The emotional strain in community interpreting: Cognitive aspects of direct versus indirect address as observed by interpreters

Abstract

Abstract In Poland, as in most countries, interpreting (similarly to translation) is a free profession (apart from sworn translation and interpreting rendered by certified translators and interpreters) which does not adhere to any particular prescriptive code or officially accepted regulations. Efforts have been made both internationally and domestically to introduce a set of universal principles or a professional working framework on commercial and scholar grounds (various codes of conduct drafted by organisations worldwide) to standardise techniques and approaches to interpreting with the aim of establishing a set of practices to ensure high quality interpreting. Regardless of the prescriptive nature of such codes or guidelines and the work of scholars, one of the matters that is of essence and still seems open for discussion is the choice of the grammatical person in which interpreters render and relay interpreted messages to their clients. This article presents a short description of what community interpreting is, its place within the interpreting domain, and it focuses on the aspect of direct/indirect address (using first or third grammatical person, respectively, while interpreting), its emotional and cognitive strain which the interpreters experience, and related lexical and grammatical choices they consequently make. The purpose of the article is the identification of possible reasons of such choices on the basis of feedback received from professionally active interpreters (both as full-time and part-time interpreters) in diverse settings: business, community, remote interpreting. The study reveals that the choice of grammatical person depends on many factors, such as cognitive and emotional strain, personal preference, context, client, and, in most cases, it is not dictated by any code of conduct.