Honestly, I nearly wrote a rehash of last month’s post on avoiding the Easy Route. It is still vitally important that we remember that interpreting is about people, not just words.
But that realisation isn’t enough. We can’t just throw out decades of developments in interpreting technologies and pretend that will fix everything. Neither can we hide in the sand about the machine interpreting. We need to be much more creative.
Interpreting for process or for outcomes
I have recently released a paper I co-authored with Renata Machado on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on legal interpreting in Brazil. Really, it ended up talking more about the relationship between interpreters and legal professionals. And the results were pretty stark.
While interpreters all cared about their conditions, work-life balance, and delivering effective interpreting; legal professionals had much simpler views. For them, interpreting was a hole in the legal process that needed to be filled.
There was no discussion of the importance of qualifications, pay, or even any skills apart from knowing legal terms and not disturbing anyone else. Interpreting was a job that needed to be done. The people doing it were of little interest.
This might seem harsh but it is a reality that we face as interpreters. All too often, clients care much less about who interprets as they do about ticking the box on the sheet that says “sort out interpreting”. Ironically, if we aren’t careful, our talk about impartiality, accuracy, and neutrality can combine with all our talk of efficiency and encourage clients to see us as simply interchangeable pieces. In that reality, it makes sense to just find the cheapest interpreter, even if that is a machine.
If interpreting is just about filling a gap, then it doesn’t matter too much who fills it or how it is filled. But there is another way.
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