Emily Howlett: With interpreters, is content more important than accuracy?

“It has been magnificent to be present with you all here today, you wonderful, lively and intelligent group of humans. I hope that we can collaborate to leave the clumpy old machinery of politics in the dim and distant past, and move forward to a brighter and more satisfying future.”

My goodness, that’s a lot of English. It was also (more or less) the opening statement at a recent meeting I attended as Co-Director of PAD Productions.

I know this was what the speaker said, because the event was captioned. The speech was also BSL interpreted, and the interpreter signed (more or less) the following;

“Good to see you all today, lovely people. I hope that we can move forward from old politics to new, better politics.”

As you can see, there’s quite a difference. That’s kind of not even up for discussion; there is a clear and obvious change in tone, detail and content. The interpreted translation contains less than half of the original, English version. But, having pointed that out, I would still argue that the interpretation contains all the necessary information.

British Sign Language is beautiful and varied. As with any other language, the possibilities for translating a sentence from English are numerous; I can immediately think of six ways to ask how somebody is without even trying.

But due to their different linguistics and structure, there are very few English sentences which can be directly translated into BSL, word for word, without becoming SSE instead (which is a COMPLETELY different form of communication, rather than a language).

And this is the interesting, but huge, and potentially damaging decision that interpreters have to make every day, during every job, with very little time to consider or process their options. Should they go for content, or accuracy?

My personal preference is to be given content and accuracy, as far as possible. I know that you can ‘dumb down’ BSL and it still gets the message across (e.g. using the simple sign of double thumbs up for anything from ‘brilliantly amazingly wonderful’ to ‘ok’), but why do that when there is such a rich library of signs available? There might not be a direct translation for every descriptive English word, but there are usually several different signs that will do the job; why repetitively use the same, simple ones?

I would imagine that using more varied and engaging signs would also make the interpreter’s job more interesting for themselves as well as their clients, but perhaps I’m wrong. It’s possible that it’s actually easier to rely on a kind of ‘basic dictionary’, particularly in corporate situations. However, if someone, as a qualified and experienced interpreter, needs to do this, are they really able to do their job properly?

If someone chooses to translate for accuracy, rather than content, does this make them lazy and unskilled, or does it make them effective and capable of finding the essence of what is being said?

I am fully aware that as a client rather than an interpreter, I simply don’t know the ways in which interpreter training prepares someone for their future role. Should the style of interpretation vary depending on the circumstances, in the same way that it varies depending on the client’s personal needs?

I’m not really sure what the answer is, but considering the question has made me very aware of one thing; we ask so much of our wonderful BSL interpreters, in terms of skill, personality and adaptability. So many hours and hours of training, followed by months of gaining experience in an often tricky environment. And yet so many of them rise to the challenge brilliantly, amazingly, wonderfully.

So, when you get a good one, let them know. In all the different signs.

Emily Howlett is a regular writer for this site. She is a profoundly Deaf actress, writer and teacher. Emily is co-director of PAD Productions and makes an awful lot of tea. And mess. She now has not one, but four grey eyebrow hairs. C’est la vie. She tweets as @ehowlett