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Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit : erudit@umontreal.ca Article Ingrid Kurz Meta : journal des traducteurs / Meta: Translators' Journal, vol. 46, n° 2, 2001, p. 394-409. Pour citer cet article, utiliser l'adresse suivante : http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/003364ar Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir. Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI http://www.erudit.org/apropos/utilisation.html Document téléchargé le 9 May 2012 08:48 "Conference Interpreting: Quality in the Ears of the User" 394 Meta, XLVI, 2, 2001 Conference Interpreting: Quality in the Ears of the User ingrid kurz University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria RÉSUMÉ Que veut dire un auditeur qui qualifie une interprétation de «remarquable»? Quelles sont les caractéristiques qu’il juge indispensables et qu’est-ce qui l’irrite? Après un bref résumé des études consacrées aux attentes des auditeurs, l’auteur formule l’hypothèse que l’auditoire cible est une variable essentielle dans l’équation de l’interprétation. La qualité des services d’interprétation est évaluée en termes de comparaison entre service fourni et service attendu. Par conséquent, tout système valable d’évaluation de la qualité de l’interprétation doit impérativement inclure parmi ses variables les expectations de l’utilisateur. ABSTRACT What do the recipients of interpretation mean by “good interpretation”? What are the features they consider most important and what do they find irritating? Following a brief overview of user expectation surveys, the paper contends that the target audience is an essential variable in the interpretation equation. Quality of interpretation services is evalu- ated by users in terms of what they actually receive in relation to what they expected. Consequently, measurements of service quality that do not include user expectations miss the point. MOTS-CLÉS/KEYWORDS conference interpreting, simultaneous interpreting, interpreting quality/assessment, tar- get audience, user expectations 1. INTRODUCTION “Quality must begin with customer needs and end with customer perception.” (Kotler and Armstrong 1994: 568) There is no reason why this generally accepted marketing principle should not apply to conference interpreting as well. Research into audience expectations and preferences with special regard to the definition and evaluation of interpretation quality is of crucial importance for a pro- fession whose raison d’etre is to establish effective communication between speaker and audience. Checking our own assumptions against our listeners’ feedback may provide useful orientation for practitioners, teachers and aspirant interpreters (Marrone 1993: 35). Obviously, users want “good” interpretation, but what do the mean by good in- terpretation? Do they all want the same thing? What are the features they consider the most important? Can we strengthen our position in negotiations with employers, improve training, communicate more easily with the users of our services by having a better knowledge of what the consumer wants? (Mackintosh 1994: 13) At a time of benchmarking, best practice sharing, process optimization and Total Quality Management (TQM), interpreters as comprehensive service providers must Meta, XLVI, 2, 2001 clearly be interested in performance enhancement and in identifying key perfor- mance indicators. An analysis of user expectation profiles coupled with a gap analysis should help us enhance user benefits. 2. USER-ORIENTED PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS Like any other professional association, AIIC (the International Association of Con- ference Interpreters), sees quality of service and professional standards as one of its major objectives. It has stringent criteria for the admission of new members to ensure quality now and in the future. Déjean le Féal (1990: 155) summarizes these objectives as follows: “What our listeners receive through their earphones should produce the same effect on them as the original speech does on the speaker’s audience. It should have the same cognitive content and be presented with equal clarity and precision in the same type of language.” In fact, conference interpreters have emphasized the significant role played by listeners and situational factors from the very beginning as witnessed by the follow- ing selection of quotations. According to Herbert (1952: 82 f.), it is quite clear that in a diplomatic confer- ence the greatest attention should be paid to all the nuances of words, while in a gathering of scholars, technical accuracy will have greater importance; in a literary and artistic gathering, elegance of speech; and in a political assembly, forcefulness of expression. Similarly, the style and tone cannot be the same in a small group of three or four sitting around a table, in a committee room with a membership of twenty or fifty, and at a large public meeting where many thousands are gathered. Gold (1973: 155) stresses the need to target the language to the expectations of the audience: interpreters should try to use the same variety of a language as the participants do. At the United Nations, e.g., some interpreters are finding that they are interpreting more and more for fewer and fewer delegates and they can thus adjust their language accordingly. Seleskovitch (1986: 236) points out that interpretation should always be judged from the perspective of the listener and never as an end in itself: “The chain of com- munication does not end in the booth.” This opinion is shared by Chernov (1985), a representative of the Soviet school, who maintains that the knowledge of the situational context of the communication being interpreted is critically important. Thiéry (1990: 42) also stresses the significance of situationality. The interpreter must always consider who is talking to whom, to what purpose, and with what pos- sible effect. Situation analysis helps the interpreter render a better performance: “[…] when we take the trouble to look at the situation, we find ourselves in a better position to act efficiently.“ In a recent publication on the Internet, Kahane (2000) observes that different listeners in the same situation may have different expectations. conference interpreting: quality in the ears of the user 395 396 Meta, XLVI, 2, 2001 3. RESEARCH INTEREST IN USER EXPECTATIONS Given the user-orientedness of the conference interpreting profession, it is somewhat surprising that studies involving users and their quality expectations have been a subject of interpretation research for only slightly more than a decade. Stenzl (1983: 31) was one of the first authors to point out that, with the excep- tion of Gerver’s study (1972) on users’ retention of consecutive and simultaneous interpretation, the research community had failed to consider user needs and expec- tations and that, therefore, we have only anecdotal and impressionistic indications on what conference delegates expect from interpreters and how satisfied they are with the service they receive. Even though it was recognized that very often a good interpreter is two quite different people, being one thing to a conference participant and another to a col- league (Cartellieri 1983: 213), the first empirical study trying to elucidate criteria for the quality of interpretation (Bühler 1986) was carried out on a sample of conference interpreters rather than users. Describing different types of multilingual events (big scientific and technical congresses, seminars, working sessions and plenary meetings of international organi- zations, parliamentary debates, media events, press conferences, dinner speeches, etc.) which are likely to involve different user expectations and requirements, Gile (1989: 25) concluded that the needs and expectations of the users of interpretation are not necessarily the same as the definition interpreters themselves give of their activity. At about the same time Snelling (1989: 142) also pointed out that a target text must be targeted upon a specific audience and that it is, therefore, necessary to in- volve, in the interpretation equation, the audience and the specific quality of that audience. He advocated a typology of beneficiaries since knowledge and awareness of the specific requirements of the specific target group will influence the interpreter in his choice of technique and, above all, in his choice of language. Since 1989, about a dozen researchers (Kurz 1989, 1993, 1994, 1996; Gile 1990; Meak 1990; Ng 1992; Marrone 1993; Vuorikoski 1993, 1998; Kopczynski 1994; Mack and Cattaruzza 1995; Moser1995, 1996; Collados Aís 1998; Andres 2000) have em- barked upon the study of user expectations and/or responses. A number of empirical studies were carried out to establish the relative weight of factors considered relevant to quality judgements in simultaneous interpreting. Five years after the first empirical study asking the users of interpreting services about their expectations (Kurz 1989), Pöchhacker (1994: 233) noted that the quality of the services rendered by professional interpreters was among the prime concerns of the international conference interpreting community. Researchers’ heightened interest in the quality of interpreting was also reflected in the program of the Conference on Interpretation Reasearch held in Turku, Finland, from 25-28 August 1994. It included a special workshop on quality in simultaneous interpreting which discussed quality from the practitioners’ perspective, the research perspective, the didactic perspective as well as the market perspective in an attempt to find out what our uploads/s1/ conference-interpreting-quality-in-the-ears-of-the-user.pdf