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1.       Introduction

Right from the onset of every human community, interlingual communication was oral. The oral interlingual communication was and is still very important for mutual understanding among people. There was always the need for middle men who understand the various languages of communication used. From ages past, the middle man, known today as an interpreter, served as a channel in between two people of different languages.  Ukoyen  (2001:216-217) corroborates this idea when he says:

From time immemorial, there have always been individuals who have access to more than one language as a means of communication and who, therefore, could serve as channels linking together the people on either side of the language divide… it is interesting to note that the very word interpreter, meaning oral interlingual communicator goes back to the practice in antiquity whereby extra-territorial merchants always included at least one bilingual or multilingual person in their team to serve as a go-between (inter) in their business transactions with foreign merchants (pretes).

 

The spoken word does not leave a written record. It is therefore difficult to trace the exact history of interpretation. However, as early as 3000 BC the Egyptians had a hieroglyphic that signified “interpreting”. In some classical works several references to interpreters have been documented: ancient Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages. Interpretation was widely used for purposes of exchanging and spreading philosophies, ideas, and religion as well as for science, and diplomacy. 

In ancient Egypt, many schools set up by Muhammed Ali relied on foreign instructors who had to have interpreters in the classroom to communicate with their students. In the history of the ancient kingdoms of Africa, the “griot’’ or the praise singer used interpretation as an oral interlingual communication tool whenever the royal courts were in session. Likewise, the interpretation of African drum language into actual words was also done. In Turkey, interpretation was done for foreign instructors who did not speak Turkish and the same happened generally in Africa during the colonial era e.g. Le Mandat of Sembène Ousmane. This type of interpretation is still being done in interpreting letters for illiterates in most African countries. The interpretations of Frédéric II’s conversations were also of remarkable relevance. These interpretations were rendered in languages like Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic while the speakers used their native languages. It was an oral-to-oral interpretation in the form of reported conversations. (Sirat 1989:176).

From Roman times to date, interpretation has undergone various developments as a tool for oral interlingual communication. Essays, articles, theses and books have been written on Interpretation and translation. Specialists in these two fields have put in place theories which include: 1) The theory of untranslability, particularly linguistic relativity or the Whorfian hypothesis  postulating that translation is not possible. 2) The theory of translatability of Greenberg, Wills, Nida, Chomsky, Mounin, Catford, Vinay and Darbelnet, Seleskovitvh, Lederer among others. For them translation and interpretation are possible and essential for humanity. According to them, translation and interpretation have always been a subject of interest not only to linguists but also to other professionals such as engineers, medical practitioners, psychologists, philosophers, literature teachers and writers, religious set-ups among others.

 

2.       Translation and Interpretation as “twins”

Nord (1997:106) suggests we could use the notion of translation (with the German pronunciation), introduced already by Otto Kade, as an umbrella term to refer to processes that are common for interpretation and translation. Paraphrasing  Chesterman and Orojo (2000) we could mark the’ shared ground’ for translation and interpretation studies where specialists in each respective field can accumulate knowledge for studying translation processes at more holistic levels.

Establishing shared ground would hopefully be beneficial for both disciplines. To further mutual understanding, a common general term may help us see the processes we share. It could also help us realize that translation and interpretation may be seen as “two varieties of the same intercultural communicative interaction based on a source text” (Nord 1997:104) – and that the meta-processes of the two activities are in their essence very similar. Thus, in theoretical discussions, referring to these processes, ‘Translation’ as a generic term, may be useful.

Also, many authors believe that translation processes have a lot in common or they are even identical. For example, Hatim and  Mason (1997:1) see translators as “trying to assist in the negotiation of meaning”. For them, translators are “seeking insights  towards the whole relationship between language activity and the social context in which it takes place”. If we see texts the way they do, as “evidence of communicative transactions taking place within a social framework”, and translation as “not restricted to a particular field”, so that it includes “film subtitling and dubbing simultaneous interpretation, cartoon translation, abstracting, summarizing etc” (1997:2), we can develop a broader view on translational phenomena and be able to understand and better cooperate with our colleagues across the discipline.

In a similar way Franz Pöchhaker points to the similarities between interpretation and translation. Pöchhaker (1995:42) conceptualizes the two activities through the notion of Skopos. He sees interpretation and translation as ‘twins’ and brings out the similarities between the two activities: both seek to achieve a communicative purpose (Skopos rule)” (ibid). Further, Pöchhaker (ibid) points out that the results can in both cases “ be defined as target-culture offer of information about a source-culture offer of information.; both kinds of target texts must conform to the standard of intra-textual coherence” and “be coherent with their respective source texts (fidelity rule).  In this study we will be using the term ‘translation’  to include both translation and interpretation at a more general level and the term ‘interpretation’  to speak about the interpretation activity more specifically.  We agree with Pöchhaker and see translation and interpretation as twins. At the same time we know that research in translation and interpretation studies does not always focus on identical issues but both of them are very relevant.

The notions of translation and interpretation are not always used interchangeably and the view of the close relationship between interpretation and translation is not shared by all scholars involved in translation and interpretation research. Therefore in cases where it is not clear which activity one bears in mind, it may be useful to indicate if one deals with translation or interpretation more specifically. Also if both interpretation and translation are considered in one book or theory, it may be useful to make it explicit. For example, Nord (1997:1) states at the beginning of her book that the notion of translating, “will always include interpreting unless stated otherwise”. Referring to interpretation or for example mentioning that Vermeer was trained as an interpreter (by K Reiss)  (ibid : 10), makes interpreters feel part of the discussion. Somewhat differently in Toury (1995), interpreting is mentioned a couple of times; at other places translation is used even if one can assume that the topic discussed concerns interpretation.  Gentile et al (1996: 39) stress that within the literature much is assumed and little said about the differences between the two skills. Likewise, emphasis is laid on the need that translation and interpretation are activities which require different skills and different aptitudes. It would then follow that research in these domains should focus on partly different phenomena. A similar view is also expressed in Pöchhaker and Shlesinger (2002:4).

Looking at Interpretation Study literature, one finds that very few authors draw on the concepts and the theories generated by  translation scholars. The notion of equivalence is a case in point. While occupying a central position in Translation Studies for decades, it rarely figures in Interpretation Studies[…] the same holds true for function-oriented  interpretation accounts of translation such as Toury’s (1980, 1995) concepts of translational norms as a driving force in Descriptive Translation Studies. With very few exceptions, neither for these lichpins of modern translation studies have been incorporated into the mainstream of interpretation research. By the same token, very few Translation Studies scholars have actively engaged in interpreting research or even mentioned interpreting in their writings.

 

The interpretative approach of translation established by the members of the Paris School of Interpreters and Translators (ESIT), whose main representatives are Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer, developed a theory based on the distinction between linguistic meaning and non-verbal sense, where non-verbal sense is defined in relation to a translating process.  Seleskovitch distinguishes between two levels of perception, that of the linguistic tool and that of sense as awareness: ‘sense is external when pre-established linguistic meaning merges with a concomitant perception of reality’ (Seleskovitch 1977:31). The interpretation process is seen not as a ‘direct conversion’ of the linguistic meaning of the Source Language but as a ‘conversion from the Source Language to sense, and then an expression of sense in the Target Language’ that is interpreted, but the intended meaning of the author.  Seleskovitch (1984:107) says: ‘’La traduction ne s’appuie pas sur la langue pour en transmettre les significations’’ ‘’ Translation does not depend on language to transmit its meanings’’. The meaning of the speaker’s sentences is to be detected and expressed by the interpreter.  The interpreter should appreciate the idea not the words. The ideas must be grasped, associated with virtual images and known facts, through the choice of words conveying the message. Each sentence must be understood as a function of the whole. Seleskovitch and Lederer (1989: 13) buttress this fact by stating that the interpreter:

Must learn to extract ideas from a mass of verbal data, understand their relative value and properly link them to each other.

 

Ukoyen (2001:5) links the success of the interpreter to the above mentioned fact of Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer by saying:

Puisque toute activité langagière comporte deux polarités, encodage-décodage, chacune à caractère dynamique, l’acte de communication interlinguale orale-écrite, que l’interprète/traducteur, opère doit impérativement tenir compte de cette double polarité s’il vise la réussite et non pas l’échec.

Since any language activity consists of two polarities, i.e. encoding and decoding, each of them being dynamic, the oral or the written interlingual communicative act of the interpreter/translator should imperatively take this double polarity into consideration if he wants to succeed and not fail.

 

The theory of sense was based on the ideas of Herbert (1952), who stressed that interpretation should not be seen as a mere linguistic transcoding –  literal translation of each segment,  but rather, as a process of comprehension and reformulation. This philosophy may, therefore, be seen as a rebellion against the linguistic-oriented translation theory. In 1968, in her doctoral dissertation, Seleskovitch developed Herbert’s idea of reformulation and suggested that it had to be preceded by a phase of deverbalization. Thus, according to Seleskovitch, interpretation is a three-phase process: (1) listening, (2) deverbalization, and (3) reproduction of sense based on understanding, knowledge and expression. In the first phase, the interpreter analyzes the meaning, i.e. the linguistic signal, of what he hears. In the second phase, he deliberately forgets this meaning and only retains the sense, ie the deverbalized message, and finally, in the third phase, he reproduces the message in his own words.

One underlying assumption of this theory which is not often noted is that, interpretation may be seen as being completely language-independent. The interpreter, who of course ideally is a complete bilingual is not supposed to have any language-specific difficulties. Danica Seleskovitch based her interpretative theory on understanding, knowledge and expression. These three factors are linked in interpretation process. Emphasis is laid on understanding the speaker and the message. The message that the interpreter receives and that he must understand in order to be able to reconstruct it in the other language is transmitted in an oral and spontaneous form which Seleskovitch (1998:11) terms ‘the spoken language’. The spoken language is an essential tool of communication. It is of paramount importance for interpretation. Before we speak we know what we are going to say, but until we open our mouths we do not know exactly how we are going to say it.

The words the interpreter chooses will depend not only on him but also on the speaker, the audience and the context in which they all find themselves. By knowing what he wants to say, the interpreter can formulate the most complex thoughts and the words are immediately at his disposal. The spoken language expands and contracts according to the background of the listener and aims to convey the message and makes it understood. Since the spoken language strives at all times to make the semantic content of the message intelligible (by using the language that the other person can understand: he speaks louder to a deaf person and gestures to a person who is too far from him), it is obvious that the interpreter must understand the meaning of the message. Immediate comprehension is the aim of the spoken language and the message it transmits will never take shape unless it is understood immediately. The message is naturally conditioned by its originator that is, the speaker who has a purpose or a subject matter and knows more about his own field. So the interpreter must understand the speaker and the purpose of his message by concentrating much more on the meaning of the speaker’s thoughts, not on the mere words.

According to Seleskovitch (1998:52-58), to understand what is going on around oneself, one depends on two types of knowledge in one’s daily life: knowledge of words and knowledge of things. Given the special circumstances under which the interpreter works, he finds these two types of knowledge of primary importance.  In order to stand a good chance of understanding what is being said, the interpreter must have some knowledge of the subject under discussion. He must have sufficient knowledge of the field being discussed to be able to analyze it intelligently.

It is impossible for the interpreter to make the necessary association of ideas if there is no prior knowledge on which to build. In order to analyze what is said and to understand it, the interpreter must raise his level of understanding to a level which, while far from equalling that of the specialist, will be distinctly higher than that of the ordinary educated person. The acquisition of this knowledge takes place both before and during the time of interpretation. Too much or too little of the required knowledge of the interpreter can sometimes be dangerous. For example, Seleskovitch’s insufficient knowledge of chemistry prevented her from grasping the rationale behind the speakers’ words in a meeting of chemists and she had to fall back on a sentence-by-sentence translation, repeating chemical formulae that were meaningless to her.

The interpreter’s knowledge is a means to an end. It covers a wide range of disciplines. The knowledge of the working languages is also very important for the interpreter and this leads him to the concept of expression. Seleskovitch (1998:75) says:

Restating a message in another language requires constant creativity; here we find ourselves moving imperceptibly from the notion of translation to that of expression. Each time the context shifts, the same word takes on a slightly different meaning which must almost invariably be rendered by a different word in the target language. Therefore, it is no longer a question of knowing the lexical equivalents of words in two different languages that can serve as automatic substitutes for one another, but of finding terms that will express ‘’the same thing’’ regardless of the words used in the original statement.

 

Expression is an important tool for the interpreter. The better the interpreter understands the speaker’s thought, the more it becomes his own thought and the more the three steps involved in interpretation, understanding, knowledge and expression become a reality. Interpreting requires an ability to express oneself clearly, and an excellent command of one’s working languages and the way they are spoken in order to be able to express oneself appropriately in all situations. There can be no doubt that this ‘theory’ was necessary at the time. Researchers and practitioners alike might have been too confident that interpreting was merely a question of linguistic transcoding. As Pöchhacker (1992:212) puts it:

Indeed Mme Seleskovitch deserves whole-hearted acknowledgement for having put her foot down against the narrow linguistic conceptions of language still prevailing in the early 1970s.

 

Furthermore, there can be no doubt as to its merits as a didactic tool when students have to rid themselves of their word fixation. However, as its critics have repeatedly pointed out, this ‘theory’ is, at best, a tentative hypothesis that has never been empirically verified. It would be extremely dangerous to confuse such a hypothesis with the theory of interpretation. It is therefore sad to note, as Moser-Mercer (1991b:13) does, that most liberal arts researchers are unlikely to realize this.

This concept of interpretation was developed in a more detailed version by Delisle based on discourse analysis and text linguistics. He views translation as a heuristic (a helpful procedure for arriving at a solution but not necessarily a proof) process of intelligent discourse analysis involving three stages. The first stage is that of comprehension; this requires decoding the source text linguistic signs with reference to the language system (i.e. determining the semantic relationships between the words and utterances of the text) and defining the conceptual content in which it is embedded. The two operations are performed simultaneously. The second stage of reformulation consists of the reverbalization of the concepts of the source utterance by means of the signifiers of another language; this is realized through reasoning, successive associations of thoughts and logical assumptions. The third stage of verification can be described as a process of back-translation which allows the translator to apply a qualitative analysis of selected solutions and equivalents. Its purpose is to confirm the accuracy of the final translation (Baker, 1986:115).

Lederer (1994) argues that interpretation represents the transfer of meaning during the shifting of a sensible manifestation of a speech to the thought of the interpreter and from there to another sensible manifestation. It has to do with the acts of speech through which the interpreter expresses the meaning of what the speaker says. She also emphasizes the meaning of the message.

Listening, analyzing and speaking constitute the kernel of the activity. This involves at least two people: the main speaker and the interpreter. Speech, thinking and hearing are the major media of communication.  Lederer (1994 :19) welcomes this idea by saying :

L’interprète a affaire à des discours, c’est-à-dire à des actes de parole par lesquels un intervenant exprime son vouloir dire.

 

The interpreter is involved in speech, i.e. he deals with the speech acts whereby the speaker expresses himself.

It is a transfer of ideas from the main speaker to the receiver, the oral expression of the mind of the speaker that manifests the maturity and the precision of his thoughts. This leads us to the following chart of communication for more light.

 

Senders =======> Message =======> Receivers

 

The chart presents two senders (the main speaker and the interpreter) and two receivers (the interpreter and the audience) but one message constituted by ideas that are supposed to be transferred to the receivers in different languages. This chart can be reconstructed in the following way for more details:

 

Main Speaker   =======>    Interpreter   =======>    End receivers

Sender 1                                Receiver 1 /Sender 2                 Audience

Root Message                      Root M/ intermediate M     Intermediate M

Original ideas/oral                 Transmitted ideas/oral Trans. ideas

expression of his mind                expression of S1’s mind

L1                                                  L1/L2                                  L2

                              Active/passive language

 

This chart shows that the art of interpretation is constituted by multiple functions which are to be accomplished by both the main speaker and the interpreter. The art of interpretation can then be defined as the expression or the application of creative, linguistic and communicative skills to achieve the transmission of a message orally.

Marianne Lederer (1994 :19) further says :

L’interprétation de conférence représente à l’état pur le  transfert de sens qui se produit lors du passage de la manifestation sensible d’un discours… à la pensée du traducteur puis de celle-ci à une autre manifestation sensible…… Expression orale de vouloir dire, le discours manifeste en même temps une maturité, une précision de la pensée non verbale au fur et à mesure que celle-ci prend forme et que l’orateur enregistre l’effet produit sur ses interlocuteurs.

Conference interpretation represents, in its original form, the transfer of meaning, which is produced during the manifestation of a speech… to the mind of the interpreter and from there to another  manifestation….. As an oral expression the speech manifests at the same time a maturity, a precision of the speaker’s mind as soon as it is formulated and its effect is registered in the speaker’s mind. (our translation)

 

Based on the above statement, the procedure of interpretation comprises the way of understanding and expression of feelings of the main speaker according to his cultural, linguistic, moral and even intellectual background. The internal form of language could be an art hidden in the deepest part of a person and it will be very difficult to remove the real mechanism of nature. Interpretation means respect of the link between these attributes (internal form and mechanism of nature) according to time and space, while expressing them in the second language. Cary agrees with us in  ‘La traduction aujourd’hui : le modèle interprétatif’ of Lederer (1994 :10 & 17) as  follows:

L’interprétation est une opération qui cherche à établir des équivalences entre des idées exprimées en des langues différentes, ces équivalences étant toujours et nécessairement fonction de la nature de ces idées, de leur destination, des rapports existants entre la culture des deux peuples, leur climat moral, intellectuel, affectif, fonction de toutes les contingences propres à l’époque et au lieu de départ et d’arrivée.

…. l’interprète se trouve en présence d’un homme qui vit, qui pense et qui parle. C’est cela qu’il est appelé à rendre.

Interpretation is an operation that seeks to establish equivalences between ideas expressed in different languages, its equivalences always reflecting the nature of those ideas, their destination, the relationships between the culture and the people, their moral climate and everything related to the period and place.

…. The interpreter finds himself in the presence of a living man who thinks and speaks. That is what he is supposed to render. (our translation)

 

Interpretation means the transfer of the total package of knowledge acquired by the interpreter and every other event surrounding the actors (the orator, listener and the interpreter himself) to a living man.  In the course of doing so, both the receiver and the interpreter overlook some words. They retain the ideas of the speaker in bulk. Lederer (1994:22) will say they conserve a ‘deverbalized memory’.

Chacun peut constater que les énoncés oraux sont évanescents. Nous retenons en gros le récit qui nous est fait, mais nous oublions la quasi-totalité des mots qui nous ont été prononcés. Le fait est patent dans l’oral : les signes du discours disparaissent avec le son de la voix qui les émet, mais l’auditeur – et l’interprète – conservent un souvenir déverbalisé, un état de conscience de l’idée ou du   fait évoqué.

En dehors de quelques personnes à la mémoire phénoménale, telle que le ‘mnémoniste’ décrit par A. R. Luria, personne ne pourrait retenir en une seule audition et  reproduire de mémoire, dans la même langue ou dans une autre, les quelques centaines de mots au minimum dont se compose une intervention de quelques minutes en réunion internationale.

 

It is obvious that oral statements are evanescent. Generally, we can retain the bulk of a story heard but forget the real words used in telling the story. The signs of the speech disappear with the voice while the interpreter and the listener conserve a deverbalized memory. Apart from some genius, described by A.R. Luria as ‘le mnémoniste’ nobody can retain hundreds of words in one instance of speech and reproduce them from the memory in the same language or in another language during an international meeting.

According to Lederer, it is difficult and rare to find interpreters who can reproduce the same words uttered by the speaker. We can get a global idea of what is said while some words can be forgotten -we only conserve the main message. This is what she calls ‘de-verbalization’. Hence, interpretation means de-verbalization of speech in the same or another language. It is the use of cognitive memory. It is the acquisition of a fleeting knowledge, which must not be confused with computer cognition where knowledge must be formalized. It is not like the verbal memory that allows us to learn a poem by heart. She also presents this theory in her studies on equivalence and correspondences, especially the matter of loss and gain in translation or interpretation, by citing Vinay and Darbelnet (1958:79) in this way:

Il faut considérer […] que le bon interprète ne traduit pas seulement des mots mais la pensée qui est derrière et que pour cela, il se reflète constamment au contexte et à la situation.

One must consider the fact that a good interpreter does not interpret only the words but the idea behind them; that is why he should constantly go back to the context and the situation.

 

The loss here can be found in the missing words while the gain is pointed out through the ideas conveyed by the word, the context and the situation in which the word is expressed. For example, during the yearly leadership training programme organized by the Glory Tabernacle Ministry, bringing together various ministers of God from Francophone countries, we have always come across some speakers who mention ethnic groups in Nigeria for illustration without further explanation. The interpreters had to highlight these words by referring to the ideas and the story behind them before the participants could understand. Apart from the missing words (in their hearing: a word which can easily disappear from their mind and memory) the participants gain more knowledge about the mentioned ethnic groups.  This theory of loss and gain favours the participants in the area of understanding, while it gives the interpreter an opportunity to bring out the general idea of the matter without struggling with the meaning of a single word that could lead him/her to serious disaster of not communicating efficiently. We say disaster because there are times when the interpreter is unable to get the exact word in the Target Language at the appropriate time, hence there is a break in the communication and this can affect the flow and understanding of the message by the receivers, and the interpreter will also miss all other words uttered by the main speaker at that moment.

In the same vein, He Ping Zhao (1990:119) writes:

La machine reconnaît successivement les mots et les phrases, alors que le sujet percevant prend en considération l’ensemble des éléments d’un discours.

The machine recognizes the words and sentences while the living person takes into consideration the totality of the various elements of the speech.

 

For studying specific interpretation processes, some independence may prove beneficial. Angelelli (2004:23) regrets that interpretation has developed too independently not leaning much on any of the established social theories, nor on translation studies. According to her, this has caused the study to stand still without evolving to use the capacity it potentially has:

By failing to incorporate related theories from fields such as Linguistics, Anthropology, Bilingualism, Feminism, Sociolinguistics, Social Psychology, Sociology, Translation Studies, prior work in interpretation has created a closed circle (ibid)

 

For a discipline, this might become detrimental. This may lead to a situation where the discipline lacks a steady base and relies rather on prescriptivism that may not always consider the changes that occur in real life. If these truisms would then be enforced through both training and rules on interaction, the vicious circle would be closed. Angelelli (ibid) holds that by so behaving interpretation study deprives itself of the possibility of developing new theories and thus also of advancing our knowledge of human communication. Importantly, Angelelli relates this phenomenon to the scarcity of research carried out on the role of the interpreter, which in her view tends mainly to be ‘anecdotal and prescriptive’ (ibid). Michael Cronin (2002: 386), on the other hand, protests against what he calls the ‘little brother’ position of interpretation studies within the framework of Translation Studies and puts the question if this is justified:

Despite its historical antiquity and geographical spread, interpretation still remains very much a minority interest in Translation Studies. And yet interpretation as an activity that goes on in courts, police stations, social welfare offices, conferences, coach tours, factory floors, journalism assignments, airports is arguably the most widespread form of translation activity in the world today and has been for tens of thousands of years. Why then this ‘minoritization’ of interpretation? In a world of Globalization, increased refugee and immigrant flows, and exponential growth in tourism, interpretation should be a leading area in cultural investigations of language contact, yet this is largely not the case.

 

This criticism is justified. The fact that intercultural communication is complicated and rewarding independently of whether it is mediated in written or oral form has not always been given due credence. That the skills entailed in either process are different definitely does not mean that in one or the other case they are lower in any sense. Cronin (2002:388), points out that the “specific psychodynamics of orality ” may entail that “the meaning of the exchange will be strikingly different from a similar exchange in the context of literacy” and people working in the oral domain continue to be substantially underestimated by specialists in the literary domain:

The fact that an oral culture may not deal in items such as geometrical figures, abstract characterisation, the reasoning processes of formal logic, comprehensive descriptions and explicitly articulated self-analysis often leads to the biased conclusion by external commentators that non-literate persons are, at best, naive, and, at worst, confused and dishonest.

 

What Cronin refers to has been regretted in Interpretation Studies long ago. Comparing for example attitudes towards literary translators and interpreters (or translation and interpretation theory), we noticed that interpreters are often considered merely as practitioners and the dimension of cultural ambassadorship is often unduly neglected. We suggest that the tendency may also be perceived in Niger Republic. Often in developed Western democracies, the differences in status can be traced to the socio-economic inequalities between the indigenous and the immigrant populations (the interpreter belonging to either community – and possibly taking sides, cf Wadenjö 1998,  Pöllabauer 2003, 2006). In the case of Niger Republic we clearly have to do with educated preachers and semi educated interpreters and audience and so, a certain minoritization of oral cultural processes as against the literary ones that automatically appear as more academic can be perceived. Cronin (2002), believes that there is considerable power and value in oral communication processes. Their values may lie somewhere else than the strictly literacy and written records focused worldview has established.  Cronin (2002:389) invites us to comprehend that “the hold of literacy on our analytical worldview means that we tend to exaggerate the importance of textual translation and ignore the far-reaching historical and political effects of interpretation encounters”. The negative consequence of this would be that in Translation Studies, which Cronin (ibid) sees as “dominated by the typographic cultures of highly literate Western elites who speak majority languages”, one might face a situation where the oral translation practices will be neglected.  In this case what is actually happening in the world today may not be reflected adequately, or in some aspects may even not be reflected at all. Cronin (ibid), warns us against moving towards a situation where “whole areas of translation practice, informed by residual orality in many different regions of the world, will either be misunderstood or simply ignored”.

 

3.       Interpretation Studies – an independent discipline?

Interpretation is inter-cultural mediation which takes place in intensive on-site communication in unpredictable constellations. It gives us insights into the processes entailed from the level of the individual up to the global one. At the same time, the capacity to pursue independent research does not have to mean isolation or confrontation. A holistic view enables us to view both processes specific to interpretation and translation processes and their interaction with global phenomena. In addition to opening new foci to translation processes and practices, the information we obtain often has a direct practical value. Today, research in interpretation has developed to yield results that can be used by various communities. For example, we can already say that research in community interpretation has had some influence on community practices in institutional communication with immigrants. Such developments indicate that the social dimension not only benefits us in learning about interpretation and cross-cultural communication processes, but it can also be rewarding for societies and people. Thus it would be only positive if we learned to appreciate the potential for studying the processes of both interpretation and translation theory and beyond that for cross-cultural communication in general.

  Cronin (2002:388-389) sees orality as an extra resource for developing the potential of interpretation study. He points to the fact that “communication oral sense-making” relates closely to anthropology and ethnography – the domains that have as yet expressed too little interest in what interpretation study potentially has to offer them. Also secondary orality opens up interesting avenues for research:

The problems of ethnographic translation scholars are the problems faced by interpreters in many parts of the world. A chief question is how to properly understand illocutionary and perlocutionry acts in interlingual exchange. Moreover, no adequate account of the role of the interpreter in many cultures can be given if the entre-deux is not also seen to include mediation (successfully and unsuccessfully) between the different mindsets of orality and literacy. […]  Secondary orality, the orality of telephone, radio, television  - as distinct from the primary orality of non-literate cultures – has expanded exponentially in our age. Therefore, interpreting as an area of translation studies that deals with the phenomenon of human speech in language transfer ought ideally to be able to make a major contribution to the understanding of the interaction between translation and secondary orality.

 

Furthermore, Cronin points to the relevance of “a conscious strategy of self-representation”,  that can also be “a covert strategy for self-preservation” (2002:392). Cronin refers to Sangren (1992:279) who has said that the “anthropological analysis of the authority of ethnography must specify the conditions of productions and reproduction in societies, especially academic institutions, not just in texts” . Cronin finds that interpretation theory should be measured against these demands. Until recently, however, most of these criteria were not taken into account. Cronin (2002:291) claims that “little critical attention had been paid to the conditions of production (and reproduction) of the theory of interpretation, including the sitting of interpretation research centres in academic institutions in the developed world”. He (ibid:389-390) talks about the geographical influence on interpretation studies that has resulted in the dominance of certain countries’ view on interpretation processes, subjects and approach.

According to Cronin (2002:391), the centres for interpreter training and interpretation research tend to be scattered around the financial monopolies and power hegemonies, which results in First World dominance and tends to neglect practices in different cultures, contexts or modes:

The professional concern of the First world thus becomes the theoretical concerns of humanity and the theoretic paradigm of interpreting is restricted to reflect the market and institutional realities of wealthier nations. The relative neglect of other forms of interpreting that are much more practiced such as community/bilateral/ dialogue interpreting […], is arguably grounded in material inequalities that universalize First World experience.

 

According to Gile (1990c:29), most of the literature on interpretation is based on speculative theorizing. One -perhaps the main - reason for this is that many interpreter-researchers are either uninterested in theory as such, or are unaware of scientific methodology. Gile’s (1988:366) point of view is that:

... most interpreters are humanities- or language faculty graduates with no scientific training and expertise, and they find less motivation in the long, somewhat arid efforts actual research implies in terms of data collection, analysis and tests of precise hypotheses than in free theorization.

 

Another reason for this deplorable state of interpretation research is that those who are trained scientific methodologists are either interested in interpretation or not. They often do their work without any contact with the interpretation community. On the one hand, the interpreter-researchers are largely ignorant of the work done by the non-interpreters-researchers and, on the other, they do not heed this work because they find it to be based on faulty ideas. Furthermore, the non-interpreter researchers, on their part, may not be interested in cooperating with practitioners who are much more interested in their work. Thus, some scientific work on interpretation may de facto have been wasted - or at least have had less impact than it deserved. One example of such criticized and non-heeded scientists who did not cooperate with practitioners would be Barik, mentioned above. A more recent example would be Dillinger (1989), who compared the comprehension of interpreters and non-interpreters. Dillinger was criticized on the point that the task that he gave his subjects could not be compared to a real interpretation task, as far as text type and mode of delivery were concerned.

Tseng (1992:65) points out that little serious research has been conducted on interpretation, and there is still no consensus about whether interpretation is an art or a science.  An upshot to this obstacle, then is, public misconceptions about the profession. He notes that clients do not know how to recruit qualified interpreters, thereby enabling unqualified interpreters to survive in the market, provided they can maintain good relations with the clients. He also points out that because of the common misconception that interpretation ‘is effortless activity that can be done by any bilinguals’, clients think that it is easy to evaluate the quality of the interpretation services they are receiving (the case of interpreters of Pentecostal Churches in Niger Republic and other African countries as it will be seen in this study is quite revealing).

As for the interpretation mode, however, in the majority of papers still the conference one has been dominating. According to Cronin (2002:390), focusing on conference interpretation brings about favouring positivism in research. As a result, what is favoured is “further depoliticized, minimally contextualized experiments, carefully controlled by a researcher who assumes objectivity” (ibid). Furthermore, these experiments will be carried out almost invariably in conference interpretation on the ground that the booth is the nearest thing we have in interpretation to a cage. Instead, Cronin suggests,  the interpreter could be viewed as a participant in a dialogue. In this case, the context and culture influenced subjective realities would be rightly considered. Cronin points out that then the whole scale of contexts and cultures would be taken into account and our actual professional endeavours would be analysed adequately. This would create a research situation where, as  Cronin (2002:390) puts it, “reciprocal contexts” for “cultural interpretations” are borne in mind and real-world performance will be analysed while “realities” we live in and perceive would be “negotiated” as “multi-subjective, power-laden and  incongruents”. At the same time, Cronin urges us to remember that the notion of culture itself is dynamic and that “culture” is always relational, an inscription of communicative processes that exist, historically, between subjects in relation to power” (Clifford and Marcus cited by Cronin 2002:390).

While Pöchhaker (2004: 79), speaks about the social turn in interpretation studies today, Cronin (2002:391-393) introduces the notion of cultural turn. Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer, developed a theory based on the distinction between linguistic meaning and non-verbal sense, where non-verbal sense is defined in relation to a translating process. The common denominators for this approach become a call for greater dynamics and flexibility, contextualization, insight and acceptance.

The deplorable state of the research on interpretation is the same all over the world. In Nigeria, for example, many translators such as Ukoyen of the University of Ibadan, Ajiboye of the Univerity of Ilorin, Bariki of the University of Ilorin and many others have written many books and articles on translation. With regards to Ph.D. theses, the same phenomenon occurs. Some examples are Iyalla-Amadi’s thesis (2000) on technical translation of French Energy terms into Yoruba; Kolawole’s thesis (2005) on fidelity in translation, while very few works have been done on interpretation and even those works are not purely based on interpretation. They rather focus on the comparative aspects such as, Fagbohun’s thesis (2006) which critically examines the fundamental differences and similarities between translation and interpretation as two important aspects of interlingual communication.  Based on the theory of the Paris School of Translators and Interpreters, University of Paris III and his personal experience as a freelance translator/interpreter, Fagbohun highlights the fact that it is not the language alone that is translated or interpreted but the message behind it. According to him, machine translation is an adjunct at the service of mainstream human translation because, unlike the machine, the human interpreter goes beyond language to unravel the intended meaning of the speaker whereby aesthetics, inner creativity and flexibility are revealed.

 

Conclusion

At this point, one could see the many efforts deployed in the formulation of translation and interpretation theories used as tools for intercultural communication, which will surely continue as long as translators/interpreters and linguists are still pursuing the academic line. Our fear is the limitation in works done on interpretation. In opposition to all these research works on interpretation and translation, a great privilege could also be given to community interpretation among Pentecostal Churches by breaking the existing silence of the experts in interpretation studies generally, and especially in religious interpretation, as a community interpretation which is quite different from the two major areas of community interpretation: the legal and health community interpretation.  The religious interpretation will then be defined as an interpretation done in a religious setting, with religious terms and by a religious interpreter. It can be handled as a conference or a community interpreting in a simultaneous or consecutive way, using Seleskovitch’s theory of sense based on understanding, knowledge and expression as well as Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence based on the transmission of the simplest meaning by mainly putting the receptor into consideration. The great difference lies in the terminology which is mainly related to religion. It is mostly based on the belief, the vision and the socio-cultural needs of the particular religious set up involved. Hence, the appropriate interpreters are supposed to be real adherents.

 

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