INTERPRETING IN SPAIN AND COLOMBIA: TWO PERSPECTIVES

NAJIT Organizes International Round Table

Daniel Sherr

On August 12, 1999 NAJIT sponsored an Interpreters Round Table at the federal court in the Southern District of New York. Speaking were Josep Peñarroja Fa, President of the Association of Sworn Translators and Interpreters of Catalonia, and Dr. Cecilia Plested Alvarez, from the School of Languages at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia. Both gave a historical overview of the profession in their countries. Peñarroja spoke mainly about the market for sworn interpreters and translators in Spain, while Plested viewed the discipline of judiciary translation and interpreting from the academic perspective. The highlights follow.

Peñarroja:
Impoverished Nobility vs. Plebeian Security

The use of sworn interpreters in the Spanish-speaking world dates back to the colonization of the Americas (la Conquista). Spanish law was applied to the indigenous peoples during la Conquista and as such, "the Indians living in the Americas had the right to be judged and have a translator, an interpreter. In the early 1500s, the law stipulated that there be an interpreter who would interpret under oath." Thus, 30 years after the Conquista, the profession of intérprete jurado, or sworn interpreter, was born.

In 1841, it was decided that the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with jurisdiction over foreign languages, would appoint the sworn interpreters and administer their examinations. "At the time," noted Peñarroja, "it was felt that anyone aspiring to be a sworn interpreter would be a bourgeois, someone with encyclopedic cultural knowledge. It was believed that a written examination would suffice. The problem is that the 1843 decision remained in force until 1966, which is an absolute embarrassment."

Currently, the examination for sworn interpreters in Spain consists of three written sections, which deal with general subjects and require translation both to and from Spanish. The oral section, introduced three years ago, is "an interview to evaluate the interpreter's knowledge of the foreign language." According to Peñarroja, every year 2,000 people take the English exam and 12 or 13 pass. " My colleagues are rather high quality translators, although I must say that there are very few who actually interpret."

In 1996, a second certification route was made available to aspiring sworn interpreters. Any person successfully completing an undergraduate course of study in translation and interpreting at an accredited Spanish university would automatically become a sworn interpreter. Peñarroja viewed this as a disturbing development. "The university is a degree-making machine," he complained. "If there are now 2,000 interpreters in Spain, with this new law, there might be 10,000. It's not the same divvying up the pie among 2,000 as it is among 10,000. The university has destroyed us, because the number of interpreters will grow exponentially, but the amount of work won't."

Furthermore, according to Peñarroja, the Spanish university approach to translation and interpreting is excessively theoretical. "In Barcelona, legal translation is taught by a poet," he observed. "I have nothing against poets, but let the shoemaker stick to his last (zapatero, a tus zapatos). What can you say about someone who has studied law with a poet?..."

Peñarroja was quick to underline the paradox that while sworn interpreters are certified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they are supposed to work in the courts, under the aegis of the Ministry of Justice. Yet the Ministry of Justice "did not want to enforce our reasonable rates," and "decided to hire non-sworn interpreters as staff interpreters. They didn't hire people who had been approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was enough for an applicant to have a high school degree. The salary is about $800 a month. Our Association was radically opposed to this, of course, but we ran up against the government's desire to save money. In Spain, the judicial branch has always complained about its low budgets, and whenever there are budgetary problems, the first area they look to cut is the interpreters."

Today, most sworn interpreters in Spain work as translators. They work for notaries public, foreign investors and multinational companies, and are often called upon to translate documents in matters of commercial law (derecho mercantil). A translation by a sworn interpreter is more expensive than one done by a non-sworn interpreter. (Peñarroja recently raised his rates to about $.11 a word, which is high for the Spanish market.)

Government-appointed interpreters working in the courts do not interpret all that is said, but intervene only at the direction of the judge. Not all defendants have equal access to an interpreter, Peñarroja noted. "In criminal cases, there may be drug traffickers who have a lot of money. They can afford the best. They can afford the best lawyer, they can afford the best interpreter. Of course, the poor unfortunate mule (camello) cannot. So we are becoming the interpreters of the rich and not of the poor, which is sad."

Having spent a few weeks in the States, observing interpreted court proceedings, Peñarroja told the group, "If you allow me to use a stereotype to compare our situations, I would say that in Spain we are somewhat like the blue-blooded English nobleman who is flat broke. Here, you don't have that noble blood, but your checking account is doing O.K. I am a sworn interpreter, I am named by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of his Majesty's government. I can use the Stamp of the State as a seal for my work. But in reality, it's all an illusion. I have no legal framework to support me. Perhaps here you don't have all the trappings of nobility, but at least you have some regulatory framework to rely on."

Plested: Tomorrow is Too Late

Plested pointed out that translators and interpreters have been present at key moments in Colombian history. She cited the role of Catalina the Indian (la india Catalina), a contemporary of la Malinche, the more well known native American who served as an interpreter for Cortés and facilitated the conquest of what would later become Mexico. "La india Catalina was the daughter of the chief of a Caribbean tribe. Shortly after Cartagena was founded, she served as an interpreter for the Spanish. It is said that she also fell in love with a Spaniard, which was another reason for her learning Spanish."

In the 19th century, translation played a pivotal role in the movement for independence from Spain. Antonio Nariño, a contemporary of Bolivar's, translated the Declaration of the Rights of Man from French into Spanish for the criollo class of Gran Colombia as part of an effort to "explain to the people why it was important to struggle for independence from Spain." The translation of such a revolutionary document contributed to Nariño's arrest and imprisonment. In their struggle for independence from Spain, Bolivar and his colleagues received help from Jamaica and England, and all correspondence had to be translated from English into Spanish and Spanish into English.

Sworn interpreters in Colombia are called "traductores oficiales" or "intérpretes juramentados". They must take an exam administered by the National University in Bogotá and are then admitted as sworn interpreters by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Many university professors, Dr. Plested explained, are sworn interpreters, but all university professors at national universities in Colombia are "justice experts" (peritos de la justicia). "At the trial itself, the sworn interpreter or translator must be present," she pointed out. "However, if a judge wishes to understand the content of a file, as long as no evidence is to be presented in court, he can request an expert analysis (un peritaje). That means that we can be called to perform an expert analysis, which could include any task of translation or interpretation... and if we refuse, the Dean of our university has to spend 24 hours in jail. Furthermore, we are not paid for our work as an expert. If you work for the University system in Colombia and you are a justice expert, the justice system calls upon you and your only consolation is that of having served the Republic."

Like Peñarroja, Plested believes that society is unaware of the challenging and important task of the translator/interpreter. "When you stop to think about how serious problems of legal translations stem from the difference in legal systems, you understand that oftentimes we are using the same words, but the other party is understanding something totally different."

Furthermore, argues Plested, translation and interpretation in Colombia have too often been taught by language instructors, who erroneously think they know about translation and interpreting because they know about languages. "The mental process an interpreter works with is very different than that of a foreign language instructor. The teacher can tell his pupil, 'Tomorrow I'll bring you the answer.' The interpreter, in a court or in a notary's office, does not have that luxury. He cannot tell the judge, 'You know what? I'll come back tomorrow. I still haven't understood what the gentleman said.' You either know it or you lose your job."

Plested shared with the audience a novel approach she has developed to help students improve their interpreting performance. The exercise consists of standing in front of a mirror and establishing visual contact with the pupils of one's own eyes. "This is an exercise that forces you to take yourself into account and start talking with the other person you have in front of you," she observed. The idea is to look oneself in the eye, study the facial expressions and mouth movements while speaking first in one language, then the other; and finally, to say three or four sentences at a time, repeating them once again in the same language and then rendering them into the second language. All the while, visual contact with the pupils is maintained.

What does this help accomplish? Plested says, "It helps in the cognitive process, in memory storage, in rapid response, and above all, it gives you that inner calm you need when you interpret. It seems simple, but it isn't. You have to be able to see how you are reflected in your own eyes. That means you have to have a high level of concentration, and you have to get over things like the fear of making a fool of yourself, or of being embarrassed at what other people might think of you (pena ajena). Being able to converse with yourself in a state of conscious concentration makes you better able to pick up, store, process and reproduce [information]."

Perhaps the most controversial comment Plested made was that although not an ideal situation, simultaneous interpreters can and sometimes should be willing to work for periods of up to four hours alone without relief. She pointed out that she is the only Spanish/German simultaneous interpreter in the Medellín area, and if she refuses to work, the job will not be done. What about bringing in someone from Bogotá? "That would be viable, but rather utopian," she replied. It seems that the country's top interpreters in Bogotá would sooner travel to a conference abroad than accept work in Colombia outside of Bogotá.

In her view, a conference interpreter must be able to go it alone for long stretches at a time. "Physical conditioning is too often overlooked in interpreter training," maintained Plested, who herself was once Colombian national champion in the 100 meter dash. "An organism that is not trained for endurance starts to tire after 20 or 30 minutes. An organism that has physical conditioning can hold up for three or four hours. Then, if you combine memory capacity and physical conditioning, you can pass the 30-minute barrier in simultaneous interpreting. That doesn't mean that there aren't any pauses, because you do have physiological needs, or breaks of 15-20 minutes to 'refresh your brain.' But when you face the reality of working without being relieved, you must look for an alternative."