Translators and lnterpreters: Can They Be Friends?

Abstract

l am an interpreter with a past: l have been a translator. As a matter of fact, in the bottom of my heart, l stili am; l am, you might say, a closet translator, clandestinely moonlighting at the keyboard while most of my U.N. colleagues go blithely about the business of leisure. Have you noticed the way interpreters wince at being called translators, pretty much as spinsters resent being addressed as 'Mrs'? There is this rather nasty feeling between us who interpret and us who translate that translators are interpreters who never quite made it, whereas interpreters are translators who managed to move out of the ghetto. lnterpretation is one of the oldest intellectual activities man ever engaged in. The fact has been used as proof a) that interpreters are born, not made, and b) that there is, therefore, absolutely no need for any theory; the same is adduced about translation, of course. But let us listen to what Vygotsky had to say 60 years ago. Every syllable Vygotsky writes about spontaneous and scientific concepts in relation to the child could be easily extrapolated to translators and interpreters.