Inhibitors of interpreting research

In the specific case of interpreting research, the following non-comprehensive list of factors, some of which are inter-related, can be drawn to explain the problems faced:

(a) A lack of demand from society

Compared to society’s expectations from medicine, education, agriculture, biol­

ogy and many other disciplines, its expectations from interpreting research (IR) are virtually nil. This may be due to a large extent to the fact that interpreting issues are

Daniele Gile

not considered important for the well-being of society. In contrast, the economically significant issue of written translation has benefited from more attention and funds, especially research on machine translation, where concrete applications seem most likely to be achieved. It goes without saying that the lack of demand of IR form soci­

ety is correlated with the lack of funding, which in turn inhibits research in a vicious circle.

On might add that demand is low even from interpretation trainers and practition­

ers, who would benefit directly from research findings. This is probably due partly to their disenchantment with the results of research conducted so far (Gile 1995).

(b) A complex object of study

Another point which has been made time and again by interpretation researchers, especially those involved in its cognitive aspects (see for example Lambert’s intro­

duction to Lambert & Moser 1994), is that interpretation is a very complex object of study, as it involves the interaction of numerous variables which compound the already difficult task of studying its single components such as speech perception, speech production and attentional strategies. It is therefore no small task to make inferences with practical (holistic) implications from findings on its low-level cogni­

tive aspects.

(c)A difficult access tosubject

Still another problem lies in difficult access to subjects for empirical research.

Not only is there objective difficulty, linked to the relatively small number of inter­

preters (especially conference interpreters) and to the confidentiality of many meet­

ings and of their content, but interpreters feel vulnerable and are loathe to have researchers monitor and analyse their output.

(d) A non-supportivenon-academic environment

Research may uncover and make public the interpreters’ shortcomings, hence a conflict of interests with professional interests as viewed by many, and in particular with claims made in the past regarding interpretation quality (though it could be argued that giving a more realistic view of interpretation could be useful to the pro­

fession in the long run). Moreover, as mentioned earlier, interpreters have been dis­

enchanted with the results of research so far, and many resent the alleged arrogance of some of the personalities who ruled over the scholarly study of interpretation until recent times. As a result, the interpreting community is neutral at best, and often hostile to IR.

(e) Competingactivities

Besides this apparent conflict of interests, IR, which is conducted mostly by pro­

fessional interpreters, suffers from competition from the professional activity’s side:

conference interpreters earn in just a few days as much as a full month’s academic salary, and while the fees of dialogue and court interpreters are lower, competition is still very strong. No wonder then that, as deplored by Cenkova (1995), they should give priority to interpreting over research.

Plenary Lectures

(£) Littlerecognitionfromacademic society and fewhost-structures

Academic society at large is beginning to accept translation studies as a discipline, judging by the fact that there are a few Chairs for translation in countries such as Austria, Finland, France and Germany, and significant progress has been achieved in other countries, in particular Italy and Spain. However, difficulties are still rife.

Even in bilingual Canada, where translation is considered important, with much activity and numerous publications, including two major journals, Meta and TTR, the University of Montreal only has a department of linguistics and translation. In other countries, the situation is even less advanced: In spite of much activity and energy spent over recent years, including several major translation conferences, the Czechs are encountering problems in obtaining recognition for translation and inter­

pretation as an academic discipline, as they are viewed as not “theoretical enough”

(Cenkova 1995). Similar examples can be found elsewhere. It goes without saying that obstacles are even more formidable as regards interpretation research. To my knowledge, while there are a few translation and interpreting research centres, there is none devoted to interpretation research, though the Institute Libre Marie Haps in Brussels is planning to set one up very soon. Prospective and active researchers are therefore deprived of the logistics and other support that is offered in other disci­

plines by existing host structures.

(g) Fewacademic research requirements

Most academic interpretation-related activity is conducted in translation and interpretation schools, the philosophy of which has been profession-oriented rather than research-oriented. In particular, members of the faculty are supposed to be prac­

ticing interpreters rather than academics, and the latter are often scorned as lacking contact with the real world and not qualified to teach. In line with this approach, there are very few research-related requirements from interpretation teachers. As to interpreting students, only in a small number of schools do they have to prepare a graduation thesis involving scholarly research. In most of them, either there is no such requirement, or said thesis can be a translation, translation criticism or glossary.

Interestingly, as is explained in Section 5, graduation theses account for a large pro­

portion of the existing empirical studies to date.

(h)Few researchers

Considering the thousands and tens of thousands of active researchers in most of the established disciplines, the odd 400 authors of texts on interpretation, about half of whom would probably not qualify as researchers by present standards if their pro­

duction was examined critically by researchers in established disciplines, amount to a very small community indeed. Moreover, these authors are scattered worldwide, and as explained by Pöchhacker (1995), it is difficult to talk about actual research centres, save possibly the SSLMIT at Trieste, Italy, and the Interpreting Research Association of Japan. As a community, the group of interpreting researchers seems to have failed to achieve so far the critical mass required for the take-off of IR as a dis­

cipline.

Daniele Gile

(i) FewqualifiedPhD supervisors

At this time, less than twenty researchers have earned a Ph.D. degree with a dis­

sertation on interpreting. About 25% of these were supervised by Seleskovitch, an interpreter, in the late seventies and in the eighties. The other supervisors were non­

interpreters, and while they were qualified in their respective fields, their supervision work may have not been optimal with respect to interpreting. To my knowledge, five at most of the persons with a Ph.D. dissertation on interpreting are formally quali­

fied in their respective countries to supervise Ph.D. work themselves.

(j) Littleresearch training

Within this general picture, it is no surprise that there has been little research training for interpretation researchers so far. A few were trained in other disciplines, such as cognitive psychology, others were trained by their supervisors, who, as ex­

plained above, may not be the most qualified, and many have entered research with­

out any training at all.

(k) No researchtradition

Also in line with the general picture, IR has no established tradition with a body of required knowledge and knowhow and with specific or borrowed-and-tried meth­

ods. It does import methods from other disciplines and invent its own, but rather haphazardly, and the body of knowledge which is used ranges from text-linguistics to sociology through cognitive psychology in no organized way.

(l) A highdemand-to-supply ratio in publication space

As translation and interpretation courses have recently become numerous in uni­

versities worldwide, the number of journals and conferences has increased accord­

ingly. Thus, the demand for publications exceeds the supply, a situation which has led to the virtual absence of quality filtering and control in most journals and in almost all conferences.