Interpreters as cultural mediators

Abstract

The view of the interpreters as cultural mediators has been recently studied from different perspectives. In this paper, the authors briefly state that interpretation, as an intercultural communication bridge, demands that interpreters not only master exquisite language techniques, but also rich and generous knowledge of different cultural backgrounds and the important functions of intercultural awareness during intercultural communication. It discusses the basic conceptions of intercultural awareness and the relationship between interpreters and intercultural awareness for the success of the simultaneous interpreting service. Several ways of training intercultural competences and mediating abilities are also analyzed so that the interpreter could strengthen the sensitivity to cultural differences; misunderstanding can be effectively reduced, and intercultural communication can be successfully achieved.

Keywords: culture, Intercultural awareness, competences, mediating activities, mediating strategies

Introduction

The academic contributions that suggest a conception of the role of the interpreter as an intercultural mediator are plentiful, and all of them seem suitable once we perceive interpreting practice as an intercultural activity. In this paper the authors intend to summarize the work by different authors who consider interpreting from an intercultural perspective and who foster the idea that the interpreter has become an intercultural expert who mediates between cultures. Culture is an integral part of any communication process, especially in professional and academic fields. If we are not intercultural competent enough as to deal with a situation in which communication plays a key role in linking two different cultures, and then work will lack focus. Nowadays, terms such as: multiculturalism, pluriculturalism and intercultural competence are commonly found in any academic-related activity or professional agenda. Every educational center, in which translation-interpretation is taught as a prior subject should be aware of the high importance that resides in adhering intercultural elements that further allow the professional move not only words from one language to another but also traditions, history and spirits. According to Banks, J.A., Banks, & McGee, C. A. (1989), most social scientists today view culture as: "…consisting primarily of the symbolic, ideational, and intangible aspects of human societies. The essence of a culture is not its artifacts, tools, or other tangible cultural elements but how the members of the group interpret, use, and perceive them. It is the values, symbols, interpretations, and perspectives that distinguish one people from another in modernized societies; it is not material objects and other tangible aspects of human societies. People within a culture usually interpret the meaning of symbols, artifacts, and behaviors in the same or in similar ways". The interpreter should be aware of the essence of a culture, not only to identify relevant elements within an ethnic group, but to distinguish and interpret their value. The interpreter is the bridge that joins a sociologic set of population with the rest of the humankind through words, phrases and complex linguistic statements. The main objectives of this paper are to analyze the relation between interpreting and intercultural awareness during this complex process, focusing mainly on intercultural aspects in the process of interpretation, and to define the role of the interpreters in mediating activities by mastering some mediating strategies and to highlight the relevance of some competences that should be developed by the interpreters.

Definitions of culture

Culture no longer offers itself a unifying force; nation, language, culture no longer line up as bounded and congruent realities. Writing across languages, writing through translation becomes a particularly strong form of expression at a time when national cultures have themselves become diverse, inhabited by plurality (Robinson, 2003). The promotion of culture as a primary concept is indeed implied in translation studies itself in the "cultural turn" the discipline took in the late 1970s and 1980s. Some definitions of the term "culture" have been broadly provided by some authors. According to Carla, 2013, in terms of intercultural studies, culture is defined as: "…the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group".

Another relevant definition of culture is given by Banks, J.A., Banks, & McGee, C. A. in 1989. They define culture as: "…consisting primarily of the symbolic, ideational, and intangible aspects of human societies. The essence of a culture is not its artifacts, tools, or other tangible cultural elements but how the members of the group interpret, use, and perceive them. It is the values, symbols, interpretations, and perspectives that distinguish one people from another in modernized societies; it is not material objects and other tangible aspects of human societies. People within a culture usually interpret the meaning of symbols, artifacts, and behaviors in the same or in similar ways."

Damen, L. (1987) defines culture as: "…learned and shared human patterns or models for living; day- to-day living patterns. These patterns and models pervade all aspects of human social interaction. Culture is mankind"s primary adaptive mechanism". Also, Kluckhohn, C., & Kelly, W.H. (1945) provide a concept of culture: "…by culture we mean all those historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational, and no rational, which exist at any given time as potential guides for the behavior of men." Kroeber, A.L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1952) state that culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action."

Lederach, J.P. (1995) assumes that: "…culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them". Finally, Linton, R. (1945), defines culture as: "…a configuration of learned behaviors and results of behavior whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society". The need to understand cultural differences has become evident today. Many societies are multicultural, and many people and organizations collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries. Although it is typical for people to see themselves as unique (Reed 1986, p.1) and to be somewhat parochial, parochialism is not a good strategy for the future.

According to Adler (1997, p.10) "parochialism means viewing the world solely through one"s own eyes and perspective. A person with a parochial perspective neither recognizes other people"s different ways of living and working nor appreciates that such differences have serious consequences."

From an anthropological position, Snell-Hornby (1988, p.46) states that translation takes place between cultures, and not just between languages. Hence, the interpreter should not only be bilingual, but also bicultural.

Interpreting process and intercultural awareness

Interpreters from different cultures have their own cultural perception, beliefs, values and social customs which greatly determine their communicative way, so that it can often bring about miscommunications in the process of interpreting. Therefore, interpreters should raise intercultural awareness of "the other culture" to build bridges across misunderstanding among different cultures and should be satisfied with the basic requirements for interpreters. Cultivating interpreters" intercultural awareness has been paid more attention to, because intercultural awareness is the cognitive aspect of intercultural communication competence that refers to the understanding of cultural conventions that affect how we think and behave (Chen, 2010). Interpreters should increase intercultural awareness of "the other culture" to build bridges across misunderstanding among different cultures. It will be profit to further improve interpreters" intercultural communication competences to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding and conflict in intercultural communication. For a long time, experts and scholars worldwide have discussed intercultural communication awareness from a great deal of perspectives. Intercultural awareness can be considered as a process of attitudinally internalizing "insights about those common understandings hold by groups that dictate the predominant values, attitudes, beliefs and outlooks of the individual" (Adler, 1987). Interpreters should know some basic conceptions of intercultural awareness intending to further perform in a better way. This process of cross-cultural consciousness can be integrated into three levels: awareness of superficial cultural traits, awareness of significant and subtle cultural traits that contrast markedly with ours, and awareness of how another perspective (Hanvey, 1987). It is also viewed as the cognitive aspect of intercultural communication competence that refers to the understanding of cultural conventions that affect how we think and behave. A great number of definitions have been provided by several scholars about intercultural communication awareness. But two common features can be found among them: there is a significant influence of culture on human behavior and the importance of recognizing differences between cultures. It is known that the intercultural awareness is one of the elementary requirements for an interpreter when dealing with an intercultural communication process, which means a particular way of thinking, a personal criterion for judgment or an acute cultivated sensitivity. So, coming from different culture backgrounds reflect on varied ways of expression of speakers.

Thus, successful interpreting is the result of accurate comprehension and reconstruction and application of various skills and techniques in a professional manner and to a professional standard that will be achieved at both discourse and cultural level. The development of intercultural awareness through education methods – needs to be approached through knowledge, feelings, attitudes and behaviors. Just knowing the role of cultural knowledge is not enough to improve interpreters" communicative competence. The key problems are concerned with the content and approach of intercultural awareness cultivation, that is, how to achieve the improvement. That is why these measures or ways while conducting intercultural awareness should be followed: to establish a right attitude toward cultural differences, to have a high level of linguistic proficiency and to have a good mastery of interpreting skills. Therefore, a successful interpretation is one that faithfully and accurately conveys the meaning of the source language orally, reflecting the style, register, and cultural context of the source message, without omissions or additions on the part of the interpreter.

Existential and Communicative Competences

The empirical knowledge concerning everyday life (time management, meals, transportation, communication and information), in public or private sectors, is, in turn, equally essential for the implementation of language activities in a foreign language. Knowing values and beliefs shared by social groups from other countries and regions, for example, religious beliefs, taboos, assumed common history, is essential for intercultural communication. These multiple areas of knowledge vary from one individual to another; they may be specific to one culture, but can also be related to more universal parameters and constants. These traits, attitudes and idiosyncrasies are elements that should be considered when interpreting in a foreign language; therefore, although they may be difficult to define, should be included in a reference frame. It is thought that they are part of the general competencies of an individual and therefore an aspect of their abilities. As it has been frequently noted, existential competences are related to culture and are, therefore, sensitive areas to perceptions and intercultural relations: the way a member of a specific culture expresses friendship and interests may be perceived as aggressive or offensive by someone from another culture. Sociolinguistic competence refers to the sociocultural conditions of the language use. Through its sensitivity to social conventions (politeness, norms ruling relations between generations, genders, social classes and groups, linguistic decoding of certain rituals essential for the functioning of a community), the sociolinguistic component considerably affects all linguistic communication between representatives of different cultures, though they may often be unaware of its influence. (CEFR, 2001)The communicative language competence that the student or user of the language is operated to perform comprise various languages activities: comprehension, expression, interaction and mediation (which mean mainly interpreting or translating). Each of these types of activities is made possible in relation to texts in oral or written form, or both. As processes, comprehension and communication (oral and also written) are obviously primary, since both are required for interaction. However, within this framework of reference, the use of these terms for language activities is limited to the role they play in isolation. Such comprehension activities include: reading in silence and paying attention to mass media, among others. It is also important in many learning styles or forms: understanding courses content and consulting manuals, reference books and documents). Communication activities play an important role in several academic and professional settings (oral presentations, studies and written reports) and also has certain social value (the assessments of what has been presented written or the fluency and accuracy in oral presentations).

In the interaction, at least two individuals participate in an oral or written exchange in which comprehension and expression alternate and may, in fact, overlap in the oral communication. Not only can they talk and listen to each other simultaneously; but even when speaking turns are strictly respected, the listener is generally predicting the rest of the speaker"s message and already preparing a response. Thus, learning to interact involves more than learning to understand and produce oral expressions. It is generally attributed a great importance to the interaction, in the use and learning of a language, due to its leading role in communication. Written and oral mediating activities in comprehension, as well as in expression, enable communication between people who, for whatever reason, are unable to communicate with each other directly. A translation or an interpretation, a paraphrasing, a summary or a note-taking provide a third party with a (re)formulation of a source text to which does not have direct access. Those linguistic-like mediating activities, which (re)process an existing text, take a relevant place in the normal linguistic performances of our societies (CEFR, 2001). Regarding the skills and intercultural skills, an interpreter or user of the language should be able to interrelate the culture of origin and the foreign one.

Moreover, the interpreter should have a cultural sensitivity and the ability to identify and use a wide range of strategies to make contact with people from other cultures. It is also of paramount importance that the interpreter fulfills the role of cultural intermediary between the culture and foreign culture and deals effectively with intercultural misunderstandings and conflict situations, as well as overcoming stereotyped relationships.

The mediating role of the interpreter

Interpreters serve as verbal connections between people who need to communicate but do not speak the same language. An interpreter"s job is to relay what is said in a conversation by interpreting each speaker"s message for the other speaker. The role of the interpreter is an important one, to act as a bridge to facilitate understanding. The interpreter should be able to improve the mediating skills, and to master some mediating strategies to reach a better performance in many mediating activities. In the mediation process the language user does not focus just on expressing meanings, but simply acting as a link between two parties that are unable to understand each other in a direct form, mainly (not exclusively), speakers from different languages.

There are some examples of mediating activities like the oral interpreting and the written translation, as well as the summary (abstract in academic settings) and the paraphrasing of texts in the same language when the target audience does not understand the language used in the original text. On one hand, among the most common oral mediating activities are: simultaneous interpreting (congress, meetings, formal speeches, etc.), consecutive interpreting (welcoming briefs, tours with guides, etc.), informal interpreting (foreign visitors within the same country, native speakers abroad, social situations and communicative exchanges with relatives, friends, clients or foreign guests, and signals, menus, advertisements, etc.)

On the other hand, some written mediating activities are: exact translation (contracts, legal and scientific texts), literary translation (novels, play scripts, poetry, handbooks, etc.), summary (newspaper and magazine articles), in L2, or from L1 to L2, paraphrasing (specialized texts, etc.) In order to perform in a way that may result in a higher interpreting quality, interpreters should be acquainted of the numerous mediating strategies that can be used during this process. These mediating strategies reflect the different ways to express the demands of the limitless use of resources for processing information and finding an equivalent. This process may suppose a previous planning to organize and benefit from the resources (development of the background knowledge, search for support, preparing a glossary), as well as considering the way to work with the given task (interlocutor"s needs, selecting the size of the interpreting unit). During the process of interpreting, explaining and translating, the mediator needs to foresee what is coming next while processes what has been recently said, generally working with two distinct "fragments" or interpreting units simultaneously (foresight). The interpreter has to note down the ways to express things in order to increase the glossary (note-taking of possibilities and equivalences) and to build "reliability islands", ("prefabricated" fragments), what free processing capacity for the foresight. Furthermore, the mediator also has to use different techniques to elicit uncertainties and to avoid interruptions while keeps foresight (saving obstacles). Evaluation takes place in the communicative level (cohesion verification) and in the linguistic level (coherence verification), and of course, regarding written translation, correction is reached through the consultation of bibliographical references and experts in the subject (getting accuracy through the consultation of dictionaries, experts and sources of information). While professional training is essential for effective and accurate interpretation, it is important to acknowledge that ad hoc interpreting occurs in a variety of situations. In fact, it may be ad hoc training that stirs a person"s initial interest in having a career in interpreting. Ad hoc interpreting refers to interpreting that is done by a person who is not trained as an interpreter but happens to speak the two languages needed for a specific interaction.

Final remarks

It is evident that the interpreters play a vital role as cultural mediators between people who need to communicate but do not speak the same language. Throughout this paper, the authors briefly described the role of interpretation as an intercultural communication bridge, which demands that interpreters not only master exquisite language techniques, but also rich and generous knowledge of different cultural backgrounds. The important functions of intercultural awareness during intercultural communication were also analyzed. Likewise, the basic concepts of intercultural awareness and the relationship between interpreters and intercultural awareness for the success of the simultaneous interpreting service were discussed. Several ways of training communicative and intercultural competences and mediating abilities were also described. It was argued that the interpreter needs to strengthen the sensitivity not only to linguistic differences but also to cultural differences, so that misunderstandings can be effectively reduced, and intercultural communication can be successfully achieved.

Bibliography

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Autor:

Lic. Karell Luis Aragú Pérez1;

Lic. Nosley Pérez Castellanos2;

Lic. Ernesto Sardaín Pérez31-Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas, Carr. Camajuani km. 5 1/2, Santa Clara. Villa Clara. Cuba.

2- Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas, Carr. Camajuani km. 5 1/2, Santa Clara. Villa Clara. Cuba.

3- Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas, Carr. Camajuani km. 5 1/2, Santa Clara. Villa Clara. Cuba.