Community interpreting: Asian language interpreters' perspectives The International Journal for Translation & Interpreting Research trans-int.org Sophia Ra University of New South Wales s.ra@student.unsw.edu.au Jemina Napier Heriot-Watt University j.napier@hw.ac.uk DOI: ti.105202.2013.a04 Abstract: With an increasing migrant population worldwide requiring community interpreting services, the role of the community interpreter has been a critical focus in interpreting studies research. As Australia is a multicultural country and one of the leading countries in providing community interpreting services, with a large proportion of immigrants from Asian countries, this paper examines the perspectives of Asian language community interpreters working in Australia on their role and cultural conflicts they can face. Based on an online survey and telephone interviews with Asian language community interpreters accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters in Australia (NAATI), this paper investigates their perceptions on the interpreter's role and the status of Asian language community interpreting in Australia. The key finding of the study was that Asian language community interpreters predominantly defined their role as a facilitator of communication, and believed that Asian language community interpreting was different from interpreting between two Western or Indo-European languages. Keywords: community interpreting, interpreters, Asian language, Asian language community interpreters, interpreter's role 1. Introduction According to the United Nations' International Migration Report (2006), there are over 200 million migrants around the world. Australia is one of the countries where international migrants constitute a high proportion of the population; up to twenty percent (The United Nations, 2006). As a large proportion of the population come from different countries throughout the world, many different languages other than the national language of English are spoken in Australia. Thus, there has always been a substantial need for interpreters in community settings, such as medical, legal, business and educational contexts for migrants to be fully integrated into the community. Community interpreters can act as a bridge between the Australian mainstream community and the ethnic minority groups or minority language speakers. This paper focuses on community interpreters who work between English and Asian languages in Australia. Of the present 200 million migrants around the world, the majority of immigrants come from Asian countries. According to the most recent Australian census (2011), over 12 percent of the Australian population is of Asian descent, predominantly Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Indian. This statistic may be an underestimation when one accounts for non-migrant temporary populations, including international students, short-term working migrants, and illegal Translation & Interpreting Vol 5, No 2 (2013) 45 ---
migrants. This transient population would not appear statistically, but they may need to engage with public services in some way while they are in Australia. Existing international research in community interpreting has investigated interpreter-mediated communication in various European and Scandinavian language combinations, such as Spanish-English (Angelelli, 2003; Davidson, 2000, 2001), Swedish-Russian ( adens , ), Danish- English (Jacobsen, 2009), English-German (Pöchhacker, 2007), Spanish- Arabic (Valero-Garces, 2005), Norwegian-English-Japanese-Chinese (Rudvin, 2007); and between a signed and spoken language (Metzger, 1999; Napier, 2002, 2011; Sanheim, 2003). Little is known, however, about community interpreting