In transnational meetings, communication is more often than not dominated by colonising languages. The underlying assumption is that “everyone understands English”. What are the effects of such thinking on the dynamics of discussions and, ultimately, on future actions? What is the political motivation behind encouraging and supporting every person to speak her own language? How can we eliminate language barriers to improve collaboration between activists who speak different languages?
- Diversity: Organizing multilingual events with interpretation ensures a more diverse range of thoughts and ideas being shared by people coming from different cultural and social backgrounds
- Inclusion: Making sure that people from different backgrounds can attend and actively participate in a meeting, while at the same time feeling included, also means overcoming possible language barriers and challenging existing linguistic power structures.
- Respect towards others is manifested by creating a safe space for everyone, where people are on an equal footing in terms of linguistic expression.
Although most people may understand and to some extent be able to express themselves in English, they might not feel at ease to do so or might feel more comfortable expressing themselves in their mother tongue (or another more familiar language). Giving people the possibility to do so can be seen as a sign of respect towards them as individuals and their cultural identity. - Empowerment: Using one’s own mother tongue (or a foreign language one is familiar with) empowers people to actively participate in a multilingual event, without experiencing frustration or fear of seeming less competent, of not making themselves understood or even being judged or ridiculed due to limited language skills.
- Connection: Considering that a key function of (verbal) communication is expressing our identities, helping us to communicate our observations, thoughts, feelings, and needs, and that empathy is manifested as the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s shoes, offering interpretation in as many languages as possible in transnational meetings sets the basis for connection and empathic exchanges between participants.
- Togetherness: “We’re in all this together”. A context in which people can share their thoughts and experience in a free, open and comfortable manner ultimately brings people together, making them feel they are not alone in their struggles no matter how different their context may seem.
Two main types of interpreting can be used in multilingual meetings: consecutive and simultaneous.
Consecutive interpreting means that the interpreter translates the speaker’s message after each phrase/idea/short speech. This type of interpreting is used whenever there is no equipment at hand (a microphone and a sound system are enough), but it has a few shortcomings:
- The meetings become longer and more tiring, particularly for the speakers (who will have to stop constantly and sometimes lose their train of thought and fluency), the interpreters (they need to focus more to memorize the ideas expressed, so that they can render them later), and the listeners (especially if they understand both languages).
- Most of the time, communication is limited to two languages (the one used by the speakers and the one into which interpretation is provided), since adding more languages makes the event even more cumbersome.
Simultaneous interpreting means translating the speaker’s message virtually at the same time. It is suitable for multilingual meetings because it allows for several languages to be active at the same time (sometimes using a ”pivot”, a.k.a intermediate language, taken by the interpreters as relay). The speakers are thus never interrupted, their message is more fluent for the listeners, and the interpreters can use the support of their booth mates more easily.
Simultaneous interpreting requires the use of technical interpreting equipment (for the listeners and the interpreters) and interpreter coordination or training. This is precisely where GRAI comes in and can help you organise a transnational event.
