First Impressions
The first time I skimmed this paper, I really didn’t like it. There are issues with the literature review and it is on the same hunt for “problems” or “challenges” as a lot of church interpreting papers published in journals that you won’t find on the European Society for Translation Studies journal list. But, the more attention I paid to it, the better it got. If you are a researcher in church interpreting, this paper is one you should really know about.
Key Findings
In interviews with six interpreters, the researchers found that many of the challenges named by the interpreters in a Malaysian context were linguistic: grammar, culture-specific items, non-standard input, Christianese and biblical terms, and idioms. There were also issues with a lack of training, especially since there was little specific training for church interpreters and language schools tend not to prepare people for the demands of interpreting.
The interpreters were very much aware of these issues and looked to mitigate them. They practised. They read widely. They interpreted in their heads when not working.
In short, these interpreters, though not professionally trained, showed much of the commitment to improvement we would expect of professional interpreters. They knew their weaknesses, had a plan to overcome them and seemed to be making progress. The line between professional and non-professional interpreters seems to be much narrower than we thought.
Why this paper matters
Two sentences summarise the power and importance of this paper.
This indicates that non-professional church interpreters are able to perform overtime cognitive abilities of professional interpreters despite not undergoing interpreting training, which points to questioning the need for professional interpreting in religious setting. It may be premature to question the level of performance professional interpreters are capable of in comparison to non-professionals, more research is needed to substantiate this audacious claim.
(De Tan, Amini and Lee, 2021, p. 70)
In all the research on “challenges,” “problems,” or “errors” in church interpreting, there has been a constant assumption that “professional” interpreting is the answer. Some researchers can tend to view every piece of data they find through that lens. This is something we will see a lot in these paper discussions.
De Tan, Amini and Lee have done everyone a favour by questioning that entire line of research, especially if it uses assumptions about “professional interpreting” as a baseline. Researchers can no longer assume that church interpreting and church interpreters are some kind of second-class species. Anyone wanting to research “challenges” or “problems” now has to offer a solid justification for that line of research.
Personally, I think that the only feasible answer is for researchers to take into account the wider context of interpreting, including why each church does it, what they expect from it and what they view as successful interpreting.
What De Tan, Amini and Lee have given us is an important counterpoint to the argument that all church interpreting should be professionalised. They have also shown why researchers need to pay attention to the people delivering interpreting when trying to understand their decisions.
De Tan, A.K., Amini, M. and Lee, K.-F. (2021) ‘Challenges Faced by Non-Professional Interpreters in Interpreting Church Sermons in Malaysia’, International Online Journal of Language, Communication, and Humanities, 4(I), pp. 53–74.