Why interpreting matters

Jones 3 describes the interpreter as any mediator facilitating communication. These barriers may be understood narrowly as the inability of two or more people to speak the same language, but can also, more broadly, be caused by conflicting political views or economic interests, as well as cultural, religious or social differences Jones 3f.

This complex role of the interpreter as a communication mediator reflects the purposes for which interpreters have been used for centuries. Angelelli 8 claims that interpreters worked as linguistic and cultural mediators in the times of the colonial conquest of both Americas.

As pointed out by Bastin f. Later, in the mid-sixteenth century, interpreting was granted the status of a profession Angelelli 10 in certain European countries. Contemporary times put interpreters in a new position of agents interpreting for a large audience, mainly due to the development of sound transmission technology.

The first half of the twentieth century shaped interpretation into the widely recognised profession it is today and gave rise to what is referred to as conference interpreting. Interpreting is divided into several types, depending on the interpreting process, as well as the settings or the audience it is performed for. This book focuses on conference interpreting, as opposed to, e.

Conference interpreting may itself be divided into several modes, most frequently stated to be: simultaneous, consecutive, liaison and chuchotage. However, Gerver ff. In most cases, simultaneous interpreters work in sound-proof booths, and are always accompanied by another interpreter.

The interpreters take shifts to interpret, and each shift is recommended by AIIC not to exceed 30 minutes due to the high cognitive effort interpreters deal with when performing the task.

In European institutions, these languages are referred to as A, B and C, corresponding to mother tongue, active and passive languages, respectively. A passive language C is a language from which the interpreter interprets into his or her mother tongue i. Although this classification is applied in the institutions of the European Union AIIC b , interpreters rarely have the chance to interpret in one direction on local national markets, which usually boils down to the fact that either they do not use their C languages when working on these markets, or interpret in a bidirectional way irrespective of their working language.

This language classification applies to all the interpreting types and modes. Katarzyna Stachowiak Author. Katarzyna Stachowiak is a conference interpreter and co-founder of the Polish Association of Conference Interpreters. Design by Oyster Creative Phone: Mobile: office interpretingmatters. Feedback Form. Meet The Team Karen Green Director. Kathy Skinner Director.

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