Community interpreting - A service-learning setting for bilingual students
Miriam Shlesinger (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
Abstract
The knowledge possessed by bilingual students, who speak the majority language as well as that of an indigenous or migrant minority group, is rarely seen as an asset that can be leveraged into community service. And yet, their heritage language, which they speak fluently, can in fact be used to render service to those members of the community who have not mastered the dominant language and who are often at a loss in handling medical or administrative needs. With this in mind, as Chair of the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, I undertook in 2006 to launch an experimental course in Community Interpreting 2006. The course was part of a larger program, "Partnership for Social Change," initiated by the Israeli Council for Higher Education. It has become a regular feature on campus, with about 45 students each year, from throughout the university, contributing 4 hours a week as volunteer interpreters in hospitals, well-baby clinics, municipal social service divisions, prisons, NGOs etc., between the providers and members of the Arabic-, Amharic- or Russian-speaking communities.
While training students towards providing this much-needed service, and instilling acceptable standards of performance as language intermediaries, the course is also driven by an avowed political agenda: to empower students, to enlist academic institutions as agents of social change, and to raise awareness of the problems experienced by language minorities. At the same time, students learn to cope with the typically complex and stressful situations associated with the task of community (particularly healthcare) interpreter, including the psychological repercussions of this role and ways of offsetting the vicarious traumatisation that may occur (Shlesinger 2007).
The talk will centre on excerpts from the students' own reports on their work as community-based interpreters in medical, public-service and child-care settings, their feelings about the political implications of community service, and the insights they have gained about their own abilities. The interface between community-based interpreter training and the academic environment has both practical and symbolic value (Michael & Cocchini 1997, Erasmus 2002) and this too will be discussed.
References
Michael, S. & Cocchini, M. (1997). Training college students as community interpreters: an innovative. In S. E. Carr, R. Roberts, A. Dufour & D. Steyn (Eds), The Critical Link: Interpreters in the community. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 237-248.
Erasmus, M. (2002). Making multilingualism work in South Africa: The establishment of translation and interpreting services for local government. In E. Hung (Ed.), Teaching Translation and Interpreting 4: Building bridges. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 197-210.
Shlesinger, Y. (2007). Vicarious traumatization among interpreters who work with torture survivors and their therapists. In F. Pöchhacker, A. L. Jakobsen and I. M. Mees (Eds), Interpreting Studies and Beyond. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. 153-172.
