Heriot-Watt trained interpreters at the 2018 Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival

By Ramón Inglada

As Scotland-based Spanish film lovers are well aware, early October marks the arrival of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival. The Edinburgh leg of the 2018 edition of the festival took place in the Scottish capital between October 4-13, before moving on to Glasgow until October 20, and including a showing in Stirling on October 7. This cinematic event showcased some of the most interesting, exciting and thought-provoking examples of recent Spanish cinema. Highlights included Handia, shown on opening night and shot mainly in Basque, Hopelessly Devout, a hilarious comedy presented at the festival by José María Conde, head of the Spanish section in LINCS, and the gripping thriller Mist & the Maiden, based on a book by acclaimed writer Lorenzo Silva and for which LINCS lecturer Leyla Navarrete did an outstanding job as an interpreter for the Q&A session after the film.

Once more, the festival was the perfect platform for further collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University. It was also the ideal setting for LINCS volunteer interpreters (María San Juan, Marina González, Eilidh MacLachlan and Carmen Acosta), who were carefully chosen among our current and past cohort of MSc and Honours students, to show their interpreting skills in a high-profile event.

At LINCS we are very proud of the key role played by our volunteer interpreters and also of our participation as major sponsors of the festival. We are already looking forward to next year’s edition!

 

LINCS interpreters at the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival

by Josemari Conde and Ramon Inglada

As the curtain falls on the 2017 Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival (ESFF), it is time to look back at 10 days of great films, fine Spanish food and interesting Q&A sessions with actors, directors and producers.

It is also a good time to celebrate yet another successful collaboration between the ESFF and LINCS. Our interpreters have participated in several festival screenings and have played an important role in enabling communication among everyone attending the festival, regardless of their language skills.

At LINCS we are extremely proud of this cooperation and we hope to be part of the festival again in 2018!

SpanishFilmFestivalesff2

LINCS collaboration with the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival

by José María Conde and Ramón Inglada

The 2017 Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival (ESFF) starts on Thursday October 5th and will run in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling until October 31st. This is the 4th edition of the festival and LINCS is collaborating with the ESFF once more, this time as a ‘Major Sponsor’:

http://www.edinburghspanishfilmfestival.com/sponsors/

This is a contribution with the best we can offer from our school: interpreters. Three of our interpreting students will be volunteer interpreters in several presentations and Q&A sessions with Spanish speaking filmmakers. More details are available in the website below:

https://www.edinburghspanishfilmfestival.com/en/festival/2017/

Two staff members in LINCS, José María Conde and Ramón Inglada, are coordinating this collaboration, hoping that it will continue for many more future editions of the festival.

We encourage you to attend some of the screenings and enjoy the festival!

SpanishFilmFestival

 

The Translating the Deaf Self project: Wrapping up and what’s next?

By Jemina Napier, Alys Young, Rosemary Oram, Robert Skinner & Noel O’Connell

Click here to see a BSL version of the blog, presented by Rosemary Oram.

In two previous LifeinLINCS blog posts in March 2016 and August 2016, we have provided an overview of our Translating the Deaf Self project. The AHRC Translating Cultures research innovation grant for this project has meant that we have been able to carry out a scoping study of an area that has not yet been explored in the literature of Deaf Studies, Interpreting Studies, Applied Sign Linguistics or Applied Social Research. Our research focused on what it is like for Deaf sign language users to be known largely through translation and what the consequences might be for wellbeing.

Our research questions were as follows:

  1. How is translation constitutive of Deaf cultures in their formation, projection and transformation?
  2. What is the impact of consistently experiencing existence to others as a translated-self on personal identity, achievement and well-being?

After interviews with Deaf sign language users, sign language interpreters, hearing colleagues of Deaf people, and parents with deaf children, our findings reveal that

  1. The shared experience among Deaf sign language users of being known through translation could be considered as part of Deaf cultural identity but more research is needed to really understand this; and
  2. The experience of consistently experiencing existence to others as a translated-self has an impact on personal identity, achievement and well-being for Deaf sign language users. That impact is not always positive but it is recognized by Deaf people some of whom make deliberate adjustments in everyday life to combat negative effects and maximize the positive. Interpreters too are professionally conscious of their role in the ‘translated Deaf self’ and the dilemmas it brings up in terms of representation to others.
  3. From hearing people’s point of view in workplace relationships with Deaf colleagues, representation and identity are obscured often by a fascination with the interpreter. Even when hearing colleagues attempt to ‘get past’ the interpreter and seek out what they perceive as the ‘real’ Deaf person they can miss the important point that the Deaf person and their language are not inseparable.  There is no hidden self ‘despite’ an interpreter.

As this project was a new exploration of this concept, it is clear that more research is needed on this topic.

Disseminating the findings

We are in the process of writing up our findings, and will submit them for publications.

So far we have also given several conference presentations as follows:

  • Oram, R., Napier, J., Young, A., & Skinner, R., (2016). Critical links between Deaf culture, well being and interpreting: Translating the Deaf Self. Poster presented to the Critical Link 8: Interpreting in the Community Conference, Edinburgh, 29 June – 1 July 2016.
  • Napier, J., Oram, R., Skinner, R., & Young, A. (2016). Translating the Deaf Self: Deaf culture in practice and being ‘known’ through interpreting. Association of Sign Language Interpreters UK Conference, Newcastle, 1-2 October 2016.
  • Napier, J., Oram, R., Young, A., Skinner, & O’Connell, N. (2016). Translating the Deaf Self: An example of innovation in university-community research engagement. Bridging the Gap conference, Brighton, 12th November 2016.

 

And will be giving another one in 2017:

Napier, J., Young, A., Oram, R., & Skinner, R. (2017). Translating the Deaf Self: The lived experience of being ‘known’ through interpreting. Symposium on Sign Language Interpreting & Translation Research, Gallaudet University, Washington, DC, March 2017.

 In collaboration with two Deaf-led production companies, AC2.Com and Mutt & Jeff Pictures, we produced three short films in BSL to encapsulate some of the key themes that had come up in our data. The films are not an attempt to summarise the findings, but to highlight some key issues that our participants discussed, which we can use to generate more conversations about the concept of the ‘Translated Deaf Self’.

We have not yet made the videos public via social media as we are concerned about how people might respond and the potential impact on wellbeing if any content of the videos triggers emotive responses and we cannot be present to talk through those responses. Instead, we have decided to only show the videos when a member of the research team is present to explain the background, contextualise the study and the videos, and is available to talk through responses. But each film has been submitted to the Deaf Fest 2017 Film Festival in the UK, so we hope that they will be shown there.

In September 2016 we hosted an event in collaboration with Action Deafness and the Derby Deaf Club, where we had approximately 75 participants who travelled from all over the country to learn about what we had found in the study, and to participate in a preview of the films. As part of the event, we also had follow up discussion in BSL about how the participants responded to the films and whether they identified with the themes in each film. Showing the films generated a lot of interesting discussion, and has confirmed for us the importance of taking the films around the country to show the British Deaf community.

What’s next?

We plan to apply for further AHRC funding to explore the notion of the Translated Deaf Self in more depth, and hope to continue the partnership with all the people and organisations who were involved in this scoping study. We also plan to apply for AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement in 2017 in order to disseminate the findings and show the videos via a ‘roadshow’.

Acknowledgements

In wrapping up this project, we would like to acknowledge the contributions of many people and organisations, without whom this project would not have been possible:

  • Professor Charles Forsdick, Theme Leader, AHRC Translating Cultures Theme
  • Stakeholder Advisory Group members: Avril Hepner (British Deaf Association Scotland); Carly Brownlie (Scottish Association of Sign Language Interpreters); Jane Worrall (Deaf Connections, Glasgow); Teri Devine (Action on Hearing Loss Scotland); Frankie McLean/ Shaurna Dickson (Deaf Action, Edinburgh);
  • Joel Kelhofer and Ella Leith at AC2.Com/SignLive, and Louis Neethling and Alison Lynch at Mutt & Jeff Pictures for the production of the short films
  • Zoë McWhinney, Research intern at Heriot-Watt University
  • Craig Crowley, CEO; Jaz Mann, Alison Blount at Action Deafness for support with organising Community Participatory Group in Leicester and with film launch event in Derby, and Action Deafness for providing interpreters for the film launch event at no cost to the project.
  • Members of the Derby Deaf Club for helping to organise the catering for the film launch event and for making their premises available for the event
  • Jane Worrall, former CEO of Deaf Connections for assistance with CPG in Glasgow
  • Mark Napier, Managing Director at the Centre for Public Innovation for providing the venue for the focus group in London with interpreters
  • ASLI UK for distributing call for interpreter participants to its members
  • Emmy Kauling for help compiling the final research report.

 

Around the World in several Films: “Round up the Unusual Suspects!”

Author: Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram

As the dust settles on the febrile buzz surrounding the Oscars, it becomes possible to take a step back, delink cinema from this veneer of glitz and glamour and reframe it through a broader global cinematic filter. The last couple of years, in particular, have conjured an eclectic and heady mix of films, from often unexpected places on the planet. As my PhD research straddles the realms of film studies, World cinema and film philosophy, I reckoned this may be a propitious moment to round up the ‘not so usual’ cinematic suspects. Let us cast a glance at films that provide us with vibrant, colourful, uplifting and occasionally disturbing glimpses of other nations, cultures and people.

Wadjda, is the first Saudi Arabian film made by a female director, and also the first filmed entirely in Saudi Arabia. This film is essential viewing, if only to afford the wider world a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Saudi citizens, particularly women and children. The title character – 10 year old Wadjda is a revelation and her honest, impish performance is at once charming and captivating.

Paulo Sorrentino’s tribute to Rome, The Great Beauty is a whimsical masterpiece, as evocative as anything Federico Fellini has created. France’s powerhouse credentials in art cinema were reinforced with Blue is the Warmest Colour and Stranger by The Lake. Both films shimmered and rippled in their representations of lesbian and gay relationships, whilst Apres Mai’s (Something in the Air) palpable rendition of the 1970s radical student movement was heightened by its impeccable aesthetic.

Director Anand Gandhi’s poetic and philosophical Indian masterpiece Ship of Theseus used the modes of hyperlink cinema along with bustling Mumbai cityscapes, to entwine three disparate narratives- a blind photographer, a rebellious monk with liver cirrhosis and an improbable good Samaritan on a quest to retrace a stolen human kidney.

Last year saw the release of two outstanding biopics. Legendary auteur Andrzej Wajda’s Walesa: Man of Hope about the Lech Wałęsa led solidarity movement in Poland, and Margarethe von Trotta’s film, Hannah Arendt about the eponymous German philosopher’s brush with the banality of evil.
Alternately labelled dormant or moribund, American independent cinema received a boost in the form of Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene; a brooding and disturbing immersion into America’s penchant for obscure cults.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s chilling exposé on Indonesian death squad leaders in darkly disconcerting ‘The Act of Killing’ is an example of innovative narrative approaches to the theme of genocide.

British cinema had its own coruscating examples, with Ken Loach’s hysterically funny and quintessentially Scottish, The Angel’s Share, and the powerful, documentary retrospective, The Spirit of ‘45 – a paean to the post-1945 Labour welfare state. Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant, was an inspired reworking of the Oscar Wilde tale and Philomena, a powerfully understated narrative continuation of Peter Mullan’s monumental The Magdalene Sisters.

Chilean film ‘No’ starring Gael Garcia Bernal of The Motorcycle Diaries fame, was a politically charged, irony-tinged exposition, about dictator Pinochet’s absolute power and a ‘Yes/No’ referendum poised to determine the birth of a new nation- themes that will no doubt find resonance in several other quarters of the world!

All in all, being a part of Heriot-Watt University’s department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, it is especially wonderful to witness this general glut of global films colouring the spectrum of transcultural cinematic exchanges and informing our perceptions of a constantly changing world.

The global village and the information superhighway have often been credited with enmeshing cultures and people and bringing the world closer together. In my view, cinema is doing the same job…and arguably in far more enjoyable fashion!

Why Bother Doing Research? Part II

It must seem very odd. Just occasionally, trained, experienced professionals choose to return to the academic arena from whence they came to study a PhD. Despite the fact that, as we revealed a few weeks ago, research is highly necessary for the Translation and Interpreting industries, it still might seem puzzling why people would voluntarily decide to do it. To help explain why, and perhaps even inspire you to do research yourself, we quizzed a few of the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies‘ own PhD students to discover their reasons.

1)
There are multiple reasons as to why I choose to do a PhD.
To start with, my husband is doing his PhD in Rome, therefore, it would be very practical in terms of distance and time difference if I can find a place in Europe to do a PhD since I graduated this year as an MA student and really don’t want to go to Rome as a dependent.
Secondly, I want to find a job in a good university as a lecturer and a PhD degree is required to enter that profession in Chinese universities.
Most importantly, Chinese Deaf signers need attention from the academia, the society and the government. Yet researching into Chinese sign language interpreting is just at its beginning, therefore, a lot of exciting work can be done in the field.

2)
I do my PhD because of I can do it in UK. My field of research (Public service interpreting) is underdeveloped in China. While it is still in the stage of initial development, UK has established relatively sound system and training program in this respect. China needs the know-how in this field to catch up with the global trend. And because I received sponsorship from the Chinese government, I will have ample time focusing on exploring the development of this field in UK. Furthermore, I have never been abroad before, so I want to have a look at the outside world and make more friends and promote China’s culture here.

3)
I left my academic position in the US to come to Heriot-Watt to do my PhD. Technically, I don’t need a PhD for my current position as a researcher. What I was compelled by was the opportunity to do the particular research that I wanted to do. It could be argued that I could have accomplished this by seeking out a PhD program in the US; but Heriot-Watt is positioned within the field of translation and interpreting studies like no other university in the States. I wanted to study alongside those within my field but not necessarily interested in the same aspect of the field. I came to Heriot-Watt to get the kind of exposure that you just can’t get in your home country – to be around different types of people and to live a different experience. You can’t learn those things in the classroom; you can’t learn those things through research. You can only learn those things by doing them.

4)
My passion for Filmmaking follows close on the heels of a sustained interest in the idiosyncrasies of Film Theory and Film Philosophy. After my tenure as a Documentary Researcher with Channel 4, I decided to juxtapose both realms-the hands-on praxis of constructing cinema, and the theory that constitutes the foundational bulwark of any such creative undertaking.  I was consequently impelled to immerse myself in an academic pursuit contingent on an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach. Enter, Heriot-Watt University (on cue!), to grant me a wonderful opportunity to do a PhD in their department of Languages and Intercultural Studies (LINCS). Ever since embarking on this journey (September 2011), I have been astounded but the multifarious dimensions of experience and learning that are part and parcel of a PhD!

So there you have it. The reasons for doing research are as varied as the people doing it. Still, the two things that all researchers have in common are passion and a whole bunch of unanswered questions. That’s why we do research!

 

Authors: Lots of people!