April 2009 Archives

"How to make a shared identity in Europe?" Patterns of cultural interaction and, especially, the range of interpretations of these patterns, have profound effects on culture being maintained and co-created by Members of the European Parliament. For instance, are differences of language a problem or a benefit? Do the homogenizing effects of using a lingua franca outweigh the constant adaptation required by working multilingually? Discourses about simultaneous interpretation (SI) at the European Parliament (with its 23 working languages) pit danger and loss against loss and risk. "Loss" of fluency and clarity worries professional interpreters at the European Parliament (EP) and "loss" of direct contact between interlocutors (users of interpreting services, in this case Members of the EP) seem to express anxieties about multilingualism and possibilities for control. Understood as a practice of intercultural communication, the tensions made evident when simultaneous interpretation is used are a vital source of creativity typically overlooked because of conditioned (monolingual) preferences for using a shared language.

FYI, there is an official announcement (only in Dutch!) in the VUB's agenda online. The talk this Wednesday, 18:00, will be in English. :-)

In addition to the transmission of information, the larger and deepest purpose of simultaneous interpretation is to generate and maintain common culture among people from different cultures.

As hoped, the opportunity to present on my dissertation fieldwork in-progress forced my brain to synthesize the trends and patterns that I have been noticing during this year of research at the European Parliament, as well as find words to express what I think these trends and patterns suggest about mono- and multilingualism. The effort to explain my perceptions moved me far along the analytical path; since returning to fieldwork many of the findings have crystallized further.

A few weeks ago, after more backbrain simmering, I finally uttered the statement highlighted above, distilling the years of talking with interested colleagues (and anyone else who would listen, thanks Arne!) into a single, comprehensible idea.

Purposes are human creations, not physical facts, so there is plenty of room to disagree. I am anticipating a conversation that will take place in Philadelphia in August ("Interpreting as Culture"), and other conversations that I hope grow from there and link from/with other sources (such as Ryan Commerson's brilliant master's thesis applying the work of Stuart Hall).

The feedback provided by participants at my presentations at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh is affirming (thanks!) and helpful. For this post, I am only including the comments that relate specifically to my thesis.

1) "Why," wrote one participant, "do people want [simultaneous interpretation] to be like a mono-lingual exchange? Why are they so uncomfortable with interpreted interaction...[?]"

I am not sure that interlocutors (or interpreters, for that matter) are consciously aware of comparing the process of interpreted interaction to what it is like to talk with someone in the same language. We are so accustomed to the ease of monolingual communication - it is like the fish not being aware of water or the bird, air. It is, for most of us, our typical environment, the way we get along with nearly everybody, practically all of the time. So when the exceptional circumstance of an interpreted interaction occurs . . . on what other basis could we imagine to evaluate it?

Not only that, but we also have the collusion of academic discourse reinforcing the unquestioned common sense. One professional sign language interpreter wrote,

"...reflecting [on] how my practice is so heavily influenced . . . it's shocking to reflect on how thoroughly 'old' theories of interpreter ('translator'?) role of 'heard and not seen' (invisible conduit) have become/are becoming so entrenched, particularly in a place where multi-lingual, multi-cultural awareness should be richest."

2) That "place" is the European Parliament, about which another participant mused, "Do politicians really want to understand each other?"

Based on the interviews with European Parliament interpreters four years ago, I can say that some interpreters think not! Or at least, not all the time, or not within the constraints of particular structures - such as the plenary sessions (which get the most publicity and thus seem to represent SI at the EP, even though I am inclined to argue more real interpreting gets done in every other setting than that one).

3) "Don't we get 'third cultures,' 'communities of practice,' all the time, everytime?" asks another researcher?

Of course we do, but the question is whether that "third culture" is substantively different than what we get without interpretation! The discourses about simultaneous interpretation that I've been learning privilege the same kind of characteristics that are prominent in monolingual communication. This was reflected in questions from another participant:

4) "How is this speed in communication (even though passive) ... effecting our expectations of it? Our response? Interaction between cultures? Dealing with relationships?"

There's no definitive answer - we are all co-creating the ways we engage the imperative of speed in collaborative/complementary fashion, consciously or not. Which leads directly into another question posed by another researcher:

5) "Will there be a paradigm shift? Would I like it?" And a participant's observation: "Despite of promotion of language diversity/equality, for practical/political/power reasons, lingua franca will still be the fate."

In response, I would distinguish, here, between communities of practice and third cultures. Perhaps this is a naive distinction, but culture is a more-or-less passive development of aggregated relational actions into coherent systemic wholes. (At some point there are leaders, religious figures, etc., who justify the parts and defend the whole.) A community of practice is intentional from the outset. While, as one participant/researcher wrote, "The language produced by interpreters - the form - is indeed a message," I would say this language constitutes discourse but does not necessarily represent a community of practice until we take hold of the form in order to wield it for specific purpose.

I submit that a purpose which could bind simultaneous interpreters into a community of practice across the gamut of "interpreters in triadic interactions and 'stream-of-language' events like the European Parliament" (quoting from a participant) is the co-construction of intercultural community premised on language difference.

In addition to the transmission of information, the larger and deepest purpose of simultaneous interpretation is to generate and maintain common culture among people from different cultures.

A couple of weeks ago, on the same day, I met two young men, each doing a week-long internship in the office of a Member of the EP. Adam had been in a session where they were discussing human rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Tristan had also witnessed a debate about human rights, in the DROI subcommittee on the situation in Sri Lanka. Each of them talked about their first time experience with the simultaneous interpretation (SI) system.

Both were disoriented. Adam had the worst of it, apparently, because in the meeting he attended most of the discussion was in a language other than English and he had to rely on the SI for everything. At one point in the discussion, an interpreter realized an error had been made and offered a correction. For Adam,

the SI was "not always clear, there were pauses. They said something, then said 'that was wrong,' and said something else. It was confusing!" He thought some of the interpreters had pre-printed information and were "just reading it off, that was fine," but otherwise, "it was annoying. I didn't understand very much."

The fieldnote I wrote to myself after we spoke was, "first time experience = bewildering (my word)."

From my vantage point - Adam was not pointing a finger in any particular direction, he was just reflecting on the complexity of the process. His experience gave me a fresh window on the experience of MEPs who've told me it can take up to two years to learn how to communicate effectively in this system (with the caveat that some learn fast, and others never do). Also, I want to say kudos to the interpreter! It's humbling to have to correct a misunderstanding because it never matters to the listeners who or how the original disconnect occurred, they assume you messed up. A variation on kill-the-messenger. (One of the foci of my general critique is this assumption that a mistake or misunderstanding is an individual's fault, rather than a feature of the communication of the whole group.)

Tristan was also confused, but most of the meeting he observed was in English, which (it seems) gave him enough grounding in the content of the debate to be able to look around when someone spoke in another language. Tristan said he "had to look to the English booth to see who was gesticulating, then I was like, ok, now I know what's going on." He elaborated on his experience in an email:

"i tried to look to see who was interpreting at all the committee meetings I attended...it was the first time i had experienced simultaneous interpretation, and it was an instinctive attempt to identify the person whose voice i was hearing."

One reason (I speculate, on the basis of the smallest sample possible!) that some Members may take longer to adapt to communicating with SI (in twenty-three languages, remember) is what those early experiences are like. If most of the communication is happening in an unknown or less-fluent language, then that forces more reliance on the SI, which could be more disorienting and thus take longer to wade through as far as getting one's bearings. If one is fortunate enough to understand the language(s) being spoken, then one relies on the SI less, and possibly gains a quicker appreciation for how to use it to individual and political purpose.

To date I've had at least one conversation with forty-four Members of the European Parliament, several have spoken with me twice, and a small but growing number are even allowing me a third conversation about simultaneous interpretation (SI) in the EP.

Going into the final month (because this Parliamentary term comes to an end early as Members will turn all their energies toward campaigning), the demographics break out like this:

by country:

2 from Austria
5 from Belgium
1 from Bulgaria
2 from Cyprus
2 from Denmark
1 from Estonia
2 from Finland
2 from France
6 from Germany
1 from Greece
1 from Hungary
1 from Italy
1 from Latvia
0 from Lithuania
1 from Luxembourg
0 from Malta
1 from The Netherlands
2 from Poland
1 from Portugal
5 from Romania
0 from Slovakia
0 from Slovenia
1 from Spain
4 from the UK (including 1 from Ireland)
42 total Members (does not include assistants)

by committee:

1 from AGRI
3 from CONT
3 from BUDG
2 from LIBE
1 from AFCO
0 from CULT
0 from DEVE
3 from ECON
3 from EMPL
3 from ENVI
4 from PECH
6 from AFET
1 from DROI
5 from ITRE
0 from IMRE
0 from INTA
2 from JURI
1 from PETI
6 from REGI
2 from SEDE
1 from CLIM
3 from TRAN
0 from FEMM

from Member's websites; first listing -
in many cases Members were more invested (at the time we spoke)
in another committee, perhaps even
one in which they are officially listed as a "substitute."

by gender:

men: 33
women: 9
as of 2007, women composed 31.53%
of the Members
(print source)
here's an online source (2004)

by age:

3 aged 31-40
7 aged 41-50
15 aged 51-60
16 aged 61-70
1 aged 71-80

by years of experience in the European Parliament:

304 total of 41 MEPs for whom this is currently known ranges from 1 year to more than twenty (22) median = 10 average = 7 years mode = 5 (14x) 2nd most frequent = 10 (6x)

The park is magical. As are all the public, cultivated spaces here: I'm given the sense of a holodeck - programmed to appear wild but the evidence of human design remains.

Doesn't that remind you of the lamppost on the other side of the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe? (I have refrained from watching the movie, so this is my imaginary correspondence from a reading many years ago.)

We picnicked and talked about the seasons. Liesbet looked at me with incredulity when I said it is a fairly recent phenomena for me to actually consciously register the duration of seasons. (She thinks I'm a treehugger!) I mean, yea, of course I always knew the seasons change, but to have that deep embodied awareness that one season follows the next . . .

and each lasts about so long . . .

Yea, that's a perceptual kind of awareness I've been growing only since the last five years or so. I'm always pleased when spring arrives, but I never trusted the end of summer. Fall, for nearly all my life, seemed to hurtle into winter. When autumn started slowing down - meaning, when I realized there would be some months of fall between the first cold night and the onslaught of snow - is when the reality of the seasons as a cycle dawned.

I know. How is it possible to have been so clueless for so long?

I was raised among people who weren't noticing those things. Or, if they were, it was a private matter, not discussed. Education was abstracted, even hands-on activities. (Not that I recall very many - which isn't saying so much, as I don't remember much of the first half of my life...) Reading Alison Bechdel's graphic novel, Fun Home, sheds a certain kind of strange light on my own childhood. I realize that there was a singular focus that bounded most of my family's doings... no wonder I still struggle to spread perceptual awareness as broadly as necessary, and so often get lost in the resulting complexity!

Anyway, we took off our shoes and spread our toes in the cool grass, comparing seasons in Egypt, Belgium, and various climes in the U.S. There is no twilight in Egypt, for instance, only a day/night transition lasting less than half-an-hour. You feel the seasons there by the temperature. Here in Belgium, as in the US, I tend to smell the season first. There is also a quality of air - probably a function of humidity? - but it seems secondary to me, whereas in Egypt (so says Mahmoud) the feel of the air comes before the nose detects a difference.

There are American sayings about the seasons....I have a vague recollection..."April showers bring May flowers" is the only one that comes to mind. Appropriate! In Dutch there is a saying about the moodiness of the weather, apparently Arabic has one as well, but for a different month... correspondence, but not an exact alignment: synchronicity is variable, huh? :-)

When Valére mentioned locking me in the cellar I knew it was really time to leave! We spent a couple of hours walking through the Middelheim Sculpture Park, talking mostly about history. In Europe, this involves talking about (and sometimes re-living) elements, aspects, fallout, and memories of war. The abstract violence that I had some dim peripheral knowledge of from early education grows in palpability the longer I stay here and the more people I meet.

Frankly, at a visceral level, I am creeped out by the immanent presence, tribality, and viciousness of violence in Europe.

This is in contrast to the US - where we only went at each other once, long enough ago that re-enactments of the Civil War are a game (which is not to deny the political fallout of the past century and a half). Violence in the US, after the genocide of American Indians, has been at the fringes of legitimacy. Yes, for terrible decades, lynchings of Black Americans were social events supported by local authorities, but anonymity and secrecy (of the KKK, for instance) was - and remains - evidence of impermissability. Yes, we have outrageous statistics of random violence - murders, for instance, but we have not drafted up our youth to go killing each other generation after generation after generation...

This history makes the project of the European Union particularly special. Europhiles know it, Euroskeptics doubt it. While my own research is not focused on the content of the debate between these forces, I have gleaned that the anti-Europeanists are skeptical not only because they perceive human behavior in Hobbesian terms, but because they sense another version of overarching fascist control. They may be right, and so the Europhiles need to generate real mechanisms of democracy that can be participated in by citizens in their day-to-day life. Only deeply-grounded practices of shared culture are capable of competing with the ideologies being implemented by local and national governments - regardless of whether their policies are in concert or competition with the EU's larger aims.

After our long, leisurely stroll, in which we noticed the preponderance of statues of women posed in domestic and sensual splendour interspersed by some statues of men portraying engagement in "something important" (such as thinking or proselytizing), we settled down for a delicious meal.

Our talk turned to language.

Most of the Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace Festival is over, there were only two events that lingered past my arrival Sunday [15 March] - I chose to add them to my tourist itinerary as prep for the Dialogue Under Occupation conference that I dash to next.

I spent some time Monday afternoon [16 March] sitting under a wood-cut and linocut (2/8, 1996) by Angela Lemaire. No photographs were allowed, but the text underneath a citysprawl intercut by yellow triangles reads:

Triangles: LIGHT IN THE CITY. Triangles is a service activity for men and women who believe in the power of thought. Working in groups of three, they establish right human relationships by creating a world-wide network of light and goodwill.

Earlier, I gazed upon the castle and walked some of The Royal Mile . . .

The cabbie who brought me from the airport had suggested that I get where I can watch the light fade - he was right. I couldn't absorb all of the running commentary so late last night when I arrived but he did a terrific job extolling the glories of the city; I wish I had more time!

Tuesday evening, I wanted to watch twilight fall on the water . . . anyplace high where I could get a beer with a view? The chap at the storyteller's place whom I asked for a recommendation mused, "That's the thing with Scotland, if you want comfort we go to ground." His statement totally reframed my take on the basement room in the bed and breakfast where I was staying! I was given the lead to King's Wark . . . it wasn't as "on" the water as I had in mind, so I wandered around for awhile.

Leith
is homey in comparison to the glamour of the Royal Mile. After trying The Granery, and getting turned around looking for The Waterline on another recommendation, I wound up back at King's Wark, where I had a cask-conditioned Caledonian 80 with clams & mussels for what might have been a third of the in-town price.

Most of my time revolved around preparing the talks. I nearly always operate in the last minute like this. The base idea circulates for a long time, but the final preparations are best kept as near as possible to the moment in real time. Perhaps this is why the gentleman I met at the Scottish Storyteller's Centre suggested I stay in touch?

The best stories feel spontaneous - the labor of laying down the framework remains unseen.

Someone tipped me off that the European Parliament has hired someone to make a film on the process of simultaneous interpretation (SI) from an elected Member's point-of-view. I imagine they were carefully vetted in order to give the perspective that the Parliament wishes people to have regarding the purposes, uses, and effectiveness of interpretation. I agree that more people need to understand the value of SI, although I'm skeptical of the vision promoted by the official public relations and policy organs of the European Union. I think their view is unfortunately limited by an inherited and ingrained one-dimensional conception of what SI can do, as well as what it actually does do.

Nonetheless, all of their previous efforts do a nice job of creating desire to become a professional interpreter working at this highest of the high, most elite level of SI.

And from a different (still officially sanctioned) angle:

And some critiques:

Ever wondered if abstract concepts can be discussed with signed languages?

Here's proof.

Ever suspected Deaf people may not be very smart?

Find out just how wrong that view is!

The video is forty minutes long, so settle in and plan to give it your full attention. (Ryan suggests gourmet snacks to accompany viewing.)

The original Rule 138 was updated on the Europarl website on 9 March, with no changes.

A text was renewed concerning multilingualism in the upcoming, seventh term of the European Parliament (2009-2014). I'll want to take some time to read through all the explanations of vote.

GrahnLaw posted a summary (scroll down) of the transitional language rules covered by the renewal. He includes a list of earlier (2007) provisions too.

There's a nice section in the 2006 book by Barbara Pozzo and Valentina Jacometti, Multilingualism and the harmonization of European Law , explaining how Rule 139 was created to give the Parliament flexibility in dealing with the new languages added in 2004.