In the Limelight? Interpreters’ Visibility in Transborder Interpreting

This paper explores photographs that were taken along the Austrian and Slovene border between 2015 and 2018 as ethnographic records of a specific field of interpreting. The photographs show interpreters who helped bridge communication barriers in situations when the mass displacement of refugees fro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:ELOPE (Tiskana izd.) 2021, Vol.18 (1), p.37-54
Main Authors: Nuč, Aleksandra, Pöllabauer, Sonja
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boundaries
Communication
Ethnography
Geopolitics
humanitarian interpreting
Humanitarianism
interpreter agency
Interpreters
public service interpreting
visibility
visual analysis
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper explores photographs that were taken along the Austrian and Slovene border between 2015 and 2018 as ethnographic records of a specific field of interpreting. The photographs show interpreters who helped bridge communication barriers in situations when the mass displacement of refugees from the Middle East resulted in an increased demand for interpreters for a range of languages that had previously not been as sought after. The photographs come from a corpus of pictures and accompanying texts that were compiled through a picture search in digital media. Drawing on the constructs of (in)visibility and bodily semiotics, a set of chosen examples is analysed qualitatively, using a visually oriented approach to examine interpreters’ positionality and agency in transborder humanitarian interpreting. The results suggest a high degree of interactional agency and visibility, but less social visibility.
ISSN:1581-8918
2386-0316
DOI:10.4312/elope.18.1.37-54