The ideology of interpreting through a system dynamics perceptive

Claudia Monacelli (Department of Languages and Literature. Libera Universita degli Studi S. Pio V, Rome)

1. Introduction

In a volume dedicated to ideology in Translation Studies, Tymoczko (2003) discusses the 'positionality' of translators. She argues that if we consider language as part of a formal system, then we must accept that translators operate within a system. She points out (op. cit.: 195) that, in transcending the limits of a given system, the translators enter a larger system that "encompasses or includes the system transcended". She thus addresses the issue whether the construct of translation as being effected in an 'in between' space can be applicable to all facets of translation (ibid.).

Considering the varying constraints involved in the different forms of translation, and interpreting, it is reasonable to question whether this construct could be applied at all. For example, interpreters always operate in the immediacy of a given situation where they are in a position of coping with contextual constraints (see Varela 1999). In this respect we can describe the guiding principle behind their operational awareness as dynamic equilibrium (see Monacelli and Punzo 2001). We thus expect the characteristics of professional behaviour also to be of a dynamic quality, unless this behaviour appears to be normative or ideological in nature.

We seek to investigate the ideology of interpreting, i.e. tacit assumptions and beliefs collectively shared among professionals as a social group, by considering how these beliefs permeate the operative level. We examine a corpus of authentic source and target language speeches compiled from a variety of conference proceedings. For this purpose interactional linguistic politeness is examined - as a reflection of social interaction - since the habitus of social interaction is "subject to change as the locus of the struggle itself changes" (Watts 2003: 11). The notion of struggle is referred to as redress in politeness theory (see Brown and Levinson 1987). Politeness is a functional domain of language and language use (Lenz 2003: 192-3) and this implies that face-work occurs in response to something. Therefore, through an analysis of shifting linguistic politeness it should be possible to perceive the interpreters’ ideology, should uniform trends emerge, and possibly to understand the reasons behind such behaviour when it is framed within a systems perspective.

We first discuss the participation framework of an interpreter-mediated conference (§2) through a systems perspective then, at a microtextual level, we analyze linguistic shifts that are prominent in all corpus texts and that impinge upon issues concerning linguistic politeness: deictic reference, modality, hedges, and the textural encoding of threats in prominent features emerging in out data (omissions, additions, weakeners, strengtheners). Bearing in mind the notion of dynamic equilibrium as guiding an interpreter’s behaviour, our analysis aims to single out uniform trends that might be indicative of ideological behaviour.

Findings (§3) show that interpreting choices systematically made in the target language - the ideology of interpreting - create an overall mitigating effect of source texts, where the interpreter's stance, or 'position', is one of distancing and de-personalization. We discuss findings in system dynamics terms (§4).

2. Participation framework of an interpreter-mediated conference

Production shifts occurring throughout a talk indicate the multiple senses in which the self of the speaker can appear, the 'textual self' (Goffman 1981: 173) being one of long standing. We assess these shifts by considering systemic or structural constraints posed by the use of different language systems in a conference and interpersonal constraints posed by the ritual of the situation (Goffman 1981). Even though anyone taking the floor in a conference is potentially considered a ST speaker, for the purposes of analysis we define source texts as those including a complete ST speech - from when the ST speaker is given the floor to when the floor returns to the Chair - and a complete interpreted version of the same (see Monacelli 2005). This means all interruptions or any other comments from the floor made during this time are considered as part of the interaction during one interpreter's turn of talk in the TT. Thus the interpreter is considered to interact with his or her own text during this turn and to shift footing in relation to other ST parties interacting during this turn.

In terms of the interpersonal, ritual proceedings of conference interpreting (Figure 1), we know that a Chairperson gives the floor to a speaker. Since we have distinguished the person who is given the floor as ST speaker, we refer to (P) as Chairperson and define (A) as ST speaker who begins a turn of talk. One of the interpreting team members (I or II) thus also begins an interpreting turn (turn-taking among interpreters is illustrated with dotted arrows). The ST is mediated for TT receivers (D). System constraints create a situation whereby TT receivers hear the message with a certain delay with respect to ST receivers (B), due to EVS, the time necessary for the interpreter to convey the ST message received. Therefore, as illustrated in Figure 1, ST receivers (B) and the interpreter (I) hear a message before TT receivers (D). Thus, in A to D communication, the interpreter (I) has the role of mediator. Only A and I address receivers in a one-to-many style of communication (solid arrows); limited amounts of communication (broken arrows) occur between other communicating parties. In other words, in our corpus interventions on the part of the Chair are directed to ST speakers (e.g. to invite them to take the podium, to inform them their speaking time is over, etc.). In the limited amounts of communication occurring from P to A and from D to A, the interpreter (I) also has the role of mediator. This role may be carried out during the course of one interpreting turn, as we have seen.

Other parties to the event with a role of overhearer, who may exercise influence on an interpreter's face-work, include technicians (C), conference organizers and staff (E), and professional conference interpreting associations (F), which may act as gatekeepers to the profession.

Figure 1 System and ritual constraints in an interpreter-mediated event

Key: P - Chairperson; A- ST speaker; I - interpreter; I I - interpreting team member; D - primary TT receiver; B - primary ST receiver; C - technician; E - conference organizer and staff; F - professional associations; solid arrows, one-to-many communication; dash arrows, occasional communication, e.g. questions during discussion session; dotted arrows, interpreters' turn-taking.

Within this framework, what emerges through the 'mechanics' (Goffman 1981: 181) of lecturing, i.e. within text brackets (e.g. opening and closing remarks) and during the management of performance contingencies (e.g. other parties intervening during the interpreter's turn of talk), is a series of moves that make it possible to distinguish how interpreters react to potential threats to their professional face (interactional linguistic politeness) that may include difficulty in completing an utterance, the admission of mistakes or self-corrections. However, aside from these obvious instances of potential loss of face, there are a series of moves made in response to face-threatening acts that are also indicative of an interpreter's ideology. The following section (§3) illustrates our data and findings.

3. Data and Findings

Our study examines a corpus of ten source and target language texts from authentic conference proceedings. Ten professional interpreters with 11-30 years experience participated. Nine subjects are Italian native speakers and one us an English native speaker. Our corpus includes the following language pairs: French-Italian, English-Italian, Italian-English. We analyze those linguistic phenomena that, on the one hand, were prominent in all corpus texts and, on the other, most inform us in terms of the shifting participation framework and interactional linguistic politeness strategies enacted.

Goffman (1981: 147) suggests that deixis may be involved in the analysis of participation framework. Grundy (2000) also suggests that deictics are used to encode a relationship between persons, times, places and ourselves as speakers and that we should expect individual uses to vary. He stresses "if individual uses vary, we should expect intercultural variation in the way speakers encode the relationships of themselves to the world around them" (ibid.: 36-37). Deictic reference tells us something about "the membership status of the speaker, the degree of their affiliation to the culture as a whole and to sub-groups within the culture" (ibid.: 41). Diriker (2001), for example, examined "shifts in the speaking subject" and reports on a range of different roles assumed by the professional interpreter in her case study. Stewart (1992, 1995) analyzed the way in which speakers exploit the ambiguity of personal reference for the purposes of face-protection and redressive action. The analysis of personal reference in our corpus further explores and extends these findings. We also examine the interpreter's perspective as evinced by how processes are presented (transitivity) and how speakers attribute agency in texts. Since the suppression of agency may lead to impersonalization and indirectness (two negative face-saving strategies), we consider transitivity patterns with regard to interactional linguistic politeness. We also examine shifts in mood and modality, since they shed light on an interpreter's attitude toward his or her utterance, or how committed an interpreter is to what he or she says. Finally we analyze how threats to face are dealt with.

Table 1 lists the quantitative findings of translational shifts in the categories of personal reference (stance), transitivity and agency (voice), mood and modality (mod). These categories show a majority of [+distance] (stance) and [-direct] (voice and mod) moves in our data. Although the overall number of shifts are illustrative of this trend, it is interesting to note that subjects I 8 and I 9 behave differently: both make a majority of [-distance] moves in the category of stance; I 8 also makes a majority of [+direct] moves in the category of voice.

Table 1 Quantitative findings of translational shifts

The phenomena examined above all impinge upon the nature of a speaker's face-work (see Monacelli 2005).

An example of face-work (that, in itself, is not countable) within the participation framework of interpreter-mediated conferences is illustrated in Sample 1.(1) The ST speaker is a female parliamentarian from Turkey who takes the floor at the EFWP and talks of the condition of women in her country at all levels. She then also begins to express her views on the condition of Chechen women. Before taking the floor she is told she has only five minutes because another plenary meeting is scheduled. During her talk the Chair tries to interrupt no less than six times before the sequence of utterances in Sample 1.

Sample 1 I 9 22 ST

The interpreter manages this sequence in the following manner (Sample 2).

Sample 2 I 9 22

Sample 2 illustrates the TT version of Sample 1. A change in voice pitch (<lowers voice>) signals a shift whereby the interpreter reports the nature of the exchange between the ST speaker and the Chair off microphone. When the Chair intervenes (italics) the interpreter turns his microphone off, making the ST exchange between the Chair (italics) and the speaker at the podium directly available to the TT audience ({meeting carrying on they are waiting outside}), before resuming his work.

Emerging trends and face-work illustrate that detachment from FTAs and an interpreter's mitigation of illocutionary force are effected to varying degrees and realized through several means: omissions, additions and weakeners. Occurrences of these specific linguistic phenomena are indeed countable. Table 2 lists findings relative to interactional linguistic face-work. There are a total of 164 moves made, of which 41% concern omissions, 32% additions, 17% weakeners and 10% strengtheners. Aside from weakeners and strengtheners that weaken and strengthen illocutionary force respectively, 57% of omissions and 53% of additions mitigate illocutionary force. These findings confirm the trend of distancing and indirectness found in table 1.

Table 2 Interactional linguistic face-work

The omissions found in our data - the most important category of interactional linguistic face-work in this study - are of two types: omissions relating to ST politeness strategies and omissions relating to potential threats. Out of a total of 67 omissions, 38 (57%) were found to either weaken or omit a ST threat, or omit a ST politeness strategy. Like omissions, additions found in our data are of two types: additions of politeness strategies to head off potential threats and additions of potentially threatening language. Out of a total of 53 additions, 28 (53%) were found that constituted face redress or mitigated a ST threat. These types of additions to the ST on the whole serve as positive politeness strategies to claim common ground. In the 28 cases (100%) where the language in the TT had a weakening effect with regard to the ST, there are two, essential ways in which the illocutionary force of source texts is weakened: the modification of a strengthening hedge into a weakening one and the minimization of a threat or imposition through the use of some form of weakening hedge.

Samples 3-7 illustrate the nature of omissions relating to interactional linguistic face-work found in our data. Sample 3 illustrates an omission of a politeness strategy. Within the framework of the EFWP, the ST in Sample 3 fulfills the hearer's want for cooperation and face redress by including these two comments after having discussed the maltreatment of women in Algeria. The very notion of redress implies control on the part of the ST speaker. By avoiding such a strategy, the TT assumes a completely different discoursal perspective.

Sample 3 I 5 19

Sample 4 illustrates an omission of a threat to face. At the end of her talk, the ST speaker levels an act threatening the face of listeners by making a request that any future conference organized "be issue-based", implicitly suggesting the current conference is not. This, too, is mitigated through avoidance.

Sample 4 I 3 15

By far, however, the most obvious mitigation of illocutionary force in our corpus is realized through the omission of value-laden words. The next three samples (5-7, also taken from the EFWP conference) belong to one corpus text (I 7). In Samples 5 and 6 the same value-laden expression appears in the ST ("and it will give us the power") and is omitted by the interpreter in both these text sequences. The omission of these value-laden expressions illustrates the politeness strategy of minimizing the imposition on the TT receiver’s face and undoubtedly mitigates the illocutionary force of the TT.

Sample 5 I 7 28

Sample 6 I 7 30

Reference to another potentially threatening lexical item ('fight') is again omitted by the same interpreter in a successive sequence, just before the closing brackets of her talk. The two text sequences (Samples 5 and 6) that exclude 'power' in the TT occur at a point where overlapping speech may have further constrained the working conditions for the interpreter, who may not have actually heard these elements. However, the sequence in Sample 7 is uttered at a point where no overlapping speech occurs.

Sample 7 I 7 35

We have compiled figures of the translational shifts in our data so as to understand the magnitude of these trends in order to weigh the importance of certain shifts compared to others. Shifts found in the linguistic phenomena examined (personal reference, transitivity and modality) are also part of the particular face-work that emerges in texts which, in itself, is not countable. However, our quantitative assessment of phenomena relating to threats to face is based on those elements that lend themselves to such an assessment (omissions, additions, weakeners, strengtheners). When put into the context of other trends, the quantitative significance of data relating to threats to face takes on major importance, considering the cumulative effect of our findings. The following section discusses our findings in system dynamic terms.

4. Discussion

Describing this study's findings in system terms implies relating an individual phenomenon to a set of other interrelated factors that, together, account for single instances, individual occurrences (see Hermans 1999: 33). Thus contextualization becomes of relevance, both in terms of the individual interpreter-mediated event (for example the EFWP), and in terms of the event as system (fig. 1)

Such considerations also apply to descriptions such as these made in the discussion of a study's findings. In other words, remarks made here constitute a meta-level, distinct from the object level. Analyses examine interpretations (in this study). Other studies have examined statements about interpretations made by interpreters, teachers, scholars and anyone related to the field (see, for example, Diriker 2004). Thus, descriptions made within a system also imply a self-reflexive evaluation. And, in so far as the perspective presented here is declaredly a subjective one, it is to be considered a tentative construct (loc. cit.).

Acknowledging the interpreter-mediated event as a social phenomenon, as illustrated in fig. 1, it is possible to say that parties to the event have a number of expectations in relation to the interpretation service, both in cognitive and normative terms. These expectations are constantly negotiated (among parties involved in the system), confirmed and adjusted by professional interpreters and those who describe interpreting. In positing interpreting as a system we describe it as an adaptive, self-regulating, self-reflexive and self-reproducing system. We are called upon, then, to account for the autonomy and heteronomy of interpreting and to describe how the laws of systems apply to interpreting and what the language of interpreting is able to tell us.

Drawing upon Hermans' (1999: 145) description of self-referentiality applied to translation, we suggest that self-reflection in interpreting distinguishes the difference between self-reference and external reference. If we contrast self-reference and external reference in interpreting we define the autonomy and heteronomy of interpreting as system. The external reference of interpreting may be understood as its assimilation to other discourse practices (e.g. attorneys as mediators between two parties). Interpreting also interacts with other discourses and social systems of which it is a part. Self-reference contributes to the self-reproduction of interpreting: it draws attention to prevailing programs or practices as accepted modes of representation (e.g. prescription in the literature such as the théorie du sens), and may question these programs or even the boundaries of what constitutes interpreting. In doing so, self-reference is grounded in similarities and contrasts with existing forms of interpreting and discourses about interpreting. It thus helps to organize, sustain and to modify the system.

From a slightly different angle, Grant (1999: 88) challenges the 'conservative' dialogical approach to the study of dialogue interpreting, specifically, and argues for translation as construction, where claims to identify any correspondence between ST and TT are eliminated and 'factual replacement' (Toury 1980: 39, cited in Grant 1999: 89) takes place. Thus he argues (op. cit.: 88-89) that since translation is not referred to a given external reality, it could be seen as self-referential and hence is to be considered an 'autonomous' text. He specifies, however, that in pragmatic terms most translations fulfil a given brief in terms of a specific, determined audience design (Hatim and Mason 1997). Therefore, translation alternates between the cognitive autonomy of the translator's factual replacement and the constraints of society and communication posed by text type (see Hatim and Mason 1990).

Beaugrande (1992: 9-10) suggests that reflexivity is also seen in the way analysts select data and in decisions to apply certain methods for investigating data. This becomes of relevance if we consider, for example, that in his study Setton (1999: 105) rejected text samples that were "so improvised and disconnected that what cohesion there was virtually disappeared in the transcriptions". He thus justifies this choice: "in such conditions sophisticated task performance variables, specifically the need for pragmatic manipulation, or packaging in TL, become so dominant as to obscure other factors, such as possible difficulties arising from linguistic structures and content". Indeed Setton's rejection of particular text samples, representing a theoretical and methodological choice, has done away with material potentially relevant to this study, since they call into question an interpreter's behaviour in terms of professional survival.

Any comments made by interpreting scholars, as mentioned, are part of the system of interpreting, as they are observations. In a volume discussing Niklas Luhmann's sense of observation and the paradoxes of differentiation, William Rasch (Rasch: 2000: 16) suggests that:

the narrative we devise to describe reality is not a representation, not a duplication of reality in symbolic terms, but rather a vehicle that allows us to navigate. During the course of our navigations, we leave in our wake a navigable world, one that can be navigated not because we charted it beforehand but because we have already navigated it. The world of objects comes into being with its descriptions, not prior to it.

He specifies thus that observation remains inaccessible to itself, or better, it gains access to itself by generating a series of descriptions (often partial and conflicting ones) that can make no claim to absolute validity, because each description must face the possibility that it too could be otherwise than it is. Rasch stresses that "our legitimacy depends on our ability to provide plausible self-descriptions, yet our first and foremost self-description is the description that says we can always describe ourselves differently (Rasch 2000: 23).

5. Conclusion

In this paper we have argued the view that interpreting, as illustrated in fig. 1, is a social phenomenon and that a systems perspective is a viable one with which to analyze interpreters’ behaviour, thus making it possible to provide plausible self-descriptions since the analyst is part of the system. Within this perspective it is expected that professionals, when coping with contextual (structural and interpersonal) constraints are guided by what has been advanced as dynamic equilibrium (Monacelli and Punzo 2001), where no clear emerging trends should prevail in linguistic data. Thus, findings to the contrary would be indicative of normative or ideological behaviour.

In our introduction, after Tymoczko (2003), we challenged the notion of professionals operating in an ‘in between’ space, since language is part of a formal system, thus translators and interpreters operate within a system. Because of the structural and interpersonal constraints in the system, as described in §2, our interpreters enact a series of moves that are outlined in tables 1 and 2. These mitigate source texts and create an effect of distancing and de-personalization. Despite our limited corpus, the nature, extent and uniformity of these trends suggest that the moves made may have ideological force. These merit further study, both in terms of different language pairs and different interpreting modes.

© Claudia Monacelli (Libera Universita degli Studi S. Pio V, Rome)

NOTE

(1) Corpus texts are transcribed in tabular format and segmented with horizontal lines according to text sequences that serve a specific rhetorical function. Those text samples that contain long or several sequences include a hyphen (-) to mark the beginning of sequence elements. Samples are numbered progressively: after each sample number is the number of our subject (e.g. I 5 refers to interpreter/subject no. 5), and the corpus text sequence to which the sample refers. Key: @ voiced pauses, +++ omissions, # falling intonation, ~ level intonation. Abbreviations: ST - source text, TT - target text, TL - target language, EFWP - European Forum of Women Parliamentarians.

REFERENCES

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Diriker, E. 2001. 'De-/Re-contextualising Simultaneous Interpreting: Interpreters in the Ivory Tower?' PhD dissertation, Bogaziçi University, Istanbul.

Diriker, E. 2004. De-/Re-contextualising Simultaneous Interpreting: Interpreters in the Ivory Tower?, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Grant, C. B. 1999. ‘Fuzzy Interaction in Dialogue Interpreting: Factual Replacements, Autonomy and Vagueness’, Linguistica Antverpiensia 33: 85-100.

Grundy, P. 2000. Doing Pragmatics, London: Arnold. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hatim, B. and I. Mason 1990. Discourse and the Translator, London and New York: Longman.

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Hermans, T. 1999. Translation in Systems. Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Explained, Manchester: St. Jerome.

Lenz, F. 2003. Deictic Conceptualisation of Space, Time and Person, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Monacelli, C. 2005. 'Surviving the Role: A corpus-based study of self-regulation in simultaneous interpreting as perceived through participation framework and interactional politeness'. PhD dissertation, School of Management and Languages, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Monacelli, C. and R. Punzo 2001. "Ethics in the fuzzy domain of interpreting: A 'military' perspective". In A. Pym (guest ed.), The Translator, Special issue: New ethics for new forms of translation? vol. 7/2, 265-282.

Rasch, W. 2000. Niklas Luhmann’s Modernity: the paradoxes of differentiation, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Setton, R. 1999. Simultaneous Interpretation: a cognitive-pragmatic analysis. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Stewart, M. 1995. 'Personally speaking ... or not?: the strategic value of on in face-to-face negotiation', Journal of French Language Studies, 5 (2): 203-223.

Toury, G. 1980. In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics.

Tymoczko, M. 2003. "Ideology and the Position of the Translator: In What Sense is a Translator 'In Between'", in M. Calzada Pérez (ed.) Apropos of Ideology, Manchester and Northamption MA: St. Jerome, 181-201.

Varela, F. J. 1999. Ethical Know-How, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Watts, R. J. 2003. Politeness, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

9.4. Translation and Ideology

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