Parliamentary Adventures: December 2008 Archives

The foundational premise of my dissertation research, Simultaneous Interpretation and Shared Identity in the European Parliament, is that the ways we communicate with each other influences everyone's identity: "mine" and "yours," and - when you add the relational element together, "ours."

That brief overview continues in the Index: SI squared (first round of conversations with MEPs), which includes links to research-related blog-posts in the blog-category, Parliamentary Adventures. In that blog-category, I summarize first impressions from the direct 'discourse data collection' of conversations with Members of the European Parliament.

The links indexed in this blogpost, Index: Action Learning (implementation for SI squared, part one), are theoretical and methodological in scope. They compose a blog-category named Call this Action Learning - a somewhat defiant title (!) chosen in response to a dissertation committee member who seemed frustrated that there is not one convenient pigeonhole that neatly categorizes the knowledge being strategically deployed and, hopefully, generated through this research project.

(You can also get to these categories via links in the main header, The Dissertation = Parliamentary Adventures and the lifework = Call this Action Learning.)

Early developments:

Although the quote refers to my first visit to Luxembourg, I like to think it applies to this research project, too: "it must be unforgettable!" (12 December 2008). This blogpost is about an internal training for staff of the European Parliament about "communication and its languages." I asked a question of the academic and institutional experts that was premised in a ritual view of communication, receiving responses that were a bit 'sideways' of what I had hoped for. In this blogpost, I try to explore what happened and provide more background for my central question:



Can we imagine simultaneous interpreting as a cultural practice that retains difference while creating a shared communication ritual, thus contributing to a sense of common identity?


Why such negative framing? (1 November 2008) is the main question to arise from a combination of reading about languages in the European Parliament and the first batch of conversations with Members of the European Parliament.

In road bump: asymmetrical patterns of language access (24 November 2008), I come up against the hard reality of selective access to the privileged resource of simultaneous interpretation. I explain the worry that research results will be skewed because it may be that the Members of the European Parliament who need interpreting the most are structurally-inhibited from talking with me. :-/

Trying to learn Dutch is giving me brain cramps (25 November 2008). I extrapolate to the challenges other language-learners face under different circumstances.

Immersion:

Explanations and reasons for using English abound: this is data (6 October 2008). I recognized the pressure to conform - to go with the easy, dominant flow - previously, and was still stunned by its strength. For the record (!), responses to the translations have been quite positive - it is worth all that effort! :-)

Background to Foreground (15 October 2008) explains how this research project hopes to cast new light on an aspect of daily working life in the European Parliament that is generally taken as mere routine. "Once we decide," I argue, "to keep the fact of constant, continual interpretation in mind, what matters is not the matter of interpretation itself, but the frames of reference that inform the interpretation." The blogpost continues to explicate and question my own frame/s of reference, however the main 'work' of this blogpost is to articulate the fact of tangible, material effects from the use or non-use of simultaneous interpretation.

In "Dare to Know" (Kant) (25 October 2008), I argue for the relevance of simultaneous interpretation as a site of tremendous importance by using three different texts to discuss language, interaction, and knowledge. This long post tries to show the philosophy from which I approach this research on simultaneous interpretation and shared identity: an equation I imagine as SI squared. Can the terms be sufficiently defined so as to produce a result widely agreed as valid? I borrow the standard for success proposed by Appleby, Hunt & Jacob, 1991:



"Success comes when the found knowledge can be understood, verified, or appreciated by people who in no sense share the same self-interest" (p. 9).

Their definition of success is metonymic, in my view, with the co-construction of understanding among people using different languages.

Initiation:

Over a superb lunch (26 September 2008), a wide-ranging intellectual discussion inspired musing on conditions requiring standardization in tension with the variable mix of desired and unwanted results of standardization. I assert that results of this study will "enable more efficient, efficacious, and effective use of simultaneously interpreted language as a creative resource, rather than as a perceived barrier to intercultural, inter-institutional, and interdisciplinary understanding."

I make an effort to understand the language crisis in Belgium in "the fragile, groping thread of communication" (17 September 2008 quoting Isaac Asimov).

Many positive signs accompanied my journey over the Atlantic, "...flying over a cloud" to a multi-hour layover in London prior to the last legs to another magical place in Antwerpen. (14 September 2008)

Growing enthusiasm!

I made a fledgling attempt to learn some French - la belle langue! (1 August 2008) - before arriving, not knowing that my incremental progress would be shifted - and repeated! - with Nederlands (Dutch/Flemish).

waving my light saber (11 August 2008) is a celebration of establishing links in the blogheader that (hopefully!) make it easier for people to navigate only to the blogpost in reflexivity relevant to the study of simultaneous interpretation in the European Parliament.

Discourses are not contained:

grant hurdle 41 - cleared (6 July 2008) reflects a citizenship moment that brings the privilege of international travel into sharp focus.

I think I'm pregnant! (9 July 2008) reflects a moment of optimism about creating a Facebook Group concerning the process of translating the research invitation into 23 languages as part-and-parcel of the participatory, action-learning premises of this study. I wonder if I am a node participating in an emergence of new consciousness/es.

I tease myself about challenging institutionalized authority (emphasis on the institution, not the authority) in just a few details . . . (13 July 2008). (The point was also to remember and recognize friends without whose support I would be beyond lost.)

In foreshadowing (28 July 2008), I reflect on friends' thoughtful responses at being asked to translate the research invitation into the 23 official languages of the European Parliament evokes the questions and concerns (i.e, the attitudes and worldview, perhaps even an ideology?) about language diversity and simultaneous interpretation that I intend to study.

Method is applied theory, and theory inspires method:

A colleague introduces me to Homans: The Human Group (7 June 2008) and I expound on a tension between cognitive science and communication theory.

I use my friends as sounding boards, always (and tease them at the same time) in risque (10 June 2008). My argument (explained) is that we are always engaged in "interpretation" - the presence of a simultaneous interpreter only makes the process more obvious. The problematic is to define the field of action in which SI has tangible social, cultural, political and economic effects.

The earliest formation of asking for participation in this research study: an invitation to help me gaze (24 June 2008). It concludes with the suggestion that



the most important question to ask of your interpreter is not "did you say what I mean" but "did you say what will accomplish for me the end I seek?"

Overlapping with the content category, Parliament Adventures, as the time for fieldwork approaches:

Grip of the Committee (defending the prospectus, 13 May 2008)

visual perceptions (and relative distance from the object of study, 14 May 2008)

Cast Concern Where You Will (teasing from and to friends, 21 May 2008)

my new best friend is . . . (inspiration for the name for the blog category, 22 May 2008)

The premise of my dissertation research is that the ways we communicate with each other influences everyone's identity: "mine" and "yours," and - when you add the relational element together, "ours."

The technical term from communication theory is constitutes: to constitute is to do an action that leads to something tangible. General definitions from Princeton's wordnet say that to constitute is to form, establish, or compose. The phrase I am drawn to the most as I write today is "to cause to stand" (from wiktionary). In short, constituting is a kind of making that persists into the future.

Participating in simultaneous interpretation is a basic structural component of working in the European Parliament. Using the professional inter- and cross-cultural language skills of simultaneous interpreters to communicate is a special and unique communication practice with significant implications for culture and identity. But what are these implications? That is what this research aims to discover.

First impressions based on my first conversations with Members of the European Parliament are recorded in the blog category, Parliamentary Adventures. Relevant musings about theory and methodology are recorded in the blog category, Call this Action Learning. (You can also get to these categories via links in the main header, The Dissertation = Parliamentary Adventures and the lifework = Call this Action Learning.)

First Conversations:

Why such negative framing? One of the most stark characteristics of the general discourses about simultaneous interpreting that I consider highly significant. (November 1, 2008)

another music? Some distinctions emerge concerning listening, speaking, fluencies, and desired uses of interpreters by MEPs. (November 9, 2008)

What goes unsaid . . . More depth develops as new perspectives and considerations are raised concerning MEPs' desires for using simultaneous interpretation. (December 1, 2008)

arrival:

The setting: fellow Fulbright grantees, one of my gracious hosts, and surrealistic Belgium (September 16, 2008)

The context: as evaluated in the 2005 Report and Motion on EP Interpretation (September 29, 2008)

Some seeds prior to arrival:

Grip of the Committee (defending the prospectus, May 13, 2008)

visual perceptions (and relative distance from the object of study, May 14, 2008)

Cast Concern Where You Will (teasing from and to friends, May 21, 2008)

my new best friend is . . . (inspiration for the name for the blog category, May 22, 2008)

There is "the problem no one talks about," one Member of the European Parliament (MEP) explained, referring to the lack of relationship between MEPs and the interpreters. This gap poses a barrier for developing the kind of rapport that makes simultaneous interpretation most effective.

There is also the reason for using simultaneous interpretation which is "so obvious it doesn't need to be said," according to another MEP. Everyone, he elaborated, "argues better in their mother tongue." I remain puzzled, however, at (what seems to be) an unquestioning acceptance of trends minimizing the need for interpretation. If - as so far everyone I have spoken with agrees - people do argue better in their mother tongue, why is there not an argument on behalf of building the capacity of interpretation services in order to facilitate people's best intellectual engagement?

Of course many MEPs are fluent enough in another language to communicate well, certainly well enough to express disagreement and offer their own ideas. No doubt some MEPs can also negotiate fine points and discern subtleties of inference leading to the identification of commonality and thus the generation of consensus. But, alongside the polyglots are equally smart monolinguals and those with various degrees of language fluencies who are forced to go along with using a second or third language because (as the story goes) there are not enough interpreters to go around. (And, the rest of the story rationalizes, more interpreting would cost too much. Not to mention, dang it all, interpretation takes so much time!)

The negative framing of simultaneous interpretation is perpetuated in another lauded commentary on the European Parliament (EP). Six Battles that Shaped Europe's Parliament, by former EP President Julian Priestley, describes the requirement of twenty-three working languages as

an objective constraint that "acts as a deadweight imposing on [the European Parliament's] organization, timetable and finances a number of inescapable consequences" (emphasis added, 2008, p. 80).

Deadweight. The cultural and linguistic inheritance of Council Regulation No. 1 of 1958 is framed not with joy, gratitude, nor celebration; rather the requirement of linguistic diversity is presented as a heavy and cumbersome burden - an obligation, a negative, constraining limit.

Imposing. Priestley contextualizes his comments of Regulation No. 1 as the matter of working languages being an area over which the EP has "little or no discretion" (p. 2). The October 2008 issue of "The EP Staff Magazine" grants a bit more prestige to this bedrock regulation, although in a backhanded way:

Looking back, it is not insignificant that the regulation laying down the official languages was the EU's first - "Regulation no. 1 of 1958 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community" (OJ L 17, 6.10.1958, p. 385). ~ "Speaking each others languages." Newshound, No. 28, p. 14.

Inescapable. "Transitional arrangements," Priestley explains, "have had to be agreed for certain less-used languages out of sheer necessity (there are simply not enough Maltese or Irish linguists to cover all the different activities" (p. 2-3). There are not now enough trained professional interpreters, however this does not need to remain the case - capacity can be built through the deliberate construction of a language-training infrastructure.

Consequences. The rationalization of professional scarcity is a hidden undercurrent of the vast public promotion of "multilingualism" in the European Union. The Newshound team defines multilingualism to mean "the ability to use two or more languages" (p. 14). By circumscribing multilingualism to refer only to the knowledge of more than one language, a discourse trajectory is promoted which silences the other crucial component of maintaining linguistic diversity: the skills of using simultaneous interpretation to communicate within difference. Don't get me wrong: I am all for language learning! However, an exclusive emphasis on such a narrow form of multilingualism is more a move toward sameness than it is a proactive strategy for retaining linguistic distinction.

In this view, language itself is perceived as a problem: an inert mass imposing inescapable consequences. The discourse engaging the problematic of language poses a restricted definition of "multilingualism" as the solution. The power of the discourse is such that this solution is generally understood as the singular answer. Because of the way the problem has been posed, no other answer is conceivable - at least, not as long as one stays within the boundaries of the discourse. Because of the power of the discourse, the answer conveys a common sense assumption of the nature of the language problem - conversely, then, the answer shapes the question, limiting possibility. This is, I propose, not insignificant.