I was watching yesterday over the French TV5 channel streamed over the Internet a film named "Les bureaux de Dieu". It is set in a large Parisian apartment where counselors and doctors meet patients and people - mostly women - seeking advices related with abortion. The film played by actresses and actors replays real dialogues picked up by the film director in Family Planning offices in France. It is a fiction that "sounds real", very real indeed. So much that while watching the film unintentionally, I was thinking that most of the interaction being dialogues could be used for community interpreting, and dialogic interpreting training at large. But not only that. Interpretation happens in cross-cultural exchange situations, and subjects may at times clash with what is tabou in the other's side cultural world. Abortion is not tabou in Japan but as with everything sexual, it is pretty much tabou. Interpreting may take place in situations that challenge the interpreter's expected neutrality, and unset not only the direct actors of interaction, but the interpreter herself who my feel uneasy and more. Spelling aloud students that interpretation does not always takes place in harmonious settings of international exchanges - contrary to the too often sugar coated limelight basked image of interpretation here. But what about challenging students - and oneself in self-learning settings - by proposing to work on subjects that should put stress onto the student, to see and feel what affect control means, even in the pacified classroom setting? That's what I intend to try, or at least propose to my interpretation class next week.
Technorati Tags: interpretation, interpreter, interpreting, Japan, japanese interpreter, Japanese language, japanese translator, liaison interpreter, liaison interpreting, Tokyo, translation, translator
0 comments:
Post a Comment