ANALELE UNIVERSITATII BUCURESTI

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LIMBI ŞI LITERATURI STRĂINE

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THE CONCEPT OF PASSIVE LANGUAGES

IN SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETATION

DANIELA IONESCU

1.      The definition: activ vs. passive language in conference interpretation

In interpretation jargon, an active language is not only the maternal language, which is language A, but also the “strong” foreign language, i.e. the B language that the interpreter uses as a target language when doing retour. Besides these two very strong and “active” languages, an interpreter may have one or several “passive” languages (ordered from C onwards, in an acquisition order, from which he/she would be able to interpret into A. The so-called passive or C-type languages are not necessarily weaker in terms of comprehension capacity, but in terms of expression, they are less mastered by the interpreter. The current trend on the EU market is for professional interpreters to add up as many Eastern European languages as possibly feasible. Indeed, there are interpreters who for several years have been studying Czech or Polish and now they are conversant into these languages to a sufficient extent as to take up either of these languages and interpret into their mother tongue: French, English, German or Spanish. The same situation stands now for Romanian; understandably enough, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish or French interpreters  are taking up Romanian, trying to learn it on an intensive and active basis so that they should be able and interpret from Romanian into their A language. 

Basically, to take up a foreign language and turn it into a “passive” language means to acquire the basics in grammar and develop the capability to comprehend orally performed messages so as to render them into the target language in the act of interpretation. The interpreter is not expected to ever interpret into that passive language, instead he would be able to interact and speak it freely, in a limited conversational setting.

Therefore, the interpreter’s cognitive, conceptual and comprehending capacity is both trained and checked through previous experiences in interpretation. A passive language added up to a series of 2 to 3 or even 4-5 languages learned earlier in the interpreter’s life practically means a replay of the same scenario: acquisition of grammar (grammatical basic rules: word formation rules, subcategorization rules, vocabulary in different semantic fields), some literary readings from the main national fiction, cultural readings (history included), geographic and political knowledge, etc. What an interpreter really does by learning a C language for interpretation is to acquire competence into that language, as he will never be supposed to perform it, therefore the performance skills of speaking and writing will not be of interest at this stage in interpretation.

It is worth mentioning that comprehension is of the essence in interpreting from a passive language, because if the interpreter is unable to decode the true message into the source (passive) language, he will not be able to render a reasonably acceptable and true-to-fact message into the target language either. Unless this message is clearly decoded from language C, the interpreter will not find the accurate transcoding while expressing himself into his mother tongue, which should be formulated spontaneously and naturally.

2.   How can a professional interpreter improve competence into a C language?

Apart from the ABC stuff (learning the grammar rules, reading literature and daily newspapers, “ear training” techniques are very important in the general process of “second language acquisition, such as: listening to the TV news and talk show programmes, listening to radio programmes of the same kind, listening to tapes (recordings of live conferences, seminars, etc.). 

In relation to passive languages, we could imply the domain of second language acquisition and the interpreter's (professional) ability to set the adequate concordances between concepts in the two languages, active and passive, or between the active and the passive languages at hand. We could take some domain, where certain concepts would have to be defined, let us say – financing or banking and see what must be overlapped in establishing the equivalent terms, naturally; however, what is more important, is the domain-related concepts or categories, such as: credits, credit lines, auditing, long-term loans, interest rates, accruals, etc. cognitive-semantic content of which has to be described identically in either language (through a process of concept reconstruction).

Concept reconstruction actually means acquisition of knowledge (or general background); obviously, it would be interesting to discuss how much an interpreter should know in order to really know what the speaker will be speaking about or how the interpreter is able to cope with the concepts in the passive language so as to recognize them and "translate" or transfer them into the mother tongue or the active language during interpretation. The question is whether second language acquisition (even if it occurs at an adult age, with an explicit and conscious purpose for the learner, in our case for interpretation purposes) is a process which is associated with a cognitive system derived from general human intelligence or whether it is autonomous or independent of it. A proper answer to this question is still a prospect for further inquiry. According to L. Avram (2002), there are grounds that lead us to believe that language is something we are endowed with and we all end up by speaking at least one language. For someone who is learning a new language, h/she will resort to the general mechanisms of learning, such as analogy, comparison, prior knowledge (i.e. competence or grammar knowledge from other languages, mother tongue included). However, there is evidence (from neurology, neurobiology, neurolinguistics and linguistics) that language or some part of language is independent of general cognitive abilities.

While elaborating on the principles of “passive” language learning in interpretation, we shall try and address two questions which have a direct bearing on a possible answer to the general question raised above: (i): is language acquisition dependent on cognitive development? (ii): how autonomous is the language faculty? Evidence on the dissociation of language from other cognitive abilities comes from studies of individuals who are intellectually handicapped but still show normal mastery of language and on the other hand, from studies of individuals whose cognitive abilities are normal but whose speech is impaired. It is precisely because language is basically an independent system that an interpreter is able to learn new structures and new words i.e. a new language while modulating this new system within the already existing one as generated by previous knowledge of other languages. Experiments have shown that learning a new language heavily relies on some genetically determined independent system; sentences (or phrases, words, complex structures, embedding, use of tenses, conjunctions, etc.) act like linguistic sign which will trigger their computation like an automatic reflex. As a difference from language acquisition as a process of learning a language to be used in an active way (expressing ideas in oral and/or writing modes), passive language acquisition would only require comprehension within the listening process. Such endeavour is possible because language acquisition is not considered to be a unitary phenomenon; the acquisition of syntax can be partly dissociated from general cognitive development, representing a process distinct from general learning principles, whereas the acquisition of word meaning may rely both on language specific and on general learning mechanisms, world knowledge, and social factors. An interpreter learning a third or 4th language will be interested in recognizing the word meanings that he has already acquired in other languages and see to what extent those meanings are similar to those in the source language. In the act of interpretation from a passive language, the interpreter performs speech in the active language on the basis of the competence he has acquired in the passive language, therefore, he will never be obliged to ‘activate’ the passive language by rendering a message into that language (in the professional interpreting act).

3.   The passive language as an input to interpretation (why is it necessary to “have” several passive languages and what does this ability mean?)    

An interpreter is – to an equal extent – a mediator between two cultures; if the two cultures are “close”, in terms of origin of languages, history, and economic development, the interpreter will more readily acquire the language akin to the mother tongue, as the whole cultural and linguistic framework of the C language is familiar to the interpreter and understanding as well as learning become sensibly easier and more reliable.  It is also true that more interferences are likely to appear in the act of interpretation just because of the formal similarity between the two languages (e.g.: Spanish avisado = Rom. prudent [careful], cana = fir de păr alb [grey hair], arena = nisip [sand]). According to a psycho-social theory of culture, culture is what we identify with. People focus on different levels of identification in terms of space: the continent, country, region a.s.o. This kind of anchorage also depends on the set of beliefs, the languages they share or understand. A set of beliefs congruent with an Italian identity would be of the following lines: Belief in: famiglia/the family; la mamma e sempre la mamma/ mother is always mother; mangiar bene = eat well; environment: la casa brilla come uno specchio /the house shines like a mirror.

By way of comparison, the beliefs and values that are proper to the Romanian culture are: the family, the mother’s role in the family – the central figure in the family, a mother’s love for her children, be and keep on being healthy (health – the core of all wishes), environment: peace, quiet, good neighbourhood (say “hellow” to the neighbour – a da bineţe vecinului); the house – casă – the centre of every man’s preoccupation in life: are o casă curată care străluceşte ca un pahar/ca oglinda = a house – so clean that it shines like a glass/a mirror). Therefore, the set of beliefs that is congruent between the Italian and the Romanian languages is highly similar – thus it is more easily understood crosslinguistically. 

Reference is easily recoverable from the context and a Romanian interpreter would thus understand the concepts mentioned in Italian more readily, and supply of equivalents will be prompt and culturally/cognitively appropriate (cf. E. Gutt, 2000 and D. Katan, 2004).

Obviously, an Italian interpreter would add up Romanian or Spanish as a passive language and the other way round. This is not only economical, it is psychologically convenient and time-saving in many respects. While a B language should always be a language from a different linguistic group, a C language could be a close or kindred language.

Language acquisition is a concept that by definition applies to child language acquisition (and it is about how a child learns his mother tongue); it is tributary to Chomsky’s generative theory of language.

The present approach to passive language learning (i.e. a C language), even if solely isolated, starts form the assumption that even an adult learner of a foreign language (second or third, in our special case) would partly redo the same track of language A learning (mother tongue) for the mere fact that an adult learner (whose profession is to communicate and mediate between languages and cultures) would have to rely on what he has acquired in terms of language competence and  language performance. Moreover, if we consider language system to be modular, then learning such a system in a language other than mother tongue would be copying the same cerebral procedural track. In neuropsychological and neurolinguistic analysis all the components and subcomponents underlying cognitive process, such as language, are organized on three main levels: (i) the main level which includes all the other levels which is called the general neurofunctional language system; (ii) the intermediate level made up of several different subsystems, such as comprehension, production, writing, reading, etc.; and (iii) the lower level, which is formed of different modules representing the most elementary cognitive units, that are linked together in order to form a particular language subsystem. From an epistemological point of view it is important to underline that these kinds of models hypothesizing subsystems and modules within a general language system are the interpretation of real phenomena observed in neurological patients showing so-called “dissociations” and double dissociations.

For example, the description of an aphasic patient who has lost the ability to speak but not to understand language following a cerebral lesion, represents a clear dissociation between the subsystems of production and comprehension. Even more interesting for our discussion on passive language acquisition is the neurolinguistic research on pathological dissociations in bilingual patients, who helped identify some neurofunctional components of the translation/interpretation system. Following particular brain lesions, some polyglot aphasic patients have been reported to have lost the ability to translate in both directions (Fabbro & Gran, 1997). Aglioti & Fabbro (1993) reported the case of a patient who, following a vascular lesion to the basal ganglia of the left hemisphere (language site) was no longer able to translate “passively” from her L2 (B) into her mother tongue (L1/A), whereas she could still translate from L1 into L2. The basal ganglia are a subcortical structure of the so-called frontal lobe system subserving relevant functions such as the choice of behaviour, the switching from one behaviour to another, speech motivation and initiation, emotional aspects of verbal communication, etc. Another aphasic patient with the same kind of lesion (in the basal ganglia) was not able to translate words from language C into  language A, whereas she could translate from language A into language C. Translation impairments in these patients  suggest that the neurofunctional components accounting for the ability to translate in one particular direction are at least partially separate and independent from those subserving the process of translation/interpretation in the opposite direction; they also indicate that some translation subsystems are organized in the structures of the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere (Fabbro, 1994). Other experiments showed that in the bilingual brain there must be a series of subsystems accounting for translation skills, which are functionally independent from each other, so that one may work while all the others are impaired, and vice-versa. These subsystems (according to Fabbro & Gran) are: 1): susbsystem for the comprehension of language A; 2) subsystem for the comprehension of language B; 3) and 4) two separate subsystems for expression in language A and B respectively; 5) a subsystem for the translation from A into B; and 6) a subsystem for the translation from B into A. A particular cerebral lesion in a bilingual individual may selectively impair for a certain period only one of these subsystems, while the others may still work.

To what extent are these experiments relevant for interpretation? Firstly, interpretation is a process that involves a complex task of bilateral cerebral activity. This is probably due to the activation of considerable non-verbal, as well as verbal, cognitive tasks in SI. In working from a C language into A, an interpreter uses a mental strategy by which he crosses from one hemisphere (languages other than A were shown to be generated in the right hemisphere, cf. Fabbro, Gran, 1993, 1997, Agosti, 1995) to another and resorts to different components of the language system.

The fact that struck me as to how an interpreter is able to learn more languages from which he would have to interpret into his mother tongue, thus submitting the message to a pragmatic and linguistic metamorphosis was an Italian interpreter’s request, when in Bucharest and practising her in-coming Romanian as a passive language to attend some civil law court trials. I asked her why she would do this and she promptly answered that thus she would be exposed to real facts from real life and to real language reflecting those facts. Therefore, she would in part redo – mutatis mutandis – a child’s track in picking out from life what she would need to know in a different language so as to learn not only isolated words, but words in actual use. Such factual reality may be similar to a perfect nutshell encapsulating the apparently disorderly mess of language items and grammar as a bootstrapping frame.

Passive language learning is a process that encompasses not only a systematic, knowledgeable and utterly conscious approach to a language grammar and lexicon, but a modular way of setting correspondences between languages on the basis of common concepts. It is precisely the common concept (inherited from mother tongue and possibly from the second language) that an interpreter would take as an asset in order to construct a new code/language module into the mind from where he would retrieve the meaning to give it shape into the A language while interpreting.

Conclusion

It would be interesting to further elaborate on the reason why an interpreter is more at ease with learning a C language which is akin to the mother tongue and interpret from that language into A rather than working from a more remote language (from a different linguistic type) into A. Would this be because he would be using the same (left) hemisphere and lateralization would occur as often or so evidently? If we take the example of a Romanian interpreter whose B language is English and who has French and Spanish as C, will obviously be able to interpret from any all these languages into A (Romanian). Therefore, French and Spanish are C languages while English is B. To interpret from a language from the same linguistic root as language A is more convenient for the mere reason that similarities run not only or not necessarily at the lexical level but rather at the structural, syntactic level. Word order, either at the sentence level or the phrase level is the most apparent source of easiness in interpretation between kindred languages. Errors and omissions or lack of understanding are more rare in such cases than in interpretation between remote languages. This does not mean that all types of errors are eliminated, for instance, there is a higher probability for a novice interpreter to fall in the “trap” of interferences, calques or misinterpretations when working with two languages from the same linguistic group (Romance in our case). This kind of equivalent fallacy occurs quite often in interpretation from a C language which is too close to the mother tongue. Albeit the interpreter may prove thorough knowledge of the passive language in terms of understanding and production, when it comes to expressing ideas and concepts into the A language during interpretation, the interpreter has the tendency to follow the speaker too closely and ends up by listening to words rather than to whole sentences, or chunks which express ideas.

Life experience and knowledge of the cultural background of the C language in actual use may contribute to a correct understanding of the concepts and may ease up prompt and good production into the A language, as mentioned above.

Continuous practice and self-evaluation (noted down regularly in the student’s logbook) will show individual gradual progress. Moreover, it may be an important signal for self-improvement in simultaneous interpretation.

CONCEPTUL DE LIMBĂ PASIVĂ ÎN INTERPRETAREA SIMULTANĂ

Rezumat

Lucrarea de faţă îşi propune să definească si să discute conceptul de limbă pasivă din care un interpret poate traduce în limba A (limba maternă). În cadrul Comunitaţii Europene, o limbă B este considerată limba din şi în care un interpret poate traduce în mod competent, ca urmare a unei evaluări acreditate de experţii Comisiei Europene pentru multilingvism, iar limba C, D, etc. constituie limba sau limbile din care  se  poate interpreta spre limba maternă, considerându-se că un interpret îsi poate “adăuga” în combinaţiile lingvistice pe care le achiziţionează un număr cât se poate de mare de “limbi pasive”, limbi pe care le foloseşte în actul interpretării, în care are capacitatea de a înţelege perfect sensurile şi aspectele referenţiale spre a le “produce” sau transmite în limba A. Cazul special discutat este acela al unui interpret român cu limba B – limba engleză care poate acumula (o) limb(ă)/i C din familia limbilor romanice: franceza, spaniola, italiana, portugheza. Originea comună, asemănarea formală şi cadrul cultural-cogntiv relativ comun (legislaţie, tradiţie culturală si artistică, valori sociale) constituie parghiile esenţiale în invăţarea (si înţelegerea ne/condiţionată) a unei limbi C. Studiile de neurolingvistică aplicate în domeniul interpretării simultane (Fabbro et al. , 1991, 1993, 1994, 1997) corelate cu studiul învăţării unei limbi străine pot fi relevante pentru modul cum un interpret “achiziţionează” o limbă C sau limbile C. În acest proces, reconstrucţia conceptelor din limba C in A presupune o sarcină complexă de activitate cerebrală bilaterală, în care interpretul foloseste o strategie mentală prin care “trece” de la o emisferă cerebrală la cealaltă, presupunând că limbile altele decat A sunt generate în emisfera dreaptă (cf. Fabbro, 1994). Apropierea lingvistică dintre cele două limbi înrudite (A şi C) este un aspect care aduce mai multă lumină asupra modului cum acţionează stimulii cognitivi şi lingvistici în cursul interpretării simultane din C în A. Observaţia individuală şi înregistrarea performanţei sunt esenţiale în înţelegerea şi autoperfecţionarea interpreţilor. 

REFERENCES

AGLIOTI, S. & FABBRO, F., (1993) “Paradoxical Selective Recovery in a Bilingual Aphasic Following Subcortical Lesions”, in NeuroReport, 4: 1359-1362.

AVRAM, L., (2002) An Introduction to Language Acquisition from a Generative Perspective, EUB.

DARO, V., (1994) “Non-linguistic Factors Influencing SI”, in Bridging the Gap, Empirical Research in SI, ed. by S. Lambert & B. Moser-Mercer, P. Benjamins Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia.

DILLINGER, M., (1994) “Comprehension During Interpreting: What Do Interpreters Know That Bilinguals Don’t?”, in  Bridging the Gap, Empirical Research in SI, ed. by S. Lambert & B. Moser-Mercer, P. Benjamins Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia.

FABBRO, F., GRAN, B. & GRAN, L. (1991) “Hemispheric Specialization for Semantic and Syntactic Components of Language in Simultaneous Interpretation”, in Brain and Language, 41: 1-42.

FABBRO, F., GRAN, L., (1994) “Neurological and Neuropsychological Aspects of Polyglossia and Simultaneous Interpretation”, in Bridging the Gap, Empirical Research in SI, ed. by S. Lambert & B. Moser-Mercer, P. Benjamins Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia.

FABBRO, F., GRAN, L., (1997) “Neurolinguistic Research in Simultaneous Interpretation”, in Conference Interpreting: Current Trends in Research, ed. by Y. Gambier, D. Gile, Ch. Taylor, P. Benjamins Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia.

GUTT, E.-A., (2000) Translation and Relevance – Cognition and Context, St. Jerome Publishing Co.

KATAN, D., (2004, second edition) Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators, ed. by St. Jerome Publishing Manchester, UK.