Theme efsli conference 2008

Third Language Interpreting

There are two sides to ‘third language interpreting’, both of which are becoming of increasing importance within Europe: interpreting to and from a language that is not the interpreter’s mother tongue or second language, and the use of a third language in an interpreting setting by a relay interpreter, whether deaf or hearing. Together these two subjects form the topic of this conference.

With the growing connections between European countries and the rise in mobility of people within Europe, sign language interpreters are confronted with more languages than their local sign language and spoken language.

There are many interpreters who have grown up with more than one native language, such as hearing children of deaf parents who have learned both a signed and a spoken language from birth, or people in bilingual regions such as Belgium (French and Dutch) or Catalonia (Catalan and Spanish). Both for such bilingual speakers and for the majority of sign language interpreters who have learned a signed language later in life, in many international gatherings, a further (third) language is needed that has not been acquired from birth, nor has been learned in an interpreting programme. Often, this language is English.

How can one interpret efficiently in such situations? How can one establish whether one’s language skills in the third language are sufficient? Are different interpreting strategies needed when interpreting from or to a third language? The efsli 2008 conference aims to address these types of questions.

In addition, another type of situations in which a third language plays a role is where relay interpreters are used; in such situations, a sign language interpreter cannot directly translate from one language to another, but a third language is used as an intermediate step. This conference will focus both on situations where a (deaf or hearing) relay interpreter is used for linking a third language in the communicative setting and on situations in which a Deaf relay interpreter provides access to different variants of a specific signed language.

With the large number of (signed and spoken) languages in Europe, especially during international conferences, more than one step is made in interpreting from source to target language. What are the challenges that interpreters face in using a relay interpreter for another (third) language?

More generally, what is the role of Deaf interpreters in European countries, and what ideas do people have on the possible ways that hearing and Deaf interpreters can work together?

The various topics will be introduced by plenary lectures, and discussed in detail in small-scale workshops and a discussion forum.

September 2007