The Interpreter in Works of Fiction – Personality Traits of Consecutive and Conference Interpreters

Objavljeno ,

The present study grew out of the author’s interest in deepening the insight into the personality traits of consecutive and conference interpreters.
The author thought it might be useful to gather personality data from literary texts to get an impression or an insight into how others see us as interpreters. As the author has found nearly one hundred different literary texts including the autobiographies of interpreters, it seems that both the interpreters and the profession of interpreting are likely to interest of all sorts of writers. In this paper, the author is not attempting to determine what makes a good interpreter. The purpose of this paper is to identify personality traits considered typical to by deducing such traits from the actual memoirs and autobiographies of interpreters and from the literary works of those who write about interpreters. Interpreters have increasingly been appearing as characters in literary works since the 19th century, or disappearing as the kidnapped Greek interpreter did in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story (1863). How do interpreter-authors describe themselves in their autobiographies and memoirs and how are interpreters portrayed by other authors?
Interpreters come in many forms: elegant and enigmatic; as passionate interpreters of four languages; as interpreters in the dictatorship; as immigrants with shifting identities; as members and representatives of minority groups; as self-alienated individuals who later re-immigrate back to their original country; and even as much more simplistic forms such as mechanical language translators. What do they all have in common?
This article presents an array of interpreter-inspired novels, short stories and autobiographies and demonstrates how interpreters are portrayed in different ways by authors from different cultures. Do writers and professional interpreters differ in their views of the “typical” interpreter? By focusing on the essential interpreters’ personality traits deduced from various literary works of fiction that feature interpreters, chiefly of literature written in English, or translated to English, or originally written in Hungarian, the author tries to constitute a psychological profile of interpreters while trying to remain neutral, objective and invisible.

Interpreting Studies at the Crossroads of Disciplines
25-26 October 2013, University of Maribor, Slovenia

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