{"id":929,"date":"2018-03-31T16:40:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T23:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/DLD\/?p=929"},"modified":"2018-08-28T19:06:14","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T02:06:14","slug":"an-interview-with-neil-gouw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/DLD\/an-interview-with-neil-gouw\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Neil Gouw"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alexandra de Vries, DLD Blog Editor<\/em><\/p>\n

It has been over 5 months since the last ATA conference in Washington, which means we are almost at the halfway mark for our next conference in New Orleans. For those who missed it, ATA announced the conference hotel venue and reservations can now be made at www.atanet.org\/conf\/2018\/hotel<\/a>. Most years, the rooms in the conference hotel sell out so book early.<\/p>\n

To get you in the mood for the next conference (or to reminisce about the last one), I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight one of our excellent DLD sessions from Washington. We Dutchies have such a beautiful word for this: nagenieten<\/em> or post-enjoyment. In fact, now that I think about it, we seem to have a number of words around enjoyment that are all about making the moment last. In addition to nagenieten<\/em> and napret,<\/em> we also have voorgenieten<\/em> or voorpret<\/em> (when you already have fun looking forward to something fun). So with this post we will do a little bit of both.<\/p>\n

\"NeilIn Washington, Neil Gouw presented an interesting and thought-provoking session entitled: Undocumented Immigrants or Illegal Immigrants? How Do Political Preferences Influence Your Translations?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translators work with words and every word represents a choice, whether we are aware of it or not. Most experienced translators probably don\u2019t stop to think about their reasons for choosing every specific word. If we did, we would never meet those deadlines! We acquire our vocabulary over time, through learning, interacting, studying, reading (especially reading), research etc… And we all have a certain style or perhaps preferences for certain words or expressions. But do we ever stop to think how this could affect our translations. How our choice of words (or not choosing a certain word) can change a meaning, influence our readers, and even reflect a political belief or value judgment.<\/p>\n

Look for example at words like illegal immigrant versus undocumented immigrant or alien; tax evasion versus tax avoidance; death tax versus inheritance tax; late-term abortion versus partial birth abortion. Some Dutch examples include allochtoon<\/em> versus buitenlanders <\/em>or Nederlanders met een migratieachtergrond<\/em>; wit <\/em>versus blank<\/em>. Some terms are very politically motivated or charged. The media often plays a role in bringing certain terms to the public\u2019s awareness. Take the example of referring to the Affordable Care Act as Obamacare. The term became so ingrained that in a recent survey 35% of Americans thought those two things were completely different!<\/p>\n

Other terms change over time and reflect societal changes. A good example are terms associated with disability. People with a disability were once referred to as handicapped, later as disabled. But now we believe that a disability doesn\u2019t make someone disabled, it is just one aspect and the more accepted term has become \u201cperson with a disability\u201d. In Dutch, the term allochtoon<\/em> is an example of this. Even though the word simply means \u201csomeone from another country\u201d, it is typically used to refer to visible minority immigrants. But not all visible minorities; it is mainly used for non-Western, non-white immigrants and over time has acquired a negative connotation. Hence the search for other terms, such as inwoners met een migratieachtergrond<\/em> (residents with a migration background), which is the current term used by the Dutch Bureau for Statistics. <\/p>\n

In the meantime, codes of ethics for translators and interpreters state that we must be truthful and neutral in our rendition. For example, the International Federation of Translators states:\u201d Every translation shall be faithful and render exactly the idea and form of the original \u2013 this fidelity constitutes both a moral and legal obligation for the translator\u201d.<\/p>\n

ATA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Practice states: \u201cFaithful, accurate and impartial translation or interpretation conveys the message as the author or speaker intended with the same emotional impact on the audience\u2026Impartial translation and interpreting requires the translator or interpreter to adopt a mantle of neutrality\u201d. But that also means if we want to remain truthful, \u201cit would also be inappropriate to \u2018clean up\u2019 objectionable language in the target language.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with so many other things in life, the first step is awareness; becoming aware that we all have biases, opinions and beliefs. To go a bit further into this issue and give you some more food for thought, I followed up with Neil after the workshop.<\/p>\n