Abstract
Translation is a feminine profession. In Israel most practitioners are women and tend to manifest links between gender, status, self-perception, and the different types of capital at their disposal. While most translational occupations may be defined as semi-professional, community interpreting remains non-professionalized. In 2007, we launched a course to teach the basic skills required of a community interpreter and to impel students to leverage their language skills for the benefit of their respective communities. This study, which focuses on the written and oral discourse of the female students in this course, seeks to determine whether they perceive their community interpreting experience as “feminine” and whether they see their participation in the course as challenging the interpreter’s traditional role definition and fostering a more visible presence.
The original article was written in 2012, shortly before Miriam Shlesinger passed away. In these six years, we witnessed quite a few changes in language policy, language accessibility, and community interpreting in Israel. One of the articles of the Nationality Law that was passed recently in the Israeli Parliament seeks to repeal the official status of the Arabic language. The Ministry of Health’s Directive regarding language and cultural accessibility (2011) is an encouraging step, but still not fully implemented. However, we should mention some positive changes, such as raising awareness of the importance of accessibility in general and of translation/interpreting in particular, and training courses in community interpreting. Additionally, as researchers, activists, and course instructors, we have gathered many insights. The background and the findings presented in the article are therefore valid for the time of writing.
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Notes
- 1.
Twenty-three percent of those who took the course over the years were male students. In the present study, we chose to focus on the discourse of the female students only (cf. a study of “gender-labeled professions” conducted by the Danish Research Centre on Gender Equality, Men Working in Women’s Professions (Warming, 2006), exploring the motives behind individual men’s decision to enter a “female profession” and “what it means to be a man in an occupation dominated by women”). The findings of the current study are confined to the female students and cannot be extended to the student body as a whole.
- 2.
Community interpreting (CI) takes place to enable individuals or groups in society who do not speak the official or dominant language of the services provided by the central or local government to access these services and to communicate with the service providers. Typical CI settings are social services such as welfare, housing, employment, or schools; medical settings such as childcare centers, hospitals, and mental health clinics; or legal settings such as prisons, police stations, or probation offices (Hertog, 2010).
- 3.
The quotation marks signify our possible reservations surrounding the implied generalization.
- 4.
The term translation is used generically to refer to both the written and the oral forms of interlingual mediation, while the term interpreting is limited to the oral (spoken) or manual (signed) modalities.
- 5.
When the chapter was written, there were two official languages in Israel—Hebrew and Arabic. Due to a legislative change in 2018, Arabic lost its official status.
- 6.
There are two exceptions: the provision of Israeli Sign Language interpreters for deaf individuals and the obligation to provide interpreting in the court and police systems.
- 7.
The female conference interpreters took a different view of themselves, presumably not unrelated to their higher income.
- 8.
Research into the community interpreter’s role has only recently begun to focus on the emotional toll of the job (Y. Shlesinger, 2007; Splevins, Cohen, Joseph, Murray & Bowley, 2010). The task is highly charged since interpreters are exposed to difficult situations during which they may have strong feelings of identification and empathy, sometimes even to the point of undergoing vicarious traumatization.
- 9.
For a variety of reasons, the FSI may find herself spending time with the client—for example, in the waiting room—in the absence of the provider. Such situations almost inevitably invite the client to confide in the FSI or to discuss matters unrelated to the triadic interaction. However much the FSI may wish to avoid such situations, they are often unavoidable. In the case cited here, the interaction also fosters a bonding between the two.
- 10.
In the agreements signed by the FSIs and the liaisons in the medical institutions, serving as an escort was defined as part of the FSI’s role.
- 11.
This is manifested in the semantics of their discourse as well. Quite often, the FSIs avoid the verb “translate(d)” in describing their work and use more “active” and less “neutral” words, such as “explain”, “ask,” “request”.
- 12.
There is a large variety of professional codes. Bancroft (2005) notes that “While there is consensus on a number of basic issues, such as confidentiality, other points are still open to discussion in standards of practice found within the U.S. and around the world; No advocacy: interpreter should interpret vs. Interpreter should advocate as needed; Be impartial and neutral vs. Strive to protect the client’s wellbeing; Offer no advice vs. Some information and referral or cultural guidance are acceptable” (p. 54).
- 13.
Michael and Cocchini (1997) are among the very few who report on a course—somewhat similar to our own—in which students volunteer and are asked to reflect on the task: “The students […] raise serious concerns about maintaining ‘neutrality’. They ask: ‘How can I remain “neutral” am I not supposed to feel for the patients?’ They ask: ‘If I see something wrong, do I fix it?’ […] A student activist—when a doctor told a patient to learn English—said she was there to interpret medical information, not political statements” (p. 243).
- 14.
While Freire is not thinking of interpreters—or of disempowerment as a result of language incompatibility—but of educators, the analogy is clear: “It’s impossible to think of language without thinking of ideology and power” (LiteracyDotOrg, 2009); “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral” (Freire, 1985, p. 122).
- 15.
In 2007, the Community-Academy Partnership for Social Change hired an independent evaluator (Zofnat Institute) to conduct a longitudinal evaluation of the community-engaged courses. Among other things, the survey found a significant rise in the self-efficacy of students participating in the community interpreting course and in all other indices as well (Katz, Dor-Haim, Matzliah & Yaacov, 2007).
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Shlesinger†, M., Voinova, T., Schuster, M. (2019). A Feminine Occupation? The Conflicts Inherent to Community Interpreting as Expressed by Female Student Interpreters. In: Markovich, D., Golan, D., Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. (eds) Understanding Campus-Community Partnerships in Conflict Zones. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13781-6_8
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