Interpreting as intervention: norms, beliefs and strategies

According to academics, the interpreting profession has moved on from its traditional impartial black-box role to that of intervention. The first part of this paper will describe what intervention means in practice, and the various levels of intervention open to interpreters. It will be shown through the use of the Logical Levels model how the interpreter’s habitus both allows and constrains some levels of intervention according to professional norms and beliefs about interpreter identity. The second part of the paper reports an online survey of some 300 interpreters to gauge their own beliefs about invisibility, intervention and responsibility. The respondents’ replies show a clear resistance to anything more than a strategic intervention, following that favoured by the Paris School, and little interest in more ideological or reflexive types of intervention. Finally, it will be suggested that openness to change may well come from those interpreters working in other capacities, rather than from those working within the interpreting habitus itself.