to broker and the perception they have of their role as language
mediators.

3.1 The when and what of CLB: The school setting

The when and what of CLB is one of the aspects of this phenomenon that has
been studied in detail (Weisskirch 2005). Through their narratives, the children
who took part in the school competition confirmed that, as described in previous
studies carried out in other countries and with a variety of linguistic and ethnic
groups, they are generally asked to language-broker in a wide array of formal
and informal situations and contexts. The main institutional domains in which
children and adolescents language-broker for family members and other people
range from educational and healthcare services, as well as financial, administrative
and legal services.
Art. 36 of Italian Law N. 40 of 6 March 1998 asserts the necessity of establish-
ing “the criteria and modalities to employ when communicating with the families
of foreign pupils, even with the help of qualified cultural mediators.” Schools,
health authorities and other public offices are allotted a certain number of hours
with professional language and cultural mediators on an annual basis and de-
pending on the demand by foreign pupils/students and users. The institutions then
decide how and when to use these language services. However, when it comes to
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 325

the regulation of language brokering activities performed by children, there are no

available guidelines. The only official and direct reference to CLB in schools is con-
tained in a circular on the integration of foreign pupils published in 1989 (http://
www.edscuola.it/archivio/norme/circolari/cm301_89.html), which encourages the
involvement of pupils of different ethnic origins, who have some competence in
the Italian language, in helping their peers who do not speak Italian.
Conversely, the new guidelines for the welcoming and integration of foreign
students published in 2014 by the Ministry of Education, University and Research
(http://www.istruzione.it/allegati/2014/linee_guida_integrazione_alunni_stra-
nieri.pdf), while providing clear indications on how to welcome and assist foreign
students who enrol in Italian schools, do not even acknowledge the existence of
the phenomenon of language brokering and the fact that in the majority of cases it
is the only available option to help teachers, students and their parents overcome
linguistic and cultural barriers.
The narratives submitted for the two editions of the Traduttori in Erba compe-
tition provided a detailed picture of the language brokering activities experienced
and witnessed by children. Primary-school age children generally describe having
brokered in both formal and informal situations, which include peer-to-peer (for
friends and school mates) and child-to-adult (for their parents and/or family mem-
bers and teachers, for instance) interactions. Middle-school age children report
more complex and formal language brokering events, which may include inter-
actions taking place at the hospital, police station, at the lawyer’s, but also at the
trade union. Hence, the pattern that emerges shows that the level of difficulty and
complexity of such linguistically mediated interactions, in terms of the vocabulary
and knowledge required, tends to increase as the children grow older.
The narratives submitted by primary school children list both informal (at
the supermarket, at the baker’s and the butcher’s) and formal contexts (like, for
instance, at the doctor’s and at the bank). This is a very good example of the wide
array of the language brokering activities, in which children of immigrants en-
gage on a regular basis for both their families and other members of their ethnic
and language community. Very often they include interpreting and translating in
situations that an adult Italian native speaker would find rather challenging and
demanding (e.g. at the police station, at the hospital, translating the tax return
form and so on). Indeed, as observed in the relevant literature:
the demands made upon children when literacy brokering can range from the
relatively trivial, maybe just writing out a note for the milkman, to the massively
complex, like helping a father fill out a tax form, but at the higher level the chil-
dren are responding challenges that their fellow students are unlikely to meet
until they are adults. (Hall & Guery 2010: 41)
326 Rachele Antonini

One of the contexts in which children are asked to language-broker more often is
the school (Prokopiou et al. 2013; Cline et al. 2014). Within the school setting, the
situations in which children are asked to interpret and translate include pupil –
teacher interactions, parent – teacher meetings, communications from the school
to the parents, emergencies or impromptu situations. Children and adolescents
are asked to language-broker in all these situations, because schools can resort
to a very limited number of hours of paid professional linguistic and cultural
mediation. Hence, any situation that requires brokering services and that cannot
be dealt with the help of a professional will see a child/adolescent acting as a lan-
guage broker.
The language brokering of pupil – teacher interactions occurs whenever the
teacher needs to communicate with a pupil who cannot communicate in Italian.
There are two available options: the first one is to ask a pupil from the same class
and who speaks the same language to interpret for his/her school mate and the
second option is to ask a pupil from another class to assist the newcomer pupil
with some class activities and in communicating with the teachers.
Example 1 contains the story of how a 12-year-old boy was helped by one of
his classmates when he started attending primary school and how he came to rely
on his friend who language-brokered for him in the school context (here and in
all examples, translation is mine and the original is provided in the Appendix):

(1) When I arrived on 16 September 2009, I did not speak Italian and only knew
a few words. The first person who helped me learn Italian was my mother,
and then my friend Vladi. Vladi is a Moldavian boy who could speak both
Romanian and Italian. He helped me a lot by translating the things that
my teacher told me, when my classmates talked to me or when doing my
homework.

Example 2 below, submitted by an 11-year-old Tunisian girl, is illustrative of the

fact that the enrolment of non-Italian-speaking children in schools can take place
at any time throughout the academic year without guaranteeing the help and
assistance of professional language and cultural mediators. This situation entails
that children speaking their same language and who are fluent in Italian are asked
to translate for them and to make sure that they become familiar with school
activities and rules.

(2) By attending school, I learnt Italian and English, which can be added to the
language I already know, that is Arabic. For this reason, in these last few years,
I have been quite helpful to teachers. Day after day our class “gets bigger and
bigger” as foreign children from many countries including Arabic-speaking
countries enrol at my school. Since they have just arrived, they do not know
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 327

Italian; for this reason, they cannot express themselves nor can they understand
the topics explained in class. This is when I “step in” and translate for both the
teacher and my class mates.

Example 3 shows how children may also take the initiative and intervene outside
the classroom to facilitate peer-to-peer interactions:

(3) Another example which might seem trivial regards the kid who has just arrived
and who, by not understanding the rules of the game, might get excluded. By
writing and thinking about this topic, I have realised how a small gesture can
have such a big impact.

As Examples 4 and 5 show, some children go even beyond that and, hoping also
to make the adults for whom they language broker more autonomous, use the no-
tions they learn at school and the material they use in class to teach them Italian:

(4) I always help my mom in our vegetable and food shop. We put together a
50-page booklet, where I wrote a few words in Italian, which I translated into
English and then into Bangla. When a customer walks into the shop and says a
word my mother doesn’t know, she takes out the booklet that we have prepared
together and turns to the page with the right word. In this way, she’s able to
understand what she’s being asked and she can answer by herself. This book
was my idea.
(5) I told her [my aunt] words and she repeated them after me. She wrote down
words in Arabic with the translation in Italian below. I still occasionally teach
her a bit of grammar, and when she comes to my house, we only speak Italian.
I prepared a big book where every day I would add pages that I photocopied
from by school books. That book had 100 pages, the cover was light blue with
a pink ribbon. I taught her the same things I had learned. In the end, my aunt
threw away the book because it was too heavy.

Even though a great part of the hours of professional mediation allotted to schools
is used for parent – teacher meetings, they are not sufficient to cover the needs of
schools for all the students and for all the languages they speak. This means that in
many cases, children of foreign origin are required to interpret at parent – teacher
conferences, 9 where their own school performance is discussed and with all the
implications that this may have.

9. In Italy, parent – teacher conferences are face-to-face meetings, in which parents and teachers
meet in person. They take place once every school term and they are notified in writing to the
families and also online on the school’s website. The form in which these meetings are carried
out varies according to the school grade. In primary schools, they consist of pre-scheduled one-
to-many meetings between one parent and multiple teachers, whereby the parent(s) of each child
328 Rachele Antonini

The following example (6) illustrates how child language brokers have to
navigate through complex circumstances when mediating between parents and
teachers, particularly when the subject matter is their own educational progress
and performance. A 14-year-old Chinese boy reports his experience of having
to interpret for his father at parent – teacher conferences at his middle school.
The narrative, entitled “Parent – teacher conference day” is structured in separate
paragraphs, each representing a meeting with a different teacher. In most of these
meetings, the teachers reported a negative assessment on the child’s academic
and linguistic progress and complained about the fact that he did not have the
books and materials necessary for him to study the different subjects and do the
assigned homework:

(6) Last month, one day at 3:45 pm, my father and I went to school for parent –
teacher conference. My father does not understand Italian and I translated for
him.
First my dad and I talked with my art teacher and she said that once I did not
do in-class assignment because I haven’t bought the course book and she said
that I need to buy the course book.
[…] We talked to the Italian teacher and she said that I need to work harder
or I will repeat the year.
[…] Then we talked to the music teacher. She said that I play the flute well, but
my homework is not good because I do not understand Italian well.
[…] The technology teacher said that I am good at graphic design but I don’t
study because I do not have the course book.
[…] I translated all good and bad things for my father.

This example is particularly significant for a number of reasons. First, as can be

seen from the original in the Appendix, this child is not very fluent in Italian.
This means that at the time of his writing, he had probably arrived Italy quite
recently. Nonetheless, as is often the case with language brokers, he was required
to interpret for his father and his teachers. Second, he admits to having translated
everything for his father including the comments on the fact that he does not have
the material (e.g. school texts) necessary for him to practice and study, something
that could also be interpreted as a reproach to his parents. Third, this and the other
examples presented in this paper are particularly illustrative of the self-positioning
of language brokers in situations in which they have to deal with the complexities
that characterise mediating between languages and cultures, namely

meets every teacher and is updated on the child’s academic development and progress. In middle
schools, they are one-to-one interviews. At all school levels, special parent – teacher meetings
can be scheduled to discuss specific matters.
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 329

competing claims for allegiance, competing expectations relating to chrono-

logical and social age behaviour, the contrastive complexities of monologic and
dialogic performance, and the contrastive contexts of the immediate setting and
the broader cultural meanings. (Hall 2004: 293)

The same positioning may occur in other situations in which children may be
required to interpret and translate, which include inter alia, the translation of
written communications and notices from the school to the parents, as reported
also by Orellana (2009).
The feelings associated with language brokering experiences vary consistently
according to a number of factors and situations. The following section will address
the issue of how children perceive their role of language mediators in terms of
the feelings and emotions they associate with their language brokering activities.

3.2 Children’s perception of their role as language mediators

The literature on CLB has highlighted the fact that the emotional experience of
being involved in this practice can be variable (Weisskirch 2007) and has also
shown that children tend to report mixed positive and negative feelings (Tse 1995).
Positive feelings are usually associated with the awareness that by translating
and interpreting for others, they can learn new vocabulary and literacy skills,
but also contribute to maintaining and improving their native language skills
(McQuillan & Tse 1995; Orellana et al. 2003). A negative perception of CLB is
likely to be engendered by feelings such as anxiety, fear, embarrassment and worry,
which contribute to turn the children’s engagement into a stressful and cumber-
some experience.
The great majority of the narratives obtained by means of the school compe-
tition express mixed emotions. In general terms, children of primary school age
reported a more positive attitude towards their role as language brokers, especially
when they had been able to avail themselves of the assistance of a child language
broker when they had arrived in Italy and could not speak the language:

(7) I am happy to help her, I am pleased to do it because I remember when I had

just arrived Italy and didn’t understand the language, so this is why I am happy
I can be useful to someone who needs my help.

Whenever children report negative feelings, these are usually associated with the
fear of making mistakes and a sense of insecurity related to their native language
skills:
330 Rachele Antonini

(8) When I do it, I feel afraid because I’m afraid of making mistakes and if I made a
mistake it would be very embarrassing, (even if I don’t think that anyone would
notice it), but anyway, everyone would exclaim: “Ah, ah, ah…, she doesn’t even
know her own language!”
But this is not the only thing I feel when I translate, there are others: I feel im-
portant at that moment, I understand how useful my act is (without me there
would be total chaos, because the teacher would not be able to communicate
with the pupil and the other way round).

As language brokers get older and their LB activities become more complex and
demanding, the perception they have of their role and responsibilities as language
brokers changes accordingly. What is clear from the comments expressed by mid-
dle-school age pupils is that they tend to have more complex attitudes towards
CLB practices and the way in which they impact on their lives, both in terms of
their awareness of the responsibilities attached to handling complex events, and of
the substantial burden posed by their LB activities on their school and free time.
After listing all the LB activities in which they are involved on a regular basis for
both their families and members of their language community (Example 9), three
14-year-old Chinese girls observe:

(9) In this situation, we feel all the burden of the responsibility that our parents
give us, because they do not speak Italian or don’t speak it very well and, thus,
they are not able to understand what they are required to do.
Our experience helps you understand that being “translators” means doing
things that boys and girls of our own age would not normally do. It is not
easy to spend a whole afternoon at the trade union’s or at the police station,
because we have to do something important for our family; but we have to
do it because it is our duty!
We are really sorry when we have to miss a day or a few hours of school, but
we can’t say no to our parents or friends who need our help!

4. Conclusions

In Italy, despite “the ever growing request and need of language services for the
new migrant population” (Antonini 2010: 234), the measures and policies imple-
mented are scarce and often rely on ad hoc solutions (Rudvin 2006).
However, even those countries with a more established tradition in the provi-
sion of language services to immigrant groups are not able to cover all the needs
and situations, in which these services are required.
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 331

This is particularly evident in the school setting where teachers very often do
not have any other choice but to resort to child language brokers to help newly
arrived pupils get adjusted to a new country, a new language, a new culture and
a new school system.
The unexpected success obtained by the school competition among teachers
and students alike was particularly relevant to understand another important
aspect of this phenomenon – its utter invisibility. Thanks to the competition it
was possible to give visibility to a practice that receives no attention or recognition
and that is often taken for granted by those adults who are the main beneficiaries
of this practice.
As Hall (2004) rightly pointed out, when children are asked to language bro-
ker, they not only have to navigate the complexities of the social context, but they
also face social and practical dilemmas and need to negotiate a pathway through
these complexities. Hence, the study of CLB must always be addressed as a com-
plex phenomenon that requires a scientific approach: all the aspects, effects and
processes triggered by language brokering do not occur or happen in isolation
from one another; therefore, they need to be studied with a methodological ap-
proach designed to take a complete picture of this phenomenon and which takes
into consideration all the ethical issues inherent in research with/on children.
Moreover, given the immense contribution that child language brokers make to
their families and society at large, “the talents these bilingual youngsters exhibit
cannot be denied. Identifying and nurturing the talent that these bilinguals dis-
play should not continue to go unnoticed. Rather, those talents need to be nurtured
and celebrated” (Angelelli 2010: 94).

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Appendix. Examples in the original language

(1) Io sono arrivato in settembre 16 dell’anno 2009. Quando sono arrivato non sapevo parlare
l’italiano, ma solo qualche parola. Per imparare l’italiano prima mi ha aiutato la mam-
ma e il mio amico Vladi. Vladi era un bambino moldavo che sapeva parlare il rumeno e
l’italiano. Lui mi ha aiutato moltissimo, traducendomi le cose che mi diceva la maestra,
quando mi dicevano qualcosa i miei compagni o quando facevo i compiti.
(2) Andando a scuola ho imparato l’italiano e l’inglese che si aggiungono alla lingua che
conosco già, cioè l’arabo. Per questo motivo in questi anni, sono stata molto utile alle in-
segnanti. Giorno dopo giorno la nostra classe “si allarga sempre di più” e giungono ancora
bimbi stranieri, provenienti da tanti paesi e pure dai paesi in cui si parla arabo. Essendo
appena arrivati non conoscono l’italiano, per questo motivo non possono né esprimersi né
capire gli argomenti trattati. A questo punto “intervengo” io traducendo sia alla maestra
che ai compagni.
(3) Un altro esempio che potrebbe sembrare banale riguarda il compagno appena arrivato che,
non capendo le regole di un gioco, rischierebbe di rimanere escluso. Scrivendo e ragio-
nando su questo tema, sono riuscita a capire bene che basta un piccolo gesto per riuscire
a fare tanto.
(4) Io le dicevo delle parole e lei ripeteva con me. Lei scriveva delle parole in Arabo e sotto le
scriveva Italiano. Io ancora adesso l’aiuto a fare un po’ di grammatica; quando viene da
me parliamo solo in italiano. Io le ho preparato un libro molto grande dove ogni giorno
aggiungevo qualche scheda, fotocopiando i miei libri. Questo libro aveva 100 pagine, la
copertina era azzurra con un nastrino di tre colori. Io le insegnavo le stesse cose che avevo
imparato io. Adesso questo libro mia zia l’ha buttato via perché era molto pesante.
(5) Io aiuto sempre la mia mamma nel nostro negozio di frutta, verdura e alimentari. Insieme
abbiamo costruito un libretto che ha 50 pagine e 100 facciate, in quel libretto io ho scritto
delle parole in italiano e poi ho trasformato in inglese e poi dall’inglese ho trasformato in
lingua bangla. Quando arriva un cliente e dice una parola che mia mamma non capisce,
lei prende subito il libretto che abbiamo fatto noi due insieme e va nella paginetta dove c’è
quella parola giusta. Così riesce a capire quello che le domandano e sa rispondere da sola.
Questo libretto è stata una mia idea.
 Chapter 16. Through the children’s voice 335

(6) Il mese scorso un giorno alle 15:45 io e mio babbo siamo andati a scuola perche c’erano le
udienze con i professori. Mio babbo non capisci italiano e io ho fato la traduzione.
Prima io e mio babbo abbiamo prato professoressa di arte e lei ha detto che io una volta
non ho fato verifica perche non ho comprato libro e ha detto che devo comprare libro.
[…] Abbiamo parato e la professoressa [di italiano] ha detto che devo lavorare di piu se
no rimago in prima.
[…] Dopo abbiamo prato con il professoressa di musica. Lei ha detto che in frauto sono
bravo, ma i compito non vanno bene perche ancora non copisco italiano.
[…] La professoresa di tecnica ha detto che disegno bene ma no studio perche non ho libro.
(7) Io sono contenta di aiutarla, lo faccio volentieri perché ripenso a quando io ero appena
arrivata in Italia e non capivo la lingua, per questo sono contenta di poter essere utile a
qualcuno che ha bisogno.
(8) Quando lo faccio, mi sento intimorita perché ho paura di sbagliare e se commettessi un
errore sarebbe molto imbarazzante, (anche se secondo me nessuno lo capirebbe), comun-
que, tutti esclamerebbero: “Ah, ah, ah… non conosce neppure la sua lingua!” Ma non eè
solo questo il sentimento che provo quando traduco, ce ne sono altri: sentirmi importante
in quel momento, capire l’utilità del mio atto, (se non ci fossi stata io sarebbe stato il caos
totale, perché la maestra non avrebbe potuto comunicare.
(9) È in questa situazione che sentiamo tutto il peso della responsabilità che i nostri genitori
ci danno, in quanto loro non parlano o parlano poco la lingua italiana e, quindi, non sono
in grado di capire ciò che viene loro richiesto.
La nostra esperienza vi fa capire quindi che essere “traduttori” significa fare cose che
non fanno normalmente i ragazzi della nostra età. Non è facile passare un pomeriggio
in sindacato o in Questura, perché si deve fare una cosa importante per la famiglia; ma
dobbiamo comunque impegnarci a farlo, perché è un nostro dovere!
La cosa che ci dispiace di più è quando dobbiamo saltare un giorno o qualche ora di lezione,
ma non si può dire di no ai genitori o agli amici che hanno bisogno di noi!
 Chapter 17

Seeing brokering in bright colours

Participatory artwork elicitation in CLB research

Ira Torresi
University of Bologna

A recurrent issue in child language brokering (CLB) research is how to best ad-
just ethnographic methodologies in order to collect data from young children.
There are a number of practical considerations in addition to the necessary
ethical aspects. Questionnaires and other methods relying on the written word
may prove inadequate for first- and second-graders, and even for older bilin-
gual or multilingual children who may not have the same level of literacy in
all their languages. Methods relying on the spoken word, such as interviews,
focus groups or participant observation, may prove similarly problematic when
groups of respondents have mixed language proficiency levels. Artwork elicita-
tion, on the contrary, can be an effective and inclusive way to collect qualitative
data about young children’s feelings and perceptions about CLB. It has the
potential to elicit visual narratives from large groups of children (e.g. entire
classes or schools), while leaving them free to include aspects of the phenome-
non being investigated that would otherwise be difficult for them to describe in
words. This chapter explores primary school children’s experience of CLB as it
emerges from artwork submitted for the “Budding translators” competition de-
scribed by Antonini (this volume), and proposes an analysis that draws mainly
on visual and social semiotics.

Keywords: artwork elicitation, visual narratives, participatory ethnological

research, visual semiotics, perceptions of CLB

1. Why artwork elicitation

Child language brokering (CLB) research often faces a series of issues when apply-
ing ethnographic data collection methodologies to minors. The first, most obvious
problem is ethical and has to do primarily with the protection of young respond-
ents or interviewees and only secondarily with the scientific soundness of the
research. Summarising Antonini’s apt description in her chapter of this volume,

doi 10.1075/btl.129.17tor
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
338 Ira Torresi

ethical issues are most likely to arise at three points: when the subject matter is
introduced to the young participants in the study, when consent is sought (both
from the children and their parents), and in the wording of the instrument itself.
This latter point is particularly sensitive as researchers (especially those without
a specific psychological or educational background) may find it challenging to
come up with questions and closed or scaled answers that are comprehensible and
relevant for the young respondents, while avoiding an unintentionally patronising
tone – as well as, of course, hidden biases and leading questions.
A second set of concerns is linguistic in nature and has to do with literacy lim-
itations that are due to the participants’ age and, possibly, their level of competence
in the language used in the questionnaire or interview. This is a case that may arise
in field research with groups of children with mixed migrant backgrounds – some
of them born in the country where the study is being conducted, others having
migrated there with their families, perhaps from a culture where the written word
is not necessarily the preferred mode of expression (see for instance Blommaert
2004, 2008). If the questionnaire or interview is mediated by interpreters or trans-
lators, or facilitated by other professionals (e.g. the children’s teachers), there may
be a risk of introducing uncontrolled biases. Moreover, having the instrument
interpreted or translated might not always be financially or practically feasible. At
the same time, a linguistically homogenous composition of the sample of respond-
ents is not always an option, given the difficulty in finding and gaining access to
young respondents with a migrant background who practice CLB. For instance,
in InMedIO PUER(I)’s survey of junior high school child language brokers (aged
11–14), questionnaires were administered during school hours and the cohorts of
respondents were either self-selected or selected by the school itself (Cirillo this
volume). In this case, a trained researcher was always present during administra-
tion to deal with any question or doubt in the most informative, understandable
and unbiased possible way, but such an approach would probably have been much
harder with younger children.
In addition to linguistic issues that apply to bilinguals or multilinguals with
mixed levels of proficiency, when working with children under the age of 7–8, we
must also consider that participants may have limited literacy and still prefer other
modes of expression. In his Before writing (1997), Gunther Kress points out that
children resort to drawing (and other visual/tactile/spatial modes such as building
block architectures and other game arrays) as their primary mode of expression
until schooling and education impose the primacy of the written/read word on
them. Moreover, it may be not too far-fetched to assume that, even after a child
starts school, it takes some time until that primacy is firmly imposed. Especially
when it comes to eliciting a response that is supposed to be spontaneous rather
than reflective, writing may not be the child’s first choice.
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 339

Considerations of this nature may be the reason why Marjorie Orellana chose
to elicit accounts of young brokers’ life experiences by walking with them in their
own neighbourhoods and asking them to shoot pictures. In this way, she “could
approximate seeing things through their eyes […] noticing what they noticed and
listening to what the kids had to say about their pictures” (Orellana 2009: 138). This
social research method, best described in Orellana (1999 and 2003), and Orellana
and Hernández (1998), is called “photo elicitation” (Collier & Collier 1986) or
“participatory photo interview” (Kolb 2008). As Orellana herself seems to point
out in her remark above, ethnographic research with visual rather than verbal-only
methods allows a more spontaneous, if perhaps more anarchic, flow of data. This
may be due to images being processed by parts of the human brain different from,
and “evolutionarily older” than, the parts that process words, meaning that visual-
based data collection methods “evok[e] a different kind of information” to verbal
approaches (Harper 2002: 13).
Unlike other visual methods, the kind of photo elicitation used by Orellana
does not rely on visuals provided by the researcher, but employs participant-gen-
erated material. The difference is not insignificant, since “participatory approaches
to visual research change the dynamics of the research process […]. They facilitate
[…] participant engagement and empowerment resulting in more balanced re-
searcher-participant relations” (Rydzik et al. 2013: 285–286). Furthermore, while
“most elicitation studies use photographs, […] there is no reason studies cannot
be done with paintings, cartoons, […] or virtually any visual image” (Harper
2002: 13). The method of “art(work) elicitation,” which has already been used in
educational contexts (e.g. Baker et al. 2013; Dryden et al. 2009) would seem par-
ticularly suitable for work with young children who have only recently acquired
literacy but have been long acquainted with arts-and-crafts activities (especially
drawing and painting/colouring) as a part of their daily lives both at school and
as a form of play.
Participatory artwork elicitation, then, can be one effective way to limit the
risk of introducing unintentional condescension or paternalism when conducting
research with young children (or whenever there is a power imbalance between
researcher and participants). At the same time, using participant-generated mate-
rial makes the subject of the research immediately relevant for the children, as it
connects directly with their own experience. Finally, given the linguistic concerns
expressed above, the opportunity to reduce verbal language to a minimum dur-
ing the data collection process is extremely valuable when working with partici-
pants who are both very young and possibly not proficient (yet) in the researcher’s
language(s).
As we will see in the next section, under certain circumstances and depending
on the type of response required, the proposed elicitation method may even be
340 Ira Torresi

used as a distance data collection tool, thus adding the further benefit of practi-
cality and the potential to reach larger populations of participants than would be
possible with face-to-face interviews. This implies that the visual materials so col-
lected are treated as data per se rather than used as prompts for verbal instruments,
such as interviews, which might not be practicable and could re-introduce the lan-
guage-related biases indicated above. To this end, the social research method used
to collect data must necessarily be integrated with a semiotic-based visual analysis
method that may sound unfamiliar in the context of CLB research. Nonetheless,
it is worthwhile exploring this interdisciplinary combination of methods to as-
certain whether they might successfully cross-pollinate and thus reinforce the
usefulness of art elicitation in CLB studies and other social research-based fields.

2. The study: Data collection and method of analysis

The artwork analysed in the following sections was collected through the Budding
translators competition that Rachele Antonini has already described in her con-
tribution to this volume. It is important to recall here that the first and foremost
aim of the competition, which involved primary and middle schools, was to raise
and spread awareness about the importance and value of CLB among child bro-
kers and their peers. The contest was also, secondarily, the data collection tool
for a study that complemented the multi-method research carried out by the In
MedIO PUER(I) group (e.g. Cirillo, Rossato this volume). In order, then, for the
competition to be truly inclusive irrespective of language proficiency and literacy
levels, it was deemed appropriate to divide the contest into three separate sections:
grades 1–2 (ages 6–7) who were asked to provide drawings accompanied only by
short verbal captions; grades 3–5 (ages 8–10) who could choose between a draw-
ing and a short essay; and middle school students (ages 11–14) who had to submit
written compositions. While Antonini has already given an account of the written
narratives collected through the contest, this chapter will focus only on the visual
narratives provided by primary school children.
Overall, children attending primary school grades 1–5 in 2010 and 2011 sub-
mitted 23 visual narratives, all of which will be taken into account in the following
analysis. 1 Participants were asked to submit an account of their own experience
of any form of CLB, whether they had undertaken it themselves or witnessed it
first-hand. Therefore, the foci of the discussion here will be on how the children
participating in the contest perceive CLB – what it is in their own eyes, the contexts

1. In 2010, three drawings were submitted for grades 1–2 and 10 for grades 3–5; in 2011, five
drawings were submitted for grades 1–2 and other five for grades 3–5.
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 341

and ways in which it is (or is not) part of their everyday life, the feelings and con-
notations they associate with it. Quite clearly, such information cannot provide an
objective or statistically relevant account of CLB in Italy, but remains firmly (and
happily) rooted in the (perhaps equally interesting) realm of the subjective and
the emotional. All of the accounts and conclusions provided in this chapter, even
those offered with the help of numerical data, should be interpreted accordingly –
as qualitative only, and by no means as attempts at generalisation.
In order to do justice to the visual medium used by the authors, the following
analysis will take into account not only the content of the drawings (i.e. what is
depicted on the page) and the accompanying verbal captions (i.e. what is said
about the drawings), but also the visual encoding of the messages (i.e. how the pic-
tures are constructed), mainly using the concepts of Kress & Van Leeuwen’s visual
“grammar” (1996/2006). In so doing, a social semiotic approach will be adopted
that highlights how meaning is co-constructed by elements carried by all the me-
dia of expression involved in its production and reception (see for instance Van
Leeuwen 2005). According to this approach, the spatial relations depicted (Scollon
& Scollon 2003), colours, perspective/angle, visual composition of the drawing
and the frames that set any of its parts aside, are as equally relevant as what is
depicted and the accompanying verbal caption. 2 Of course, given the young age
of the participants in this study, it can be assumed that, unlike their selection of
what to depict and what to say about it, their choice of visual modality was largely
unintentional. This, however, does not affect the possibility of applying a visual
semiotic method of analysis to such material. The traditional view in semiotics is
that once a text is produced, it becomes available for the reader 3 to interpret and
make sense of, regardless of the author’s intentionality (Eco 1979). Visual semiot-
ics, then, only provides a way to break visual texts – any kind of visual texts – down
into the elements that constitute them, and is not concerned with the authors’
conscious awareness of such elements and of the “grammar” that connects them.
This comment on the authors’ intentionality leads to a final caveat. It should
be remembered that the scope of this paper does not include the study of mean-
ing-making in children’s drawings in general. I shall limit myself to an investiga-
tion of the depiction of CLB that emerges from the meanings embedded – both

2. Admittedly, the material I will be working on was scanned from the original drawings, which
excludes the tactile mode from the analysis. This implies that a series of elements will necessarily
be left out, such as the kind and size of paper employed, its thickness and grain; the intensity of
the colour, whether the felt pens or pastels have brushed the paper lightly or scratched it in places,
and eraser marks.
3. Here the term “reader” is intended in semiotic terms, as the decoder of the (verbal, visual or
multimodal) text.
342 Ira Torresi

within and beyond the realm of mere figuration – in the 23 drawings submitted for
the Budding translators competition in 2010 and 2011. In addition, the drawings
will be analysed together in the following sections, with no distinction depending
on grade or age. This implies that even when certain visual characteristics of the
drawings (e.g. the use of a frontal angle vs. devices to express perspective) might
be due to the author’s age and visual proficiency, only the effect (in terms of visual
semiotics) that they may produce on the reader will be taken into account, without
any consideration regarding the child’s cognitive development, which would go
beyond the scope of this paper and the expertise of the author.

3. The child in the middle: Where does the broker stand?

Over the total of 23 visual narratives, 13 narrate real-life mediated encounters

between speakers of different languages, 4 while the rest are multilingual or mul-
ticultural/multiethnical narrations, i.e. different languages are spoken or several
different ethnic and cultural groups are represented in the same picture, but with
no translation explicitly involved. For the purposes of this study, however, I will
treat all the pictures as narratives of brokering or mediation, since even when
no translation is specifically indicated, the pictures and captions refer either to
abstract views of interlinguistic/intercultural contact or to consequences of medi-
ation (e.g. non-native speakers of Italian thanking those who helped them become
linguistically and/or socially proficient).
The first visual category I will employ as an analytical tool is that of horizontal
composition, that is to say, the left-to-right positioning of elements on the page.
According to Kress and Van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (1996/2006: 179–185), in
cultures whose writing progression is from left to right, elements depicted to the
left of the page tend to have the value of the “given,” i.e. to occupy the theme po-
sition, whereas the right-hand-side position corresponds to the “new” or rheme. 5

4. By “real-life” here I mean accounts that provide realistic details of a child translating between
other people, either verbally (e.g. “I did not know what they were saying and when I asked my
schoolmate answered…”) or visually (e.g. a picture set in a shop described in detail rather than
against an abstract background). The outcome of the encounter may be successful or unsuccessful
communication: e.g. in one drawing, a child is placed between an Arabic speaker and his own
father who asks for explanations, but the balloon coming from the child’s smiling mouth reads
“a jo capit gnit” [“I haven’t understood a word,” in the local dialect of Forlì].
5. This order is of course reversed in cultures whose languages are written with a right-to-left
progression. It should be remembered, however, that at the time of the competition, the authors
of the drawings were attending primary school in Italy.
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 343

In the children’s drawings analysed here, however, at least two additional values
seem to be attached to the horizontal compositional axis – that of interpersonal
footing (Goffman 1981) and its corollary, power symmetry/asymmetry.
It should be noted that the very topic of the contest (i.e. describing brokering)
implies a strong suggestion of interpersonal relations, since brokering practices
involve at least one broker and two other sides of the communication process in
what Wadensjö (1998: 12), referring to dialogue interpreting, calls a pas de trois.
More interestingly, however, the visual medium presents the young authors with
a very practical problem: where does the broker stand physically and symbolically
vis-à-vis the other participants in the mediated event? What distance is there be-
tween the three sides involved in the interaction? Do the participants have equal
power, or is only one of them helped by the broker? Quite clearly, children’s visual
representations of brokering also face issues that are absolutely central and much
debated in interpreting studies, such as interpreters’ footing and neutrality/invisi-
bility (e.g. Roy 1993; Tate & Turner 1997; Alexieva 1997; Wadensjö 1993 and 1998;
Rudvin 2002; Angelelli 2004: 19–22; Hale 2011), and their psychological distance
and boundary-setting versus personal involvement (e.g. Bot 2003; Valero Garcés
2005; Pöchhacker 2012).
In what appears to be the most recurrent division of the page, the three par-
ticipants in the verbal exchange are represented side by side with some blank
space between them to signify that they are to be read as separate entities within
the same physical and semiotic space. Figure 1 is perhaps the most representative
drawing of this kind. 6

6. In the pictures, as in the rest of the paper, real names have been left out or changed to protect
children’s identities.
344 Ira Torresi

Figure 1. The new Chinese boy’s first day at school. 7

Here, the three participants – the Italian schoolmate or teacher, the non-Italian
speaking Chinese schoolmate, and the Chinese broker – are all depicted from a
frontal angle, meaning that they are presented as part of the reader’s world and
look directly at the reader, engaging him or her – judging from the three smiling
faces and the desk drawn in the foreground – in an emotional relationship of re-
laxed “being-togetherness” at school (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 116–140). 8
Overall, the broker is literally the child in the middle in eight narratives. 9 In
another three representations of real-life mediated encounters, the child in the

7. The verbal text that accompanies the picture translates as: “The new Chinese boy’s first day
at school. A 10-year-old boy came in March and he did not know Italian. Luckily there is anoth-
er Chinese boy in the same class who explained everything to him.” The Italian balloons read:
“Where do you come from?” and “[New Chinese boy’s Italian name] said: I come from China.”
8. I will not venture into interpretations of the different size of the broker vis-à-vis that of the
other two figures. We learn from the caption, however, that the scene happens in a first-grade
class, while the new boy is 10 years old. If the third participant is the adult teacher, then the
6-year-old broker is likely to be actually smaller than the others. Another possibility is that the
author is trying to convey perspective and the three people involved are placed around the desk
in the foreground with the broker standing at its far end.
9. In three out of eight such drawings, the author is identified as the brokering child; in four
cases, s/he witnessed the brokered event; and in one case, it is not possible to tell.
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 345

middle is the one who receives the translation. 10 However, not all of these tripar-
tite pictures share the same degree of symmetry and inclusion shown in Figure 1.
For instance, all human participants are depicted from a frontal angle only in
three other drawings of the same set. In one such case (Figure 2), the equalising
and inclusive value of the frontal angle is actually undermined by a double fram-
ing device – the salient representation of a fence and two different colours used
for the background – that splits the picture into two strongly separate units of
meaning (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 203–204). In the upper part of the

Figure 2. Gardening at school. 11

10. Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996/2006: 194–200) identify recurrent patterns in the informa-
tion value of what is to the left and right of the centre in triptychs, which is mainly linked to the
distribution of given and new elements. However, in the children’s drawings analysed here, the
people represented to the left and right of the child in the middle seem to be positioned rather
randomly. For instance, in four cases, one of the broker’s parents (which, one might assume,
would most likely occupy the position of the “given”) is represented to the broker’s left, while in
another four, the parent is to his/her right. Furthermore, it is not always possible to identify the
relationship between the broker and the other two sides of the interaction.
11. The caption reads: “While I was watering [the plants] in the school garden my grandfather
passed by: [author’s name] don’t misbehave! – he said in Albanian. Ok – I answered. [author’s
name] what did your grandfather say? The teacher asked. He said that if I misbehave he’ll scold
me.” The balloons in Italian read, right to left: “[author’s name] what did he say?” and “He said
that if I misbehave he’ll scold me.”
346 Ira Torresi

drawing, the one usually associated with more abstract or “ideal” content (Kress
& Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 186–193), a blue background, which according to Van
Leeuwen (2011: 64) denotes emotional distance, was chosen for the street where
the grandfather stands. In the lower part of the picture, normally associated with
the information value of the “real,” the broker is seen translating the grandfather’s
remark from Albanian into Italian for the benefit of a classmate and a teacher. The
latter action is set in a warmly coloured school garden enclosed by a fence that cuts
across the page from left to right. One might therefore conclude that, although all
participants are represented from the same frontal angle and are clearly seen to
be interacting with each other over or across the fence, the framing and the use
of colours point to a clearly asymmetrical division of the “us/them” kind, where
the author, at least while at school, seems to identify more with his immediate
surroundings and less with a member of his family who remains outside the school
boundaries.
In all other narratives of tripartite brokering, the same kind of “us/them”
division is visualised mainly through directions of gaze and body posture. The
importance of gaze vectors, body orientation and physical distance in achieving
and representing empathy and what Penn & Watermeyer (2012: 275) term “cultural
buffering” to the benefit of those who are not proficient in the host language is rec-
ognised not only in social semiotics, but also in the study of dialogue interpreting
(e.g. Mason 2012). In seven of the drawings, one or more of the participants are
shown facing all or one of the other characters, thus signalling that they are not
part of the reader’s world and also creating asymmetrical groups of participants
in the interaction. In four of these visual narratives, the broker and a relative face
each other, thus excluding the third participant from their relation. 12 Similar to
the Albanian-Italian broker’s narrative in Figure 2, two further drawings reinforce
this asymmetry by colour use and/or framing in ways that go beyond the mere
naturalistic depiction of physical features of an enclosed space, but appear to be
“motivated signs” (Kress 1997: 91–94), i.e. they convey the specific meaning of
separation. In both cases, the part containing the brokering child has a warmer
background, indicating that the author identifies with, or feels emotionally close
to, him/her. In one of the two drawings, a Chinese boy is portrayed by an Italian
schoolmate while he translates between a teacher and his own father. The boy
and the father share the same brown, red-purple and yellow background, while
the Italian teacher stands against a cooler yellow and brown background. In the
other drawing, the Chinese author is depicted facing her mother to whom she is
speaking across a fence that cuts the page vertically from margin to margin, while

12. Note the difference from the Italian-Albanian author of Figure 2 and his sense of belonging
with the school environment rather than with a member of his family.
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 347

a blonde classmate appears standing behind her, facing her back, with a question
mark above her head. The Chinese girl uses pink-purple for the right-hand side of
the drawing (the school garden) and light brown for the left-hand side (the street
where her mother is seen standing by her bicycle). 13

Figure 3. At the shop. 14

In another representation of an asymmetrical triad (Figure 3), the author-broker

stands behind the friend she brokers for, pushing him forward with outstretched
arms towards the shopkeeper they both face. This narrative is an exception in the
collection in that there is no distance between the two friends, making it clear
that broker and user count as a single information unit vis-à-vis the shopkeeper,

13. Curiously, Figures 1 and 3 are two of the five drawings that do not portray all the children
involved as smiling – the Chinese boy in the first drawing has his mouth open in a circle (he is
caught speaking), while the Chinese girl here and her blonde schoolmate both have “flat” mouth-
lines. In both drawings, the adults have smiles on their faces. Of the other three drawings with
children who are not smiling, one shows a boy with a gaping mouth and a question mark above
his head to show that he is not understanding what is being said, but the other two children in
the picture (the one who speaks Romagnolo dialect and the broker), are both smiling. The other
two drawings will be described in the following section on colours (they are the playground scene
with the crying boy, and the classroom scene where we only get a back view of the author).
14. The larger writing on top of the page reads: “I am helping him. We are FRIENDS.” The diago-
nal writing on the left reads “I won!” (the entire left-hand section seems to be the representation
of a claw machine).
348 Ira Torresi

whose distance from the girl and boy is further highlighted by his standing behind
a very prominent green counter. The caption reads: L’aiuto io. Siamo AMICI. (“I’m
helping him. We are FRIENDS”). In addition to the capitalised word “friends,”
the verb “help,” which is recurrent in the verbal narratives analysed by Antonini
in this volume, is also relevant here.
Figure 3 is particularly telling because it brings to the fore what might be more
implicit in the other asymmetrical representations of mediated encounters, i.e.
that children seem to look at the allegiances that may arise during brokering as
normal and largely positive consequences of the mediation processes. This point
will emerge perhaps more clearly from the following section.

4. The colours of brokering

The use of colour as a framing device has already been discussed in the previous
section with reference to space partitioning and personal distance. Here, I will
focus on colour qualities as carriers of meaning per se.
The first and foremost quality that is evident when looking collectively at the
23 drawings is colour saturation. Most of the authors employ the bright, saturated
colours that are usually used as children’s identity markers not only in children’s
visual discourses, but also in discourses aimed at children (Van Leeuwen 2011: 93).
Saturation, especially in warm tones, is also usually associated with “positive, ex-
uberant, adventurous” feelings (Van Leeuwen 2011: 61). As a result, the reader has
the overall impression that CLB is seen under a benevolent light by the children
involved and their peers. Such an impression is so consistent that the exceptions
are prominent, both in their numerical scarcity and in the extent to which their
colour scale differs from that of the rest of the narratives. It may be worthwhile,
then, to analyse such cases individually.
I will start with what is perhaps the exception that constitutes the starkest con-
trast with the rest: the only black-and-white drawing in the collection (Figure 4).
Van Leeuwen (2011: 61) remarks that “the absence of colour […] can unlock
metaphors such as ‘ascetism’ and ‘austerity’.” Without wishing to ascribe ascetism
to a primary school girl, the picture is striking not only for the total lack of colour,
but also for the unusual framing strategy that sets the three children apart from
a setting that is rather nondescript and therefore would not appear to deserve
a separate meaning unit (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 203–204). The im-
pression is that the author felt the need to differentiate between a small niche of
gratification, happiness and rich detail (the stage at the centre of the page) and a
generic “rest of the world.” Although Figure 4 might be interpreted as the rather
naturalistic description of a stage show (notice the flowers in the girls’ hands), the
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 349

Figure 4. With a little help from my friends.15

colourlessness and partitioning of space, the use of perspective to distance the

stage from the reading plane, as well as the presence of some background detail
only within the stage area, seem to point to a sense of gratitude and belonging to
a small group of friends and helpers, all of them Chinese. By contrast, the context
appears so irrelevant that, with the exception of few very stylised trees and flowers
out of perspective, the constituent people and objects are not even drawn in the
rather large space around the stage/niche. Regardless of the smiles on the three
children’s faces and the frontal angle that, if only the stage were not so distant
from the reading plane, would suggest that they are part of the reader’s world, this
contrast is, quite literally, not presented in a bright light. It is also interesting to
note that two of the children have their eyes closed, shutting their gaze vectors and
thus making it difficult to interpret the drawing as a “demand” picture where the
reader is directly emotionally engaged (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 116–124).
The second drawing that contradicts the rule of brilliant, “enthusiastic” col-
ours is dominated by the representation of a tall building labelled the “Ospedale
Pierantoni” (Forlì’s public hospital). The white hospital divides a small red am-
bulance driven by a stick man (with another little stick man lying in the back of
the ambulance) from a larger right-hand section of the page with a stylised slide
and swing and, more prominently, a dark-skinned boy. The small red ambulance,
the boy’s equally small and red shirt, and the yellow of the sun above, squeezed

15. The caption translates as: “Thank you, friends. With your help, now I get by!.” In the original
picture, the three children were all identified as Chinese by the names above their respective
heads, deleted for privacy reasons. The author portrays herself as the girl to the left.
350 Ira Torresi

between two significantly larger and very dark grey clouds, are the only warm
colours in the drawing’s palette. Besides the grey clouds above and the white ex-
panse of the building (and the road leading to it), the other main colours are green
for the grounds around the hospital and the dark blue used for the sky, the boy’s
trousers and the caption letters. A lighter blue is used for the hospital’s many rows
of windows. The scene is therefore dominated by cold, desaturated hues that seem
to point to a “cold and repressed, brooding and moody” attitude (Van Leeuwen
2011: 61) towards the episode recounted in the drawing. In addition to the lack
of saturation, blues and greys are a marker of sadness in art theory (ibid.). This
is not surprising given the content of the scene. As is apparent from the caption,
which reads Qui ho incontrato chi mi ha aiutato. Qui sono guarito (“Here I have
met someone who helped me. Here I was healed”), the boy has evidently benefited
from some kind of help – be it language brokering or just healthcare – when he or
somebody he cared for was brought to the hospital.
This picture can be contrasted with another that depicts a smiling blonde girl
standing close to a boy in clear distress – he is crying, blood is pouring from a cut
on his side, and his bicycle is lying on the ground. Here, the difficult situation is
depicted in much brighter and more diversified colours, which may be connected
to the fact that the setting is entirely different from a hospital: the two children are
in the city park, with rabbits scampering around them. The smile on the girl’s face,
combined with the caption (Quando si gioca nessuno è straniero, “At play no-one
is a foreigner”) points to her judgement that her friend’s wound, although painful,
is the kind of superficial and temporary injury that a child would normally expe-
rience when playing, rather than a health problem that requires hospitalisation
or an ambulance trip to the ER, as shown in the previous drawing. In this picture
even the sun, which has a face and is depicted in glasses (a visual pun? sunglass-
es), smiles down at the children from a turquoise, cloudless sky. The path the two
children are standing on originates directly from the sun itself, thus linking them
to a benign surrounding environment, while the white mass of the hospital in the
previous picture achieves the opposite effect of division, although it cannot be
called a frame in the proper sense, as the top does not reach the upper edge of the
page, leaving some sky above.
The last exception to the generalised use of bright colours (Figure 5) is drawn
in pastel colours with a prevalence of pale grey/yellow employed for a tiled floor
that is represented in perspective and takes up over three-quarters of the picture.
The top of the page is occupied by two rows of realistically detailed open lockers,
each containing a school bag (painted in different, but rather desaturated, colours),
and a window looking onto a tree, while the author with her back on the reader
can be seen sitting at a green table that takes up about a quarter of the floor. A
teacher also sits at the same table, smiling, with her pink bag hanging from the
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 351

Figure 5. “How difficult it is to learn!”

back of her chair. We see her in three-quarters view, so that she seems more a part
of the reader’s world than the girl herself appears to be. There are three other empty
chairs. The angle at which we see the scene is significantly higher than normal eye
level, creating the impression of looking down on the participants from a position
of power. Since the participants’ gazes are focused on the table and there is no
other vector that reaches the reader, the scene is clearly constructed as an object
for contemplation and does not elicit the reader’s emotional involvement – it is
clearly an “offer” picture (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 116–124). The overall
impression is one of emptiness and isolation. The lower right quadrant of the
drawing, to which Kress and Van Leeuwen (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 197)
ascribe the information values of “real – new,” is empty except for the floor, and the
girl and teacher are both placed in the lower left quadrant (real – given). Because
of her smaller size and the fact that she is turned away from the observer, the girl,
in particular, appears detached both from the setting around her and the reader’s
world (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006: 138–140).
It should be noted that, although the call to take part in the competition
clearly glossed the term mediazione linguistica (language brokering/mediation)
as translation of written texts or spoken conversation performed by children, the
author of the drawing might have interpreted the term as the work performed by
professional mediatori (brokers), from whom she has clearly benefited first-hand.
Indeed, the schools that participated in the contest tend to employ the very few
available hours of professional brokering services (paid for by the local authorities)
352 Ira Torresi

for Italian literacy support rather than translation or interpreting. This explains
why the teacher and child are shown repeating the ABC and the caption reads
Imparare, com’è difficile! (“How difficult it is to learn!”). The detail of the bags
hanging in the lockers in the empty room points to the fact that in order to receive
Italian language support, which is provided only to particular pupils with special
literacy needs, children are separated from their schoolmates and are taken to
communal spaces during regular classes (Di Rubbo 2014: 138). This flexible, one-
to-one approach allows schools to cater for children’s individual needs, while at the
same time avoiding an institutional course running throughout the year, which
would require dedicated spaces (and perhaps additional opening times), more
mediatori time than the schools are entitled to or, alternatively, specially trained
literacy teachers. Moreover, such a course might well go unattended should there
be no need for literacy support in a given year (previous ethnographic research in
the same schools, however, suggests that this would be highly improbable, see e.g.
Rossato 2014; Cirillo et al. 2010). That at present Italian state schools are not given
the resources for such institutionalised literacy courses is a fact (Di Rubbo 2014),
and this drawing describes vividly what some of the side effects of the current
approach might be.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in all three cases in which there is an absence of col-
our or colour desaturation, the author of the visual narratives, a first-generation
child, depicts him/herself as a recipient rather than a witness or provider of CLB.
This passive role, too, is further highlighted by the kind of colours employed,
since a proactive attitude would tend to be more consistently associated with sat-
urated and warm colours (Van Leeuwen 2011: 61). Another common feature of
the drawings analysed so far in this section is that people appear comparatively
smaller than in the other visual narratives submitted for the Budding translators
competition, so that the space surrounding the human figures appears more im-
portant than the figures themselves, even when it is largely empty (as in two of the
three cases described here). This seems to point to an awareness of the children’s
perception of an “us/them” divide (people represented vs. context around them)
and attached power relations, which is also recurrent in some of the more brightly
coloured drawings analysed in the previous section and similarly authored by
first-generation children. 16

16. One interesting version of this “us-them” divide is given in a drawing which is not otherwise
relevant in my discussion of space arrangements or colour. In this narrative, the author asks his
friend to translate what the friend’s mother and aunt have been saying in Spanish; the friend
replies, “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you the personal details! They’re going shopping for groceries later.”
In retaining information about his family, the broker/gatekeeper refuses to abdicate the power
(secrecy) granted by their common language. Interestingly, the two boys are depicted facing each
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 353

However, I would like to close this section on a different – and perhaps opti-
mistic – note of colour. When we deal with narratives of brokering, we might also
expect to find a visual account of multiple ethnicities, which is in fact the case in
several of the drawings. That said, children’s attribution of skin colour does not
always fall within what could be defined as the (Western-centric) stereotypical
standard of white to pink for Caucasians, yellow to light brown for Asians, the
entire palette of browns for Africans depending on the area of origin and a com-
bination of the three for Latin Americans depending on their ethnicity. In the 13
narratives, whose characters are not all Caucasians, and excluding Figure 4, which
is entirely in black and white, only five seem to correspond to this standard. In two
of the other drawings, the Chinese characters’ faces are painted in the same pink
as the Italian participants in the interaction. 17 The same happens to the face of an
Arabic speaker in a third picture, whereas in a fourth drawing, the Italian author
leaves both his own skin and that of his friend from Salvador white.
In another instance, the standard is actually subverted. The author portrays
four parents of different origins waiting for their respective children at the end of
the school day and saying “hello” in Chinese, Albanian, Italian (her own mother,
who also calls her name) and Arabic. While the Chinese father does have slanted
eyes and the Albanian mother has her head covered, the author’s Italian mother is
the only one with a light brown skin, while all the others are white, with black eyes
and red smiling mouth-lines. The very same subversion can be observed in the re-
maining two pictures in this set, which are particularly telling in their symmetry.
The two drawings were made by two 8-year-old friends, one from Morocco
(whom I will call Yasmin) and the other from Burkina Faso (Selima). Their origin
and identification is made clear in both drawings by the accompanying captions
and balloons over their respective heads, but otherwise it would be very difficult to
tell from the visuals who is who. The fact is that Yasmin portrays her own skin as
a rich dark sienna and paints Selima’s face in a much lighter brown/yellow, while
Selima gives herself (and her family) a light brown hue (different from the one
used by Yasmin), but sees Yasmin as definitely pale pink. Hair colour also defies
the standards of ethnic stereotypical representation. In both pictures, Yasmine has
blonde hair, exactly as Selima’s mother, while Selima sees herself as a red-head, but
has brown hair in her friend’s depiction. It would seem that in these two cases, and
in those discussed above, skin colour is not a constant component of difference and

other, smiling and with outstretched hands; they are sitting in the Latin American child’s house
in the same kind of relaxed “being-togetherness” that I have referred to in analysing Figure 1.
17. This cannot be accounted for by a lack of colour sensitivity, given that in both cases differently
coloured backgrounds are used as a framing device (see Section 3).
354 Ira Torresi

is less relevant than other elements in drawing the boundaries between groups –
the “us/them” divide that has emerged so often.

5. Conclusions

While in no means exhaustive, the analysis provided in this chapter has hopeful-
ly shown that visual narratives collected through artwork elicitation, even with
potentially large cohorts of participants (such as entire classes or schools), can be
subjected to qualitative analysis without necessarily presupposing follow-up in-
dividual or focus-group interviews that may not be practicable or desirable (as in
the case of the Budding translators contest described by Antonini in this volume,
which was primarily a contest and only secondarily a research instrument). The
drawings collected for the purposes of this study seem to reveal insights that might
not otherwise be retrieved solely through verbal-only tools. This is even more true
when the young age of the participants, and their varying degree of literacy, are
considered. Such insights stem both from an analysis of what is represented in
the drawings and how it is represented on the page, following a visual “grammar”
(Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996/2006).
As we have discussed in Sections 3 and 4, some of the authors of the visual nar-
ratives submitted for the Budding translators competition seem to show awareness
of the power relations involved in brokering practices and take for granted that,
whenever one of the participants in the event can be identified as the weaker side
(if only as a result of a lack of language proficiency), brokering will always be per-
formed to their benefit. In this sense, brokering takes on the meaning of “helping
less proficient peers out” not only with learning the host language, but also with
operating in the host culture and managing everyday interactions (e.g. at the shop,
the playground, in the classroom and at the hospital). Representations of this kind
appear to point to what Hale (2008) would term advocating for the disempowered
or facilitating communication, which, as Hale rightly concludes, are roles that can
carry profoundly negative connotations in court interpreting. In the drawings
analysed here, however, brokering appears to happen mostly among young peers
and in everyday settings where, one might argue, ethical considerations seem less
of an issue than simple empathy. As we have seen, when the sides between which
the child is shown brokering enjoy different positions of power, and, in particular,
when one of the sides is a distressed child, the broker is usually depicted in highly
emotional terms, as a friend, ally, rescuer or helper (a sort of “guiding angel,” in
the words of one of the written essays), without any reference to concepts such as
social or moral justice. This should be borne in mind even when the interpreting
scholar cannot help but hear the echoes of essentially critical discursive approaches
 Chapter 17. Seeing brokering in bright colours 355

that have been applied to interpreting, for instance, in asylum seeking interviews
(e.g. Blommaert 2001) or in conflict situations (e.g. Inghilleri 2011).
That the children participating in the Budding translators competition see bro-
kering as part of their everyday experience is also evident from another recurrent
element in their drawings – the almost ubiquitous prevalence of real-life settings.
Only three of the 23 drawings do not contain any visual or verbal reference to
a clearly identifiable place or specific occasion, suggesting rather that both the
setting and the scene depicted should be interpreted as generic abstractions. This,
together with the importance attached to the physical and psychological position-
ing of brokers discussed in Section 3 and the emergence of an “us/them” divide
implied by different language and cultural proficiency levels, seems to point to
children’s perception of brokering as a situated practice (Angelelli 2004, drawing
on Haraway 1988). These narratives appear to suggest that brokering practices
happen in real situations and tend to be influenced by – as well as to generate or
perpetuate – emotions and power imbalances. Therefore, not only the broker’s
role and identity, but also the role and identity of the other participants in the
interaction are shaped by the broader context in which such practices occur and
by the subjectivity of all the sides involved. For instance, brokering or receiving
brokering in a hospital can be different from playing the same role in the play-
ground. Similarly, being in a position that compels the recipient to feel grateful
for the brokering (help, rescue) received can be awkward or hard to bear if the
individual feels isolated from the host environment. Furthermore, when children
broker between their own relatives and people outside the family, they would
usually feel more drawn to their relatives (unless they are having fun with their
friends in the school garden, and their grandfather passes by only to warn them
to behave well, as we have seen in Figure 2.)
Finally, the participants in this study tell us that child language brokers are
first and foremost (and unproblematically) children. The adults who recur to CLB
should always bear this in mind.

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 Chapter 18

Language brokering
Mediated manipulations, and the agency
of the interpreter/translator

Elaine Bauer
London South Bank University

Language brokering is a common phenomenon among children of migrants,

whereby the child mediates between a parent and a different language speaker.
This paper uses data from a UK study to explore the retrospective childhood
experiences of adults who grew up interpreting and translating for their
parents. It examines the ways in which children perform as agents during
language brokering, converting meanings in one language into meanings in
another in order to achieve particular goals. The paper analyses ways in which
adults report that they exercised this form of agency in childhood, and how
they feel this influenced their adult identities.

Keywords: children, language brokers, agency, benefits, censorship, identity,

manipulation, family settlement

1. Introduction

Migration is an ongoing feature of modern societies, with many migrants moving

to places where they cannot speak the language. In the absence of professional
language services, or sometimes due to financial or cultural reasons, migrants rely
on the help of family members or members of their linguistic community who
are more fluent in the language of the host country. It is also within this context
that many children of migrants who either learn the language very quickly, or
who were born in the host society, become interpreters and translators (language
and cultural brokers) for their parents – who are often uncomfortable dealing
with professional interpreters and translators (Antonini 2010; 2013; Hall & Sham
1998; Orellana 2009; Weisskirch & Alva 2002). In the main, the research available
on language brokering indicates that sometimes the experience is enjoyable and
facilitates a stronger parent – child bond (Chao 2006; Valdés et al. 2003; Orellana

doi 10.1075/btl.129.18bau
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
360 Elaine Bauer

2009; DeMent & Buriel 1999; Valenzuela 1999), while sometimes it is stressful and
a burden (Hall & Sham 1998; Weisskirch & Alva 2002; Wu & Kim 2009). Studies
on the psychological and emotional outcomes are mixed, possibly because they
reflect not just individual experience but the overall language brokering experi-
ences within the family (Weisskirch 2010). Other studies report positive outcomes
such as greater cognitive ability, greater academic performance and self-efficacy
(Shannon 1990; Dorner et al. 2007; Buriel et al. 1998).
There is also a strand of the literature that views language brokering as “abnor-
mal” and as adult work, and which could negatively affect the normal development
of the child and the dynamics of the parent – child relationship (Cohen et al. 1999;
Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco 2001). The concern here regards the possibility
that the activity could place the child or adolescent in a position of increased
responsibility and decision-making authority, which may, under certain circum-
stances, result in unhealthy role reversals, with parents becoming dependent on
their children (Trickett et al. 2010: 93). This position is likened to the concept of
“parentification” (Chamorro 2004; Peris et al. 2008) or “adultification” (Trickett
& Jones 2007; see also Burton 2007; Jurkovic 1997; Minuchin et al. 1998), terms
with their roots from clinical work with families, whereby the power dynamics
shift within the family and the child assumes parental or adult caregiving respon-
sibilities for siblings and/or parents.
However, views are mixed with regard to the degree to which researchers view
the activity as resulting in power shifts and role reversal (see for example Buriel
et al. 1998; Tse 1995; Martinez et al. 2009; Weisskirch 2007). Other studies have
cogently argued against role reversal in language and cultural brokering (Buriel
et al. 1998; Orellana 2009; Trickett & Jones 2007). They argue instead, that the ac-
tivity involves an “interdependent” relationship between the child broker and her/
his parents, and may be compared with other normal activities in which children
contribute to their families, such as household and other family chores (Dorner
et al. 2008; Orellana 2009).
The majority of the studies on language brokering have focused on children
and adolescents. More recently, works have been done exploring the activity in
young adulthood, again with mixed results (Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Esquivel
2012; Guske 2010; Weisskirch et al. 2011). Largely unexplored, however, is how
adults narrate their retrospective experiences as child language brokers, and how
their perspectives on their language brokering experience change as they grow
from children into adults. In addition, evidence concerning the link between lan-
guage brokering and agency is scarce on the ground. The strategies children use
in complex language brokering events suggest agency and activity on their part,
as individuals who are creating particular roles and effecting desired outcomes,
and not merely being passive in these situations (Bauer 2010; Hall & Guéry 2010;
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 361

Shannon 1990). For example, during complex language brokering events such as
the doctor’s office, government offices, banks, parent-teacher meetings and hous-
ing offices, the child as the mediator must have some understanding of the vocabu-
lary and the message. She/he must then reformulate the message and judge her/his
reformulation for accuracy before passing on the message (Hall & Guéry 2010: 34).
As Hall (2004) observed from his study with 10-year-old language brokers
within a simulation of a brokering event, for the children in the middle, “moving
from one language to another […] was a relatively minor part of the process;
choosing what to say was a much more complex process than simply translating
what had been said” (ibid.: 294; see also Sánchez & Orellana 2006). Children do
communicate the sense of the main message, but they are also responding to power
relations, cultural differences, ages and experiences of other speakers, the number
of speakers plus wider issues such as the degree of trust placed on them by the
adults and the immediate and long-term consequences of what is being brokered
(Hall & Guéry 2010: 34).
Very little is known, also about the covert censorship that children exercise
while interpreting and translating (cf. McQuillan & Tse 1995), nor how, and for
what reasons they “paraphrase” (Orellana et al. 2003a; 2003b) and manipulate
the meanings they convey during mediation situations (Antonini 2013). Bauer
(2010) showed how during language brokering situations, when children para-
phrase they are thinking through relationships and making independent decisions
about how much information is necessary to give while still conveying the main
message. In addition, when they argue with their parents, they are learning from
a very early age how to navigate and negotiate the dynamics of relationships and
situations, and how to make independent decisions about what to say, and what
is appropriate or not to convey in order to get the best results (Bauer 2010; Hall
2004; Shannon 1990).

2. Agency: A theoretical framework for analysing child language

brokering

An important debate in sociological theory concerns the concept of agency

(Goffman 1967; Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984), which has been associated with
terms such as “selfhood, motivation, will, purposiveness, intentionality, choice,
initiative, freedom and creativity” (Emirbayer & Mische 1998: 962). However,
Emirbayer and Mische’s conceptualisation of agency appears most useful for
analysing the activities of child language brokers. The authors point out that al-
though the various conceptions of the term all constitute significant dimensions
of agency, none individually captures its full complexity. And by conflating one
362 Elaine Bauer

or the other with agency itself, the sense of the dynamic interplay among these
dimensions, and how this interplay varies within different structural contexts
of action is lost (ibid.: 963). In their view, the key to understanding the dynamic
possibilities of human agency is to view it as comprising variable and changing
orientations within the flow of time. Only then will it be clear how the structur-
al contexts of action are both dynamically sustained and also altered by actors
who are capable of formulating projects for the future and realising them, even
if only partially, and with unforeseen outcomes in the present (ibid.: 964). Thus,
Emirbayer and Mische highlight the importance of temporality and contexts in
the ways in which agency is achieved. For them, agency is understood as a tem-
poral phenomenon which is achieved in active and non-static (or ever-changing)
contexts. Thus, they suggest a definition of agency as, “a temporally constructed
engagement by actors of different structural environments – the temporal – re-
lational contexts of action – which, through the interplay of habit, imagination
and judgement, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive
response to the problems posed by changing historical situations” (Emirbayer &
Mische 1998: 970; see also Sewell 1992: 20–21).
The authors distinguish between three elements of human agency: “iteration,”
“projectivity” and “practical evaluation” to correspond with the different temporal
orientations of agency. The “iterational element” refers to forms of action that are
more oriented towards past patterns of thought and action, as routinely incorpo-
rated in practical activity, thereby giving stability and order to social universes and
helping to sustain identities, interactions and institutions over time (Emirbayer &
Mische 1998: 971). The “projective element” refers to forms of action that are more
oriented towards the future “in which received structures of thought and action
may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’ hopes, fears and desires for the
future” (ibid.). The “practical-evaluative element” refers to forms of action that are
oriented towards the present, and “it entails the capacity of actors to make practical
and normative judgments among alternative possible trajectories of action, in re-
sponse to the emerging demands, dilemmas and ambiguities of presently evolving
situations” (ibid.). Finally, the authors argue that all three of these elements of
human agency can be found in varying degrees within any situation. However, in
any given case, one or the other of these elements could predominate, depending
on whether the action is more (or less) engaged with the past, directed towards
the future or responsive to the present (ibid.: 975–976).
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 363

2.1 Agency: Achieved in the process of social interaction

While some theorists use an individualistic approach for understanding agency–

that is, agency as being achieved by the individual (or the agent) alone (Levine
2005), others suggest that agency should not be understood as an individual’s
capacity (or as a possession of the individual), but should instead be understood
in terms of the individual in interaction with others (Biesta & Tedder 2006: 22–24,
18–19; Ardent 1977; Emirbayer & Mische 1998; Sewell 1992). Agency, therefore,
may be seen as both individual and collective, for it entails the ability of the in-
dividual to coordinate her/his actions with others and against others, to form
collective tasks, persuade, coerce and monitor the effects of one’s own and others’
activities simultaneously (Sewell 1992: 21). This point is very much in line with
Emirbayer and Mische (1998) who view agency as something that is achieved in
the process of social interaction, through the interplay of habit, imagination and
judgement (ibid.: 970). Biesta and Tedder (2006) frame agency in transactional
terms. This transactional approach for understanding agency implies that “both
actor and environment are affected by the ‘engagement’” (ibid.: 18). Therefore,
the achievement of agency is contingent upon others and how others respond
in different situational contexts. Biesta and Tedder refer to this approach as an
“ecological understanding of agency,” one which always encompasses “actors-in-
trans­action-with-context,” and “actors acting by-means-of-an-environment rath-
er than simply in an environment” (ibid.: 18). Furthermore, this transactional/
ecological approach makes it possible to understand fluctuations in individual’s
agency over time and in different situations. Therefore, a person may be agentic in
one situation but not in another, depending on the particular transaction. Also,
in some cases, the achievement of agency requires more effort from the individual
than in other cases, depending on the availability of resources (Biesta & Tedder
2006: 18–19; Sewell 1992: 20–21).
It is this understanding of agency as something that is achieved in social in-
teraction (Biesta & Tedder 2006; Sewell 1992), and through the interplay of habit,
imagination and judgement (Emirbayer & Mische 1998), which I will draw upon to
illustrate what children do in their activities as language brokers, thus contributing
to further conceptualisation of agency in “non-normative” contexts. I will do so by
focusing on adults’ retrospective accounts of aspects of their childhood language
brokering activities, to illustrate the different ways in which these individuals, in
their roles as family interpreters and translators, performed as agents in order to
achieve particular goals.
364 Elaine Bauer

3. The study

This study was part of a programme of work entitled “Transforming Experiences:

Re-conceptualising identities and ‘non-normative’ childhoods,” 1 and was con-
cerned with the ways in which adults from different family backgrounds negotiate
their identities as they re-evaluate their earlier experiences. A main objective was
to understand the factors that produce adult citizens who lead “normal” lives, and
who are “unremarkable” in not requiring social work intervention despite having
childhood experiences that do not fit conventional or “normative” patterns. This
paper focuses on the family experiences of adults, most of whom were born in the
United Kingdom or who came to the country at a very small age and grew up as
language brokers, interpreting and translating for their migrant parents.
A total of 40 qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 females
and 17 males from diverse ethnic backgrounds, and from varied educational and
occupational backgrounds. The individuals in the sample experienced language
brokering between English and 15 other languages: Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese,
Croatian, Greek, Gujarati, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi, Sign language (not ASL or
BSL, but self-constructed), Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Urdu. In addi-
tion, one participant language-brokered from Arabic (Syrian) to Swedish. The age
at which the participants reported that they began interpreting and translating
ranged from 5 to 13 years, and many continue to do so for their parents and other
family members. Their mean age at the time of interview was 33 years. Once the
individual interviews were completed, participants were invited to three focus
group sessions consisting of five to seven participants each. Individual interviews
and discussions from these group sessions were recorded, transcribed and fed
into the overall analysis. In the extracts presented below, participants are given
pseudonyms when their individual interviews are quoted, but in the focus group
discussions, “woman” and “man” are used.

3.1 Language brokers as agents

From the perspective of agency as something achieved in social interaction (Biesta

& Tedder 2006; Sewell 1992), and through the interplay of habit, imagination and
judgement (Emirbayer & Mische 1998), it could be argued that when children

1. This was an ESRC Professorial Research Fellowship titled “Transforming experiences: Re-
conceptualising identities and ‘non-normative’ childhoods,” Award number: RES-051-27-0181,
and was conducted at the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University
of London. Ann Phoenix was the professorial fellow and Elaine Bauer and Stephanie Davis-Gill
were research fellows on the project.
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 365

perform as language and cultural brokers, their strategies for negotiating and
managing in complex mediating situations demonstrate agency and activity
on their part. Within these contexts, they use different linguistic and social ap-
proaches to create particular versions of what is being said, while also making
independent decisions about how much information to give, and in most cases,
conveying the correct message in order to achieve the required goals (Bauer 2010).
Moreover, as social agents, their activities result in solutions/outcomes that benefit
themselves, their parents and their communities. What follows is an illustration
of two modes (though not exclusive/limited) by which they exercise agency by:
(1) manipulating the information they interpret and translate and (2) censoring
(leaving out/omitting) information.

3.2 Manipulating information during mediation

Participants in this study spoke about the different ways by which they manipulat-
ed information in language brokering situations, conveying messages without re-
peating things word for word. Orellana and her colleagues (2003a; 2003b) suggest
that in language brokering situations, people “para-phrase” or put things in their
own words using the cultural tools (words, values and symbols) available to them
to achieve social goals. Participants in this study mentioned that they paraphrased
as well. For example, in one of our focus groups, this man said:
A lot of time you have to paraphrase definitely. You couldn’t say everything re-
ally … I don’t think you could half the time … Well I couldn’t… [interpret]
everything the doctor said or the teachers said or the person on the news … At
the age of like 6 or 7 it is practically impossible. I think, most of the time.
 [it’s impossible]

But some of the more common words they used are phrases such as “summarise
it” “giving the gist of things,” “do a picture,” “story telling,” “I make it my way,”
“say that differently,” “go around it,” “dilute the language,” and “tone down the
message.” Jack, a Croatian man, for example said, “I would have probably toned it
down a bit, but certainly the message would have been there.” Ruby, a Somali wom-
an, speaking about a typical language brokering situation with her mother, said:
I just think, “Okay, get a gist of what this person is saying, and tell it to her in a
line or two.” That’s it, simple. Cos if you’re going into [details], you’ll be there the
whole day trying to find [the right words] and … so you just kind of think okay,
what is the overall… the main point, and extract that and then tell her.

Others spoke of the difficulty they experienced in understanding technical terms

(or “large words” as some put it) from the third person, and how they “broke
366 Elaine Bauer

down” the information to tell their parents. They often did the same when they
were required to interpret a passage that was “too long.”

3.3 Translating documents

When translating documents for their parents, participants said they used a sim-
ilar approach to that used when interpreting. Phrases such as “editing,” “diluting”
the information and “giving the gist” are again phrases they mentioned when
translating documents such as school reports, medical reports and prescriptions,
household bills, bank statements and legal documents, to describe what they did
to translate the main message. Asad, a Somali man who language-brokered for
his mother, said that it was very difficult for him to translate documents “word for
word,” but it was not too difficult to translate the message. In translating letters
to his mother, he said:
I don’t think I’ve ever translated anything precisely, but I think my mum’s always
understood because every letter has a moral to the story, and as long as I …artic-
ulate the moral correctly, that’s the most important thing. And I think I always
do that rather adequately. (Asad)

When writing letters for her mother, Tilly, a Moroccan woman, would “big up”
the letter to “make it nice” and correct her mother’s grammar in an effort to make
her appear intelligent. However, according to her, “I always kept the meaning
because I guess you learn, you’re just a messenger.” Furthermore, translating the
correct message was crucial in Tilly’s case, because her mother required her to read
back what she wrote, and would be “angry” if she detected that she had written
something different.

3.4 Editing

When people spoke of “editing” information, it was often in relation to their school
reports, and especially if their marks were unsatisfactory. Maria, a Greek wom-
an who language-brokered for her parents, recalled that as a young student, she
changed her grades, and she believed that she wasn’t alone in editing her school
report:
I mean we all did that, we all edited information. All the reports we got back, we
all edit the reports … And they wouldn’t know. Or we would alter the marks and
there would be a comment with it. But they don’t know that. They can’t read the
comment to say that doesn’t match the mark… We were all a bit naughty.
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 367

For Winsome, who interpreted and translated for her deaf-mute mother, trans-
lation was very challenging. Because Winsome’s mother never learnt any spoken
or written language, she does not have the range of vocabulary that is available
to a speaker. Consequently, Winsome found some things more straightforward
and easy to translate, or as she put it, “just more black and white.” However, more
complex documents required more creativity on her part. She said:
I explain it the best I can… and it’s because I can’t actually translate word for word
written things because I don’t have that vocabulary in sign and neither does my
Mum to do that, so it then becomes a matter of me reading it, summarising it and
signing what I think are the most key important points. So I’ve done this whole
processing thing before it even gets translated… It’s really difficult I think some-
times… to be completely unbiased about translating what someone wants to say.

3.5 Censoring information

For some participants, language brokering was not simply about paraphrasing,
toning down or giving the gist of things while conveying the main message, but
it was also about leaving out certain questions and omitting certain information.
In other words, they used their own judgement to decide what information was
important or appropriate to pass on to their parents or the third party, and cen-
sored what they felt was not. Winsome, for example, said that when her mother
asked inappropriate questions, she gave her a “little look” which meant, “you can’t
ask that,” and explained to her mother afterwards why she handled the situation
in that manner.
Parent-teacher evening was a typical situation where people reported that they
censored information. Sonita, a Bangladeshi woman, said: “When the teacher used
to say bad things about me, I never used to mention it – you don’t say everything
to your mum if it’s something bad or you think it’s going to worry her, you just
keep it inside.” Ahmed, a Somali, said that he was normally a good student and a
“good” interpreter who conveyed the correct message. However, in his mid-teens,
he experienced a “horrible stage” when he received some “bad reports.” At parent-
teacher evening, the teacher complained to his mother, but instead of interpreting
the teacher’s concerns, he explained to his mother that the teacher was “a bad
teacher and nobody liked her.” Some people reported that they misinformed their
parents about their school grades. Hasni, a Moroccan woman, recalled incidents
as a young girl when she “lied” to her mother about her grades. At other times,
she simply kept her grades hidden.
Some mentioned that they refused to translate information which they felt
were irrelevant, or unimportant, because they thought their parents wouldn’t
368 Elaine Bauer

understand the legal or formal language, but also because they wanted to finish
the task as quickly as possible. As a teenager, Adan, a Somali, experienced frequent
episodes with his mother in the doctor’s office where he felt it necessary to censor
information. He recalled that for 4 years, he avoided telling his mother about
the smear test recommended by her doctor. When he finally told her a “diluted
version” of what the doctor actually said, she refused to comply, on the grounds
that the doctor was implying that she was “unclean.” She explicitly asked Adan
to convey her refusal to the doctor, but instead, he told the doctor that she did
not feel comfortable having the test at that moment, but might think of doing it
another time.

3.6 Disagreements during language brokering

Sometimes during language brokering situations, disagreements occur between

parents and the third party, and the child in the middle is the person who is re-
sponsible for interpreting their parents’ anger and frustration. Participants said
that they managed in these situations by “toning down” their parents’ actual words
(and sometimes their messages), left out parts of their messages, avoided asking
certain questions or simply refused to interpret, which sometimes resulted in argu-
ments between parent and child. Both Maria (Greek) and Costas (Moroccan man)
spoke of refusing to interpret their fathers’ “angry” and “inappropriate” messag-
es. Adan (Somali) mentioned that together with interpreting and expressing his
mother’s happiness, he was expected to express “her anger and her frustration”
to convey what was actually a “boiling point.” In situations when his mother felt
that she was being treated unfairly, she shouted at him, expecting him to shout at
the other person. However, according to Adan, “I couldn’t do it, but I tried to find
words that were suitable without being chucked out the office.” Essentially, in order
to manage a disagreement, Adan would “gauge the situation” by deciding what
was important to convey, and delivering “toned down” versions of his mother’s
story to the interlocutor.
What the above illustrations show is that when children manipulate and cen-
sor information in language brokering situations, they are making independent
decisions as social agents, in situations where they are using their imagination
and judgement about how much information to give while still, in most cases,
conveying the correct message in order to achieve the required goals (Bauer 2010,
2012; Tse 1995). In situations where disagreements occur, when they manipulate,
censor information and challenge their parents on issues they disagree with, they
are acting as “vocal agents” (Nsamenang 2008) who are developing their own
voices and their own points of view.
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 369

4. Why manipulate and censor

4.1 Lack of vocabulary, knowledge, understanding and too much

information

Participants mentioned various reasons for manipulating and censoring infor-

mation. I have already mentioned some such as lack of vocabulary, both for them
and their parents – particularly in more complex situations such as when dealing
with medical, legal and administrative matters. A typical example comes from
Ruby (Somali) who said that in certain language brokering situations, the vo-
cabulary used by the third person did not exist in her mother tongue. Therefore,
she found ways to simplify the message by giving “the gist” of the information.
Others mentioned that they manipulated information simply because they lacked
the knowledge or understanding of what they were being asked to interpret and
translate. Winsome sometimes found it challenging to interpret her deaf-mute
mother’s informal “miming” and signing, therefore she became very creative in
reconstructing her mother’s messages. Another reason people gave for manipulat-
ing and censoring information was that there was too much information to pass
on word for word.
Therefore, as Laris, a Bengali woman, said in parent-teacher evenings, when
her teacher gave a long speech about her performance, she would listen, “break
it down” and decide what was important to tell her mother. She told her mother,
“The teacher says I’m good,” because according to her:
My parents wouldn’t want to hear every detail, they just want to know if you’re
good in class, if you listen to the teachers and if you do your homework. That’s
the main thing they want to know, and if your grade is average. They don’t want
to know how you’re getting along with other kids, and… things like that… It’s
not really that important.

Ahmed also left out what he felt was “unnecessary information,” because he be-
lieved that some of the issues he was asked to interpret “were not that serious.”
These are some typical examples of how people explained their reasons for
manipulating and censoring information during language brokering situations.
However, there are other common examples, and some of which as we will see,
had lasting consequences for the parents, as well as for the children.

4.2 Frustration, embarrassment and fear of reprimand

Frustration and embarrassment were also key themes that the informants men-
tioned in their effort to manage the shift between being a child and taking on
370 Elaine Bauer

responsibilities in language brokering activities, including mediating parents’

unhappiness and distress. They often manipulated and censored information,
because they wanted to avoid these emotions. Participants spoke of the frustra-
tion they experienced not only for themselves, but also of their perceived sense of
frustration for their parents and the interlocutor, when they could not understand
and interpret clearly what either was trying to convey. In these situations, they
evaluated and recast the messages from all parties, while ensuring that the main
messages were communicated.
Feelings of embarrassment were common in situations such as parent-teacher
evenings when the child was the focus of the conversation. Here, participants
reported that they manipulated and censored information, and sometimes “lied,”
when the teacher’s report was less than positive. They also spoke of being em-
barrassed in situations when they felt that some of the information their parents
required them to interpret were inappropriate, or in situations where they could
not interpret their parent’s messages, due to their lack of vocabulary for English
translations from their mother tongue.
However, some of the most embarrassing situations they mentioned were at
the doctor’s office where as children, they were mediating about very personal
issues that children their age would not normally have knowledge about. Afreen,
a Punjabi woman, for example, spoke of interpreting for her aunt at the GP’s and
explaining the different types of contraception to her. Because Afreen was not
yet aware of these matters, and the topic for her was a cultural taboo, she found
this experience very embarrassing for her as well as for her aunt. Interpreting at
the doctor’s was embarrassing for most, and was particularly embarrassing for
boys who interpreted for their mothers. Matt, an Italian man, for example, found
interpreting his mother’s symptoms to the doctor both embarrassing for himself
and for his mother, and frustrating for the doctor whom he perceived had diffi-
culty understanding. We met also Adan earlier who was too embarrassed to tell
his mother that the doctor recommended a smear test for her.
Some participants changed and censored information in language brokering
situations out of fear of being reprimanded by their parents. They did this mostly
with regard to school behaviour and reports. Maria and Costas recalled being
“smacked,” “yelled at” and “scolded” in front of their teachers at parent-teacher
evenings. As a result, they either “diluted,” “toned down” the message, left out
certain information or “lied” in order to appear as though they were doing well in
school (Bauer 2012). Others spoke of changing the grades on their school reports
out of fear of being reprimanded by their parents for unsatisfactory grades.
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 371

4.3 Protecting parents from stress and worry, and from discrimination

Participants also spoke of altering and censoring information in language broker-

ing situations in an effort to protect their parents from stress and worry. Sonita and
Pavna, Bangali women, deemed that their parents were coping with other more
serious responsibilities at home; therefore, at parent-teacher evening, they tried to
shield them from extra worries by interpreting misinformation from the teacher
to their parents about unsatisfactory behaviour and academic performance. Maria
also spoke of being “selective” in conveying and withholding information from
her father regarding his imminent death from cancer in an effort to protect him
from additional stress and worry.
Others spoke of shielding their parents from discrimination in situations
where they perceived class differences between their parents and the third person.
The migrant status and lack of formal education of Maria’s Greek family placed
them in a lower class position in her community, where she often felt “slightly
inferior.” Consequently, in mediation sessions, she often rephrased her parents’
words in a manner that made them appear “tactful and diplomatic.” We saw earlier
how Tilly rephrased her mother’s letters so they appear “more diplomatic” and
“intelligent” because according to her, “I was trying to protect my mum. I don’t
want anybody to think poorly of her.”
In situations where disagreements arose during mediation, people spoke of
“gauging,” “toning down” the language or refusing to interpret their parents’ mes-
sages, in order to protect their parents’ reputation and bring calm to otherwise
tense situations. Mustafa, a man whose father often asked him to interpret his
angry and inflammatory message, would tell his father, “Well dad you can’t really
say that you know. No, I don’t want to say that!”
I have shown that when children interpret and translate for their parents, they
are acting as agents to bring about the best results for themselves and for their
parents. However, as we shall see, the particular ways in which they interpret
and translate are sometimes constrained by their lack of knowledge of certain
things, and by what is required in specific situations and contexts, resulting in
creative misrepresentations which can have implications for themselves and for
their parents.
372 Elaine Bauer

5. Consequences resulting from children’s manipulation and censoring

during language brokering

Emirbayer and Mische (1998) contend that the achievement of agency depends
upon the interplay between individuals and structure, and how others in different
situational contexts respond to the individual. Here, the authors highlight the sig-
nificance of the impact of situational contexts on action. Moreover, when actors are
positioned in more temporally and relationally complex settings, they may need
to develop the capacity for inventive and deliberative intervention (ibid.: 1008).
Citing Sahlins et al., the authors point out that interventions of actors do not al-
ways have the desired effects, and may result in unintended consequences of action
(ibid.:1008). However, “by subjecting their own agentic orientations to imaginative
recomposition and critical judgement, actors can loosen themselves from past
patterns of interaction and reframe their relationships to existing constraints”
(Emirbayer & Mische (1998: 1010).
The judgement that children make and the usual strategies they use in medi-
ation situations are sometimes constrained by their lack of knowledge of certain
technical terms, and by what is required in specific situations and contexts, and
this sometimes have unintended consequences for themselves, for their parents
and also for the third person in that particular situation. Moreover, as we have seen
above, their agency may sometimes be constrained because it is often performed
out of frustration, embarrassment and fear. Participants in this study were often
very much aware of the constraints which they encountered in language broker-
ing situations. They spoke of the varying degrees to which they manipulated and
censored information as being contingent upon particular brokering contexts. For
example, in complex medical, legal, administrative and financial situations, they
sometimes felt constrained by their limited vocabulary and lack of knowledge of
technical terms and legal procedure, which for some, resulted in lasting conse-
quences for them and their parents.
People spoke of the level of responsibility which they felt as language brokers
from an early age, and the frustration and anxiety associated with the activity. This
is so, partly because they were aware of the consequences that their interpreting
and translating could have for themselves and for their parents if messages were
interpreted incoherently or incorrectly. Jack, a Croatian man, said, “At times it
could be an overwhelming responsibility and I was afraid to translate incorrect-
ly.” Consequently, throughout Jack’s childhood and early adulthood, he became
a “worrier,” an identity he attributed to his language brokering experiences in
complex situations. Winsome, the daughter of a deaf-mute mother, still harbours
a sense of having failed her mother by not being able to interpret everything pre-
cisely. Alessandra, an Italian woman, described her childhood language brokering
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 373

experiences as “filled with fear.” In particular, she recalled the experience of filling
out her father’s work time sheets as “terrifying” and “emotionally heavy,” because
she worried he would be underpaid had she filled them out incorrectly. Although
in retrospect Alessandra felt her overall experience as a child language broker was
“very positive,” she nonetheless carries a tremendous amount of empathy for what
she feels is a “huge responsibility” placed on children who interpret and translate
for their parents.
From a few accounts, manipulating and censoring information could and did
have negative consequences for some parents. Billy, a Chinese man, spoke of how
his limited knowledge of banking and mortgages resulted in his father choosing
the wrong accounts, and holding a mortgage years beyond the time that it could
have otherwise been paid off, had his father used a professional interpreter who
could have interpreted precisely what the options were. Matt, an Italian man, spoke
of the serious consequences for his parents of his misinterpretation, while language
brokering in medical situations:
The actual experience of the interpreting was very difficult. There were obviously
a huge number of words… a lot of detail that you could just never be right about,
a level of precision from both languages. I remember feeling inadequate both in
relation to the Italian and the English because clearly their expression of symp-
toms and gradations of pain… There’s a level of detail and precision that actually
helps a doctor to make a diagnosis, which you can’t do very well. So clearly it’s
frustrating for the doctor.

Matt felt that due to his inadequate interpreting, his mother was misdiagnosed and
given the wrong prescription for 35 years, which created long-term complications
to her health.

6. Benefits of language brokering

Given that children’s manipulating and censoring of information during language

brokering situations can sometimes result in serious consequences for their par-
ents, what can we say about the benefits of their activities? Accounts of individuals
in this study illustrate more benefits than drawbacks to the activity: benefits for
the child, for their parents and for their wider community.

6.1 Benefits for the child

With regard to benefits for the child, people spoke about feeling a sense of “free-
dom” and “power” from an early age, in situations where they were able to “control
374 Elaine Bauer

the flow of the conversations” and make independent decisions about what to say
and how much information was necessary to give while still conveying the main
message. Hence, it might be argued that they were learning how to negotiate from
an early age, and this is about agency. Asad, a Somali man, articulated this point
very well when he described the situation at his parent-teacher evening:
I was the mediator between my parents and my teacher, so I had a level of power
within that mediation for me to either have the conversation going my way or
against me… I was doing well in school anyway, it’s just I was a bit naughty here
and there and the teacher was mentioning that. I didn’t mention it to my par-
ents… I didn’t think the teacher was… clever enough to know that when you’re
mediating through a child, and you’re saying bad things about that child, that
child may not articulate it the same way you’re saying… So the child does wield
a lot of power in that sense and I feel I did… You don’t only become a sort of
translator, you also become a negotiator… on behalf of your parents. And you
kinda take the whole situation into your hands and deal with it. I remember doing
it on a number of occasions, which concluded with my mother getting what she
wanted. But I’ve also noticed that I’m not only um, a translator, I’m like a partner
in negotiating whatever my mum wants.

Billy said he made banking decisions on his parents’ behalf that were not nec-
essarily what they wanted, but he did so in order to avoid embarrassment and
arguments in mediating situations:
I suddenly assumed I was making all the decisions. Yeah it kind of got to the point
where I didn’t really ask them what we should do next, I just did… what I thought
at the time was a good decision. So I, I just kind of took charge to an extent and
just said yes we’ll have this, this and this. And if my parents went, “Oh no we
didn’t ask for that,” I’m like, “shshsh we’ll deal with it later,” cos I didn’t really
want another scene. It’s so embarrassing. You’re embarrassed with your parents
at that age anyway. So for them to just, at the top of their voices, just go, crazy,
you do anything to avoid that. So there was me making decisions that weren’t
necessarily what they wanted, but it was close enough.

Thus, it might also be said that the child is learning from an early age how to be-
come an active citizen. Bauer (2010) has shown how children’s mediating activities
and their strategies for managing in language brokering situations such as in the
doctor’s office, at parent-teachers meetings, banks and housing offices, “suggest
agency and activity on their part, as individuals who are creating particular roles,
and effecting desired outcomes as active citizens, and not merely being passive in
these situations” (ibid.: 142). In addition, when they argue with their parents in
language brokering situations, they are challenging issues they disagree with, and
this is also about citizenship: being actively engaged in society.
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 375

Children’s early experiences as language brokers have emotional and psy-

chological implications on their development, and help to shape their identities
over time. Although some individuals might have found their earlier experiences
burdensome, stressful, a duty, an obligation and responsibility, over time their
views changed as they became aware of the benefits such as “intellect,” “maturi-
ty,” “self-confidence,” and the close parent-child bonds that resulted from their
experiences. Effectively, these experiences all contributed in shaping the identities
they constructed, not only in terms of their own subject positions, but also their
positions in relation to others (Bauer 2012). As Ruby, a Somali woman, observed,
the experience of language brokering is “more than something that you do… it
was something personal as well… something that has deep emotional and psycho-
logical implications on one’s development.” Asad believes that being “a seven or
eight year old kid with that amount of power is pretty good for your own physical
well-being.” He believes that his mediating activities helped to shape him as an
“ethical” and “honest” individual. Adan linked his early acceptance of his sexu-
ality [homosexuality] to his role as a language broker, which he feels gave him a
certain level of “intellect,” “control,” “power” and confidence from a young age.

6.2 Benefits for parents

Children’s language brokering activities also have benefits for their parents. Some
participants spoke of the activity as one in which they “gave voice” to their parents
who were not able to express themselves, or lacked the linguistic tools to do so.
Effectively, they are acting as agents in helping their families in terms of settlement
and mobility in the new country.
When children mediate for their parents, they are also providing them with
integrity and dignity. Although many parents are given the option to use profes-
sional interpreters, some refuse to do so because they feel less comfortable mediat-
ing through strangers about private and personal issues than they do through their
children. Moreover, in some communities, because there are limits to the number
of people who are able to interpret in a particular language, the parent becomes
suspicious that the interpreter might be someone they know, and therefore do not
want to expose their personal business.
In addition, in line with Araujo’s (2008) work with parents who used their chil-
dren as language brokers, this study shows that although language brokering situ-
ations may be serious and very private with lasting effects on the life of the child,
parents still reported feeling comfortable and confident in their child’s abilities to
relay the necessary information (ibid.: 53). The work that immigrant children do
as interpreters and translators for their family does not only help their families in
376 Elaine Bauer

terms of settlement and mobility in the new country, but they are also contributing
to the host society (schools and local communities) more generally, by minimising
the cost to professional interpreters and translators (Orellana 2009; Bauer 2010).

7. Summary and conclusions

Viewed from the perspective of agency as both individual and collective (Sewell
1992) and as something achieved in the process of social interaction (Biesta &
Tedder 2006; Emirbayer & Mische 1998), this paper has shown how in their activi-
ties as language brokers, the innovative strategies which children use for managing
in various mediating situations demonstrate agency on their part. In their effort
to accomplish the social goals required in language brokering situations, they
paraphrase, or put things in their own words to convey clarity in the closest ways
possible. When they manipulate and censor information during complex situa-
tions, they are making independent decisions based on their own judgement and
imagination about the content and the quality of information to pass on that will
bring about the best results. Thus, they create particular versions of the conversa-
tions, while getting the main issues across to effect the required goals.
The outcome is not always achieved in the smoothest manner or with the best
desired result, because the child may feel frustrated, inhibited or embarrassed by
what she/he is required to interpret, and sometimes by her/his lack of knowledge
and understanding of technical terms. However, despite these limitations, on the
whole, they manage fairly well by using their repertoire of linguistic resources
to achieve the goals required in these particular situations. Thus, although there
may sometimes be consequences to the activity – for example, in more complex
situations such as legal and medical matters – what these accounts illustrate is
the tremendous potential, and the cognitive and practical capabilities of child
language brokers who are learning from an early age, how to use their imagination
and judgement to negotiate collectively in complex situations. This is about agency,
performing as social agents in everyday life, and how in their activities they make
significant contributions to their family functioning and sustainability.
Moreover, their activities have implications for themselves and for their fam-
ilies in the present as well as for the future. As Hall and Guéry (2010) point out,
although children are popularly seen as economic liability within families, in
many households, their activities make significant contribution to the economy
of their families. But because “work” is conventionally defined in terms of adult
wage-earning, the work carried out by children within families become “invis-
ible.” However, if we consider children’s work as activities that contribute to the
 Chapter 18. Language brokering and the agency of the interpreter/translator 377

administrative, social and financial well-being of a family, then while unwaged,

such work can make an important economic contribution to family life (Hall and
Guéry (2010: 37–38). And child language brokering clearly demonstrates this.
Finally, I have shown how children’s early experiences as language brokers
have emotional and psychological implications on their development, and help to
shape their identities over time. Thus, their earlier feelings about the activity as
burdensome, stressful, a duty, obligation and responsibility have shifted over time
and replaced with what they perceived as benefits such as “intellect,” “maturity,”
“self-confidence,” and close parent-child bonds. They viewed their experiences as
significantly contributing to shaping their identities, and also their positions in
relation to others (Bauer 2012). Furthermore, in situations where disagreements
occur, by manipulating, censoring information and challenging their parents on
issues they disagree with, they become “vocal agents” also in their own self-interest
(Nsamenang 2008). This is about developing their own voice and their own points
of view, which is intimately linked to the development of their identity and sense
of self (ibid.: 214).

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 Chapter 19

Not just child’s play

Exploring bilingualism and language brokering
as a precursor to the development of expertise
as a professional sign language interpreter

Jemina Napier
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

This paper situates the discussion of child language brokering (CLB) within the
wider context of interpreting studies and discussions of bilingualism and pro-
fessional interpreting, and provides an overview of a groundbreaking interna-
tional survey study that sought to collect information about CLB experiences of
people who have grown up bilingual in the Deaf community using a sign lan-
guage and a spoken language. In order to contextualize the study, 1 a review of
relevant literature will be given, before describing the survey instrument used,
the results and implications of the findings will be provided, and a conclusion
with recommendations for the sign language interpreting profession and future
research will be drawn.

Keywords: bilingualism, Codas, questionnaire survey, sign language

interpreting

“I’m a better person and an excellent interpreter because of my

brokering experience but it was really really tough at times.”

1. Bilingualism, child language brokering, and interpreting

The review of child language brokering (CLB) by Orellana (this volume) confirms
the existence of CLB in migrant communities and that this has always been going

1. This study was initially conducted while the author was employed at Macquarie University,
Australia, where she is still an Adjunct Professor. Thus, the study was made possible with funding
from a Macquarie University Safety Net Grant, and with research assistance from Gerry Shearim
and Andy Carmichael and research intern Joy Marks (from Gallaudet University).

doi 10.1075/btl.129.19nap
© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company
382 Jemina Napier

on (Hall & Guery 2010). Nevertheless, very little is known about what CLB means
to children, and the implications for their adulthood (Orellana 2009). The CLB
experiences of young bilinguals need to be explored to determine how they shape
the bilingual brokers’ attitudes, values, and beliefs of their own culture and that
of the society at large (Angelelli 2010). Furthermore, each child will have dif-
ferent experiences and understandings that ultimately shape his/her idea of the
role and professionalism as a professional interpreter or translator as an adult:
“This different conceptualization of what service is, what an interpreter does, and
where boundaries between professional and personal role lie is essential to the
socialization of future interpreters and the construction of professional ideology”
(Angelelli 2010: 97).
Professional interpreters are not available at all times, so bilingual children
and adults take on the responsibility to facilitate communication. While these bi-
linguals can choose not to take on this role, it means that they know that the indi-
viduals will be deprived of access to information. Inevitably, because they identify
so closely with these individuals, it is almost impossible for them to stand-by and
watch this happen (Angelelli 2010). As a result of taking on these communication
facilitation roles, these bilingual children develop abilities that other bilinguals
do not, and could be considered as gifted (Valdes et al. 2003). Thus, more research
needs to be done to understand these additional skills that these bilinguals develop
(Angelelli 2010).

1.1 Bilinguals

The profile of bilingual individuals is complex and diverse (Hoffman 1991;

Romaine 1995). Bilingual language use is known to vary according to the nature
of language acquisition and use. Bilinguals can be characterized according to a
wide range of parameters, such as whether their languages were acquired natu-
ralistically or formally, simultaneously from birth or consecutively; whether they
have bilingual proficiency in reading, writing, listening, and speaking; and their
degree of biculturalism (Hamers & Blanc 2000) It is also known that bilinguals
generally use each of their languages in different domains and may not have equiv-
alent proficiency in all domains (Myers-Scotton 2006).
Angelelli (2010) defines bilinguals in two ways: (1) “elective bilinguals” who
choose to become bilingual and (2) “circumstantial bilinguals” who are forced
to be bilingual due to life circumstances; whereas Grosjean (1997: 168) makes a
different distinction between “regular bilinguals” and “interpreter bilinguals” by
stating that:
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 383

Interpreter bilinguals, unlike regular bilinguals, will have to learn to use their
languages (and the underlying skills that they have in them) for similar purposes,
in similar domains of life, with similar people. This is something that regular
bilinguals do not often need to do.

In his statement, Grosjean is referring to professional interpreters as interpreter

bilinguals, and assumes that regular bilinguals do not undertake an interpreting
role. However, this may not necessarily be the case, as we know that bilingual
children often play the role as interpreter or “language broker” in their family.
Understanding the different types of bilinguals is important in educating inter-
preting and translation students, because their backgrounds and ideologies are
very different (Angelelli 2010).
This is particularly important when considering the status of bilinguals in
Deaf communities, as children who grow up with deaf parents do not really fit
either definition of elective or circumstantial bilingualism, in that they neither
choose to learn a sign language nor are they forced to relocate to a new society. I
would suggest that people who grow up using a sign language at home are indeed
circumstantial bilinguals, as their language situation is dictated by the fact that
members of the family cannot communicate with the wider community; therefore,
their bilingualism is brought about by the circumstances of their home life.
Deaf communities could be regarded as being similar to first-generation im-
migrants from non-English speaking countries (Stone 2010), and being bilingual
is an intrinsic part of Deaf community life (Grosjean 2001), as deaf people must
be competent in a sign language and also in the written (and/or spoken) language
of the majority in order to function on a daily basis. They typically would use
sign language at home and with their friends (and possibly in the workplace),
but would experience barriers in communicating with non-deaf people who only
speak and do not use a sign language. In these circumstances, deaf people would
either utilize professional sign language interpreters or rely on someone who can
sign to broker the communication.

1.2 Bilinguals with deaf parents

The majority children born to deaf couples can hear, that is, they are “hearing.”
These children who have at least one signing deaf parent are often referred to as
children of deaf adults (Codas). Codas often grow up using a sign language as their
first language in the home, and therefore are bilingual and bicultural. The small
minority of deaf people who have deaf parents may also refer to themselves as
Codas, but more typically refer to themselves as Dodas (deaf of deaf adults) (Jeff
McWhinney, personal communication, 31 May 2013).
384 Jemina Napier

There are several autobiographical descriptions that detail what it was like to
grow up as a Coda (e.g., Corfmat 1990; Sidransky 2006) and there are also reports
in the media of young Codas who show remarkable intuition and responsibility in
emergency situations in order to assist their deaf parents (e.g., Cowlishaw 2012).
The small amount of research that exists on Codas focuses on linguistic issues,
such as their language development and communicative strategies (Schiff-Myers
1988; Singleton & Tittle 2000; Wilhelm 2008; Mather & Andrews 2008). Bishop
and Hicks (2005; 2008) investigated the bimodal code-blending used by hearing
adult Codas when conversing with one another in American Sign Language (ASL).
Emmorey et al. (2008) and Pyers and Emmorey (2008) have explored bimodal
bilingualism in adult Codas, whereas van den Bogaerde and Andrews (2008), and
Baker and van den Bogaerde (2014) have analyzed the bilingual bimodal acquisi-
tion and use of a spoken and sign language by young Codas; and Pizer (2007) and
Pizer et al. (2012) examined language choice within families with deaf parents.
All of these studies give us a useful picture of the level of bilingualism present in
deaf families, and the way that Codas acquire and use spoken and sign languages.
The only other two major studies of Codas both focus on Codas’ sense of
identity and belonging in relation to Deaf communities. Preston (1994; 1996) and
Adams (2008) conducted extensive interviews in order to examine Coda experi-
ences of growing up with deaf parents. The best-known study would be that of
Paul Preston (a Coda himself), who published a book based on interviews with
150 Codas in the United States (Preston 1994). Preston found that his informants
had positive and negative experiences, and a shared cultural perspective of Deaf
communities and its culture. Adams (2008) – a non-Coda – collected narratives
from 50 participants in the United Kingdom (26 Codas, 12 deaf, and 12 hearing)
to examine the experiences of Codas at key life stages. Adams sought to moderate
past definitions of Codas in terms of their cultural affiliation and community
membership, and instead focused on patterns of experience. She classified four
unique patterns of experience particular to their situation as Codas, which in-
clude “go between,” “misfit,” “foreigner,” and “glass ceiling,” and states that these
should be considered as the life experiences which define Codas. Preston (1994)
and Adams (2008) note that many Codas grew up with feelings of conflict and re-
sentment. Adams identified key themes in Coda perceptions of their experiences,
including feelings of being lost, inadequacy, frustration, guilt, embarrassment, and
responsibility; the need to escape, juggling pieces of their life, and being the subject
of ridicule, as well as being an ambassador for their parents and Deaf communities.
This conflicted sense of Coda identity contradicts Angelelli’s (2010) descrip-
tion of how circumstantial bilinguals typically feel about the second-language
community that they belong to; Codas often feel a tension because although they
have grown up in Deaf communities using a sign language, they are not actually
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 385

deaf. Some Codas have described this conflict as having a “passport without a
country” (Davie 1993).
Very few descriptions of the Coda experience have focused on the positive
aspects of growing up bilingual and bicultural as a result of having deaf parents
(see Mudgett-Decaro 1996; Napier 2008), and we know that although some Codas
become involved professionally in Deaf world, others have very little interaction
with the community once they leave home (Pizer 2007; Preston 1994).
Because professional sign language interpreters are now widely available to
provide access to a range of public service settings (Stone 2010), it should not be
necessary for deaf parents to rely on their children to facilitate communication
for them. However, anecdotally we know that even if deaf parents discourage their
children from doing so, sometimes their children will step in and assist as non-­
professional interpreters (Kerridge 2011), that is, they will function in a CLB role.

2. Language brokering in Deaf communities

Many Codas act in a CLB role for their parents (Preston 1994). CLB can be a shap-
ing aspect of the Coda experience that can affect them for the rest of their lives
(Preston 1996), although not all Coda experiences are necessarily the same (Napier
2008). In spite of this, very little research has been conducted specifically on the
CLB experiences of Codas. Adams (2008) considers that Coda experiences are
unique; however, given the nature of this volume, it appears that this may not be
the case. The Coda experience appears to mirror those of other children growing
up speaking a minority language at home.
CLB experiences of children as outlined in relevant literature and in this vol-
ume are also the experiences of Codas, who broker between their signing deaf
parents and the hearing majority who use a spoken language. To date, no research
has been conducted to explore CLB experiences from the perspective of Codas.
Even less consideration has been given to the experiences of deaf Codas (Dodas),
who also broker for their parents, family members, and friends. The only docu-
mented experience is that from Adam, Carty, and Stone (2011) who describe the
“ghostwriting” experiences of members of the Australian Deaf community who
brokered in various contexts, for example, in school classrooms “re”-translating
what the teacher had said to classmates, explaining the content of a letter at the
local deaf club; writing letters on behalf of their friends or family members, which
were “dictated” in Auslan; and even interpreting between deaf and hearing family
members at family events. Forestal (2011: 51) notes that, for deaf people who work
as interpreters, “there were times during their school or college years when they
would interpret for their classmates, family members or friends who asked for
386 Jemina Napier

assistance with communication. They never thought to call this interpreting.” For
the purposes of this chapter, however, the focus is primarily on the CLB experi-
ences of hearing Codas.
Thus, this paper reveals findings from a survey study that sought to break new
ground by developing an understanding of the complex experience of interpreting
as a Coda. Sign language interpreters have traditionally come from deaf families
and interpret from a young age, and since the introduction of professional sign
language interpreting services, people often assume that children no longer need to
interpret for their deaf parents (Napier et al. 2010). Yet, based on anecdotal obser-
vation, this is not the case. It has also been noted that fewer hearing Codas seem to
be choosing to work as professional interpreters (Scott Gibson 2008), meaning that
fewer interpreters come from Deaf communities, who Cokely (2005) refers to as
“evolved” rather than “schooled” interpreters. These evolved interpreters can bring
something to the work of professional interpreting based on their life experiences
and understanding of the deaf intercultural frameworks that are brought to deaf/
sign language communication: “the cultural commonality between [a deaf person]
and the evolved interpreter enables a different type of decision-making about how
to best facilitate the articulation of necessary information” (Kent 2012: 17).
However, there are still huge supply and demand imbalances in the sign lan-
guage interpreting sector, so more people need to be attracted to the profession.
Thus, it is vital to explore the nature of interpreting that is performed by Codas for
several reasons: (i) to gain a clearer picture of the interpreting needs of Deaf com-
munities, to account for interpreting demand that may currently be “masked” by
the fact that supply is met by children rather than professional interpreters; (ii) to
ascertain how the Coda interpreting experience can be harnessed into positive
linguistic and social competence, and mentoring them into becoming professional
interpreters; and (iii) to inform community interpreting policy and practice more
generally for all languages.

3. Aims of the study

The primary aim of this pioneering applied research project was to replicate ex-
isting CLB research with spoken languages to examine the CLB experiences of
Codas. As with the spoken language CLB research, it was felt that there is value in
exploring issues with young brokers, adult former brokers (see Bucaria & Rossato
2010), and those who still work as professional interpreters.
The study addressed the following research questions:
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 387

–– When, where, and why do Codas act as language brokers for their parents?
–– What are Coda attitudes toward their language brokering role?
–– How many Coda adults become professional interpreters and why?
–– How many young Codas plan to become professional interpreters?

4. Method

In order to collect data to answer the above research questions, a questionnaire was
designed to survey Codas across a range of ages on their experiences of CLB. The
survey instrument was developed based on adaptations from surveys administered
by Tse (1996) and Weisskirch and Alva (2002) with young language brokers of spo-
ken languages to collect factual, behavioral, and attitudinal data (Hale & Napier
2013). The difference between this study and spoken language studies, however,
is that this was an international online questionnaire-based study, rather than a
survey of purposively sampled local school-based populations.

4.1 Participants

The survey targeted Codas who were aged over 13 years from all over the world.
The goal was to recruit responses from people with CLB experience, including
adults who currently work as professional sign language interpreters. Dodas were
also encouraged to respond to the survey, although the focus of discussion in this
chapter is on responses from hearing Codas.

4.2 Survey instrument

The survey instrument was developed online using the software SurveyMonkey,
written in English, and presented 40 questions arranged in related subsets of sev-
en main sections. A combination of open, closed, partially open-ended, multiple
choice, and attitudinal rating scale questions were to be completed by respondents.
Section 1 of the instrument gave an overview of the project, the backgrounds
of the research team, and the purpose of the study. This information and an over-
view of the questions were also made available in International Sign on YouTube 2

2. International Sign (IS) is a “type of signing used when deaf signers communicate across
mutually unintelligible language boundaries” (Supalla & Webb 1995: 334), and is used for re-
stricted purposes. Essentially, IS is a form of “foreigner talk” (Quinto-Pozos 2007),where different
signed languages come into contact. IS has complex grammatical system but a limited lexicon,
388 Jemina Napier

to make the information more accessible to potential respondents from non-­

English speaking countries. Section 2 sought participant consent by explaining
what would be done with the data, and asking respondents to confirm that they
were over 13 years of age and to agree to participate in the research (questions 1–2).
Section 3 (questions 3–14) collected demographic information, including country
of birth, age, gender, siblings, languages used at home, the majority language of
the country, and how many languages the respondent can use. Section 4 (ques-
tions 15–16) provided a definition of language brokering and asked respondents
whether they do any language brokering now or in the past. Section 5 (questions
17–29) focused on language proficiency and on the people who use sign language
in the family, parents’ language (spoken, written, and signed) abilities, other family
members’ language abilities, and respondents’ self-rating of own language abili-
ties. Section 6 (questions 30–40) sought to elicit information on CLB experiences:
who respondents brokered for and where, and attitudinal statements about how
they felt about their CLB experience, for example, “I feel nervous when I broker
for others,” “brokering for others makes me feel more grown up,” and “I think
brokering has helped me to understand my parents better”; the age they began
brokering, whether they are still brokering, whether their siblings broker and in
what contexts, whether they are working as a paid professional interpreter, and if
under 18 years of age, and whether they are considering a career as an interpret-
er. An open sub-section was also included for any general comments. Section 7
(questions 41–42) closed the questionnaire by thanking respondents for their time,
and asking whether they were interested in being contacted for follow-up research.
The first draft of the questionnaire was piloted with several Codas in Australia
and the United States to obtain feedback regarding the comprehensibility of the
material, and suitability of the line of questioning. Following the review and feed-
back by colleagues, some minor amendments were made to the preliminary ver-
sion before it was released to participants in the study.

4.3 Procedure

Using network and snowball sampling (Hale & Napier 2013), a flyer giving details
of the survey and requesting participation was sent out via contacts of the research
team, as well as through supporting relevant organizations to their membership

which borrows heavily from other signed languages (Rosenstock & Napier 2015). See http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_YFmCQ_cs&feature=plcp for the IS explanation about the sur-
vey instrument.
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 389

groups, 3 and via Facebook. People were asked to pass on information about the
survey to the memberships and to individuals in their networks who would be eli-
gible to respond. On receipt of the flyer, participants could access the survey online
by going to a website link provided on the flyer. Questionnaires were estimated
to take up to 20 min to complete. Respondents completed the survey in English
at their leisure and in their own chosen environment. Participants had access to
information about the study and the survey was open online for submissions for
6 weeks from mid-September to end of October 2012. On receipt of the completed
questionnaires, the quantitative figures were analyzed using descriptive statistics,
and thematic analysis was used to extract any key themes from the qualitative
open-ended comments.

5. Results and discussion

5.1 Respondent characteristics

A total of 240 responses (214 hearing, 26 deaf) were received from 16 differ-
ent countries, with the biggest representation coming from the United States,
Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Figures 1 and 2 provide an overview
of the distribution of all respondents according to region and country.
Given that the survey was in English, it is not surprising that the majority of
respondents came from English speaking countries. This could also be attributed
to the fact that Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States in particu-
lar also have very active Coda organizations, so the survey may have been better
promoted in those countries through their memberships. Nonetheless, this is the
first study of its kind that captures data from Codas across a range of countries,
and when the responses are examined in more detail, it can be seen that the CLB
experiences of Codas are common across all countries.

3. Organizations that supported the project through the dissemination of survey information
through their membership include CODA International, CODA Australia, KODA Australia,
Deaf Australia, the Australian Sign Language Interpreters Association (ASLIA) and the World
Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI). CODA is typically the acronym used for the
organizations, and Coda for the people.
390 Jemina Napier

Europe
17%
Asia Pacific
30%

Scandinavia
3%

The Americas
50%

Figure 1. Distribution of all respondents according to region by percentage

120
102
100

80
63
60

40
24
20 18
8 7 5 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
0
Au SA
lia

da

Be ny
m

Ire a
nd

De sia

il

nd
UK

k
Ge en
nd

Sw raz
ar
i
an

an

rb
ui
ra

a
na
U

ay
la

la
ed

nm
rm
la

al

nl

Se
lg

B
st

er
al
Ca

er

Ze

Sw
Fi

itz
M
th
w
Ne
Ne

Figure 2. Distribution of all respondents according to country by number

A total of 186 (77.5%) of all respondents were female (166 hearing, 20 deaf) and
54 (22.5%) were male (48 hearing, six deaf). Given that it has been reported that
typically the eldest female child functions as the family interpreter (Singleton &
Tittle, 2000), it is not surprising that the results are dominated by female partic-
ipants. If they are the ones in their family who tend to function in the CLB role,
then it is likely that they are in a better position to discuss CLB experiences in
Deaf communities, and thus more likely to respond to the call for participants.
However, our findings reveal that not all the female, hearing respondents were the
eldest child in their family. In fact, of the 166 hearing female respondents, only 83
(44%) report being the eldest child. Nevertheless, when considering who actually
performed the CLB function in their family, it is interesting to see the subtlety in
terms of age and position in the family (see discussion of CLB experience below).
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 391

Over half the respondents (55%) were aged between 25 and 34 years, with
only 2% in the age group of 13–18 years and 4% in the 65+ group (see Figure 3 for
an exact overview of age categories). This result is somewhat disappointing as the
goal was to recruit younger Codas in order that we could directly compare their
responses to the experiences of young spoken language brokers. However, there is
value in eliciting information from adult former brokers (Bucaria & Rossato 2010),
especially when a topic such as this has not been sufficiently investigated, and as
with the findings across countries, the Coda CLB experiences of respondents to
this study are common across ages.

Age Group 13–18

65+
0% 2%
4%

19–24
55–64 11%
13%

45–54 25–34
15% 27%

35–44
28%

Figure 3. Distribution of all respondents according to age by percentage

5.2 Language profiles

Many young people who participate in CLB do so because their parents may have
little or no competency in the majority language (Baker 2006), but previous studies
of spoken language CLB have not determined the language competence of parents
as they are typically migrants in a new country and therefore it can be assumed
that the parents have limited competence in the language of that country. This is
not the case, however, for deaf parents who are more likely to have been born in
the country where they live. Instead, their language competence will be influenced
by a variety of sociological and sociolinguistic factors, such as whether they were
raised using a sign language at home, whether they went to a residential or bilin-
gual school for deaf children that utilized sign language or some form of signed
system, and their level of exposure (and access) to the majority language of the
392 Jemina Napier

“hearing” community as they were growing up. 4 For this reason, we wanted to
elicit information about the Coda respondents’ parents’ language competence to
see if there is a connection between the CLB experience of Codas and their parents’
language skills.
Respondents were asked to rate on a 5-point Likert scale their parents’ compe-
tence in their signed and spoken/written language. 5 It was found that there was a
striking difference in the aggregate scores of all the respondents, with both parents
being rated as much more competent in their sign language, and rating particu-
larly low on their speaking and listening skills, as seen in Table 1. The mothers
had a marginally higher total mean (3.3) in terms of language competence than
the fathers (3.2). This result confirms that deaf parents (as with migrant parents)
may have limited ability to communicate directly in the majority language of their
country, which subsequently may place Codas in a position to perform CLB duties.

Table 1. Mean scores of reported parents’ language competence

Parent Language skill Mean score Language skill Mean score
Mother Signing 4.46 Speaking 1.98
Understanding signs 4.47 Listening 1.58
Finger spelling 4.25 Writing 2.66
Understanding finger spelling 4.20 Reading 2.81
Mean 4.35 Mean 2.2575
Total mean 3.30375
Father Signing 4.43 Speaking 1.92
Understanding signs 4.48 Listening 1.58
Finger spelling 4.19 Writing 2.59
Understanding finger spelling 4.18 Reading 2.74
Mean 4.32 Mean 2.2075
Total mean 3.26375

When focusing on language profiles of respondents themselves, initially partici-

pants were asked to report which language they regarded as their first language.
Only 57% of the 214 hearing respondents (n = 122) reported that their home sign
language was their first language, as seen in Figure 4. This does not reflect the
experiences of spoken language brokers, who one would expect to report 100%
of the time that their first language (i.e., home language) was the same as their

4. There is no scope in this chapter to discuss issues concerning language acquisition, bilin-
gualism and educational trends in Deaf communities. For a deeper overview of the issues, see
Brennan (1999), Ewoldt (1996), Power and Leigh (2000).
5. Likert scale: 1 = poor, 2 = reasonable, 3 = competent, 4 = fluent, 5 = extremely fluent.
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 393

parents. The reason for not all Codas identifying a sign language as their first lan-
guage may be because many deaf parents choose not to sign with their children,
and instead communicate through speech and lipreading. This is for a variety of
reasons, including potentially a lack of understanding that using a sign language
will not damage the development of speech (Goodwyn et al. 2000).
Interestingly, 21% (n = 45) of the hearing respondents actually consider them-
selves to be balanced bilinguals, that is, to have acquired their signed and spoken
languages simultaneously as equal first languages. This could be regarded as typ-
ical of the Coda experience, as they use their sign language at home but live in a
world surrounded by the majority spoken language, where they are immersed in
that language both inside and outside the home. This self-reported status may dif-
fer from that of spoken language brokers as the children typically relocate to a new
country and therefore acquire a new language once they have migrated, so they
are initially dominant in the home language and therefore perhaps less confident
in the newly acquired language. This is an important point to highlight in terms
of how Codas may feel about their CLB experience, as perceptions of language
competence can affect their sense of identity.

Balanced 45

Spoken lang 47

Sign lang 122

Figure 4. Respondents’ reported first language

As with the questions in relation to their parents’ language competence, respond-

ents were also asked to rate on a Likert scale their own competence in their signed
and spoken/written language. As can be seen in Figure 5, participants self-reported
a high level of fluency in both languages, but a marginally higher level of compe-
tence in their sign language with an overall mean of 4.4975 in sign language and
4.4825 in spoken/written language.
394 Jemina Napier

4.65
4.60
4.60
4.55 4.54
4.51 4.52
4.50 4.47
4.45 4.44
4.42 4.42
4.40
4.35
4.30
Listening

fingerspelling
Writing
Speaking

Reading

Signing

signs
Understanding

Understanding
Fingerspelling
Figure 5. Mean scores for self-reported language competence

When examining the open comments 6 made by respondents in relation to this

question, it can be seen that there appears to be a level of confidence in the sign
language as a result of either using the language at home within a deaf family, or
because they have gone on to train as a professional sign language interpreter, and
have therefore worked hard to further develop their signing skills. The following
Examples 1–5 illustrate quotes from respondents:

(1) I believe I have a great understanding of Auslan and would say I’m very fluent
as my Mum has exceptional skills.
(2) I was raised in a deaf family (only hearing member in family)
(3) Most Deaf people think I am Deaf when they first meet me
(4) I’ve recently graduated from an Interpreting program and I consider my skills
to be good but I would never consider myself to be extremely fluent (I don’t
know if I would EVER consider that).
(5) I am a certified sign language interpreter, also court certified in ASL

This means we need to re-examine the notion of circumstantial and elective bilin-
guals, as Codas who go on to become professional sign language interpreters do
not fit either category particularly well, in that they may start out as circumstantial
bilinguals acquiring two languages from a young age, but electively choose to
pursue more formal study of their home language in order to advance their skills
for professional practice. Thus, the discrete categorization of two different types
of bilingual is more complex than would initially appear.

6. The open comments from respondents have been copied verbatim from the survey responses,
so all the grammatical and typographical errors are intact.
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 395

This is particularly notable when comparing how the survey respondents feel
about their spoken/written language competence, as some respondents reported
that they did not feel as confident with this language for a variety of reasons, as
shown in Examples 6–10:

(6) I’ve always had difficulty finding the English equivalents or signed words/
concepts. I believe my command of ASL is greater than my English. I have had
MUCH more practice in voice to sign. However, when I write, I don’t have the
same hesitency [sic] or difficulty expressing my thoughts.
(7) English is an area of struggle for me. As I grow older I see influences from my
professional work setting and it’s improving.
(8) English is my 2nd language (…) learn to do it every day really.
(9) I rated reading and writing lower because I am not comfortable with certain
types of writing and reading (…) for example, very dense pages and pages of
academic text
(10) Due to the lack of English grammar in our house, I feel I’ve missed out on the
exposure to all the language which doesn’t exist in Auslan. I sometimes get
confused during pronounciation [sic] and context of some words.

One of the possible reasons for this lack of confidence is that if their parents do/
did not feel comfortable using the majority language (see Table 1 above), there
may have been a lack of exposure to that language in the house (e.g., in the form
of books), and thus the Codas’ skills in that language could be weaker.
Others noted that it is difficult to define fluency (in either a signed or spo-
ken language), especially if you feel that your language competence is always
developing:

(11) I don’t ever put extremely fluent as I feel I am always a work in progress
(12) I’m not sure how to define “fluent” versus “extremely fluent.” “fluent” to me
means fully able to communicate about a range of topics in a range of situations
with people who are familiar and unfamiliar to you.

The understanding of finger spelling scored lowest in the sign language self-as-
sessment (mean 4.42) but reading scored highest in the spoken/written language
assessment (mean 4.60) (see Figure 5). The reading of finger spelling is often noted
as problematic for interpreters (Patrie 1992) as it involves the borrowing of words
from the majority spoken/written language into the sign language through an
orthographic representation of each letter on the hands (literally spelling out a
w-o-r-d). This strategy is typically used by signers when there is no existing sign
for a concept, or they want to emphasize a particular word, and is most commonly
used in settings relying on technical terms, such as conference presentations or
396 Jemina Napier

university lectures (Napier 2006). Typically though, problems with finger spelling
comprehension is considered to be an issue for learners of sign language as a sec-
ond language, so it is interesting that Codas also experience difficulty, although
this is relative as they still rate themselves as highly competent, just not as compe-
tent as they are in other areas of sign language production and reception. None of
the hearing respondents chose to elaborate on their skills in understanding finger
spelling in the open comment box in relation to this question, so it is not possible
to examine this finding in more depth.
A total of 77 (36%) of the 214 hearing respondents reported competence in
more than two languages, so in addition to the spoken and signed language of
their own country (e.g., English and Auslan), they stated they were also competent
in at least one other spoken or signed language. This finding reveals the potential
contribution that Codas can make to the professional sign language interpreting
profession due to their facility with languages. In fact, in some countries, there is
increasing recognition of the need for sign language interpreters to work between
three or more languages to accommodate the language needs of particular groups
in the deaf population, for example, in the United States between spoken English
and ASL and either spoken Spanish or Mexican Sign Language, or both (Quinto-
Pozos et al. 2010; Ramsey & Peña 2010), and between spoken English, New Zealand
Sign Language and Maori (McKee & Awheto 2010).
Now that we have established the characteristics and language profiles of the
respondents, it is possible to focus on their reported CLB experience.

5.3 CLB experience

From the total 240 respondents to the survey, 81% (n = 193) reported that they
currently do some form of language brokering, and 41% (n = 98) stated that they
have previously taken on CLB before circumstances changed. These numbers are
conflated as some respondents answered that they still broker for one member of
the family, but also used to broker for a different member of the family until that
person moved away or died.
When asked who they brokered for, of the 210 complete responses to the
question, the overwhelming response was that 99% of the time it was for parents
(n = 208), followed by friends (n = 160) and other family members (n = 102), as
seen in Figure 6. When teasing out the most time spent brokering for which par-
ent, the majority of respondents (n = 148) reported that the language brokering
is predominantly for their mother, which reflects the findings of Orellana et al.
(2003) with Latino children in Chicago.
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 397

99%

76.2%

48.6%

21.9% 19.5%

Parents Brothers/sisters Other family Friends Neighbours

members

Figure 6. People brokered for, by percentage

Another finding that mirrors spoken language brokering studies is in the contexts
where CLB occurs, as seen in Table 2. It can be seen that Codas broker in a range
of different places, most commonly at home, followed by medical settings, at the
local store or bank, and even in legal settings. It is not surprising that they may
broker when someone comes to the front door or when visiting the local shop, as
professional interpreters would not be readily available in these places, but these
results confirm that although professional sign language interpreting services are
available for deaf people to access services in many institutions in many countries
(medical, legal, education, employment especially), Codas are still performing this
non-professional interpreting function for their parents in those contexts.

Table 2. CLB contexts

Places of brokering Response no. (n = 210) Response %
Home (e.g., telephone, hawkers, and visitors) 199 95
Doctors, specialists or hospitals 196 93
Store/shop 189 90
Financial institutions (e.g., bank and tax agent) 174 88
Educational institutions 160 76
Utility companies (e.g., electricity, telephone, and gas) 159 75
Government departments (e.g., welfare/pensions) 153 73
Post office 138 65
Church/religious events 119 56
Employment 105 50
Justice systems (e.g., police, courts, and tribunals) 98 46
398 Jemina Napier

Respondents were also offered the opportunity to offer suggestions for other sit-
uations where they broker. Two main categories were suggested, including sight
translation (i.e., letters and notes from school), which reflects the findings of
Antonini and Torresi (2012) and Orellana (2009). The other situation seems to be
particular to Codas and deaf parents, that is, brokering between hearing and deaf
family members at family events. One-third of the 33 respondents who answered
“other” stated that they broker in this context. This phenomenon has also been
reported elsewhere in discussion of language use/choice in deaf families (Pizer
2007; Pizer et al. 2012), and is an occurrence that may be less likely to happen
in migrant families between family members. One respondent made a revealing
comment in response to the question of CLB contexts:

(13) At the pub, days out, booking tickets, listening to answer phone messages,
stuff said on TV (when the subtitles are not there or go wrong), on holidays,
at restaurants. In fact, when I think about it pretty much everywhere, simply
because I spend a lot of my social time around deaf family and friends.

When asked at what age they began to engage in CLB, it was surprising to see how
young Codas report to have been, with the highest number reporting between the
ages of 4 and 5 (43.5%), as seen in Table 3.

Table 3. Age began CLB

Age (years) Response no. (n = 198) Response (%)
2–3 26 13
4–5 86 43.5
6–7 38 19.5
8–9 19   9.5
10–12 10 5
14–15 3   1.5
Unsure 16 8

From the 16 respondents who were unsure of their exact age, they made com-
ments such as “From as early as I can remember,” “As far back as I can remem-
ber,” “Primary school age,” “Toddler age,” or “Too young to recall,” which would
imply they also began at a very young age. This finding is in contrast with that
of Antonini and Torresi (2012) in Italy, who found that CLB commenced among
migrant children on average between the ages of 8 and 12, which was likely influ-
enced by the age of the children when they relocated to a new country.
We were also interested to see whether respondents are the only broker in
their family. Of the total number of 240 respondents, 57% had at least one sister,
and 70% had at least one brother, a breakdown of which can be seen in Figure 7.
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 399

120 108
103
100 95
80 72
60 47
40 35

20 13
7
0
0 sisters 1 sister 2 sisters 3 or more 0 brothers 1 brother 2 brothers 3 or more
sisters brothers

Figure 7. Number of respondents with brothers and sisters

Of the 214 hearing respondents, all of whom have siblings, the majority in com-
bination (63%) have at least one other sibling that also performs the CLB role, as
seen in Table 4; but the largest single group (37%) report that they are the only
family broker.

Table 4. Siblings that broker by number and percentage

No other siblings broker 78 37%
Brother 28 13%
Sister 33 16%
Both brother and sister 19   8%
Brothers   6   3%
Sisters   8   4%
Other siblings (no gender specified) 42 19%
Total 214 100%

These figures become more enlightening once the comments offered by the re-
spondents in answer to whether their siblings broker are reviewed. The primary
reasons given by respondents for their siblings not brokering focused on signing
skills, being the eldest child, or resistance to the role, as seen in Examples 14–19:

(14) Yes, my sister, but not as often as I do as her signing isn’t nearly as precise (…)
and she doesn’t like to do it.
(15) No. I’m the eldest child and I was the only one who became fluent in Auslan.
(19) My brother sometimes does, but didn’t sign well so it usually didn’t work well.
(17) No, my brother (…) doesn’t broker for my parents as he feels it’s a burden. He
would rather disappear than broker at the door for a sales man, or interpret
a phone call for them. When we were younger, I remember him interpreting
some things at the shops etc., but now I’m the prominent “go to” person when
brokering is needed as I’m much more fluent (…).
400 Jemina Napier

(18) My older sister (…) did broker for a period, but began resisting and refusing in
her early teens. After college, she distanced herself from the family and rarely
had contact. And, when she did, she rarely used her signing and typically
excluded our parents from conversations at the dinner table or socially.
(19) My brother, sister and I all took turns brokering, I did the most since I was the
oldest…

These comments correspond with previous reports from Codas (e.g., Preston
1994), and also with spoken language brokers (e.g., Tse 1996) that typically there
is one child in the family that functions as the default broker, and it tends to be
one of the older children in the family. However, it does not appear that CLB is
necessarily the charge only of female children as previously thought (Singleton
& Tittle 2000).
From some of the comments made by respondents, it can be seen that there are
clearly strong attitudes toward the CLB role. Participants were asked to respond
to attitudinal statements in relation to how they felt about their CLB experience,
by either agreeing or disagreeing with the statement. Table 5 gives a breakdown
of the most common responses. 7

Table 5. Attitudes toward CLB

Attitudinal statements Response no. Response
(n = 210) %
I’m proud to be a broker 142 67.6
Brokering made/makes me more independent and mature 137 65.2
I know my Deaf culture better because I brokered 129 61
I think brokering has helped me to understand my parents better 107 51
I think brokering has helped me to care more for my parents 105 50
I feel good about myself when I broker for others 102 48.5
I think brokering has helped me to better understand people who 101 48
are from other cultures
I think my parents know more about hearing people/culture 95 45
because I interpreted for them

When looking at the most common responses, there appears to be an overall posi-
tive outlook toward CLB. A total of 79 (37.5%) of the respondents agreed that they
like to broker, and 55 (27%) stated that brokering for others makes them feel more
grown up. Nevertheless, some respondents also agreed with some of the negative
attitudinal statements, which means that CLB is not always a positive experience.
Eighty (38%) respondents stated that they have to broker for others even when

7. The figures do not add up to 100% as people were able to agree with more than one statement.
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 401

they do not want to; 60 (28.5%) felt that brokering is a burden; 23 (11%) said they
are embarrassed to be a broker; 23 (11%) said they feel nervous when they broker;
but actually only 14 (6.5%) said that they do not like to broker.
Again, when drilling down into the comments made by respondents, a more
revealing picture can be seen. Ultimately, respondents acknowledged that their
feelings about brokering are not clear-cut, and that even if they generally feel
positive about the experience, it may not always have been easy. In particular, a
pattern can be seen in Examples 20–25 below where participants noted how their
feelings have changed over time, that they may have resented the brokering role
as a child, but value the experience now:

(20) As a child, I hated brokering… and found it to be a burden. I have since dis-
covered that it was the responsibility I felt as a child for ensuring my parents
made the “right” decision that I hated. Brokering… with a responsibility to the
message, not the outcome, is a joy.
(21) When I was younger, I hated brokering for my family and friends. I actually
stopped talking to my family and friends for many years. It’s only been the last
12
(22) Many ambiguous feelings at different stages of my life and with different fam-
ily members. Helping my father discus [sic] building plans at age 7 with the
architect is not the same as shopping with my daughter (…)
(23) Brokering is a… rite of passage, it’s very hard and unfair when under 18 witout
[sic] the necessary emotional maturity to cope in awkward situations. As an
adult it’s hard to broker when the inner child within wants to cry or react to
what’s happening
(24) My comments are rated at different times of my life. I was not expert at inter-
preting and was embarrassed about my inadequacies rather than by brokering
itself.
(25) Brokering at times is a burden, but the advantages of brokering have assisted
me in learning how people communicate and have taught me life skills

Even though respondents noted the conflicting feelings they have about their CLB
experience, the majority (78%) of the hearing 214 respondents work as professional
interpreters, and thus have continued with a brokering role in their professional
lives. When asked if they felt they “fell into” interpreting as a result of their bro-
kering experience, or whether they had actively decided to work as an interpreter
and pursue that as a career option, 53% (n = 113) confirmed that because of their
CLB experience their interpreting career was “accidental.” Respondents were also
given the opportunity to comment in relation to this question and it is interesting
to see what drew them into professional interpreting. Only one person commented
402 Jemina Napier

on their decision to become an interpreter, and two commented that interpreting

is a sideline career. Some felt it was a natural progression from CLB, some resisted
and then succumbed, whereas others felt encouraged or pressured into the profes-
sion by their parents or other community members, as shown in Examples 26–30:

(26) My interpreting career has happened because I fell back onto a gift I had to
allow me to pursue other personal priorities.
(27) I kept it at arm’s length for many years – all through college, grad school… and
few years beyond, stating that it wasn’t my vocational goal. I always did it on the
side, because it was nice “extra” money. Finally, I took a national certification
test, got the highest level, changed career path to interpreting and never looked
back. I say interpreting chose me, I didn’t choose it!
(28) I am a paid interpreter, yes, I fell into it due to pressure from my parents
(29) I had no intentions of becoming an interpreter, but the community demanded
and requested that I do so… In hindsight, I’m honored and feel privilidged [sic]
that I was appointed and selected.
(30) I work as an educational interpreter and I’m currently studying to become a
qualified interpreter. I fell into this line of work through my love of the language
and experiences within Deaf communities.

Given that many of the respondents “fell into” interpreting, but now there are
more opportunities to actively pursue interpreting as a career with degree cours-
es in many countries, respondents who were below 18 years of age were asked to
comment on whether they are considering a career as a professional interpreter.
Of the 16 eligible hearing respondents, nine said that they are not planning to
become a professional interpreter and seven said that it is something they plan to
do. Reasons given against included: “just didn’t think I wanted to because I have
been signing since birth,” “I do not like interpreting,” and “not my thing”; and
one comment in support stated “I think it would be an interesting experience to
interpret professionally. I think I would also feel good about myself for helping
people who have trouble communicating with hearing people.”
In sum, it appears that although the majority of respondents to this survey did
report having positive CLB experiences, and a high number are now working as
professional interpreters, sign language interpreting may still not be the career of
choice for young Codas. This last quote from one participant neatly sums up the
findings of this study: “I do believe it is a catch 22. Sometimes it is uncomfortable
to interpret for my parents, but I do also feel that it has molded me into the person
I am today.”
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 403

6. Limitations of the study

Before concluding this study and discussing the implications of the findings, it
is necessary to acknowledge its limitations. There are several reasons why the
findings of this study cannot be generalized: (1) The sample of 240 (214 hearing)
respondents is an extremely small number for an international study, given that
the World Federation of the Deaf estimates that there are 72 million deaf sign
language users worldwide. If every deaf person has one child, this sample is only
a tiny fraction of the potential sample. Because we used network and snowball
sampling to disseminate the survey information, there is no way to know the reach
of the survey, that is, the actual number of people who received the information;
so it not possible to estimate the return rate; (2) the respondents are more likely
to be those who have experiences of CLB and who have something to say about
it; (3) although there was information about the survey available in International
Sign, the questionnaire instrument itself was in English, so the survey responses
are naturally skewed toward responses from English speaking countries; (4) the
research team was based in Australia and the United States at the time of the
study, so we were also more likely to get results from those countries. Another
limitation of the study is in relation to the language proficiency ratings. These
ratings rely on the accurate reports from respondents, but we had no way to test
participants’ bilingual competence, so we have to rely on respondents being truth-
ful. Furthermore, the reported language competence of deaf parents cannot be
generalized as many deaf people rate themselves as balanced bilinguals, and highly
proficient in speaking and/or writing, especially deaf professionals (Hauser, Finch
& Hauser 2008); so (a) Codas with parents with less bilingual competency may be
more likely to broker and (b) deaf professionals, who are better educated, are less
likely to rely on children to broker as they probably feel more competent to insist
on interpreting services; thus, the findings from this survey may be skewed toward
Codas with parents with less bilingual competence.

7. Conclusions

Overall, the findings from this study support the research on spoken language
CLB in that Codas participate in CLB from a young age and in a range of settings,
and they have mixed feelings about their CLB experiences. Nevertheless, Codas
feel that their CLB experiences have positively contributed to who they are today
as adults. Previous studies of spoken language brokering (e.g., Buriel et al. 1998;
McQuillan & Tse 1995; Tse 1995) that were conducted retrospectively have shown
a positive relationship between language brokering and feelings of self-efficacy,
404 Jemina Napier

which is also apparent in the retrospective comments from adult Codas in this
study. The majority of adult respondents in this study are still functioning in a
brokering role, and in fact are working as professional sign language interpreters,
but not all young Codas necessarily want to be interpreters. Thus, the findings
from this study reveal that language brokering is not just child’s play, and there are
implications in considering bilingualism and language brokering as a precursor to
the development of expertise as a professional sign language interpreter.

7.1 Implications

Professional sign language interpreters have traditionally come from deaf families
(Napier et al. 2010) and have “evolved” from Deaf communities, but since the in-
troduction of formal interpreter training programs anyone can choose to be a sign
language interpreter and be “schooled” into the profession (Cokely 2005). Fewer
Codas seem to be choosing to work as professional interpreters, and it may also be
the case that we are experiencing attrition from interpreter education programs
as Codas do not complete the course of study (Scott Gibson 2008), meaning that
fewer interpreters come from Deaf communities (Cokely 2005). There are still huge
supply and demand imbalances in the sign language interpreting sector world-
wide, hence more people need to be exposed to the possibility of sign language
interpreting as a career, regardless of whether they are Codas or not.
Many Codas still continue to broker for their parents when they are adults,
even if other professional interpreters are available, because it is the only legitimate
option due to the family member being the only professional interpreter who can
understand the deaf person, for example, due to onset of dementia (Major 2013).
Moreover, many Codas who work as professional interpreters feel undervalued in
terms of what they bring to the profession (Williamson 2012). Brokering experi-
ence is an asset (Orellana et al. 2003), and it is important to recognize and value the
expertise (the “fund of knowledge”) that Codas have and the “real-life activities”
(such as brokering) that they have engaged in from their experience of growing
up in a minority community, which is comparable to the experiences in minority
ethnic communities (Andrews & Ching Yee 2006). Brokering can be considered
as a form of active citizenship from an individual who can productively contribute
to society by using his/her bilingual skills (Bauer 2010).
Therefore, it is vital to further explore the nature of brokering that is per-
formed by Codas for several reasons: (i) to gain a clearer picture of the interpret-
ing needs of Deaf communities, to account for interpreting demand that may
currently be “masked” by the fact that supply is met by children rather than pro-
fessional interpreters; (ii) to ascertain how the Coda interpreting experience can
 Chapter 19. Bilingualism, language brokering and signed language interpreting 405

be harnessed into positive linguistic and social competence, and mentoring them
into becoming professional interpreters, as Codas can “bring valuable insights” to
the interpreting profession (Colonomos 2013). A better understanding of how and
why Codas interpret can also feed into ensuring that formal interpreter education
programs can be adapted to account for the different training needs of Codas, so
that they can actively pursue a career as a professional sign language interpreter
(Williamson 2015).

7.2 Recommendations for further research

Although a survey study is useful for “sketching the broad contours of the [CLB]
practice” (Orellana 2010: 51), more qualitative research is needed to further con-
tribute to the body of CLB research and explore “how adults narrate their expe-
riences as child language brokers, and how their perspectives on their language
brokering experience change as they grow from children into adults” (Bauer
2010: 127). Furthermore, it is also necessary to explore the CLB experiences from
the young Codas themselves, and deaf parents’ and other stakeholders perceptions
of their CLB experiences (as Cirillo et al. 2010 did in Italy regarding institutional
expectations), as well as observe “language brokering in action” (Orellana 2010).
Thus, further replication of spoken CLB research in Deaf communities is needed.
Further research will enable us to examine CLB experiences of Codas in more
depth, and from different perspectives, and build upon the findings of this ground-
breaking survey study.

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 Index

A 352, 354–355, 360, 373, 375, 383, 385, 388,

acculturation 5, 68, 73, 262–263, 324 396–401, 403–404
ad hoc interpreter 132, 134, 138, 150, 260 see also child language broker
see also family interpreter brokering 1–4, 8, 10, 12–13, 16–21, 23, 29, 33, 35,
ad hoc interpreting 157–158, 166, 168, 173, 259– 46, 51–52, 57, 59–60, 65–77, 157–160, 164173,
260, 268–269, 274 185, 192, 231, 259–261, 263–270, 272, 274–275,
see also lay interpreting, non-professional 281–285, 291–292, 295–307–312, 315–317, 319,
interpreting 321–326, 328–331, 337–340, 342–344, 346–348,
adult language brokering 157, 169 350–351, 353–356, 359–361, 363–365, 367–377,
see also child language brokering, language 381–382, 385–388, 391–393, 396–401, 403–405
brokering see also adult language brokering, child language
adultification 66, 324, 360 brokering, language brokering
see also parentification budding translator 322, 337, 340, 342, 352, 354–355
agency 13, 19–20, 71, 166, 187, 259, 269–271, 275,
316, 319, 359–365, 372, 374, 376 C
artwork elicitation 20, 337, 339, 354 case study 18–19, 139, 213–214, 225, 323, 239–240,
attitude towards non-professional interpreting and 281, 285, 292
translation 13, 19, 164, 166, 168, 173, 269, 271, censor information 368, 376
273, 295, 310, 315, 317, 330, 382, 387, 400 censorship 225, 359, 361
autoethnography 195–198 child 1–5, 7–8, 10–15, 18–20, 23, 31–37, 39, 48,
autonomy 15, 19, 88, 97, 102–103, 281, 283, 291–292 51–52, 59–61, 65–68, 70–76, 78, 90–91, 95,
see also independence 98–100, 132, 143, 157, 159, 164, 166, 168–169,
171, 201, 208, 215–217, 223, 231, 260, 262–266,
B 268, 281–283, 285–288, 290–292, 295–296,
benefit of language brokering 8, 58–59, 68, 260, 300–303, 305, 307–312, 315–329, 331–356,
365, 373, 375, 377 359–361, 363–364, 368–377, 381–383, 385–386,
bilingual 4–5, 7, 10, 13–14, 18–21, 32–35, 37, 39, 41, 390–391, 393, 396, 398–401, 403–405
48–51, 53, 55, 58–59, 61, 65, 67, 71–72, 74, 79, development 19, 67, 70, 73, 75, 281–282
86, 88, 101–102, 107–108, 110–113, 115, 119, of deaf adults 20, 223, 383
123–127, 133, 159, 183, 244, 259–272, 274–275, see Coda
281–282, 284–285, 310, 331, 337–338, 381–385, child language broker 13, 60, 68, 166, 265, 292,
391, 393–394, 403–404 308, 328–329, 331, 338, 355, 360–361, 373, 376,
see also bilingual youngster, circumstantial 405
bilingual, gifted bilingual see also young broker
bilingual youngster 18, 259–264, 268–272, 274, 331 child language brokering 1–2, 4, 60, 65–66, 159,
bilingualism 5, 7, 14, 19–21, 29–30, 50, 57, 61, 264, 164, 169, 171, 231, 264, 281, 295, 315–316, 337,
267, 282, 381, 383–384, 392, 404 356, 361, 377, 381
blog 14, 29–32, 34–38, 40–42, 53, 65 see CLB
publication 30–31 see also adult language brokering, language
broker 13, 19, 60, 68, 70, 169, 173, 264–266, 268, brokering
271, 282–284, 291–292, 296–297, 301–303, childhood 20, 39, 183, 260, 263, 283, 318–319, 359,
309–311, 323–324, 326–327, 329, 331, 342–347, 363–364, 372
412 Non-professional Interpreting and Translation in Institutional Settings

church interpreter 17, 35–36, 177–178, 180–181, 185, developmental script 281, 283, 292–293
187, 190–192, 196–197, 202–207, 209–210 dialogue interpreting 343, 346
church interpreting 17, 35–36, 177–178, 181, 185, disaster interpreting 232–235, 248
187, 191, 195, 197–199, 202–203, 205–207, 209, 231 see also relief interpreting
CI 131, 134–135 disaster relief 15, 18, 231, 233, 236–237, 239, 241,
see community interpreting 246, 248, 252
circumstantial bilingual 7, 260, 275, 382–384, 394 doctor 6, 15–16, 40, 46, 74, 85, 88–92, 94–103,
CLB 4–6, 9–10, 15, 18–21, 281–283, 285, 287, 291, 111–127, 149, 158, 164, 241, 251, 264–265, 284,
293, 295–302, 305–312, 315–319, 321–325, 286–290, 299, 312, 325, 361, 365, 368, 370,
329–331, 337–338, 340–341, 348, 352, 355, 373–374
381–382, 385–393, 396–403, 405 see also healthcare provider, patient
see child language brokering
Coda 384–387, 381, 383–389, 391–398, 400, E
402–409 essentialism 15, 83–84, 88, 98, 101–103
see child of deaf adults ethnological research 177, 337
cognitive skills 259, 268 see also participatory ethnological research
community interpreter 8, 60, 103, 134, 137, 233, evangelical discourse 177, 180–181
260 see also religious discourse
community interpreting 5, 12, 51, 57, 85, 131, experience of translation/interpreting 15, 19–21,
234–235, 386 37, 39, 45–46, 50, 55, 57–61, 67, 71, 73–74, 84,
see CI 108, 157–158, 164–169, 181, 183, 189–192, 195–201,
connectedness 19, 281, 283, 291–292 216, 271–272, 281–282, 284–288, 301, 309–310,
contextual assumptions 86–87, 89, 97, 101 321, 323–324, 328–330, 337, 339–340, 359–360,
conversation analysis 15, 70, 83, 107, 111, 321 373, 375, 381, 383–388, 392–393, 396, 400–402,
cooperation 21, 161, 167, 199, 220, 223, 236, 250– 404–405
251, 311, 322 expert translator 34, 45, 55
coordination in disaster relief 241, 243, 247, 249,
252 F
coordination in interpreting 85–87, 103 family dynamics 19, 70, 73, 75, 281, 291
court interpreter 136–137, 140–141 family interpreter 5, 125, 259–260, 269, 274, 363,
court interpreting 29, 40, 354 390
Creole 244–251, 254 fandubbing 2
crowdsourcing 2, 29, 250 fansubbing 2, 6
cultural adjustment 292–293
cultural brokering 3, 16–17, 157, 170, 292, 360 G
cultural mediator 13, 86, 159–160, 164, 171, 324, gatekeeping 131–132, 139
326 gifted bilingual 259, 274
cultural presupposition 84, 86–88, 91, 99, 103 globalization 1, 9, 179

D H
data collection 13, 20, 139, 320–322, 337, 339–340 Haiti 18, 231–232, 234, 236–237, 239–242, 244–249,
deaf 18, 20, 214–217, 219–220, 222–225, 367, 369, 251, 253–255
372, 383–387, 389–394, 396–398, 403–406 healthcare provider 83–84, 87–88, 102–103
community 381, 383–386, 390, 392, 402, see also doctor
404–405 healthcare services 83–84, 87–88, 324
interpreter 216 host country 60, 133, 262, 359
translator 220, 222, 225 host language 12, 132, 157, 346, 354
see also child od deaf adults, Coda humanitarian field 231–232, 246
developmental continuum 45, 49–50, 56 hybrid translational event 219
developmental perspective 14, 45, 49, 57
developmental psychology 66, 68
 Index 413

I dialogue interpreting, disaster interpreting,

ICT 214, 217, 236–237, 249, 251, 253 lay interpreting, medical interpreting,
see information and communication technology military interpreting, non-professional
identity 16–17, 98, 103, 107–109, 112, 115–116, 118, interpreting, public service interpreting,
122, 124–127, 157, 159, 164, 166, 171–173, 195, 207, relief interpreting, sign language
209, 215, 267, 323, 348, 355, 359, 372, 377, 384, 393 interpreting, simultaneous interpreting,
immigrant inmate 158, 165, 173 sports interpreting, war interpreting
see also migrant inmate intralingual translation 46
independence 19, 60, 281, 283, 292 see also interlingual translation
see also autonomy, interdependence IPRI 18–19, 259, 269–275
indigenous language 110–111 see Interpreter Interpersonal Role Inventory
information and communication technology 232, Italian class 159, 165, 167
236 Italy 1–2, 16, 19, 74, 84, 88, 94, 96–97, 157–162,
see ICT 166–168, 172–173, 226, 268, 295–298, 300, 312,
InMedIO PUER(I) 295, 338 317–318, 322, 327–331, 341–342, 398, 405
institutional encounter 16, 131–132, 134, 138, 142,
151, 312 J
institutional setting 3, 5, 12, 21, 135, 202, 321 jail personnel 17, 157–158, 168
see also public setting junior high school 19, 167, 295–296, 338
integration 12, 135, 157, 159, 164, 172–173, 325
interaction 3, 18, 83, 86–88, 91, 93, 95, 100–103, L
107–109, 111, 114–115, 118–119, 121–122, 126, 128, L2 learner 46, 50, 52, 58–60
134, 163, 179, 182, 185, 189, 191, 238, 252, 268–271, language 1–8, 10, 12–14, 16–21, 23, 29, 33, 35–42,
273, 311, 319, 343, 345–346, 353, 355, 363–364, 372, 46–53, 56–61, 65–76, 86–87, 107, 109–112,
376, 385 115–116, 122, 124, 126–127, 131–136, 138–143,
intercultural adaptation 15, 88–90, 101–103 145–146, 148, 151–152, 157–160, 163–173,
intercultural mediation 83–85, 101, 103 179–181, 185, 187, 192, 196, 202, 213–217,
intercultural mediator 48, 51, 59–61, 83, 87, 91, 300 220–225, 231–233, 235–236, 239–248, 250–252,
interdependence 19, 281, 283, 292 259–268, 271–272, 274, 281–286, 288, 291–292,
see also independence 295–296, 298, 300–301, 305, 307–312, 315–317,
interlingual translation 45–48 319, 321–331, 334, 337–340, 342, 346, 350–352,
see also intralingual translation 354–356, 359–361, 363–377, 381–388, 391–398,
Internet 18, 138, 140, 155, 215, 218, 231, 237–239, 400, 402–406, 409
241–243, 250, 254–255 acquisition 5, 51, 164, 215, 262, 382, 392
Interpreter Interpersonal Role Inventory 18, 269 broker 13, 17, 19–20, 33, 46, 51–52, 57, 59–60,
see IPRI 67–70, 72–74, 158–160, 164–166, 168, 172–173,
interpreting 1–18, 20, 25, 29, 35–42, 51, 56–58, 260–261, 263–268, 272, 274, 281–282–285,
67, 69–70, 83–88, 101–102, 107–111, 126–127, 291–292, 300, 308, 312, 317, 319, 321–324,
131–138, 140, 148, 150–151, 157–159, 163–164, 326–331, 338, 355, 359–361, 363–364, 372–373,
166, 168–169, 173, 177–179, 181–192, 195–199, 375–377, 383
201–211, 213–214, 216–219, 223, 225–226, brokering 1–4, 10, 12–13, 16–17, 19–21, 29, 35,
231–237, 239–240, 244–249, 251–252, 259–260, 51, 60, 65–75, 157–159, 164, 166–171, 173, 185,
264–272, 274–275, 309, 315–316, 323, 325, 329, 192, 231, 259–260, 263–267, 274, 281–283,
343, 346, 352, 354–355, 359, 361, 364, 366–368, 285, 291–292, 295–296, 298, 301, 305, 309,
370–373, 381, 383, 385–386, 396–397, 399, 315–317, 323, 325–326, 329, 331, 337, 350–351,
401–405, 409 356, 359–361, 363–365, 367–377, 381, 387–388,
and translation market 10 391–393, 396–397, 400, 403–405
cognition 177, 182 services 12, 17, 60, 157, 231, 241, 262, 315–316,
strategies 150, 192 324, 330, 359
see also ad hoc interpreting, church interpreting, technologies 231, 236, 239–240
community interpreting, court interpreting,
414 Non-professional Interpreting and Translation in Institutional Settings

lay interpreter 16, 107–108, 110–112, 115, 119, 122, O

125–126 online community 240, 244, 246, 249
lay interpreting 107–108, 126–127 online network 231–232, 238–240, 243–244
see also ad hoc interpreting, non-professional oral translation 57, 107
interpreting orate style 221
literate style 221
P
M para-phrasing 5, 365
machine translation 237, 251 parentification 66, 324, 360
see MT see also adultification
manipulation 111, 359, 372 participation 15, 71, 83, 87–89, 98–103, 109, 119,
mediation 3, 18, 60, 69, 83–85, 87, 101–103, 138, 157, 121, 139, 195, 197, 199, 207–208, 250, 252, 269, 388
159, 162–164, 166, 168–173, 177, 179, 185, 192, participatory ethnological research 337
201, 209, 315–316, 323, 326–327, 342, 348, 351, patient 6–7, 15–16, 39–40, 46, 83–85, 87–92,
361, 365, 371–372, 374 94–103, 110–127, 158, 245, 248, 264
see also intercultural mediation see also doctor
medical consultation 16, 107, 109–112, 126, 134, Pentecostalism 195, 199–204, 207, 211
305, 307 perception 18–19, 73, 95, 178, 259–260, 264–265,
medical interpreter 39, 136–137 268–271, 274–275, 284, 295–296, 301, 304, 311,
medical interpreting 29, 39, 187, 245 320, 337, 356, 384, 393, 405
metalinguistic skills 53, 259, 267–268 of CLB 19, 296, 337
micro-analysis 223 of self 17, 157, 159, 171, 173, 213, 225, 260, 265
migrant 7, 10, 16–17, 60, 84, 87–89, 101–103, 110, performance 7, 10, 50–57, 60–61, 159, 177–178,
128, 139, 157–159, 161–164, 223, 300–301, 311, 180–182, 184–185, 187, 189–192, 266, 305, 310,
330, 338, 359, 364, 371, 381, 391–392, 398 327–329, 360, 369, 371
child 311, 398 photo elicitation 339
family 300–301, 398 positioning 69, 71, 107, 126, 186, 328–329, 342, 355
inmate 16, 157–159, 161, 164 power 10, 33, 165, 167, 189, 192, 198, 217, 222, 225,
military interpreter 37 237–238, 261, 339, 343, 351–352, 354–355, 360–361,
see also war interpreting 373–375
misalignment 107, 118, 122–126 preparation 197, 200–201, 203–207, 209
MT 237, 247, 251, 254 primary school 216, 288, 310, 322–323, 325–327,
see machine translation 329, 337, 340, 342, 348
public service interpreter 136–137, 141
N public service interpreting 5, 16, 84, 131, 136, 159,
narrative 20, 166, 180, 186, 189, 204–205, 209, 217, 233
220, 222, 296, 315, 317–318, 321–322, 324–325, public setting 12, 295, 299, 309
328–329, 337, 340, 342, 344, 346–348, 352–355, see also institutional setting
384
research 315, 321–322 Q
natural translation 4, 14, 29, 32–33, 45, 48–49, questionnaire 17–19, 45, 53–54, 57–59, 141, 158–
51–52, 159 159, 165–167, 173, 183, 259, 283, 295–306, 308–309,
netnography 239 311, 317, 320, 338, 381, 387–389, 403
non-professional interpreting 3–6, 8–9, 11, 17, 127,
158–159, 195–197, 210, 316, 397 R
see also ad hoc interpreting, lay interpreting recontextualisation 83, 91–92, 98, 101–102
non-professional interpreting and translation rehabilitation 17, 157, 159, 164, 173
4–6, 8–9, 195–196, 316 relief interpreting 233
NPIT 1–16, 18–19, 21, 316 see also disaster interpreting
see non-professional interpreting and religious discourse 178, 181, 183, 186
translation see also evangelical discourse
 Index 415

religious event 184, 190–192, 397 164–166, 169–173, 178–179, 187–189, 195–196,
religious setting 17, 177–178, 191–192, 196 198, 213–226, 231–237, 239–240, 242–247,
religious translation 29, 36 249–252, 260, 264–267, 269, 272, 275, 281,
rendition 85–86, 88–9–98, 100, 103, 118, 123, 287–291, 299, 301 303, 307, 309, 311, 315–316,
144–146, 151, 187–188 323–327, 329, 342, 345–346, 351–352, 366–367,
retrospective account 363 372, 383, 385, 398
ability 50–51, 53–54, 56
S competence 4, 14, 50, 55
school competition 315, 317, 321–324, 329, 331 experience 45, 55, 57–61, 216
school setting 296, 302, 315, 324, 326, 331 expertise 50, 54–55
self-perception 17, 157, 159, 171, 173, 213, 225 strategy 53, 142, 159, 170, 173, 225
self-reflection 54, 177, 189 see also interlingual translation, intralingual
semi-structured interview 183, 220, 281, 284, 317 translation, machine translation, natural
sight translation 216–218, 398 translation, non-professional interpreting
sign language 5, 12, 18, 35, 135, 138, 196, 213, 216, and translation, oral translation, religious
224, 381, 383–388, 391–397, 402–405 translation, sight translation, sign language
interpreting 5, 18, 213, 216, 381, 386, 396–397, translation, website translation
402, 404 translation and interpreting studies 135, 198,
translation 18, 213 218–219, 316
simultaneous interpreting 17, 40, 182, 195–197, see TIS
201–202, 205, 207–209 trust 184, 191, 223, 261, 273, 361
social media 18, 231, 236–237, 239–240, 243
specialist terminology 131, 133, 136, 143–144, 146, U
151 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
sports interpreting 29 Child 318
survey 17–20, 66, 71, 136, 140–141, 159, 166–168, unprofessional Translation 14, 29–31
170–172, 216, 259, 271–274, 276, 283, 295, 305,
309, 311, 338, 381, 386–389, 394–396, 402–403, V
405 video recording 17, 107, 177, 187
vignette methodology 19, 281, 284, 289–292
T visual narrative 20, 296, 317, 322, 337, 340, 342,
teacher 19, 72, 74, 158, 165, 168, 180, 220, 260, 346, 352, 354
263–264, 267, 272, 285–286, 295–296, 298–305, volunteer interpreter 17, 177–178, 183–184, 190,
307, 309–312, 317, 320–323, 325–328, 330–331, 338, 198, 231, 236, 249
344–346, 350–352, 361, 365, 367, 369–371, 374, 385 volunteer translator 231, 243
TIS 1–3, 8, 22, 227, 275, 312
see translation and interpreting studies W
Traduttori in Erba 322, 325 war interpreting 29, 38
transcoding 52, 56, 222 see also military interpreter
translanguaging 65, 67, 72 website translation 213, 216
translating mind 45–47
translation 2, 4–6, 8–11, 13–16, 18, 20, 29–34, 36, Y
38, 40–43, 45–61, 65–67, 69, 72, 77, 85, 89–90, young broker 19, 295–296, 298–299, 301–303, 305,
107–108, 112, 115–116, 123, 125–127, 130–131, 310–311, 339, 386
134–136, 138–143, 146–150, 152, 157, 159, see also child language broker
In the light of recent waves of mass immigration, non-professional
interpreting and translation (NPIT) is spreading at an unprecedented pace.
While as recently as the late 20th century much of the ield was a largely
uncharted territory, the current proportions of NPIT suggest that the
phenomenon is here to stay and needs to be studied with all due academic
rigour.
This collection of essays is the irst systematic attempt at looking at NPIT in
a scholarly and at the same time pragmatic way. Ofering multiple methods
and perspectives, and covering the diverse contexts in which NPIT takes
place, the volume is a welcome turn in an all too often polarized debate in
both academic and practitioner circles.

“Place your order now: coming in June is the latest collection of research on what
is fast becoming an established ield of intellectual inquiry – non-professional
translation and interpreting. Some of those who are ighting the good ight to
professionalize these ields may cringe. But the argument made by researchers
is that this ield of activity is real – it is here to stay – and it should be studied
rigorously. The fact that we are in the midst of the greatest wave of mass
immigration in the history of the planet certainly highlights the need for this
research, which is both academic and pragmatic.”

Marjory A. Bancroft, in INTERSECT: A Newsletter about Interpreting, Language and

Culture, April 28, 2017
isbn 978 90 272 5875 5

John Benjamins Publishing Company