Australia: Interpreters: Policy and Practice

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Interpreters: Policy and Practice: Immigrant Womens Support Service Forum

ANA MARIA ALLIMANT HOLAS began her presentation to the IWSS forum with the
lyrics of a popular song from the 1960s. The following article is an
edited version of her paper.


It's a restless hungry feeling
That don't mean no one no good,
When everything I'm a-sayin'
You can say it just as good.
You're right from your side,
I'm right from mine.
We're both just too many mornings
An' a thousand miles behind.[1]


In this brief presentation I would like to talk about the unsaid regarding
interpreting policies in Queensland and in Australia. I shall do this by
looking at the cracks in the official and formal discourses about
interpreting.

To begin, the formal discourse about interpreting does not say or align
with Suvendrini Pereras argument [2] that in contemporary Australia there
is an insistent trend towards a raceless or colourless (other than white)
society. I argue that this trend is responsible for a contradictory state
of affairs regarding people of non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB),
where at once we see a movement towards silencing, subjecting and
subordinating people of NESB to the Australian way - that is to say, Anglo
Saxon/Celtic - along with a movement towards a mega-visibility of the NESB
persons constructed as a threat, deviants (The Others) who must be kept
under surveillance both at home and in public.

The tendency to render NESB people at once invisible and mega-visible
creates a hungry feeling meaning no one any good, causing people to remain
separated by a thousand miles, like in the case of women who for various
reasons can not exercise their rights to an interpreter, while at the same
time become mega-visible (especially if they are Muslim) by being the
object of racial assaults and discrimination. The contradictory state of
affairs in Australia is also reflected, as Anthony Burke and Katharine
Gelber put it, in the sovereignty and rights paradigm [3]. The sovereignty
notion includes issues of national security, unity and government
responsibilities. The rights concept comprises the idea that humans are
born with definite rights. So the question is: can human rights be
exercised in a context of national security and sovereignty?

This trend (towards a raceless, colourless society other than white) is
not new and can be traced back to the times of the encounter between the
first people of this land and the convicts from Britain who, despite being
victims of the British class system, transported to a penal colony and
used as slave labour, still aspired to the higher status of colonisers.
Even though they could not disperse the indigenous peoples into total
oblivion, and thereby make a reality of the myth of Terra Nullius (empty
land), they did develop the apartheid model with Aborigines replacing them
on the bottom rung of the social ladder.

A later manifestation of this strong tendency towards a raceless (other
than white) Australia was the White Australia Policy that can be traced
from the anti-Chinese legislation of the 1850s to the appearance of
multiculturalism in the mid-1970s which aimed to suppress the racial
nature of Australia under a rhetoric devoted to values of equality in
cultural and economic terms [4] and the fantasy of the one Australian
nation.

This is most presently illustrated in the debate around the proposed
changes to the Australian Citizenship Legislation (a discussion paper
developed by the Commonwealth government) and in the words of the
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural
Affairs, Mr. Andrew Robb that says:

 The government believes it is important that immigrants develop English
skills which allow them to communicate effectively with their fellow
Australians to fully contribute to Australian society..."[5].

These words have an oppressive and dividing tone as only English speaking
abilities are praised amid ignoring the contributions made by NESB people
and the worth of NESB peoples cultures of origin. Thus, reinforcing that
identity and cohesion in Australia can only be achieved by the sharing of
a common mono-cultural history such as that of Anglo Saxon/Celtic.

Specific Issues

About 16% of Australias population speaks a language other than English at
home [6]. These foreign languages are a sign of Australian diversity and,
from the position argued earlier, are a menace to the pretence of one
culture, one nation that is sometimes expressed in a hostile reaction from
some people when hearing foreign languages in public spaces. This perhaps
may explain the late development of translating and interpreting services
that were almost non-existent in Australia up until the late 1960s. And,
may also explain why teachers advised migrant parents to speak only
English at home so children would only be exposed to the English language
and NESB students were dispersed into mixed classes to keep them away from
speaking their first language. Assimilation was the framework of this
approach in the late 1930s.

>>From around 1947 various government departments and the Red Cross did
translation for migrants until 1958 when the Department of Immigration and
Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) took responsibility. However the Whitlam
Labor government (1972) developed some important social reforms including
the creation of a Racial Discrimination Act, prohibiting discrimination on
the basis of race, colour, descent or ethnic origin [7] and provided the
opportunities for various advances in the multicultural area including the
establishment of the free Emergency Telephone Interpreter Service in
Melbourne and Sydney. In 1977 The National Accreditation Authority for
Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) was created to facilitate the
development of national standards.

In 1978 the Galbally Report found that in spite of the provision of
English language programs there would be a significant proportion of
people unable to speak English well. [8] The report recommended the
improvement of the Telephone Interpreting Services and the creation of
proper standards for the translating and interpreting professions.

Currently the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS) is still
available nationally. However, in recent years there has been a constant
unresolved tension between Federal and State Government responsibilities
about a universal provision. This tension represents a crack in the
nations commitment to have specific cultural institutions attempting to
assist people to reach social, politic, spiritual and economic
participation. In fact, many NESB people are marginalised and
disadvantaged by not being able to communicate and are silenced in their
capabilities and strengths, relegated to live in a sort of parallel
society.

Thereby NESB people are not being engaged within their conditions. More
exactly it denotes the extent to which NESB people are made to surrender
to Western practices, approaches, concepts and experiences. The gaze and
acts of practitioners, policy makers, services, and people in the
community - including NESB people  is tainted and precludes more equal
relationships. This is intimately related to a sense of spiritual and
emotional unwellness that many NESB people commonly express as not
belonging.

Language policies should not only be integrated with a culturally
competent approach but should also aim to assist NESB people to reach a
sense of belonging as a passage towards safety and well being that has
many routes, all interconnecting to a fair and inclusive destination. This
sense of belonging should be characterised by the diversity of its people
in terms of friends and social support networks. Services should be
created, not made or imposed. It requires time for listening, learning and
opportunities for sharing and developing a new set of social relations
along with cross-cultural encounters.

ANA MARIA ALLIMANT HOLAS

http://cpcabrisbane.org/Kasama/2006/V20n4/IWSS-Holas.htm

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