Postscript to the Ronjat Centennial

In the course of 2013, this blog drew attention several times to the fact that it was the centennial of the publication of Le développement du langage observé chez un enfant bilingue (Language Development As Observed In a Bilingual child) by the French linguist Jules Ronjat. The book sheds light on the fundamental human ability or abilities that make the mental operations of translating possible.

"What it is – to paraphrase a well-known linguist – that enables little children to translate so much with so little example or instruction. In 2013 it was just a century since Ronjat first noticed it and published his observations of his bilingual son."

Ronjat's observations were a classic example of serendipity. He had set out to study not the development of translating but of phonetics and phonology. His greatest merit was to recognise the interest of his observations and to preserve them. One hundred years later, still only a handful of researchers and theorists recognise their significance. I wish I'd met him.

Meanwhile there used to be a snag about recommending Ronjat's book. It had long been out of print and could only be found in a few libraries. My attempt to find a publisher who would reprint it failed. I was, however, barking up the wrong tree, because now comes great news from a reader of this blog named (or pseudonymed) Aaro. It's that there's an electronic facsimile already available on a website of the University of Toronto. From there it can be downloaded free in a variety of formats. The site is called The Internet Archive. You can get directly to the page announcing the Ronjat by clicking here. The scanning was sponsored by the University of Ottawa.

Sincerest thanks to Aaro and to all involved

There are other papers on the topic at academia.edu. Click here.

Post 300

Like all Blogspotters, I wish my Followers and other readers, a

HAPPY, HEALTHY, PROSPEROUS

AND PROLIFIC NEW YEAR!

Since I'm writing this during the night of December 31 to January 1, you can regard it as either the last post of 2013 or the first of 2014. But in either case, it has particular significance for me, because, by pure coincidence, it's the 300th post to this blog. Not that I've counted them; Blogspot does that for me. I'm surprised myself that I've made it this far. Anyway, it's a moment to draw a line and think about how to continue.

In the past year, Old Age has caught up with me with a thud. Physically more than mentally, so that few of you are aware of it. No complaint; at 84 I've had, as they say, 'a good run for my money.' But I need to slow down. I've noticed other blogs disappearing or remaining in a state of suspended animation, still displaying last year's news on fossilised pages. There must be as much blog debris whirling around us as there is space debris. The cause of it is usually blogger fatigue. So please be patient if I blog less often.

Yet I can't put Unprofessional Translation to sleep. Not yet. Its missionary purpose is still unfulfilled. True, some things have taken a turn for the better since the days when I started it. In 2009, the child language brokering field was already well studied in the United States. Since then, in academic circles, the advent of the conferences on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation has made at least a dent in the age-old assumption that only Expert Translation is worth discussion. For the general public, Found in Translation, published in 2013, has made a notable contribution to awareness of the scope of translation both in time and in place. What continues to be most lacking is interest in the fundamental human ability or abilities that make the mental operations of translating possible. What it is – to paraphrase a well-known linguist – that enables little children to translate so much with so little example or instruction. In 2013 it was just a century since the French linguist Jules Ronjat first noticed it and published his observations of his bilingual son.

The other publication of 2013 that most impressed me as a researcher, though it's not directly about translating, was an interview with the father of the Higgs boson, Peter Higgs. Very anti-establishment. You can find it here.

Hope you'll stay with me.

Image: http://www.hdwallpapersinn.com/

Sacagawea and the French Canadians

Next week there'll be the 201st anniversary of the death of one of the most famous North American interpreters, Sacagawea (S). I prefer to celebrate people's birthdays rather than their death days, but in this case there's no choice: date of birth unknown. Even the date of her death is disputed but it's officially December 20, 1812. Wish I'd thought of it last year.

Sacagawea (aka Sakakawea or Sacajawea) earned her fame on several counts. First because she was that rarity: an interpreter who has made it into popular history and legend. She did it by her skills, bravery and hardiness. Secondly because she was a woman interpreter. And thirdly, but not least, because she was a Native American, one whose aid was invaluable to the nascent United States.

There's an ample literature about her, both written and audiovisual, both historical and semi-fictional, and including a long Wikipedia article. So this post will only touch on a few aspects that are insufficiently recognised.

First we have to know that the Lewis and Clark expedition  (LC), which S served, was a military mission that was sent out in 1804-1806 to look for a route through what is now the Western United States to the Pacific. It succeeded despite great hardships. S was a Soshone Indian woman who became multilingual if not as an infant then when she was very young, because she was captured when she was about 12 years old by Hidatsa raiders who spoke a different language. She accompanied her husband on the expedition.

S's husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, was a Professional Interpreter as well as an experienced frontiersman. He was taken on by LC from the start of the expedition because they were well aware that they would need interpreters to communicate with the tribes through whose territory they were to pass. S, on the other hand, became an interpreter by chance when LC discovered she spoke Shoshone and they knew they would need the help of Shoshone tribes. She had no training, but on the other hand we can surmise she was a Native Interpreter rather than a Natural one, since she had her husband as example and mentor. S wasn't paid for her work, but Toussaint was: $500 and some 500 acres of land. So we can regard them as a Professional Team.

They were professionals in yet another application of interpreting that hasn't been adequately studied, namely exploration and anthropology. It's a form of liaison interpreting. It typically involves little-known languages.

S couldn't speak English and therefore couldn't communicate directly with LC. But nor could Toussaint. It had to be done by relay interpreting, using François Labiche, another expedition member, who spoke French and English. Indeed double relay, since S probably spoke Hidatsa with Toussaint.

This brings us to the 'French connection' and the role of French Canadians in opening up the American west. Toussaint Charbonneau's name is unmistakeably French; Charbonneau is still a common family name in Quebec. S was far from being either Canadian or French. Yet her working association with Tousssaint incorporates her into the lineage of French Canadian interpreters. Another post on this blog has already provided a glimpse into the origin of the lineage in the 16th century. To find it, enter lafond in the Search box on the right. However, between the late 16th and early 19th centuries there had been a great shake-up in North America. French Canada and its commerce had been taken over by the British. The United States had been formed and had doubled its territory at one swoop by purchasing Louisiana. Nevertheless, through it all, French Canadians had retained a significant role on both sides of what was until our own days a very porous frontier. And so, although a few intrepid Brits like John Long had joined the French frontiersmen-interpreters in the push west and north-west (see References), the latter were still invaluable. Thus Toussaint wasn't the only Frenchman with LC. There was also François Labiche, already mentioned; Pierre Creusat, a good boatman and interpreter for Clark; Baptiste Dechamps, head waterman; the Drouillards, father and son; François La Birche, interpreter and boatman; Jean Baptiste Lajeunesse from St. Rose, Quebec; François Rivet, a Montrealer who later worked as interpreter for the Hudson's Bay Company; and so on. Notice that they were valued as 'boatmen' as much as for their interpreting. The French Canadians were famous for their skill at handling the large trading canoes and log rafts on the great rivers and lakes. Later in the century, some of them would even be sent up the Nile to help in the unsuccessful mission to rescue Gordon from Khartoum.

And so the members of the LC expedition were a motley corps of multilingual and multicultural adventurers. They spoke English, French and Hidatsu among themselves, Shoshone and other Native American languages with the peoples they fell in with. They included white Americans of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent; at least one Black American (Clark's manservant York); the French Canadians; Native Americans and persons of mixed race. All of them dependent for their survival, at several crucial stages of the journey, on the skills and personality of Sacagawea.

References

• Sacajawea. Wikipedia, 2013. Click here.
• Lewis and Clark Expedition. Wikipedia, 2013. Click here.
• Jone Johnson Lewis. Sacagawea (Sacajawea): guide to the west. About.com, 2005. The article is here.
• A Roster of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. JTR's Colorful Families, 1965. The list is here.
• John Long. Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader, describing the Manners and Customs of the North American Indians; with an account of the posts situated on the River Saint Laurence, Lake Ontario, &c. To which is added, A Vocabulary of the Chippeway Language. Names of Furs and Skins in English and French. A List of Words in Iroquois, Mohegan, Shawanee, and Esquimeaux Tongues, and a table showing the Analogy between the Algonkin and Chippeway Languages. London: Printed for the Author; and sold by Robson, Bond-Street; Debrett, Piccadilly... 1791. 295 p. Antiquarian booksellers ask several thousand dollars for the first edition, but there are modern reprints.

Image
Commemorative postage stamp. As a portrait it's highly fanciful, since no known picture of her from life has survived.

Should Children Be Translators?

The last post, the one about The Guardian newspaper award to the Young Interpreter (YI) scheme in the UK, brought me some correspondence from experts on legal interpreting in the UK and Holland. They're concerned about whether children ought to be entrusted with translating in a public institution like a school. There's a danger they may be made privy to information they shouldn't have, for example. More generally, they're being given responsibilities – towards the school, other children, parents, et al. – that shouldn't be laid on them at their age. I know from conversations with Claudia Angelelli  (see References) that this is a concern in the United States as well; to the extent that some people consider child language brokering a form of exploitation and therefore oppose teaching children to translate.

I have my views, but I'm neither a parent nor an educator nor an expert on educational ethics. So I turned for an opinion to Astrid Gouwy, the coordinator of the YI scheme. Here's her reply.

"You are right, there is a danger of over-enthusiasm which sometimes can come from certain misconceptions around interpreting as not everyone realises the complexity of the task. The role of Young Interpreters is not to replace professional interpreters in interpreting for situations you mentioned – including PTA meetings. The role of Young Interpreters is to provide peer support to new arrivals in the early stages of learning English so that they feel welcome in their new school. The guidance pack gives examples of how Young Interpreters can help – for example to show a new arrival around the school, or to play a game with them at break times. In addition, the role play situations which are used during the training depict typical situations where Young Interpreters could help – for example what to do if you see a new arrival on their own. Finally, whilst language is an asset for the role and can be used to welcome others, Young Interpreters don’t have to be bilingual or share the same language as their buddy to make them feel happy in their new setting. Effectively, many Young Interpreters won’t ever get to ‘interpret’ in the sense that most people attach to the term. However, they will use a range of strategies learnt in their training to communicate with their buddies and make them feel included e.g. through use of pictures, body language etc. They will also use their many qualities – in fact, one Young Interpreter was telling me the other day that the most important thing about the role was to be caring and kind.

"I understand concerns from professional interpreters over the use of children as interpreters but I hope the above clarification of the role of Young Interpreter will reassure them. The new edition which will be out very soon will give further guidance to practitioners in charge of developing the scheme in their schools. This will comprise dos and don’ts of Young Interpreters’ role and more on safeguarding."

To this, though it really needs no further comment, I'll append my own simple list of contexts in which I consider – with the reservation mentioned earlier – that translating by children should be scrupulously avoided unless no other translator is obtainable.

A. Legal. Those that might have legal implications or repercussions. For instance, a serious dispute between a parent and a school; or an injury to a child that might lead to a claim; or an accusation of sexual assault.

B. Medical. Any serious medical problem. The danger in medical interpretation comes not only from conveying wrong information but also from omissions. Unlike Expert Interpreters, Natural Interpreters are not constrained to reproduce everything they hear. Expert Interpreters must struggle to do so; but if Natural Interpreters can't understand or can't reproduce something, they just skip it and carry on.

C. Emotional. Something that might cause the interpreter stress, eg having to convey bad news about someone in the family.

One of the aforementioned correspondents mentioned a PTA meeting that proposed to use YI but dropped the idea. Sometimes it might be a matter of age. Events like PTA meetings require some knowledge of the school system, of its terminology and of the stakeholders. Perhaps 14 years old would be a viable minimum. I think I knew enough by that age.

References
For more information about YI, click here.

Claudia V. Angelelli (San Diego State University). Expanding the abilities of bilingual youngsters: can translation and interpreting help? In M. J. Blasco Mayor and M. A. Jimenez Ivers (eds.), Interpreting Naturally: a Tribute to Brian Harris, Berne, Lang, 2011, pp. 103-120.

Young Interpreters Wins Guardian Award

Several posts in the course of this fast disappearing year have been devoted to the Young Interpreters. It’s the movement started and developed in the UK by Hampshire County Council's Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (Emtas) and coordinated by Astrid Gouwy and her team. Participating schools at all levels set up programmes to encourage bilingual pupils to interpret for their peers and give them some basic training. To find the posts, enter emtas in the Search box on the right.

Now comes great news. The scheme has been named winner of the Grassroots Excellence category in this year's The Guardian newspaper’s Public Services Awards and overall winner of the Awards. A richly deserved recognition!

The Guardian citation says this:

“A scheme that makes a vital impact on a pressing social issue, yet costs almost nothing, sounds too good to be true. But that is the beauty of the young interpreter programme developed in schools in Hampshire.

“By giving children the role of supporting others whose first language is not English, the groundbreaking scheme is promoting successful integration of migrant youngsters, accelerating their learning and helping the young interpreters become accustomed to responsibility.

“The initiative has been praised by school inspectors and is being picked up by schools elsewhere in the UK and overseas…

“Presenting the award, David Brindle, the Guardian's public services editor, said: ‘Like so many of the best ideas, the Hampshire Young Interpreter Scheme is so stunningly simple that you wonder why it has not been done before. It has negligible costs, yet is fantastically popular with both the children who act as young interpreters and those they befriend, making them welcome and helping them adapt to their new surroundings and language. It is making a priceless contribution to social cohesion.’

“The idea is that training pupils already fluent in English to act as interpreters, will take the pressure off the council's interpretation service and help new arrivals – who often speak no English at all – to settle into their new schools and learn the language at the same time.

"’Our school has got 27 different languages and, with the best will in the world, there's not the money to fund that with bilingual resources,’ says Fairfields [primary school]’s deputy head, Vicky Hopkins. ‘We were looking for a way to support these children using what we already had available.’

"We had a lot of children who had already been through the experience of being a new arrival in our school. They were now advanced bilingual learners; they're very proud of where they come from, and of being able to speak other languages."

Young Interpreters goes some way towards implementing Jill Karlik’s suggestion in the last post, based on her observation of three-year-old language brokers in Africa, that interpreter training for bilingual children should start very young.

 

References
Hannah Fearn. Overall and grassroots excellence winner: Hampshire county council. The Guardian Online, 13 November 2013. For the full article, click here.

Astrid Gouwy’s address is Astrid.Gouwy@hants.gov.uk.

Recent Articles from The Linguist

Miranda Moore

This blog has several times recommended and quoted from The Linguist, the bi-monthly magazine of the UK Chartered Institute of Linguists. Under its vivacious and highly competent editor, Miranda Moore, who often does her own fieldwork and has a keen eye for graphics, it contains many articles that are of interest for us here. The latest issue, October-November 2013, is no exception. And now that there’s an electronic edition (see References), it’s easily accessible.

A recent article I particularly enjoyed was ‘Let’s get physical’ by Rekha Narula, in which she looks at the challenging physical environment for interpreters working like her in the UK health service. It’s true to life. But Rekha is a Professional Expert, and so further discussion of her modus operandi would be beyond the scope of this blog.

Nataly Kelly too is a Professional Expert, but her article (see References) does fall within our scope because it’s about a hot topic in non-professional translation, crowdsourcing, and most crowdsourcing contributors are Advanced Native Translators but not qualified Experts. (For more about it on this blog, enter crowdsourcing in the Search box on the right.) Part of the article is given over to persuading the Professional Experts that community translation (as she calls it) isn’t a threat to them: “Community translation: friend, foe or no big deal.” But what interests me most are the measures she describes for checking and revising the contributions. Translation crowdsourcing has already developed beyond ‘anything goes’.

 

“The freelance [professional] translator community became enraged when, in 2007, Facebook began using members of its community to translate its platform into other languages. The complaints primarily consisted of exclamations such as… ‘They can’t ensure quality if they use the unwashed masses.’… Facebook came up with its own [software] solution, [a free app] which allowed its huge community to cast votes for the best translations. [If you want a glimpse of the Facebook app, click here.]
"This enabled the company to ensure that a single translator was not deciding how millions of people would say ‘write on your wall’ in their native language. Instead, the community of users had a say in how they wanted to see phrases translated… the majority decides which translation it likes best... The sheer number of volunteers is a safeguard to quality but smaller communities can struggle to find sufficient numbers, and that can mean that the translation is never launched… Many community managers will not trust a translation if it hasn’t been reviewed by several volunteers.”

A noteworthy implication of this procedure is that, for better or worse, not only the translating but also the assessment of the translations is done by non-Experts. It becomes communal, distributed and democratised.  But even if the translators are not Expert Translators, they may well be subject-matter savvy and they have a passion for language.  The same can be said of the Wikipedia translators whom Julie McDonough has been studying (enter mcdonough in the Search box), though they make their revisions without special software.

 The third article that struck my attention did so because it adds first-hand information to a topic that has already appeared several times on this blog, namely church interpreters in Africa. It’s by Jill Karlik of Leeds University, who studied them in The Gambia. In a post a long time ago, I told how impressed I was by the dramatic manner  of a church interpreter in Cameroon (enter buea in the Search box).  So it struck a chord when I read the following:

“Some of the younger generation…  gain recognition as competent interpreters within the frame of church events. I found they meet end-user expectations by a highly communicative and lively manner…  It occurred to me that their skills deserved wider recognition.”

Most important, though, are her comments on the development that they have been through.

“In this multilingual milieu, all the interpreters in my study had grown up interpreting since childhood, serving the function of ‘community interpreters’. I observed children as young as three [my emphasis] acting as interpreters for visiting cousins.”

In the centennial year of the publication of Ronjat’s Le développpement du langage chez un enfant bilingue (enter ronjat in the Search box), it’s good to have this empirical confirmation of the young age at which bilingual children can start to translate communicatively.

Finally, along this line of thinking, she raises a question that deserves discussion and action:

“…whether there might be some way of helping young ‘natural’ interpreters benefit from appropriate training at an early age, at a time when they are most receptive to developing their cognitive skills.”

  

References                                                               

The Linguist. Edited by Miranda Moore. London: Chartered Institute of Linguists, bi-monthly. The paper edition is available from the CIoL (www.iol.org.uk) at GBP 41 a year plus postage. The electronic edition is free here, but the references below are to the print edition.

Rekha Narula. Let’s get physical. The Linguist, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 12-13, 2013.

Nataly Kelly. Power of the crowd. The Linguist, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 14-15, 2013

Jill Karlik. A Christian Interpretation. The Linguist, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 18-19, 2013.

 

 

 

 

NPIT2 Deadline

Just received:

"The deadline for abstract submission for the Second International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation has been extended until Sunday, November 10."

For the Call for Papers, enter NPIT2 in the Search box on the right.

I hope this doesn't mean what it would seem to mean, namely that there aren't yet enough papers for NPIT2. After the resounding, hopeful, innovative success of NPIT1 - which would be confirmed by anyone who participated - there ought to be stacks of them.