Interpreting in the multilingual environment
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 472.
Today it often happens that speakers at international conferences, seminars, workshops, round tables, interviews, talk shows and other events use several source languages, which they know well. This is especially typical of multilingual linguistic environment of Ukraine where for the majority of the population the mother tongue is Ukrainian, however many people in the Central and Southeast Ukraine and in the Crimea prefer to speak Russian. All of these people are citizens of Ukraine but they may be ethnic Russians, Jews, Moldavians, Greeks, Crimean Tartars, as well as representatives of other nationalities, who live in our country and enjoy equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Ukraine. One of these rights is to speak the language they were born with and which is spoken by their community. This right is in full compliance with the provisions of the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages [ªâðîïåéñüêà õàðò³ÿ 2004].
The most typical situation is the use of the Russian language as means of international and interethnic communication. In practice this leads to a tri-lingual communicative situation (two source languages and one target language), when interpreters have to translate from Ukrainian or from Russian spoken by different participants of the same event or even hear from a Ukrainian speaker words like that: “Âû çíàåòå, ÿ ñåé÷àñ ñêàæó íà ðóññêîì ÿçûêå”.
On the one hand, such situation creates additional complications in terms that interpreters have to switch from and into several languages. However, on the other hand, it adds to professional skills of interpreters, who appear to be in a “unique” situation in Ukraine – interpreters whose working languages are Ukrainian, Russian and English (or any other foreign language) appear to fall under the highest professional category as those, who have two category “A” languages according to the AIIC standards (see more on this in Unit 1, Annex 1 and at http://www.aiic.net/ViewPage.cfm/page1403.htm). This unique status of Ukrainian interpreters allows them to work at the events with a wider language combination; it is very much valued by the AIIC, international organisations and provides for higher remuneration of interpretation services.
Speaking about the target language of interpretation (whether it should be Ukrainian or Russian) it is worth mentioning that the current “linguistic market” shows that in approximately 80% of events such language is Ukrainian and in 20% – Russian, which is the case with conferences and other events where there are participants from the former Soviet Union republics. Anyway, at all conferences the working languages are indicated in the agenda and publicly announced at the opening session. At the governmental and official level the target language should no doubt be Ukrainian, being the state language as the Constitution of Ukraine stipulates it.
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