Agustina Marianacci: Professional Linguistic Services in English and Spanish
Back in November, I presented at the 2022 conference organised by the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT). Days after, I flew back to Argentina and promptly forgot that it ever happened, until a dear colleague asked for permission to share the presentation with someone else.
I believe it was 2021, in the very midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when my dear colleague Alejandra González Campanella approached me with an idea: editing a special issue on a scientific journal about trauma and interpreting. “I’m in”, I said, even though I don’t think it was exactly an invitation. Since that day, it took us over a year to get that issue published. We contacted the New Voices in Translation Studies editorial team and never looked back. We happily became guest editors in a team of welcoming and flexible scholars who were happy to offer their support while also letting us lose to do what we thought best.
Community interpreting norms and research have been heavily influenced by a Western-centric community of practitioners and an individualist, positivist philosophy. This has resulted not only in an entrenched emphasis on professional interpreters’ detachment, neutrality, and invisibility but also in research which often ignores interpreting service users from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. This article addresses the complexity of operationalising horizontal methodologies during interpreting research in an effort to centre marginalised voices and epistemologies. The study involved a research project conducted with the Latin American community in Aotearoa New Zealand, employing horizontal one-on-one and group dialogues to assess interpreting service users’ views on allyship and social justice in spoken-language community interpreting. In this article, horizontal methodologies are presented as a culturally affirming way for Latin American service users to co-produce knowledge, and for Latin American researchers to engage with their own identity, recognise their impact on society, and challenge colonial research practices and interpreting norms.
The project aimed to explore what interpreting students’ written reflections reveal about the impact of Interprofessional Education (IPE) on their development as future practising professionals. Student health interpreters from the Auckland University of Technology and postgraduate Speech Science students from the University of Auckland, who were already registered speech and language therapists (SLTs), had a shared 3-hour interprofessional education session which involved semi-authentic role play scenarios. Student healthcare interpreters took turns taking on the role of interpreter or client, while SLTs conducted assessment sessions as they normally would. Scenarios involved a child with language delay accompanied by a parent, and an elderly adult being assessed following a stroke. Student health interpreters reflected on the experience in written reflective assignments which were thematically analysed and coded into five main themes using NVivo software.) Student reflections showed that they had found the experience very beneficial, with comments focusing on the interpreters’ code of ethics; understanding each other’s roles and how these differ in the SLT context; collaboration between professionals; competence; and the importance of practice for problem-solving.
Scrolling through my feed of endless posts about language, translation and interpreting, I came across this title: “Why so few men?: Gender imbalance in conference interpreting”. The feminist translator in me just couldn’t resist it. I had to read that article even when I suspected I was not going to like what I found.
Well, I didn’t. The piece written by Rachael Ryan and published in the website of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) offered, in a very objective manner, an insight into the pervasive misconceptions we all have to deal with on a daily basis, but allow me to share with you what I read into it.
Translations with AM 