Category Archives: Policy

Why Legal Protection Can’t Save Translation and Interpreting

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You don’t have to go far to find out what is worrying those in the translation and interpreting professions. Crowdsourcing, machine translation and large-scale outsourcing could easily make people fearful that the future of translation and interpreting consists of low-paid, low status work, offered by uncaring providers.

But hold on, cry a few voices, we can stop all this madness. All we need is some form of government protection. If there were only a law (or several) that limited who could translate and who could interpret, all of these issues would go away in the blink of an eye.

Alas, in the real world, things aren’t that simple. Leaving behind the whole issue of how to get legislative support for this idea in a single area – never mind an entire economic sector – the problems with relying on legal protection are legion. For a start, given that there is no way of tracking every single document translated or conference interpreted in even a single city, policing such a law would be impossible. Someone would always manage to get their work to slip through the net and in time, things would probably return to the way they are now, with a few possible exceptions in highly visible work, such as court interpreting and international tenders.

There is also the inconvenient truth that certification, which often goes hand in glove with legal protection, is not in itself an indicator of quality. It was, after all, certified auditors who allowed the Enron scandal to go undetected. And there is, as yet, no proof that “certified translators” produce better work than those with equal amounts of experience but no certification.

This, of course, does not mean that certification is worthless. It implies accountability and a professional approach to work, which are assets in themselves. It also implies a readiness to submit your work to outside scrutiny, which again, is worthwhile. When tied to membership of a professional association, such as MITI or MCIL or Chartered Linguist status here in the UK, it also implies a commitment to the good of the profession as a whole. It does not, however, mean that every translation produced by every certified translator will be of an equal standard. Restricting translation to those who are certified would therefore be no good to clients.

Protection, at least as it is commonly described, might even be detrimental to the professions it was meant to safeguard. How are people supposed to get into translation or interpreting if only existing professionals can do the work?

Perhaps we might be better seeking to emulate the practices of those in the medical profession. (Of course, this isn’t my idea, Heriot-Watt PhD student, Robyn Dean, thought of it before I did). The point is that, nowadays, anyone can be their own doctor. The internet offers a variety of different tools and sites, each of which can give medical advice of some sort or another, much like there is a range of ways you can get translation done.  What sets the proper doctors apart from the amateurs is not just training and passing exams but their part in a system which puts accountability and scrutiny at the core of career advancement.

What can and should set the “real” translators apart from the cowboys and amateurs then is not simply a certificate or a title – as good as these things are – but an entire approach to work. Setting up and promoting a system of checks and continued accountability is worth more than legislation. If the system is robust enough, it will justify limiting certain kinds of work to those who are within it. It would be much easier, for instance, to argue that those interpreting in courts should be independently checked and continually monitored by an entire system than that they should have passed a one-off exam. Similarly, it would be easier to argue for clients to use translators and interpreters within this system on the basis of added value rather than simply screaming for restrictions to be placed on the market.

At the end of the day, any system that is set up has to benefit clients and professionals alike. It’s this goal, not simply pushing for higher rates or restrictions on trade, that is worth pursuing.

 

Author: Jonathan Downie

Spitting the Dummy at Government Inaction

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Records of British Sign Language may date back to the 16th century, but it took until 18th March 2003 for formal governmental recognition to be secured for the language anywhere in the UK. Ten years later, many Deaf (and hearing) people – including Heriot-Watt’s staff and students with an interest in this community – are asking what this ‘recognition’ really meant.

Dissatisfied with a decade’s uncertain progress, pressure is mounting for renewed attention to the issue. An Early Day Motion (EDM) is currently being promoted at Westminster – thanks in particular to the efforts of the Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Bruce, Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon – seeking to secure greater attention to BSL at UK government level. Over 100 MPs have so far signed. As Malcolm Bruce, whose daughter Caroline was born deaf 30 years ago, acknowledges,

“Sign language is a vibrant language used by tens of thousands of deaf people yet British Sign Language does not enjoy the degree of support that is provided for Gaelic and Welsh or even the foreign languages of our immigrant communities. With the service of interpreters profoundly deaf people can engage much more fully in work and society. If we can give support to deaf parents and their children to learn and use BSL and provide access to video relay services (providing video links to interpreters anytime anywhere) and teach BSL as a foreign language we will not only keep this part of our culture alive but really enhance the quality of life for deaf people.”

LINCS, of course, offers the UK’s only undergraduate degree  from which successful graduates will emerge as fully qualified BSL interpreters.

Harnessing the power of social media to unite the geographically diffuse Deaf community, a UK-wide Facebook group has been established to help campaign for enhanced recognition of BSL: in a few short weeks, this group pulled together over 11,000 members (a startling figure, when you appreciate that there are fewer than 100,000 BSL users in the UK – it’s as if six million people suddenly joined the Queens English Society). The group has a startling name – ‘Spit the Dummy’ – a reference to the community’s sense that the recognition of BSL secured in 2003 was actually an empty, meaningless pacifier, which has led to minimal gains in subsequent years. The sense of frustration at those 10 lost years is what has ignited the current action.

Heriot-Watt staff are active along with others in promoting the EDM, and have received positive feedback from two local MPs who are keen to take a greater interest in what we do. An Early Day Motion will certainly not be enough to wrest a bolder response from the UK parliament, yet other linguistic communities near and far have achieved real political successes along these lines – so what do you think needs to happen next?#

Author: Graham Turner

The Importance of Messy Interpreting

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It’s a sad fact that interpreting is still not seen as a particularly difficult and useful skill by many members of the public. After all, it’s just like having a walking dictionary, isn’t it? Interpreters hear words in one language and find their equivalents in another. Surely a computer could do the job.

Professionals might laugh at such opinions (in fact, we have laughed at them before) but it is worth pausing a little to figure out why people might have such a simplistic view of our work. True, it could be due to seeing communication between human beings as being similar to communication between computers. You put information in, process it a bit and then output some more information. Interpreters then become machines. Their job is just to find the “right words” in order to give an “accurate translation” of what they have heard.

The quotation marks are very necessary here. Interpret for five minutes and you know that phrases like “right words” and “accurate translation” are loaded and troublesome. There are, of course, many different ways to “accurately” interpret the same sentence depending on context, clients, speed, and a whole host of different factors. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that the vocabulary and phrasing an interpreter might use when consecutively interpreting the cross-examination of a defendant in a court might be very different to the ones they would use when using interpreting the same defendant’s discussions with their barrister.

Life gets even more complicated when you take into account that interpreters in many contexts have to make a variety of ethical decisions as to what to interpret and how to interpret it. (See our interviews with Robyn Dean). Some researchers have pointed out that sometimes the most “accurate” version of what was said might not be the “right” version for a given context.

Andrew Clifford points to a case where, if the interpreter had given the most “accurate” version of what a doctor had said, a patient might not have been able to concentrate on the vital details of how they could be treated. Cases like this might not be found in any textbook but they are the daily realities of interpreting in many settings.

The problem is that, as Ebru Diriker has pointed out in her book, De-/Re-contextualizing Conference Interpreting, on the rare occasions when interpreters get into the public eye, we tend to shy away from discussing the messier aspects of our work. We talk a lot about our language skills, our speaking skills and the importance of our work. We might, very occasionally, talk about the times when we had trouble interpreting or when we needed to be a bit more creative than usual but we quickly reassert that we are still always “accurate” and “trustworthy.”

Faced with such evidence from interpreters themselves, the public have no real choice but to assume that interpreting really is as easy as they thought. If accuracy can be taken for granted then why do interpreters need to be so well paid? If it’s all just a matter of linguistic abilities, why bother with training? If there are never any real decisions to be made, why not let computers do it? In short, if interpreting is just relaying information, why on earth would it be important to have trained, skilled professionals doing it?

Perhaps, in our quest to present ourselves as trustworthy and accurate, we have made it harder to present our work as skilled and worthy of respect. What do you think?

Responsible Interpreting pt. 1

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The recent controversy over the Ministry of Justice interpreting contract has brought to the fore just how much interpreting suffers from a lack of status. In this two part interview with sign language interpreter and researcher, Robyn Dean, I had the chance to discuss with her how her work on interpreter ethics might help strengthen the profession. Today, in part I, we discuss her background and the need for interpreters to learn from the way that medical practitioners are trained.

A Year and a Bit of Blogging About Research

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On 1st October this year, LifeinLINCS celebrated a year since its launch. Since then we have covered a whole range of topics from subtitling to court interpreting and from getting a career in translation and interpreting to minority language rights and why people would put careers on hold to go and do research.

It has to be said that the reception has been superb. People from more than 110 countries have checked out the blog. Since the end of February this year, more than 12,000 different people have read at least one post. More than that, almost 100 comments have been left since the blog began, which means that our number of comments far outstrips the number of times we have posted!

And what have you been saying? Well, it seems that odd client behaviour isn’t actually as odd as it might seem. The UK government’s arrangements for court interpreting still inspire anger and it is impossible to over-exaggerate the personality quirks of language professionals.

All of this from a blog that struggled to gain 10 visits a day in its first week. If you had asked the experts then if a blog about research aimed at practising professionals would survive, the answer would have been hidden in fits of laughter. Nowadays, one of our editors gets a bit disappointed if we get less than 100 visits per day and it is not unknown for days to hit ten or even twenty times that!

If nothing else, the past year and a bit has shown that professional practice and rigorous belong together. It has also shown that when this research and the thinking that goes alongside it are presented in an easily accessible way, people will not only read it but will start to talk about it.

So, maybe translation and interpreting isn’t in such bad shape after all!

There is more to come from LifeinLINCS as we seek to broaden the range of language research from Heriot-Watt that we cover, as well as commenting on language stories in the news and, of course, attempting to be funny from time to time. Lookout for next week’s post on what modelling clay can tell us about our clients.

Author: Jonathan Downie

The Interpreters of the Future

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… will either be mobile aps or underpaid, under qualified temps. That’s the impression people could easily get from the last month’s worth of news headlines. We already covered the attempt by NTT Docomo to create an interpreting ap and now, wonder of wonders, Microsoft are at it too. Sure, the results are “comical” in places and it just about scrapes by in two languages if it understands your accent but the idea is sound, isn’t it?

And then there is the on-going saga of court and police interpreting in the UK. So far, a government report and two enquiries into the new single-provider contract are uncovering uncomfortable truths such as:
•    The procurement procedure was not up to scratch
•    Advice was ignored or fudged
•    Rates were set without consulting interpreters
•    Not all interpreters working under the agreement were qualified or properly vetted

The end result is that the vast majority of interpreters who are qualified and checked are refusing to work under the new contract and many courts are having to revert back to the old system if they actually want someone reliable and useful. Whoops!

The problem is that the financial logic behind the original move seemed sound enough, at least to those who made the decision. After all, if companies can save money by outsourcing entire functions to a single supplier, so can government department’s right? And, interpreting is just a service like any other right? Surely any good bilingual can interpret, right?

The fault in this logic stems from exactly the issue that this blog covered in the second ever post, over a year ago. The public face of languages and of the language industry needs to be changed. As long as people see interpreting as a financial cost item instead of a worthy investment, spending patterns won’t change. For as long as people associate interpreters with people they don’t want in their country, justifying pay rises (or even pay stability) will be difficult.

The point is that most, if not all, interpreters know the real potential of their work. Not only does interpreting help justice to be served, it helps people to get medical attention, families to cope with trauma, business to conquer new markets and economies to grow. As soon as you trade anything, be it people, products or ideas, outside of the market that speaks your language you need interpreters (and translators).

If the future of interpreting is to be filled with qualified, vetted, reliable professionals, someone will need to make sure that the message gets out that this future and only this future is the one we should be chasing. Someone has to convince government ministers, business people, and the public that interpreting is worth more than it costs. Anyone up for that?

Upcoming Event: Language Education Policies for Deaf Children

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We are delighted to confirm our next EdSign lecture by Dr John Bosco Conama from Trinity College Dublin, on Tuesday 6 November, 6.30PM, at Deaf Action:

Who decides? – Language education policies for Deaf children
Selected findings from a comparative analysis of Finnish and Irish policies on signed languages

John will talk about comparative language education policies in Finland and Ireland. He will present his research discussing different components that influence language educational policies. Showing excerpts from interviews and commenting on the situation in Finland and Ireland, John highlights equality issues around language education policies in general.
Date: Tuesday, 6 November 2012
Time: 6.30pm-8.30pm
Venue: Deaf Action, 49 Albany Street, Edinburgh EH1 3QY

Language: The lecture will be presented in International Sign, and there will be interpretation into English and BSL.

The event is open to everybody and you do not need to book in advance, but spaces are limited, so arrive early.

On a different note, the consultation on the proposed British Sign Language
(BSL) Bill in Scotland is still open, but the deadline is approaching soon: 31 October 2012.
Please take a look at the BSL documents. Responses and petitions should be sent to Mark Griffin MSP, Room M1:20, Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh EH99 1SP.

We look forward to seeing you all soon,

The EdSign Lectures team

Help us improve BSL recognition in Scotland

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In previous posts, we have talked about our interest in minority languages. We are also very proud to have become the first Scottish university to offer a four year undergraduate degree in British Sign Language and Translation or Interpreting. Now, we would like you to help the D/deaf and signing communities in Scotland to go one step further towards full legal recognition of BSL.

There are now only 23 days left to respond to the Scottish parliamentary consultation on a proposed BSL Bill. We need to raise the number of responses – we’re aiming for 1,000 responses to beat the previous record!

To make it even easier for you, the Scottish Council on Deafness have uploaded sample answers to their website (in English and BSL) If you wish to post responses and petitions, please send them to Mark Griffin MSP, Room M1:20, Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh EH99 1SP. Thank you! http://www.scod.org.uk/BSL_Bill_Consultation-i-329.html

Author: Graham Turner

Word Up!

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After years of dithering and de-prioritisation, it seems parliamentary action to address the decline in British citizens’ language learning is finally approaching. The Holyrood and Westminster governments are announcing plans for change, trying to put the brakes on a decade of implosion which has seen the numbers of young people taking foreign language qualifications at schools decimated. In 2010, 43% of pupils aged 15-16 were entered for a language in national examinations, down from a peak of 75% in 2002.

In London, the focus will be on English and other languages. The education secretary, Michael Gove, will promise a new focus on spelling and grammar when he sets out his plans for the teaching of English in primary schools later this week. Children as young as five will be expected to learn and recite poetry by heart in England. He will also put forward proposals to make learning a foreign language compulsory for pupils from the age of seven.

In May 2012, a study commissioned by the Scottish government said children in Scotland should begin learning a second language as soon as they start school at the age of five. The recommendations – made by the government’s Modern Languages Working Group  – also suggest that children should start to learn a third language before they reach 10 years old.

If this seems radical in a British context, it certainly isn’t unusual within Europe. Last year, the Edinburgh-based Consuls General of France, Germany, Spain, Italy and China joined forces to warn that Scotland needed to take modern languages more seriously. Scottish exports to these five nations alone were worth £4.52bn in 2009, representing about 21% of Scotland’s total international exports.

There are so many reasons for supporting these proposals. For a start, it’s easier for pupils to learn new languages when they’re young. They’ll become more fluent and the learning process will be more fun. Learning early will also help them to develop skills in their first language. And it will confer general cognitive benefits which will assist their all-round personal development.

Of course, many of these benefits can also be gained from learning indigenous languages other than English, and there is evidence of Gaelic being more popular than German in some Scottish schools . The current campaign to introduce school qualifications in British Sign Language  also looks set to be highly popular with pupils, and to promise significant broadening of linguistic, cultural and social horizons amongst students.

Still, as good as these plans may be, they won’t work unless there are teachers capable of delivering them. Modern languages have not hitherto been seen as a major priority – it’s future teachers of maths and sciences who qualify for the most generous ‘golden hellos’ (). Still, Throughout the UK, there appears to be belated recognition that it is never too soon for children to start on the path to bilingualism but is it too little, too late? Let us know what you think in the “Comments” box below.

 

Author: Graham Turner