How Neutral Is Neutral? Issues in Interaction and Participation in Community Interpreting

This chapter argues that the paradigm shift in translation and interpreting studies away from a simplistic positivism to a context-based approach. In the context of community interpreting (or ‘public service interpreting’), the chapter examines how previously held positivist axioms of equivalence and ‘neutrality’ are being replaced by a more dynamic, interactional approach which looks at the community interpreter as an active agent in the construction of ‘meaning’ and attempts to account for cultural and individual factors involved in the translation/interpreting process. Recognizing the community interpreter’s dynamic role as an active, decision-making protagonist rather than as a “pane of glass” or “conduit” (traditional translating/interpreting metaphors) during the interpreting encounter is, this paper claims, crucial and could offset the negative effects of stress for the community interpreter. The aim of this chapter is therefore twofold: Firstly, to look more closely at what is really meant by ‘neutrality’. Is this, seemingly objective criterion, culturally defined? Secondly, to explore the community interpreter’s interactive role as a cross-cultural facilitator and to problematize cross-cultural differences.