Interpretation - Theory and Practice

Forty years of practice have made the author realize that interpretation, in all its modalities and social settings, is a sub-type of mediated inter-lingual communication whose success lies in establishing relevant sameness of meaning across the language barrier between real people. Successful communication, in the end, is having an interlocutor relevantly understand a speaker as a function of his, the interlocutors, own interests, ability, knowledge, sensitivity and acceptability criteria. Whatever a speaker and an interpreter have said in his or her turn, communication will not have succeeded if the new interlocutor has not understood relevantly, i.e., what is necessary or advisable that he understand the way it is necessary or advisable that he understand as a function of the meta-communicative purposes of communication in the specific situation. Asymmetries in power, sophistication, interests and sensitivity as well as conflicting claims on our loyalty - let alone cognitive constraints, speed, accent, etc.- complicate our task. The above mentioned the author tried to explore in these pieces, a few of which were absorbed in his General Theory of Inter-lingual Mediation.