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Linguistica Antverpiensia, 2021

This article presents a socio-linguistic analysis of interpreting in conflict zones and paints a picture of the limits on the interpreter's agency when working in the field. It focuses on the interpreter's behaviour towards cultural and linguistic barriers in communication between foreign military personnel and the civilian population in Lebanon. The aim is to analyse the level of agency that the interpreter has when working in a military deployment, taking into account the context and the narrative features that require mediation. Data were gathered through interviews with interpreters in Lebanon and analysed by applying narrative theory. Knowing and appreciating both the theoretical context and the linguistic and cultural barriers identified through the analysis are fundamental to understanding the difficult role that the interpreter-mediator plays in conflict settings and to reflecting on interpreter training that is appropriate to this context.

Asia Pacific translation and intercultural studies, 2019

The performance of interpreters in wartimes is not always related to language mediation as it, in most cases, exceeds interpreting the performance of extra tasks. This excess increases the significance range of the roles of interpreters in framing the narratives of war zones. In order to examine this work, I have developed a new model (non-linguistic framing), which is developed to fulfil the gap regarding the issue of the framing of narratives in the work of war-zone interpreters. The model discusses the impact of the extra tasks that war-zone interpreters perform, as well as the range of selection they are allowed on framing conflicts on two main non-textual roles, which are (a) interpreters and gatekeeping, and (b) interpreters and suppression. The framework in this paper is based mainly on Mona Baker's understanding of narrative theory and framing theory and other studies submitted in the field. This article starts by elucidating languages at wars and the need for such a model, briefly explaining the data and the methodology used to collect the data, presenting my developed model, and ending with concluding remarks.

Barranco-Droege, Rafael Solving the riddle of interpreting quality: dimensions and challenges. Granada: Comares. ISBN 978-84-9045-914-0., 2020

We live in a planet dominated by unbroken conflict in which the figure of the interpreter in conflict zones (ICZ) has been present since ancient times. Tragic situations such as war and conflict are the breeding grounds in which ICZ have acquired and developed their language skills. These interpreters rarely have any previous training in interpreting techniques and consequently tend to learn the job on the ground. The law of supply and demand rules the hiring procedures in conflict zones and consequently, armed forces deployed to foreign lands tend to prioritise a series of particular requirements when recruiting ICZ. Aspects such as family history, ideology and ethnicity, as well as certain traits, such as being flexible, obedient, resourceful and trustworthy appear best suited to fulfilling the troops’ key needs on the ground. This paper, which is based on a much larger doctoral research project (Gómez-Amich 2017), draws upon a series of semi-structured, in-depth narrative interviews with five local interpreters from Afghanistan who worked for the Spanish troops deployed in that country as part of the NATO ISAF mission between 2003 and late 2014. The results of this study suggest that untrained interpreters adapt their performance to what they believe are the parties’ needs and expectations, which are framed within very particular and sometimes dramatically dissimilar cultures. At the same time, the way they judge their own performance appears to be informed by their ideas about the role of an ICZ.

(Re)visiting ethics and ideology in situations of conflict, 2015

Quoting AIIC, translators/interpreters contracted to work in conflict zones are often nonprofessional linguists even though they play a key role in communications. Moreover, interpreting in conflict zones needs to be examined in a particular way since the context creates a distinct atmosphere from other kinds of interpreting. Data for the empirical research has been collected, first, through the study of previous projects such as InZone or Red T, which explored different aspects of interpreting in conflict zones; and, secondly, by conducting interviews and surveys with soldiers and interpreters that have suffered the consequences of war. The analysis of this data will let us know about the particularities of the situations and the strengths and weaknesses of some of the main principles of the code of ethics (accuracy, impartiality, confidentiality) in conflict situations. The results could help in the development of a code of ethics that protects interpreters and helps them to provide a quality service.

TTR : traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 2000

Violent Distortions: Bearing Witness to the Task of Wartime Translators — By using the example of translators during the 1991-1992 war in Croatia, this article addresses the position of the translator in war in order to rethink the foundations of the metaphorical relationship between testimony and translation. If the theories of testimony do not allow the translator the position of a witness, how can then translation be "une métaphore de tout témoignage"? Taking the problem of distortion in translation, the author demonstrates how the failure to translate emerges as the testimony of the translator, one which, moreover, negates the metaphorical link of testimony and translation. The article concludes by showing how the translator as a witness is also excluded from the theory of translation.

2010

Although irregular warfare (IW) is considered the oldest form of warfare, the war scenarios have considerably changed in the 21st century. Nowadays, IW seems to plague much of the non-Western world (White, Some Thoughts on Irregular Warfare) and, consequently, new actors, strategies and approaches have been brought into play, resulting into a new balance between State and Non-State organizations. Accordingly, and considering that “winning the war has ceased to mean only the annihilation of the enemy, but also transforming civilians into allies in the theatre of war” (Cumming, Influencing the Population: 43) collaborations between civilians and military personnel – based, among others, on new warfare tactics such as Petraeus’ Cultural Awareness concept – have been adopted. This may bring up, however, numerous concerns, including communication challenges when there is no common language. The interpreter in conflict zones (ICZ) funnels two or more realities in such contexts. This paper draws on five narrative interviews with five local ICZs from Afghanistan who supported and worked for the Spanish troops deployed in that country until the end of 2014. The main objective was to explore the life stories of these five locally-recruited interpreters who were born and raised a in a war-torn country, and to understand their perceptions regarding a series of aspects that, besides being closely related to their human nature – identity, culture, ideology and loyalty – tend to enhance, as per our initial hypothesis, the danger inherent in the local interpreter’s “otherness”, leading to a number of dilemmas including autonomous vs. heteronymous (see Cronin, The Empire Talks Back), civilian interpreter’s involvement vs. mistrust, or traditional enemy vs. irregular actors. The conclusions of this research study highlight a series of regularities among ICZs’ narratives with regard to how they experienced war, loyalty, and role as ICZs, all analysed from both the personal and the professional dimensions.

Interpreting Conflict: A Comparative Framework, 2021

Conflict zones are the scenario of interaction between civil population and the arrival of foreign military personnel. In this encounter, the mediating role of the interpreter acquires particular significance due to the circulation of competing narratives about the conflict. This chapter showcases part of the results of an international doctoral study at the University of Alcalá and Université Saint Joseph-Beyrouth applying the frame-analysis theory studied by Goffman (Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986) and Entman (Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication 43(4): 51–58, 1993) among others and applied in Translation and Conflict by Baker (Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. Londres: Routledge, 2006). Empirical data have been collected through qualitative analysis of interviews with interpreters that have worked during the conflicts occurred in Lebanon between 1975 and 2006. This chapter shares the results and engages the audience through the interpreters’ personal experiences when negotiating ideologies during interpreting.

Our association has more than once wondered if the time had come to reconsider our profession and its -our -place in the world. The need to do so has never struck me with such force as when beginners or outsiders ask apparently taxing questions about our responsibility and the moral conflicts it could lead to. They might be about translating a profanity or replacing a solecism with something better or perhaps more politically correct if we are to play the sublime role we claim as facilitators of dialogue or even messengers of peace.

al-andalus journal for humanities & social sciences, 2022

Abstract The work of interpreters in frontlines is completely different from that of community interpreters. It needs advanced skills and competencies, in addition to resilience and a amenability to survive and prepare to face multiple risks. The language and culture barriers are the most pressing challenges facing conflict interpreters. Besides, diversity of culture, society norms, and hostile nature have a huge impact on the interpreters' work. The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language (Kirkpatrick, 2020). 10 Yemeni interpreters working in conflict zones in Yemen were selected using an open-ended questionnaire to explore if they face challenges and barriers in their work as interpreters. For this purpose, the paper aimed to identify the barriers and challenges that encounter interpreters in conflict zones in Yemen. The findings showed that interpreters encounter many challenges, including linguistic, social, cultural, and psychological challenges, in addition to pressure work, translation lost, workload, security threatening, diversity of dialects, diversity of society, workload, and term conflicts. The findings also showed that most interpreters are affected by cultural and psychological factors more than linguistical and social ones. The study recommended the interpreters to be aware of cultural sensitivity and to avoid psychological pressure and tension. Key words: conflict, cultural diversity, pressure, language barrier, conflict zone interpreters, society, social.

Nawa Journal of Language and Communication Volume 7.2, December 2013 Years ago it would have been difficult to believe that Afghan, Farsi, Serbo - Croatian or Pashto would be strategic languages today. History proves that conflicts are breeding grounds for language interpreters, creating ideal conditions for learning, practising and using a language. From the First World War in 1914, to current or recent conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, we have witnessed how these tragic situations allow for natives to work in their own minority languages in the heart of the conflict, even though most lack professional training. In any other sphere of professional interpreting activity it would be unacceptable to hire an interpreter with no proper training in linguistics or interpreting techniques. This is not the case in conflict zones, where the law of supply and demand rules. Without conflict interpreters, (invading) armies could be at a disadvantage. So too could international journalists without their language “fixers” or NGOs and peace activists without their language mediators. These language specialists are an integral part of our collective history, yet their existence is unknown to many. Key words : interpreting, conflict zones, military interpreters, terps, intercultural communication, international conflict, fixers.

2018

Wars and conflicts have no recognised linguistic boundaries as they break out irrespective of differing languages and cultures. However, verbal negotiations for truce, ceasefire, and peace conventions still need to be engaged in between the conflicting sides. Consequently, the need for interpreters to overcome language barriers in war zones has recently increased significantly as even local conflicts are given a global dimension in the contemporary political scene. Despite all this, there has been a lack of studies submitted in the field for which this thesis is a focus: the roles that war-zone interpreters can play in framing narratives of conflicts. The contribution this study attempts to achieve is in developing a new model to assess how narratives are framed in the field of interpreting. This model can be used as an analytical framework in order to collect and analyse oral interpreting data; in addition, it is designed to be used in other conflict interpreting studies. This thesis examines the roles that Libyan interpreters played in framing narratives of Libyan conflict in the Libyan uprising during the period from the first days of the uprising on the 17 th February 2011 to the implementation of the intervention on the 19 th March 2011.

International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 2020

Taking into consideration the problems, dangers and challenges they faced, the overall aim of this paper is to advance a clear picture of the interpreting situation and the roles played by community interpreters in war zones namely in Iraq. It draws upon the results of questionnaires sent to more than 30 interpreters who worked for the coalition forces during the 2003 war in Iraq. Now they are living in Iraq and some other foreign countries they immigrated to. It is also based on a number of letters of recommendations given to these interpreters during their work with the military. The paper tries also to prove that interpreters adopted other roles other than the linguistic ones. They were given a multiplicity of tasks to help facilitate the military missions.

Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism, 2020

This chapter takes an indigenous approach to the use of language and translation in warzone areas. Inspired by Sandy Grande (2004: IX), who opened her book with “I am a Quechua woman [...] not only who I am but also, in these ‘post-colonial’ times, an identity, I feel [...] obligated to claim,” I am also an indigenous woman, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip. This is not only who I am but also an identity I feel increasingly obliged to assert in these times, when the advance of research methodologies, translation work, and epistemologies on Palestine are rooted in the imperialism seemingly inherent in Orientalist academia, journalism, and activism. These practices are still alive, advanced through a web of power relations that are part of colonialism’s power/knowledge construct with an ongoing, long history of “research through imperial eyes” (Smith 2012: 58; Hardan 2014: 64). This power/knowledge nexus continues to be implicit in the “contemporary coloniality” (Hardan 2014: 61) of literature on Palestine, with power relations inherent in imperialism and colonization often being the fundamental aspects of the argumentation. The continuous impact of coloniality takes different shapes and forms, and it is constantly used to undermine the colonized societies, through different means including language. To examine how language and translation are means of oppressing instead of representing in the Palestinian case, this chapter examines the knowledgeproduction discourse in the case of the Gaza Strip, since the other parts of Palestine are more widely accessed by scholars. It aims to achieve an alternative approach of knowledge production by indigenous people and understand how helpful it is to speak a different language in the war-zone and whether the indigenous point of view is central to the Orientalist discourse. The chapter also examines how the ongoing Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip is contributing to the process of knowledge production by allowing a certain type of people to enter and leave the Strip.

This edited book provides a multi-disciplinary approach to the topics of translation and cross-cultural communication in times of war and conflict. It examines the historical and contemporary experiences of interpreters in war and in war crimes trials, as well as considering policy issues in communication difficulties in war-related contexts. The range of perspectives incorporated in this volume will appeal to scholars, practitioners and policy-makers, particularly in the fields of translating and interpreting, conflict and war studies, and military history.

Close Encounters in War Journal, 2018

Although irregular warfare (IW) is considered the oldest form of warfare, the war scenarios have considerably changed in the 21st century. Nowadays, IW seems to plague much of the non-Western world (White, Some Thoughts on Irregular Warfare) and, consequently, new actors, strategies and approaches have been brought into play, resulting into a new balance between State and Non-State organizations. Accordingly, and considering that "winning the war has ceased to mean only the annihilation of the enemy, but also transforming civilians into allies in the theatre of war" (Cumming, Influencing the Population: 43) collaborations between civilians and military personnel – based, among others, on new warfare tactics such as Petraeus' Cultural Awareness concept – have been adopted. This may bring up, however, numerous concerns, including communication challenges when there is no common language. The interpreter in conflict zones (ICZ) funnels two or more realities in such contex...

2018

Interpreters in conflict zones bridge the linguistic gap during a conflict and are often locals with no previous experience of interpreting. This particular category of interpreters will be analysed in this research project but from the users' point of view. In this inductive qualitative case study, two members of the Dutch army have been interviewed regarding their experience with local interpreters when they were deployed in Afghanistan. The aim of this study is to find out their impressions on the interpreting service and, more specifically, if they believed that the interpreters' background was more an advantage or a disadvantage, if the interpreters were ever at risk and if the interpreters' jobs were financially worth these potential risks. By comparing the users' different experiences, this study shows how the type of working and personal relationship between the user and the interpreter has a tangible influence on the interpreters' working conditions, per...

Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition, 2016

Many scholars have attempted to understand certain aspects of translation and its fundamental role in constituting reality and representing the Other during media news coverage of international events. However, translation is often an invisible activity during such coverage. The relationship between translation and representation of the Other in the global media and news texts raises ethical questions about translation and textual manipulation. This dilemma is reinforced by the media’s selection of specific quotations and narratives for translating and publishing. It also imposes the question of media responsibility and translators’ ethics towards representing the Other, especially when the media deal with international events. The majority of media codes of ethics do not mention translation as a fundamental factor in ensuring and maintaining news accuracy and objectivity as well as fair representation of the Other. This paper scrutinizes media responsibility and translation ethics based on The Guardian and The New York Times’ representation of the Syrian humanitarian disaster (SHD) as embedded in the translated quotations and narratives told by Syrian citizen journalists (residents, refugees, protesters, eyewitnesses, and activists). To do so, it draws on Mona Baker’s narrative theory, on Stuart Hall and Edward Said’s theory of representation, and on media responsibility and translation ethics theoretical approaches. Accordingly, the corpus consists of 326 news texts distributed as follows: 177 news texts from The Guardian and 149 news texts from The New York Times. This represents a three-year timeframe of the SHD, from March 2011 to February 2014. The findings provide further understanding of the media’s responsibility in representing the events of the Other and translation ethical practices in the text.