A profession on the defensive

Reading the AIIC newsletter must be a feel bad experience for any "unprofessional interpreter" who is not a member of AIIC. That's what I feel each time I receive and peruse it. And I am not about to quit receiving and reading it. Because there's a common factor I am now clearer with that stands as a bond between the exclusive pro and the mass of improperly taught and raised interpreter. But there is a take to that newsletter that helps improve self-confidence and pragmatic look at the market.

This edition of Winter 2010 is symptomatic of something, I would call it, the profession under siege syndrome. It comes with two articles, a new one on Freelance Interpreting, and a ten years old "still valid" titled "Interpreting is Interpreting – Or Is IT?". They both cover the same topic but I think the older one has more juice than the first. Both display something like a strong need to self-legitimate conference interpreters as if they are under siege from badly bread interpreters. To put it differently in interrogative mode : do badly bread interpreters eat the lunch of AIIT interpreters? Are AIIT members loosing jobs because half-backed interpreters are eating into their pizza? The defensive tone of the first article sounds particularly strange. Referring to the many words piggy backed on "interpreter", the author starts with arguing that "The proliferation of titles and categories is often nothing more than a marketing ploy – create a niche and occupy it."

At gut level, I would argue : What's wrong with occupying a niche and get money to pay the rent? At a higher than gut level, here's what I think. The researchers who are at times AIIC members are the first to crunch, slice and separate interpreters into categories. Most categories are meaningless to the lay people with no experience at interpretation in client's mode. I claim I am a "liaison interpreter" to customers who are usually looking for a "translator". So, who am I trying to fool in with that self-heated claim that I exist as a "liaison interpreter", as in the title of this blog? The answer lies in a common factor of people doing it over the years without formal training. The keyword is shame, and adjectives before the name "interpreter" also functions as a carapace to accommodate the constant uneasiness at the fact that one didn't sit in classrooms at the Geneva.

My clients are more than usually SMEs, sometimes VSMEs (the V stands for very) if not individuals. I am delivering services at a level where no AIIC interpreter would ever be contacted for a quote. The "liaison" thing is described in books, the latest I have read giving so far the best synthetic description I know. The "liaison" dongle is a protection toward the (yuck!) "ad hoc" nasty bit of flesh. It is to tell that I don't belong to that scum, just like "AIIC" is a mark of distinction. Only kings do not need self-legitimacy until the next palace revolution.

The market does indeed use this as a ploy to lower the fees, and that doesn't include only agencies. Your average client will justify not spending a dime on "interpreters" by requesting "linguistic helpers" and other politically correct names to suggest that the context will be so easy that you just need to know a few words. Just last week, such public request for interpreters came out of the blue for the now running Strasbourg Christmas Market in Tokyo. The call for "help" was superb of non-ambiguous ploy, justifying the zero bill because "there is no budget for volunteers" (!), parallel to the person in charge to call in who was staying at the Imperial Hotel, not a crappy Sakura House. There was enough budget for accommodation. The politics of avoidance to pay for interpretation, that ploy, is endemic, but I assume not much in the high realms where AIIC members deliver. If so, isn't the tongue in cheek tone of an editor stating with "The proliferation of titles and categories is often nothing more than a marketing ploy – create a niche and occupy it." nothing but a symptom of a malaise not due?

I also see another symptom whenever there is a reference to terps in wars of local extraction that are always qualified as "never been through formal training". Incidentally, a military terps never get the quote of not having sat in Geneva or ESIT. Anyway, exclusive clubs need self-justification like anyone else down the ladder. I much prefer when an AIIC member writes something tangible and sensible about how to progress for those with the stigma of not having gone through formal (respectable) training. You'll be untouchable for eternities. Have no fear. Leave it to the "untrained interpreter" to carry on the stigma.

Note : The book "Rapt : Attention and the Focused Life", introduced as suggested reading in the AIIC newsletter can easily be avoided. I am selling my copy back Amazon right away.