Managing dynamics in interpreted interactions with Paul Belmonte

Every interaction between people involves a power dynamic. Our role as interpreters invests us with some of that power; we may be the only person in the room who understands both languages being used, or when we are working in a simultaneous, two-way interpreted interaction, managing turn taking may require us to decide who gets to speak and when. Even our role as a professional means that we will carry a certain amount of power into any situation that we work in. 

Of course, as interpreters, our aim is to empower others, especially doing all we can to support the agency of those who have historically had their power and agency repressed. Empowering deaf people is one of the main aims of our work. However, our desire to empower others may lead us to fail to recognise the power we ourselves hold. 

In this workshop, we will discuss the various ways in which interpreters hold power, whether we recognise it or not. It will suggest that power that goes unrecognised can easily end up being power misused. Two perspectives will be discussed: that of interpreters who strive to exhibit empowering behaviours and their experience of recognising their part in a power imbalance, as well as that of deaf people who have experienced interpreters’ misuse of power, whether that has been intentional or otherwise. 

Deaf people have for some time been telling us as interpreters that a power imbalance exists, both through conference presentations and their writing in academia and the media. This will be a good opportunity for us as a profession to continue this conversation, identify misuses of power we may not even be aware of, and together find ways to address this imbalance.