Call this ACTION LEARNING!: June 2009 Archives

I hope Koen was being prophetic and not just descriptive. It is strange, btw, to be me!

There's no time, now, to properly process the odd collection of blogable bits that I wish to re-compose, suffice a listing with minimal commentary.

Sunday: I missed the concert but caught up with everyone immediately afterwards. "You have nice friends," said one about another. Yes. Lucky me! ;-) Eventually we arrived at Den Draak, only Annmarie was missing (and Vee & Vivaldi) or the symmetry would have been perfect. I had no idea where we were going - having left all responsibility for decision-making to others. They could not have known that this last outing arrived to the same location as the first one last fall.

Monday: I will not miss the Belgian bureaucracy! I'd been told I did not need an appointment to de-scribe my registration as a resident, but the woman at the desk tried to tell me to return at 9 am tomorrow morning. "I can't," I said, "I'll be on a plane to the US." "Then come at 1:30," she said. Hello? I had to ask for a manager three times before someone intervened and confirmed that they could, in fact, take care of this right now.

Retrieving the historical translation from French to English was much smoother. :-) The Little Shop of Translations is the best! "Optimism," the manager informed me, "is misinformed pessimism." Not only do they provide high quality translations into and out of all European languages, but they never failed to call out my Americanness in our casual conversations. (I'm gonna miss you!)

Then there was Marsi: "You're older but I'm bigger." She promises to threaten me over Skype. We'll see. We waved each other goodbye for half-a-block, and then Topi and I followed suit....

Antwerp ~ thanks for a tremendous year!

Ok, maybe it isn't quite as exciting as the Large Hadron Collider, but I stood in the very office where Heisenberg worked. I tried to absorb any lingering quantum waves that might collapse as particles (in the form of a brilliant idea) in my mind. I did actually have a new thought about the dissertation today, a title for the chapter on language ideologies: Language as a club. I can't remember, now, whether I had the idea on the way going there or on the way back... but with relativity perhaps it doesn't actually make a difference?! I'm also thinking about rearranging the sequence of chapters . . .

The reason I was at the MPI at all was mundane - I had to submit my final report on the grant. "Who still uses Internet Explorer?" Dada asked. Hmmph. I agree! The IIE must have a contract with Microsoft that precludes using other platforms, such as Firefox or even Safari. So I was fortunate that the Institute has a small computer room with terminals for visitors, otherwise I'd be up to a very un-fun scramble to meet tomorrow's deadline.

I picked up the Excellence Cluster Newsletter (Issue 2 May 2009) and read the Public Outreach Coordinator's statement on the successful launch of "Herschel" and "Planck" from a European spaceport French Guiana. Herschel's job, according to POC Barbara Wankert, is 'to explore the mechanisms of star formation;" and Planck aims to generate "a better understanding of the energy fluctuations...that formed the template for today's distribution of galaxies."

Meanwhile, I am returning to The Man Who Knew Too Much, a book I started last November and had to set aside. Until now!

I think that's what he said.

My memory is sketchy on the exact word, but the principle had something to do with a kind of misrepresentation. I think! It looks cruel written down but in the complexity of the moment I did not feel it unkindly, rather as a caution. We were talking about blogging.... why do I do it? How do I do it? ("Do you ever lie?" he asked.) No. I try to write honestly about whatever was/is the most important thing at the time. Or, more precisely - I write about what seems to me most important relative to the desired/intended audience at a given time. So I write now (Friday morning, a few hours before presenting) to the people attending this conference on Bakhtin. In my mind, also, are the people who attended the conference last week in Antwerp. I hope they are reading but I realize they probably aren't - everyone is already massively committed to many important efforts and besides, the blog format seems "extra" anyway (doesn't it?) - definitely less significant than a journal article or book.



A day later (Saturday morning)

"Does it take over your life?" He's discovered a "horrid fascination" for blogging (not necessarily for bloggers?!) This morning, yes, I am compelled. There is a force of language in me that wants expression. I could ignore it: I have in the past. Nothing happened - no cataclysms or miracles, just another mundane unfolding of a regular day. Usually when I blog it is the same - nothing momentous occurs, no responses forthcome, the day unfolds more-or-less like any other day. Yet I am satisfied that in some small, unfinalizable way I have played my bit part in the human saga.

I made connections with people I want to continue and deepen. Take Lakshmi, for instance:

Usually I'm the one approaching others with that very American overture! What a dinner conversation we had out on some small island in the middle of Only A Few Knew Where, punctuated by the occasional speaker who deigned to drift upstairs to bless us with a lesson in (highly gendered, ahem) Swedish drinking etiquette or a Swedish poem set to song. (Not bad Johan, not bad!)

I'd chased down Daphna because she knows Wilfred Bion - and who the heck knows him?! Lo-and-behold, one of her dear friends is Miriam - who I just met last week at a conference in Antwerp! (Centripetal force, anyone?) Lee Wah secured the most scenic view for the evening repast, and quickly convinced me that I need to take lessons from Che Husna Azhari, who is an expert in the art of telling without saying.

My notes from dinner include:

• concept of rhythm = closure; loophole = opening


• when to invoke history, when not to because it becomes a burden


• necessity of periodic closures or no invention (?) - "periodic" because opens up again


• polyphony


• aesthetic mode of attack


• dialogizing


• crazy theory


• Rabelais' body and Manausomeone's ghost


• the only response is schizophrenia


• the first suicide bombers were Sri Lankans


• Mahabharata, how people ______ the past_____


• the constitution of voices (plural) doesn't automatically = dialogue


• Tagore's friendship with Gandhi and their public disagreements

If I had been able to write quickly enough I would have composed a story of these elements alone in an attempt at representing the wonderfully chaotic yet intensely unified stream of our conversation. Already, however, the dinner fades into the experience of the conference as a whole, interweaving in memory with myriad other interactions and stimuli.

After dinner, Lescek introduced me to a lovely toast, "to the health of heartful ladies" and Sissel bought me a jagermeister. (Here's to you, Nick!) Jan, Margit, and Gunhild taught me that Norwegian is a tonal language (like Chinese!) and pronounced my paternal grandmother's last name, Tarang. Hopefully I practiced the downward accent and upward lilt enough times to be able to reproduce it for my family! Apparently I also spoke with Steffan about a "social psychological something." On the way to the bus, Magnus duly informed me, "It's a little cold." And someone negotiated permission to bring along his wine glass!

And then it was the last day.

Hopefully I will be able to put my hands on a copy of the paper on collective memory (and the other dozen papers I have reasonable certainty bear, in one way or another, either soon or somewhen, significance to my own endeavors). I need to give credit for a discussion facilitated by Eugenio about the different definitions of dialogue, which inspired me to state the meanings in my mind when I use the terms dialogic and to dialogue. (More accurately, by listening to the debate the meanings that I have been living cohered into a language I could trust to convey the intersubjective sense I hope to stimulate and experience.)

I am eager to read Professor Zinchenko's paper and was thrilled by his visual representations of the chronotope. I found the last session a nicely-symmetric bookend to Michael's opening address, one of those centripetal effects of language that cannot be planned - only embraced wholeheartedly when they unfold.

I had to invent the presentation proposal many months ago . . . I've highlighted the phrases in bold that speak most directly to the shaping of the actual presentation.

This presentation conjectures an extension of Bakhtin's exposition of language via the novel to cultural practices of simultaneous interpretation. Interpreters deal in real time with features of language and characteristics of authorship apparent in novelization - such as heteroglossia, polyphony, alterity, interpenetration of different languages, and double voicing - all intersecting in conglomerations of meaning/meaningfulness. The task of the interpreter is to minimize authorial interference with the mix of discourses in speaker's utterances in order to include, as fully as possible, the original interlocutor's voice within their own utterance. While endeavoring to re-present another person's use of (centripetalizing and centrifugalizing) language, interpreters deliberately try to root in an authorial position without force.

Meanwhile, general discourses in popular culture and by participants in simultaneous interpretation about interpreting indicate that most people think about language in non-dialogic terms: as homogenous, unifying formal structures with fixed meanings, i.e., with monolingual logic. Interpreters' intimate familiarity, however, with the presence and use of different languages in actual interactions yields experiential knowledge that monolingual logic cannot accommodate. Nonetheless, discourses among professional interpreters display features Bakhtin describes as characteristic of the epic. This paper investigates a triangulation among images of language presented by Bakhtin and those in interpreter and interlocutor discourses about interpreting. While creative use of language brings us novels, novels show us the incredible spectrum of what language can do.

The motivation for this intellectual exercise is to explore whether the epistemological capacity indicated by novelness can be used to better conceive how to use language to generate interventions in the centripetalizing and centrifugalizing discourses of our era.

This is not only an academic endeavor for the purpose of theory, although the theoretical foundation must be strong. Nor is comprehending the peculiar situatedness of the interpreter a task only for interpreters; this is a collaborative endeavor requiring the active participation of interlocutors as well. If all language is dialogical (i.e., polyphonic with multiple meanings), and all language is also discursive (representative of and subject to discourses, e.g. Foucault, Fairclough, Blommaert), then interlocutors and interpreters must recognize their (our) mutual participation in generating meaningfulness. For instance, which choices of language use reinforce established dialectical formations (such as, for instance, the perpetuation of discrimination), and which choices unsettle them? Is the speaker's goal in making utterances to contribute to reification, or does the utterer seek to resolve that (or some other) problem, unaware that their use of language guarantees failure because of what it invokes?

The presenter is currently engaged in dissertation fieldwork into discourses about simultaneous interpretation at the European Parliament. An experienced American Sign Language/English interpreter, she wants to develop and test the intellectual limits of borrowing from Bakhtin's theoretical framework to elucidate the practical problems of generating simultaneous interpretations in various linguistic combinations among twenty-three languages at the same time. Concurrently, she is trying to act into the system of interpretation at the European Parliament through an action learning/action research methodology that presumes the presence of dialogical capacity even in the presence of a strictly formalized institutional regime. The strategic goal is to cultivate a bed of curiosity about the potentials of simultaneous interpretation. Ideally, spinoff from the project might contribute to public debates concerning language (particularly policies and practices), and specifically in simultaneous interpretation as both end and means for creating and maintaining deep infrastructures that reinforce the capacity of democratic institutions to manage the tensionalities of difference in increasingly equitable ways.

A critical discourse analysis of talk generated in conversation with individual Members of the European Parliament (MEP) is currently being constructed. This analysis will be put into conversation with a similar analysis conducted four years ago in interviews with individual interpreters for the European Parliament. The juxtapositions of viewpoints (opinion, critique, complaint, praise, etc) will compose a more-or-less wholistic image of the conceptual and functional status of language in the workings of the European Parliament. Early findings suggest some intriguing areas of alignment between professional interpreters and the MEPs as users of simultaneous interpretation. These perspectives from participants situated in different roles within a coherent practice of cultural communication indicate some shared identifications.

The conceptualization of participating over time in a shared, cultural communication event can be used to highlight residues of monolingualistic logic in a society overtly seeking to increase multilinguality. Mapping discourses about simultaneous interpretation may illuminate the workings of centripetal and centrifugal forces in a particular case, a bounded 'location' involving a specific set of 'users.' The results may tell us something interesting about language in society today, and point (I hope) to exciting possibilities for developing conscious and conscientious uses of language in ways that further language policy development and education in accord with democratic political goals. Can we, novelistically, speak the societies in which we want to live into institutional reality?

What forces blow me back to these shores I cannot say. Nearly five years ago the first conception of what has become my dissertation project was born - right here in the halls of the Aula Magna at Stockholm University! - during an international conference on community interpreting, Critical Link 4. Whoever could have imagined such a return, in which I will practice how to novelize an action research adventure?

• Leili and I talked of surfing;
• Michael said, "the technical term is heteroglossia";
• and Lisa (all the way from Geneva!) says its just me on helium.

Beatrice, meanwhile, said she could talk freely around me because I'm not an academic! (Maybe she sees something behind me that is beyond the boundaries of my perception?!)

Ragnar clued me in (spontaneously!) to a guy, George Miller, who wrote a paper famous in psychology, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, about the capacity of working memory. Cognitive science was strongly influenced by informatics, Ragnar explained, and came about largely as a reaction to behaviorism. We commiserated together (just a wee bit) on the development of theories of language and mind based on pure calculation - all mystery removed. Johan then informed me that Ragnar is one of those rare guys who walks his talk, publishing a foundational piece of original research in Norwegian (not English): Language, Thought, and Communication.

Trond carried on about Zizek, (The Matrix), and I met a faculty member and bunch of students from a Communication Disorders program somewhere in Arkansas. The most salient detail to remain in memory was their stiletto contest!

Today I'll re-arrange the slides for tomorrow's talk...

"That's a cheap shot!" The ethical and fine Prince of Significant Findings, was not completely flattered that I followed his choice of beer. He continued, "Follow my paradigm!" Oy, I thought to myself, wincing just a bit even though I knew full well that he was teasing, we're in it now. Not long before I had told Brooke that I'm anti-cognition. She almost blinked. Almost. ;-) I was not scoring points for subtlety! Then there was Claudia (?), who laughed at me so hard she had tears in her eyes. At least I am able to be a source of amusement (although perhaps only to the sleep-deprived?)

I do respect history, but sometimes "my" history (the history I know combined with my own biography) overwhelms the awareness that other people's history (what they know and have lived) may be premised upon other foundations. This skews the processing in my prefrontal cortex. (That's the part that makes us really different from animals - its where we can forecast the ways things may play out in the future, i.e., "an experience simulator.") Yet, it is always so, yes? You see parts of me that I cannot perceive, and somehow we manage to stumble on regardless.

Unfortunately I had to miss the first two sessions of the second day of the Aptitude for Interpreting conference, so this blogpost is incomplete. My apologies to everyone, although if there was very much math involved then I know at least a few people who entertained themselves by doing basic addition. Do the percentages add up? Yep, you're right; I also did not stay for the hardcore methodological session. I understand (sortof) the compulsion to measure, but I am leery of a world in which we don't question the invention of the language used to quantify it. (Someone has said that you can only deconstruct that which you love: see "footnote" below.)

I like Franz' one-man operation to devise an aptitude test on the 'what if' assumption that one of these days the European Union is going to ask for one. And, in general, I agree that there is merit in trying to reduce curricular chaos, but (then again) only so much. Everything in nature operates within zones of uncertainty; why are interpreter trainer/researchers so intent upon its elimination? Yes, I know - there is the market and jobs and demands of the global economy, but what is the valued added of simultaneous interpretation? Can we name it in any kind of compelling way? It seems to me that the contested definition of the role of an interpreter during the performance of interpretation mirrors the contested value of interpretation for society writ large.

Dirk, who was such a good sport in providing a live demonstration of Franz's test for us, also tossed out a challenge. What if someone provides a grammatically correct but contextually wrong solution that closes the sentence? (The test is a spoken narrative, read at a moderate pace, in which periodic sentences are incomplete. A pause ensues in which the test-taker has 5-7 seconds to generate as many possible endings as fits the grammar and content.) Franz agreed that the unexpected is a limitation; then got us all to laugh: "You would not believe what people will come up with, or how wrong they can be!" Dirk also asked how nonsense responses would be scored, and Franz (winning humor points again) replied, "Our subjects were very cooperative. I don't know how to deal with people like you."

Basically, "if you say something to complete the sentence then that's an achievement."

Let me draw out and rephrase a possible meaning in order to make it strange: one of the things that interpreters do is change the oral or gestural utterances of human speakers into the (spoken or signed) form of literary text, i.e., "complete the sentence." Hmmmm. Why are we using written codes for language as a basis for measuring interpretational quality of spontaneous social interaction? I am not suggesting there is a ready alternative (which can only come about through a coordinated, collaborative effort), but is anyone else curious about the ramifications of celebrating the achievement of imposing form?

Another question I have is about the belief that, as someone stated during the Q&A, "a conference interpreter is one who can produce both simultaneous and consecutive interpretation." Why? They are different skills; why must any given interpreter be held to a performance standard in both? Or, asked another way, if we are going to require that dual ability, why are we not equally requiring skill in the interpersonal ("whispering"-type) situations common to community interpreting as well as those apparently necessary in conference interpreting?

All of these divisions are arbitrary: one can explain the historical developments that seem to have caused them, but simply because they happened is no guarantee of social integrity. Chris and Jemina's exchange about interpreters being "all things to all people" suggests that we haven't adequately negotiated the boundaries about what it is we can, should, and/or are capable of doing. (Claudia's upcoming book on self-protection may be informative in this regard; she was surprised by the finding that interpreters consistently use distancing techniques with interlocutors even when the conditions don't obviously indicate the need.)

Generally, as we plunge along the p path to aptitude, is there room for critique of the end product?

Here's what I'm trying to get at:


Much of the discourse during this first conference on Aptitude in Interpreting turns on value assumptions that, for instance, fast processing and the ability to complete thoughts logically based upon prior exposure to content are premier skills of the quality interpreter. First, it should be noted that closure has been described uncomplimentarily by interlocutors as "fill in the blank" interpreting, i.e., as what interpreters do when they don't have a clue what the interlocutor just said. Second, the premises of familiarity and logic deny the possibility of creative dialogue: they keep the interpreter's gaze upon the past rather than toward the future. When we practice closure, what we're generally doing is providing the most common sentiment in relation to the topic or viewpoint or context. In other words, we're perpetuating an already-established discourse - a completed conception of knowledge or way of orienting - rather than enabling the co-creation of anything new.

Another comment Dirk shared with me is that the way the test is designed, emphasizing completing sentences whose end is missing, works best with languages like German and Dutch - where the most meaningful action comes at the end. In other languages, such as English, where the action can occur anywhere, he mused that the test may not work as well. Franz gave a satisfying answer as to why gaps in the middle are not feasible, but Dirk's observation reminds me that one of the puzzles I would like help with are differences of duration in uttering complete expressions in various languages. I heard an anecdote that it consistently takes longer to express the same thought in Dutch as in English. Does anyone know that reference? And is there similar information on any other languages or language combinations?

This may or may not be able to be cross-correlated with the time it takes people of different nationalities to clear security at US airports. Carmen shared a dame blanche with me and I'll be happy to share dessert with her in the future but only if she continues to give the answers allowing immigration officials to prove that they asked the silly questions.

Prescribing closure as one of the basic interpreter performance skills has a range of effects. These effects are experienced and complimented by interlocutors. The cooperation of interpreters and interlocutors in authorizing closure contributes to the images and expectations of what interpretation can accomplish as a medium of intercultural communication.

Maybe this is the best we can do? But I am not convinced....

:-o




Footnote:

"In giving an account of his use of the word deconstruction Derrida gives the following explanation: "The undoing, decomposing, and desedimenting of structures, in a certain sense more historical than the structuralist movement it called into question, was not a negative operation. Rather than destroying it was also necessary to understand how an 'ensemble' was constituted and to reconstruct it to this end." So deconstruction names something rather more powerful than simply undoing."