Ester Saiz de Lobado (MIRCo-UAM), Georgina Fraser (CELES-UNSAM)
Participants: Anastacia Rodríguez (UAM), Ester Saiz de Lobado (MIRCo-UAM), Georgina Fraser (CELES-UNSAM), Houmad El Kadiri (Cruz Roja), Martha Sif Karrebæk (University of Copenhagen) and Vera Santomé (MIRCo-UAM).
In this conversation, we have reflected on interpretation as a tool to preserve the most vulnerable people’s Human Rights. In contexts of power inequality, the metaphor of language as a barrier is used as an excuse to encourage or continue social differences or inequalities. In the contexts we discussed, like communication between indigenous peoples and the nation-state or asylum petitions, interpretation becomes sort of a social intervention, that usually spams beyond mediation. It is key to underline that governmental structures are affected by ideologies that hardly ever imply support towards linguistic minorities. In this context, interpreters, also belonging in the system, may even perpetuate these structural inequalities using their practices. Thus, we consider that one pending issue within the education of interpreters, mediators and experts in interculturality is to include the self-reflection in regards to the normalization of racism and discrimination of the institutions with whom they work to avoid situations that perpetuate contexts of right’s violations and hinder an effective communication. Finally, from recent experiences with the use of automatic translators in intervention contexts with community interpreters, we agreed that this novelty would do nothing but perpetuating inequalities. Languages are not aseptic or made of neutral terms, thus, although technology may be of help in this complex task, it would never be able to substitute the human being, in spite of all of our imperfections.
