The Academic Foundations of Interpreting Studies

An Introduction to Its Theories

Cynthia B. Roy, Jeremy L. Brunson, Christopher A. Stone

• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781944838386
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Academic Foundations of Interpreting Studies is the first introductory course book that explores the theoretical foundations used in sign language interpreting studies. Authors Roy, Brunson, and Stone examine the disciplines whose theoretical frameworks and methodologies have influenced the academic study of interpreting. With this text, explanations for how interpreted events occur, how interpreted products are created, and how the interpreting process is studied can be framed within a variety of theoretical perspectives, forming a foundation for the emerging transdiscipline of Interpreting Studies.As sign language interpreting has emerged and evolved in the last 20 years as an academic field of study, the scope of learning has broadened to include fields beyond the language and culture of deaf people. This text surveys six disciplines that have informed the study of sign language interpreting: history, translation, linguistics, sociology, social psychology, and cognitive psychology, along with their major ideas, principal scholars, and ways of viewing human interaction. Each chapter includes clear learning goals, definitions, discussion questions, and images to aid understanding. The Academic Foundations of Interpreting Studies is required reading for upper-level undergraduate or first-year graduate students in interpreting, Deaf studies, and sign language programs.

1

The Discipline of Interpreting Studies

I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

—Albert Einstein

Academic disciplines determine how language, culture, ideas, events, objects, and interpreting are studied. All of us reap the benefits of those studies. Most professions require at least a bachelor’s degree to demonstrate one’s knowledge and expertise of a profession. Academic study rewards us with research-based knowledge so that we make thoughtful, wise, and acceptable decisions about the work we do. We invite you to examine the new, emerging discipline of Interpreting Studies (IS) so you can become a recognized and respected professional.

IN THIS chapter we discuss what constitutes an academic discipline and some of the crucial concepts about a scientific disciplinary field and provide an overview of Interpreting Studies (IS). Readers are likely familiar with the idea of disciplines, as many have taken classes in psychology, English, and mathematics, among others. However, it has been our experience that gaining familiarity with and understanding the design of a discipline are two different objectives. Most students are busy learning content rather than focusing on the elements of a discipline—which is okay. That is why we dedicate both time and space to unpack the design of a discipline before considering IS; then present the disciplines that best represent both the field’s past and future. Disciplines that produced studies of interpreting are explained, followed by their theoretical and methodological lenses to illustrate how they have addressed the questions and concerns pertinent to IS.

In 2004, Franz Pöchhacker wrote Introducing Interpreting Studies (the inspiration for this book). Until the early 1990s, scholars who studied interpreting did so under the umbrella of other disciplines, such as sociology, linguistics, or Deaf Studies. The sister discipline of interpreting, translation, had become known as Translation Studies (TS) and was a large field of study with a long history. While, early research on interpreting was conducted under psychology, it was clear that studies were proliferating using much of the terminology from translation; however, it became apparent that the concerns and questions of interpreting would differ in significant ways from the concerns and questions of translation. For that reason, Pöchhacker (2004) set out “[…] to provide students, research-minded teachers and practitioners of interpreting as well as scholars in related fields with a broad and balanced overview of interpreting studies as an academic field of study” (p. 1). He presented a multilayered map of IS composed of:

1.an overview in terms of concepts, developments, approaches, paradigms and models

2.a look at salient research studies of interpreting from a variety of disciplines

3.a review of major trends and future perspectives of interpreting research.

A second edition was published in 2016 and is a must read for any student engaged in academic studies of interpreting.

In this textbook we provide an in-depth introduction of six major disciplines: history, translation, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, social psychology, and cognitive psychology from which studies in IS have emerged—with specific focus on Sign Language Interpreting Studies (SLIS). Before delving into these chapters, it is important to first discuss what a discipline is along with its key concepts. While people may engage these terms in everyday use, their application within academia is specific and different.

Ideally, what we hope to do as authors of this text and scholars of IS is to move away from the overly simplistic discussions of interpreting to encourage research and theoretical analyses. For example, in the late 1980s, the work of sign language interpreters was conceptualized as metaphors of practice (although, they were erroneously referred to as a models). These metaphors (i.e., helper, conduit, communication facilitator, and bilingual–bicultural) provided a label for one part of interpreting work (Roy, 1993/2002), and focused solely on interactions with consumers. What several of these disciplines will emphasize is that interpreting should also be examined as a social phenomenon, an event with people and practitioners all embedded in particular histories and influenced by the societies they all inhabit. These disciplines illustrate that people involved in an interpreted event experience the moment not only physically but also socially, linguistically, and psychologically. Understanding this larger picture undoubtedly informs the work of translators and interpreters.

Franz Pöchhacker

THE MAKE-UP OF AN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

Before we examine IS, it is important to first define what constitutes an academic discipline. Our argument throughout this book is that IS necessarily brings together different disciplines, which individually contribute to the exploration of interpreting as a practice.

Universities were founded to consolidate scientific knowledge about the world and about human behavior. Professors are expected to teach what is known and to research what is not known, but, of course, no one can study everything. After the Renaissance, teachers naturally began to group areas of study together, and called them disciplines, including history, mathematics, science, and literature. Every discipline strives to develop scientific theories, either about how the world works or the different ways in which to understand human beings and their actions. Theories provide general principles for how something works or an explanation of the relationships between two or more concepts (Merton, 1967; Schneider, 2006). As Chafetz (1988) said, “the central task of any science and its theories is to aid in our understanding or explanation of some class of empirical phenomena” (p. 5). These empirical phenomena are facts or events that are observed and can be verified through approaches that include experiments, observations, interviews, or recordings. Gathering facts, observing and recording events, interviewing people, counting occurrences, and detecting patterns are all different approaches to collecting and analyzing data for research. Analysis then either confirms a theory about how the world works or allows scientists to develop new theories, which, in turn, help explain how persons, places, or events are connected and related to one another.

Research studies are designed to test a theory. This ensures specific data (language examples, interpreting examples, survey responses, or responses to experiments) are collected to either test an hypothesis or explore emerging categories and themes, or describe specific phenomena within the data.

Our own research work (indeed, we will be drawing on other scholars throughout this book; however, we agreed to take this opportunity to self-aggrandize) has put forth different, but not contradictory, theories about interpreting. For example, Cynthia Roy’s (2000) position that interpreting is a discourse process, or Jeremy Brunson’s (2011) position that access is a matrix of various apparatuses that organize video relay service (VRS) interpreters’ labor, or Christopher Stone’s (2009) position that Deaf translators adhere to norms that create effective interpretations and translations. These three analytic positions contribute to developing an overall theory of interpreting.

Scientific Methods

Theories are tested through scientific methods, which either demonstrate their strengths or weaknesses, or allow a detection of patterns or systems that add to a theoretical notion. Scientific methods follow specific guidelines (or protocols) to subsequently enable studies to be replicated. The scientific community has divided data collection into two broad categories:

•qualitative methods, which include interviewing, observations, and other ways of collecting data and which aim to explore a particular phenomenon in depth, yield data in the form of notes, transcripts, and narratives;

•quantitative methods, which include using surveys, undertaking statistical analysis, and other ways of collecting data, which aim to study phenomena broadly and provide generalizable explanations, yield data in the form of charts, numbers, and yes/no responses.

All research starts with questions that establish what you will study, and sets limits or boundaries to exclude what you will not study. Good questions seek constructive and insightful answers that move knowledge forward or, as Hale and Napier (2013) suggest, “the research question acts as a plan for your project” (p. 8). It could focus on interactions among people (see Brunson, 2011; Roy, 2000) or observe how people experience their identity (see Stone, 2009).

Key Questions

•What type of research is typically reported on in the news?

•Which type of data are you more likely to believe?

As you progress through this textbook, the differences among the disciplines will become clear; their theories focus on different aspects of the world and people, they ask different kinds of questions, and although their methods sometimes overlap, what they have (or will) contribute to the field of IS will be different. Reading about these disciplines will also provide an idea of the challenge in creating a combined and all-inclusive theory for IS.

To our minds, IS is the encompassing term for studies of interpreting between any language pair, while Sign Language Interpreting Studies (SLIS) is an area of study embedded within IS. Whether a scholar works in literature, geography, or mathematics, if they are studying interpreting, they are also doing IS. We suggest that the field is transdisciplinary. That is, IS scholars come at the examination of interpreting from different disciplines. This exploration then benefits from multiple disciplinary perspectives simultaneously, rather than simply examining interpreting through sociology, or linguistics, or cognitive psychology. This approach can potentially bridge more holistic analyses of interpreting, which would become both the form and the theory of IS and its subdiscipline, SLIS, alike.

INTERPRETING STUDIES

IS is a recent development within universities. Its primary mission is to investigate the practice of interpreting in both signed and spoken languages. While interpreter education programs are beginning to use the term, no current programs have gathered faculty from the aforementioned variety of disciplines included here. Without this mix of faculty and disciplinary training, a crossover and blending of disciplines the field arguably deserves cannot be achieved.

As a new discipline, IS strives to bring together different ideas of interpreting: an historical process, a translation process, a linguistic process, a sociological process, a social–psychological process and a cognitive process, among others. A unified theory of IS would describe how interpreting happens as an event created by relationships between people. However, constructing this is and will be difficult, as it must not only account for three primary people (or more) and their interaction, but also for layers of social and psychological forces and norms. With so many concepts at play, it is like putting together a puzzle the size of a shopping mall/center!

Typically, conducting research on the interpreting process seeks to explain how all its parts move and come together. Determining how best to pursue such studies is precisely where other disciplines have assisted. That is, IS has borrowed methodological practices from other disciplines to investigate interpreting. For example, cognitive processes have been examined experimentally (see Gerver, 1976), the linguistic process has been examined through video recordings (see Van Herreweghe, 2002), social forces have been examined through ethnographic observations (see Angelelli, 2004; Berk-Seligson, 1990) and interviews (see Inghilleri, 2003), and norms and identity have been examined (see McKee & Awheto, 2010). Clearly, there are many different paths to understanding the process, and the future of IS necessitates a combination of these paths to present a more holistic picture, which further captures this transdisciplinary nature of IS.

It is likely that the best research and scholarship will continue to emerge from people who study within specific disciplines. That is, a university’s IS department cannot examine the full range of interpreting practices unless recognized scholars from various disciplines who have researched interpreting are involved and engaged. This effort would also require some acknowledgment in funding applications and other disciplinary practices from both universities and funding bodies to properly express how such transdisciplinary practices are emerging. Consequently, perhaps scholars can then create a truly transdisciplinary effort to study interpreting.

GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

This book is designed to serve as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate interpreting courses, such as a senior capstone course (in the US), or an interpreting theory course. It also functions as a theoretical introduction for students, researchers, instructors, and practitioners. We aim to help readers develop an understanding of how the practical everyday concerns in interpreting work are also the concerns of research and scholarship. As students progress in their education, the frameworks presented here can provide a guide to the intensely complex nature of interpreting. This book may provide a stimulating introduction to a range of theoretical approaches in interpreting, which are relevant both for those engaged in academic study of interpretation and for professional practitioners. Nonetheless, closer examinations and further reading of specific issues that greatly interest students are both encouraged.

Like other works, this book is necessarily selective. The theories and approaches covered have been chosen for their strong influenc...