A Profession in the Spectrum between Crises and Compliments: Conference Interpreting

Abstract

Interpreting, especially conference interpreting, is considered a highly stressful profession due to reasons such as the intense cognitive load, the simultaneous physical and mental skills required, and the very wide spectrum of working subjects and settings. When coupled with high-profile speakers such as countries’ presidents and senior officials of countries, conference interpreters necessarily must engage in a stress management task at the same time as the job they are required to demonstrate. However, when looking at how interpreting is evaluated and criticized on various platforms and channels of media, one canfairly easily conclude that the components of intense effort and cognition involved in interpreting are ignored and these criticisms and evaluations are mainly expressed through the notions of error and crisis. This article will first describe the interpreting process based on the various efforts and skills interpreters employ in light of the theory of effort models from interpreting scholar and conference interpreter Daniel Gile, then proceed to elaborate on the interpreting event that took place on August 18, 2021 at the joint press conference featuring Republic of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, which created a tremendous stir in all of Türkiye and the public. A number of common concepts and perspectives on this situation will be highlighted as they were featured on mainstream and social media, in addition to the findings obtained from non-structured interviews with two conference interpreters. Lastly, this article will offer some possible suggestions to both conference interpreters and researchers working in the field of interpreting.

Keywords

• interpreting crisis
• press conference
• simultaneous interpreting
• professional conference interpreter
• effort model