Thread by @translationtalk

Today I want to tweet about an interpreter training course I did a few years ago. For data protection reasons I will not disclose the names of institutions and persons involved. The point here is to give you some food for thought. #1nt
#Terps

The request came through a group of academics who had made contact with a nearby prison. This prison was reserved for foreign nationals, i.e. people not holding citizenship of the country of detention. My task: teach the inmates to interpret better.

For a variety of legal reasons, these inmates had no right to an interpreter. Even when they had interpreters for official exchanges, 95% of exchanges inside the prison were not covered by this provision. Many inmates did not or only barely speak the official language.

So those inmates who spoke the official language routinely interpreted and even sight translated legal documents for their peers. The challenges with this set-up are so numerous, I don't know where to start. The most basic one: you have no control over what languages are covered.

In terms of language this was one of the most interesting settings I have ever trained in. Forget "Portuñol". In this prison, people who knew Polish might be the closest thing to a Russian interpreter you could find and they would just make it work somehow to help their peers.

How do you train interpreters in this kind of setting? What do you emphasize on? Clearly not style, register or even accuracy.

So what is left?

The workshops I ran in this prison were some of the most interesting workshops I have done in my life. The questions asked and the input given by participants made me rethink my whole concept of professional ethics and what actually matters.

To simplify grossly: accuracy mattered less than confidentiality, neutrality mattered less than empathy, and the most important thing to teach these inmates was to consciously step into and out of their role as interpreters and clearly demarcate it from their role as peers.

Each day, a prison guard would "sit in" on the workshop - initially mainly bc they had to be there and keep an eye on the inmates and the clueless academics training them. But magic happened: 45min in, they became full participants in the class.

One of the guards was a classical "monolingual". He had limited patience for all this fluffy linguistic and cultural staff and before the class took me aside to tell me how pointless he thought this thing was and how naive he thought I was (a woman and not too old either)

This guy against all odds turned out to be one of the most committed and most interested students I have ever had in a class - and he had been signed up despite himself. It was the funniest thing.

After the class he came to tell me he had never imagined that this interpreting thing was so complex and this was the first time that, in role plays, he was put in a position of not understanding the others. He made a huge leap that day.

A leap so big that he got so excited and eager to return the favour that he then took me and my colleagues on a "tour" of the parts of the prison they had never been allowed to access and had been trying to gain access to for months.

No amount of ethical clearance and letters from the university management had gotten them what a half-day training session magically achieved: a guard clearly understanding that there was more to these multilingual actions than just migrants talking gibberish.

There are people interpreting in all sorts of places and under all sorts of conditions. They aren't professionals nor should/could they be. But they all experience the same challenges we face: How do I say this? Why does he/she not understand me? How can I get the message across?

So when all else fails, that is what it boils down to.

The current workplace of many interpreters is designed in a way that easily makes us forget that communication is actually the point. Technical documents being read at high speed & alibi debates without content take place.

I am not claiming the inmates turned interpreters became professionals that day. Not at all and that was not the point. But what was amazing about this course was that interpreting was something that we could all connect around and relate to.

It meant that inmates spoke to the guard not as detainees but as interpreters.
And their guards saw them not as inmates but as people holding relevant expert knowledge.
This changed the way the related to each other in that class.

Even if that does not have a long-term impact (likely it will not), this moment existed and it did create a sense of mutual respect.
Recognizing this language practice as "legitimate" and coming into the place as professionals increased the self-esteem of these inmates.

Many wrote me messages (through intermediaries, obviously) afterwards to ask rather poignant questions about interpreting, role and ethics.

To be clear: it is scandalous that inmates in that prison had no access to proper interpreting services in their own language. This was a makeshift solution.
I was worried our training would give a seal of approval to this practice and we clearly communicated this upfront.

But what it actually did was force detention authorities to recognize this practice actually existed. Which is something that had never been officially acknowledged. And recognize that there were inmates in that prison who had not been able to talk to anyone for weeks or months!

And while I was initially weary about the guards sitting in, this actually was a brilliant thing in the end. Bc they could not claim they had not heard what was said.
Ultimately, this training did not at all run counter to the idea of advocating for proper interpreting services.

Bc in a prison, people are held 24/7 and no interpreter will ever be there during each and every interaction... unless that interpreter is also an inmate.
Proper language provision for formal interactions can function in tandem with ad hoc solutions for day-to-day communication.