This paper explores the problems which arise when people attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. I draw on my fieldwork experience in various settings in Eastern and Central Europe -camps, courts, schools and businesses -where I found that communication works best when trust is established, and that the necessary step to fulfil this condition was to learn how to unlearn deeply rooted assumptions on both sides. The paper begins with a discussion of racial and ethnic stereotypes, drawing on a range of insights from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. I then turn to memory myths, suggesting how to apply recent findings from specialized memory research. In the second part of the paper, I challenge the concept of "intercultural", which can all too easily legitimate the "clash of civilisations" ideology. In order to establish real intercultural communication, I suggest that we must abandon models of verbatim translation and instead take advantage of recent anthropological insights into how language works, how meanings are socially constructed and how shared understandings are achieved. In all this, I build on the work of linguistic and legal anthropologists who are already contributing to this endeavour and conclude with some meditations on the related themes of counter-dominance and laughter. Keywords: anthropology, applicability, communication, interpreting, culture, memory, stereotypes, unlearning Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.George Iles IntroductionAnthropology is the study of what it means to be human. Its relevance and applicability to human problems has been assumed since this discipline's inception. In this paper I explore its relevance to language and communication. My specific focus is on how to avoid getting lost in translation as insiders and outsiders, experts and non-experts, the powerful and the powerless attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. My argument is that as we enter this process of two-way communication on each side, it is important to learn, but equally to learn how to unlearn. To illustrate my thoughts, I will provide examples from my observations in various I have examined various settings in which official communication with asylum applicants takes place and present my findings from participant observation and ethnographic interviews with asylum applicants and discussions with border staff and decision makers. First, I examine how myths about memory manifest themselves during interviews in legal settings, comparing these myths with contemporary scientific findings concerning how memory works. During discussions with teachers and business personnel conducted while assisting with the teaching of "intercultural communication" and preparing educational materials for use in schools, I discovered they were interested in lists of rules about "do's and don'ts". I explore how this stance is linked to processes of stereotyping, and clarify to what extent unlearning could be helpful. Second, I focus on the failure to distinguish between language...

In cases of interpreting for foreigners in the public sector, there is a need for both intercultural translation and understanding of the language of legislation. Studies on the sociocultural aspects of interpreting focus on the fatal consequences of the unreflected character of various language registers in legal settings (Barsky). In the literature there is a call for understanding communication as the non-linear interaction of all participants and interpreting as a process of intercultural exchange. The observations of linguistic and legal anthropologists, sociolinguists, interpreters and lawyers in this field point to two underlying tendencies: prescriptive and descriptive. This article links these findings with the author's observations since 2005 and data collected in 2010-2011 by nonprofit organizations providing legal assistance to migrants in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine, where inadequacies in interpreting and their causes and legal consequences have been identified. In this context, my focus is on the different manifestations of the prescriptive and descriptive approaches in relation to the interactions between applicant, interpreter, decision-maker and observer.KEY WORDS Interpreting, migrants, prescriptive and descriptive approach, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, legal anthropology ÚvodAnalýza dynamiky tlmočenia v právnom prostredí, v ktorom sa pohybujú aj migranti, je v posledných rokoch predmetom zvýšeného záujmu lingvistických a právnych antropológov, sociolingvistov, tlmočníkov i právnikov (

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In this study, I examine the linguistic means that weaken the effect of an asylum applicant's speech during court proceedings: the overuse of selected words implying doubt, uncertainty, assumption, or presumption signal imbalance. I analyse how the hegemonic practices of consensus are reflected in the tolerance of the interpreter's inconspicuous mistakes: the use of the third person instead of the first, the use of passive instead of active voice, the concealment of the subject or the author, and the subordination of the subjectivity of the asylum applicant's testimony in both linguistic and non-linguistic forms. This case study presents the partial results of the ethnographic research that took place at hearings of asylum applicants between 2015 and 2018 at the Regional Court in Bratislava. I focus on the linguistic practices which significantly influenced the atmosphere of a hearing; the applicant was not aware of the expressions which were adjoined to his speech and weakened his argumentation. These expressions were also not part of the official record. I interpret the linguistic means of identity construction in courts in accordance with the anthropological and sociolinguistic works of Diana Eades, Anthony Good, Katrijn Maryns, and Susan Philips. In a broader context, I also make use of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of production and reproduction of legitimate language.