Factor inducible por hipoxia

We can divide the sources of misunderstanding into those that are discourse-internal and those that are discourse-external (House et al., 2003). Bazzanella and Damiano’s (1999: 819) propose a taxonomy of discourse-internal sources of misunderstanding which includes all levels of language, from the phonetic to the pragmatic. This implies that there is potential for misunderstanding in any part of the discourse: incorrect pronunciation, an unknown lexical item, a marked syntactic order, an incoherent utterance, an indirect speech act or pragmatic implicature – all can be sources of misunderstanding which are expressed through the discourse. However, background knowledge of the topic, shared knowledge with the speaker and contextual cues will greatly determine whether the hearer understands the discourse or not.

In the interpreting process the following will minimise the potential sources of misunderstanding and facilitate the comprehension process:

1. At the discourse-internal level From the interpreter:

• a thorough knowledge of the two languages involved.

From the speaker:

• coherence of discourse style,

• a willingness to be understood,

• unambiguous expression.

2. At the discourse-external level From the interpreter:

• an understanding of the discourse roles in the interaction,

• an understanding of the social roles attributed to the participants,

• an understanding of the context of the situation,

• an understanding of the setting,

• an understanding of the relevant cultures,

• a knowledge of the subject matter,

• common or shared knowledge with the speakers.

From the setting:

• good physical conditions which will not hinder hearing or concen-tration.

From the speakers:

• an understanding of the interpreter’s role,

• an understanding of the interpreter’s needs.

We can see that there are more points under the discourse-external category than under the discourse-internal category. This is because discourse-external factors will impinge on the understanding of the discourse itself. How much an interpreter understands the ‘language’

of the speaker will be determined by how many of the extra linguistic requirements that interpreter meets. Once again, referring to Grice’s

(1975) cooperative principle, we assume that the speakers want to be understood and will be partly responsible for the hearer’s comprehen-sion ability.

The following examples from interpreted data illustrate how misun-derstanding occurs due to different sources.

Example 1.1 Guilty or not guilty?

1. Magistrate: How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?

2. Interpreter: ¿‘Usted se declara culpable o no culpable?

3. (Do you declare yourself guilty or not guilty?) 4. Witness: Sí, sí.

5. Interpreter: Yes, yes.

6. Magistrate: How do you plead guilty or not guilty?

7. Interpreter: ¿Es culpable o no? (Are you guilty or not?) 8. Witness: Yeah.

9. Interpreter. Yes, yes.

10. Magistrate: Well that is not a plea. Do I take it that when you say yes you are admitting the offence?

11. Interpreter: Señor, cuando usted me dice que sí ¿está admitiendo que cometió ese delito? (Mr X, when you tell me yes, are you admitting that you committed that crime?)

12. Witness: Yes.

13. Interpreter: Yes.

(Extract from a NS W Local Court mention)

Example 1.1 is one of a misunderstanding between the magistrate, the witness and the interpreter due to discourse-external sources. The magis-trate’s original question is ‘Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’ (line 1).

This is a legal speech act² which requires an answer that adheres to the appropriate felicity conditions³for it to be valid. The answer needs to be either ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’; any indirect speech act such as

‘yes’ or ‘I didn’t mean it’ or ‘I won’t do it again’ does not constitute a plea, as stated by the magistrate in line 10. The interpreter inter-prets the question accurately, using the pragmatic approach (lines 2 and 3). The use of the word ‘declarar ’ (declare) shows a knowledge of the appropriate legal register in Spanish. The witness no doubt under-stands the language used, but does not understand the requirements of the institution. The source of the misunderstanding is not discourse-internal. He therefore simply answers with a ‘yes’, meaning, ‘yes, I’m guilty’. The magistrate repeats the question in the same form. Here,

however, the interpreter deviates from her accurate rendition of the same question, and possibly assuming that the witness did not under-stand the legal register (discourse-internal source), attempts to clarify the question by asking a different question that does not belong to the legal register and will not elicit the legally required answer: ‘Are you guilty or not?’ The witness’s answer to this is coherent with the ques-tion: ‘yes’, meaning ‘yes, I am’. The interpreter’s attempt to help has the opposite effect of reinforcing the witness’s misunderstanding. We can surmise that the interpreter here has misunderstood the purpose of the original question (discourse-external source), albeit the words used were understood. This is most probably due to an ignorance of the requirements of the law – a lack of knowledge of the setting. In previous work on court interpreting (Hale, 2004), Hale found that a major source of difficulty for interpreters, manifested in poor inter-pretations, was the interpreters’ lack of knowledge of the setting, of the specific legal or strategic ways language is used in the courtroom, which in turn led to misunderstandings. This reinforces the asser-tion that knowledge of two languages alone is insufficient to interpret accurately.

Miguélez (2001) reports the findings of causes of comprehension difficulty for interpreters who had to interpret expert witness evidence simultaneously. She found that, although there was some specialised terminology in the testimonies, technical jargon was not one of the main sources of difficulty. Especially challenging was the occurrence of grammatical or structural irregularities, false starts and embeddings, and what Miguélez refers to as ‘semantic ambiguities’ or ‘total loss of coherence’. An example from her data is given in Example 1.2.

Example 1.2

I checked the speedometer reading from the general reading to the decimal indicator at the end of the reading from one point to the next and then in sequence and then got at the mileage by subtraction.

(Miguélez, 2001: 18)

Miguélez cites this as a case where the interpreter ‘has no choice but to render an ongoing interpretation of what she/he hears as it is virtually impossible spontaneously to correct or improve the quality of spoken language when cohesion and coherence are so totally lacking’ (2001:

18). Such examples fit in the discourse-internal category, where the

source of misunderstanding lies in the speaker’s inability to express him- or herself coherently. In situations such as this, it is not the interpreter’s responsibility to clarify the utterance. Rather, the inter-preter has no choice but to maintain the incoherence in the interpreted rendition.

Mason and Stewart (2001) quote from the O. J. Simpson trial instances where the interpreter’s renditions fail to achieve a pragmatic equival-ence, resulting in misunderstanding between the witness and the lawyer, as Example 1.3 shows.

Example 1.3

Att: And you’ve been here 27 years, correct?

Int:+ + +

W: Haga la cuen/vine en 69. Haga la cuenta.

(Calcula/I came in 69. Calculate)

Int: I came in ’69, YOU figure it out. ( laughter in courtroom) Att: Okay. Why don’t YOU tell me, how long you’ve been here.

(Mason and S tewart, 2001: 60)

Mason and Stewart aptly comment that the witness’s remark was not intended to be impolite, as the interpreter’s rendition was.

The use of the imperative in Spanish is not regarded as a sign of impoliteness as it might be in English. The possible reasons for the inappropriate interpretation are: first, the interpreter’s misunder-standing of the original intention; second, the interpreter’s unaware-ness of the impolite tone of her interpretation in English; or third, the interpreter’s inability to produce a pragmatically equi-valent utterance under pressure. A more appropriate interpretation would have been something like ‘Can you help me work it out’

or, as Mason and Stewart suggest, ‘Could you work it out for me?’

(2001: 61). The interpreter’s inaccurate rendition (incorrect illocu-tionary point and force) caused the attorney to misunderstand its intention, and he reacted (perlocutionary act) with an equally impolite response.

The cause of the misunderstanding illustrated in Example 1.4 is discourse-external, an unawareness of the context of the situation.

Example 1.4

Question: Do you see where    there is a couch a rectangle for a couch, do you see that?

Interpreter: Y, ¿hay una especie de cama o sillón rectangular ahí marcado?(And, there is a type of bed or rectangular lounge marked there?)

(Extract from a NS W Local Court hearing)

The misunderstanding in Example 1.4 is reflected in the interpreter’s hedging when interpreting the word ‘couch’, as ‘a type of bed or rect-angular lounge’. The word ‘couch’ was accurately interpreted as sillón, taken out of context. In the context of a doctor’s surgery, as was the case here, the correct interpretation in Spanish is camilla, a rendition the interpreter produces later in the hearing, when the context becomes clear.

1.3.2 Conversion

Concept 1.6

The translation choices interpreters make during the conversion phase of the process are linked to their theoretical approach to interpreting.

The conversion phase is the mental translation process. This is where the interpreter needs to make strategic mental choices to decide what is the most appropriate and most accurate rendition in the target language. A constraining difficulty found at this phase in interpreting, and which is not found in translation, is the need to act in real time, with little opportunity to contemplate the choices. A whole range of issues will contribute to the characterisation of this phase (see Table 1.2).

Factors 1 and 2 are self-explanatory and have been discussed by others.

Factor 3, however, is one that (to my knowledge) has never been expli-citly linked to this phase of the interpreting process. I propose that the choices interpreters make during the conversion process are inextric-ably linked to the approach they adopt to their interpreting, which may rely on their natural intuition or on careful, informed study. There are three general approaches that can be taken by the interpreter which are

Table 1.2 Factors involved in the conversion process 1. Knowledge of

the target language

This includes not only a thorough knowledge of the grammar, but also knowledge of the appropriate lexicon, registers and pragmatic conventions.

2. Interpreting skills

These are acquired through training and/or experience.

A bilingual person may understand perfectly well what was said by the source speaker (phase 1 of the process), but will not be able to convert the utterance into the target language if unequipped with the appropriate interpreting skills.

Technical skills required include:

• note-taking,

• mastery of the different modes of interpreting (short consecutive, long consecutive, simultaneous, sight translation),

• situational management (knowing when and how to interrupt, take turns, seating arrangements),

• the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct the message quickly,

• the ability to make difficult, complex choices under pressure,

• the ability to concentrate, listen and make use of long-and short- term memory.

3. A theoretical underpinning approach

A conscious understanding of the reasons behind each choice.

linked to the levels of language and to whether the translation process is viewed as top-down or bottom-up, as illustrated in Figure 1.2.

Those who take a bottom-up view argue that languages can be matched by substituting equivalent words and will interpret at the word level, producing a literal rendition. I argue that only very incom-petent bilinguals and absolute beginners adopt this approach, as it is

Language level Interpreting

extremely difficult to translate literally consistently. By literal, I mean matching every word in the same order, for example: ‘By God went-I to house brother-me and hit-I sister-me telephone’ (Wallahi ruH-t bayt ab-ii wa Darab-t ukhtii tilifuun) is a literal translation from Arabic, which adequately translated would read: ‘I’m telling you, I went to my brother’s house and phoned my sister’ (Campbell, 2001: 1). Similarly, ‘No give-I more’ is a literal translation of the Spanish No doy más, which adequately translated would read, ‘I’m dead tired’.

There are some instances where a literal translation will make sense semantically and even pragmatically, but these are rare.

Most untrained, ‘natural’ interpreters, to use Harris and Sherwood’s (1978) term, or novice interpreters, take a middle approach, aiming for translation at the sentence level and producing a semantic rendition.

By this I mean a rendition that is grammatical in the target language, conveys a message that on the surface, and out of context, may appear to be correct, but that fails to capture the original intention, its illocu-tionary point and force. This is what Thomas (1983) called ‘pragmalin-guistic transfer’.