Multilingualism and interpreting: training for the EU

AGM and Conference in Mechelen 27 – 30 April 2010

The context of this research is located in the realm of multiculturalism and multilingualism as characteristics of modern Europe. Addressing this issue, Peter Hans Nelde affirms that “Language planning and language policy have thus become established in the cultural planning of the EU members in such a way that they are now even recognized by outsiders” (Nelde, 2007: 60). According to my interpretation of his words, the language planning policy of the EU members has to take into account basically also the second generation immigrants who return to their parents' homeland, which is the realm of this research among bilinguals in Portugal. By addressing the question of bilingualism in the training of Conference Interpreting, it is meant to approach multilingualism in the context of the European institutions as potential working places for our students and trainees in their future professional field, that is, interpreting. According to Joanne Winter and Anne Pauwels, “the second generation are seen as threats or challenges to language maintenance as well as potential transformers for bi/multilingualism and linguistic diversity” (Winter & Pauwels, 2007: 180). I will tackle the problematic from another point of view: the contribution that the second generation can use in the market place after having been trained in higher education as bilinguals is fundamental, at least in the field of conference interpreting. The methodology applied to this research is inspired by the experience of briefly interpreting at the European Parliament, in the late eighties, in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg, by the experience of training interpreters for approximately ten years and from the analysis of specialised literature on the subject. The necessary conclusions of this study range from the notion that bilingualism is not a guarantee that an interpreter is a better one only because she is a bilingual to the notion that intensive training can create skills and capacities in the trainee that compensate for her not being bilingual. According to Peter Scott, there has been a 20th century shift and it is probably wrong to conclude that “„humanism‟ and „the market‟ are fundamentally opposed” (Scott, 2010: 30). Our European Universities, Polytechnic Institutes and Schools of Higher Education have to reschedule their patterns of goals and modernise their teaching paradigms based on notions of “Humanism” adapted to the neo-liberal market demands. Mathilde Anquetil has affirmed that “Le programme Erasmus a longtemps répresenté le volet humaniste du projet européen par rapport à la construction technocratique d‟une union économique” (Anquetil, 2008: 233). So, the Europeans have to establish a balance between the economic needs demanded by the market, and at the same time preserve humanist values defending education for second generation immigrants who are bilinguals. The implications for Higher Education in this context are, forcibly, that a preparation of curriculum adaptation is crucial, if we are to train future interpreters, bilinguals or multilinguals to work for the European Institutions.