Dilek Dizdar & Tomasz Rozmyslowicz
The paper presents results from a new research project on the role of translation and interpreting in the context of forced migration. In this project, field research is conducted in a German reception facility for refugees. The research interest focuses on an often neglected but central aspect of forced migration: the role of translation and interpretation in the communications between refugees and authorities. Contrary to the widespread view in everyday life and also in academia, these mediation processes are not neutral and harmless acts of transferring meaning. Rather, they are complex and consequential practices of constructing and processing difference that require in-depth investigation.
The presentation will show how translating and interpreting do not simply cross existing language boundaries, but first and foremost draw them, sorting people by language and assigning them to language communities (Sakai 2018; Dizdar 2021). Under what institutional conditions do such assignments take place? And what consequences do they entail? What does it mean, for example, when refugees from Africa are classified as «French-speaking» and therefore have to speak the language of a former colonial power? What does it mean to be subsumed under a category like «Arabic» when it encompasses a multitude of different and not necessarily mutually intelligible ways of speaking (Dizdar 2021)?
By answering such questions, the presentation aims to reconsider the relation between language and translating/interpreting practices on a theortical level.
Dizdar, Dilek (2021): «Translation als Katalysator von Humandifferenzierung», in: Dizdar, Dilek/Hirschauer, Stefan/Paulmann, Johannes/Schabacher, Gabriele (Hg.) (2021): Humandifferenzierung. Disziplinäre Perspektiven und empirische Sondierungen. Weilerswist: Velbrück, 135-159.
Sakai, Naoki (2018): „The modern regime of translation and its politics”, in: D’hulst, L./Gambier, Y. (Hg.): A History of Modern Translation Knowledge: Sources, concepts, effects. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins (Benjamins Translation Library 146), 61-74.
Keywords: refugees, translation/interpreting, language, field research, asylum centre.