‘Tell me the story is and do not leave out anything’. Social responsibility and ethical practices in the translation of complainants’ narratives: the potential for change

Harding, Sue-Ann; Ralarala, Monwabisi K.

doi:10.1080/13556509.2017.1327792

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…In this chapter we examine how narrative facilitates access to resources for the relatively less powerful in encounters in the translation zone. We will look at how mediators, brokers, orin the term applied to everyday translators and interpreters in multilingual settings in South Africa, transpreters (Harding & Ralarala 2017)intervene in this process.…”

Section: Chapter 4 Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

Translation and Translanguaging in (Post)multilingual Societies

Lee¹

2022

The Cambridge Handbook of Translation

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This is a summary of the research outcomes elaborated in detail in the following report, which was conducted as Phase Four of the Birmingham case study of AHRC-funded Translating Cultures project, 'Translation and Translanguaging: Investigating Linguistic and Cultural Transformations in Superdiverse Wards in Four UK Cities'. Linguistic ethnographic research was conducted with an Advice and Advocacy worker in the Chinese Community Centre, Birmingham, in 2016. In the process of providing advice and advocacy services to people with a wide range of needs and requests for support, translation is a crucial dimension of exchange. Advice and advocacy in the Chinese Community Centre takes place in a translation zone, where biographies, histories, beliefs, values, and future trajectories of participants come into contact, and shape the interaction. The translation zone is a space which offers hope of being heard, hope that there will be a response from those in authority. The translator (mediator, advisor, advocate) offers the possibility that the individual will be heard by the powerful. The translator is frequently confronted with the necessity to make decisions and choices in translation. In some cases the translator makes ethical and ideological choices based on social justice for the client. Of secondary importance are questions of adherence to the letter of the law, or loyalty to the neutrality of the translation process. Translation in practice extends far beyond the transfer of meanings from one language to another. It includes translation of the complexity of government systems, with their unfamiliar terms and acronyms, and web of rules and regulations. A feature of translation is the co-construction, re-telling, and re-formulating of narrative. Every re-telling of a story is a translation. Narratives are recontextualised as they are retold, through the rearrangement of their structure, the substitution of some words, the addition of new elements, and the deletion of others. Discourse may be translated from one semiotic domain to another, 'resemiotized' as it shifts from context to context, from practice to practice. Often narratives told in one language, and in one mode, are resemiotized in another language, and in another mode. In the health and welfare benefits systems discourse may gain legitimacy as it is resemiotized, gaining status as it changes from a spoken to a written artefact. As artefacts gain symbolic and economic capital they may become sites of contestation and tension.

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Section: Chapter 4 Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

Translation and Translanguaging in (Post)multilingual Societies

Lee¹

2022

The Cambridge Handbook of Translation

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“…In the South African context, record construction, pre-statement activity, as well as the formulation of a sworn statement, involve a joint exercise between both the transpreter and the complainant (Harding & Ralarala, 2017;Ralarala, 2014Ralarala, , 2016. The complainant relies solely on the linguistic competences and capabilities of the transpreter to act as a mouthpiece to convey accurately the content and the meaning of the original narrative while translating it into a legal text, hence a sworn statement.…”

Section: Context Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the outstanding features of the intralingual translation activity, in as far as sworn statements are concerned, is the discrepancy between the original and the output (Harding & Ralarala, 2017). This differentiation is characterized by, among others, a significantly higher number of words (1,235 words) in the pre-statement than in the sworn statement (299 words).…”

Section: Discrepanciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Equally, pastors may not, by virtue of their ordainment, claim the designation of priesthood. Arguably, additions of this nature are not only common in transpreters' translated narratives, but they also carry the potential of distorting and compromising the authentic content of the original narrative (see Harding & Ralarala, 2017;Ralarala, 2014, for a detailed account).…”

Section: Additionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Police intralingual translations of complainants’ statements in South Africa: From interviewing to collaborative record construction of a legal text

Ralarala¹,

Lesch²

2022

Language and the Law: Global Perspectives in Forensic Linguistics From Africa and Beyond

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A civilian complainant's first encounter with an officer at a local police station in South Africa is an example of an event in which language, translation, narrative, power, law and criminal justice are all interconnected. Statements written by officers during these sessions form the basis of any further legal action and are a critical aspect of the law. In discharging this function, officers act as both intralingual and inter-lingual translators (Harding & Ralarala, 2017:158).

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“…Johnson (2013) analyses how police interview texts travel from the interview room to the audio-recording to the court, and how the interview texts are institutionally evaluated and transformed. Harding and Ralarala (2017) analyse transcripts of police interviews conducted in isiXhosa in South Africa, and notes the omission or de-selection of key narrative elements and story aspects. These omissions skewed the focus of the statements so that potential witnesses, and the degree and nature of the violence reported, were lost from the record.…”

Section: Recontextualisation and Legal Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Recontextualisation and advocacy in the translation zone

Blackledge

Creese

2020

Text &Amp; Talk

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This paper reports an element of a team linguistic ethnography which investigated the ways people communicate with each other in the changing, dynamic environments of superdiverse cities in the UK. The particular example examined here is that of a ‘translation zone’ between an advice worker and her Chinese clients in a community centre with a remit to support Chinese people in the city. In the interaction the advice worker, herself a migrant from China, translates relevant aspects of the complex, bureaucratic welfare benefits system, deploying interlingual, intralingual, and intersemiotic translation. More than this, however, the advice worker engages in recontextualisation, co-constructing and re-shaping the client’s narrative so that it meets the criteria of the government welfare benefits office. Recontextualisation is a consistent feature of the discourse practice of the advice worker as she seeks to support her clients. We propose that it may well be a salient feature of interactional encounters as people seek help and advocacy to negotiate complex bureaucratic systems.

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‘Tell me the story is and do not leave out anything’. Social responsibility and ethical practices in the translation of complainants’ narratives: the potential for change

Cited by 4 publications

References 20 publications

Translation and Translanguaging in (Post)multilingual Societies

Translation and Translanguaging in (Post)multilingual Societies

Police intralingual translations of complainants’ statements in South Africa: From interviewing to collaborative record construction of a legal text

Recontextualisation and advocacy in the translation zone

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