Thanks, Arslan, for sharing your experience. Kia baat hai! That sounds like a demanding process, translating from not just one but two different languages into English. As you say, it involves a lot of decision-making and nuance which may not always be obvious to outsiders, especially if they are monolingual. As Ingrid asks, it would be great to know more about your experience of doing that work – what was expected of you and whether you felt that you were adequately acknowledged and compensated for this demanding work.

Thanks, Sihoon, for sharing these reflections. You give two very good examples of how interpreters’ work is undervalued: one, through colleagues’ practices in the workplace, and the other on a structural legal/policy level in terms of how governments value particular in-demand skills and grant visas on that basis. Undoubtedly, we need more interpreters and translators in Australia, yet having professional skills in this area is not necessarily recognized or rewarded through our skilled migration programs. On that note, I discuss how migrants’ language skills and language work are not always recognized within migration legal practice in Australia in another post https://www.languageonthemove.com/intercultural-communication-in-migration-law-practice/

Thank you for sharing Arslan, I agree with what you say, especially how “the ability to capture not just the words but also the underlying sentiments is a delicate skill,” as someone who have done both translating and interpreting, it is quite difficult to capture the essence of the target language into the subject language. I especially respect speakers of one or more languages also doing translations in multiple languages. Although Punjabi and Urdu both have words in common and belong to a similar language group in a sense, it must be unbelievably challenging to switch between the languages. Again, thank you for sharing, it also gave me a chance to look back at the struggles I had in translating and interpreting.

My colleague and I were talking about a topic similar to this. She mentioned how when she was working for Samsung, her work was not recognized at all and all the credits went to the person who initiated the project. Interpreters have little voice in the workplace as they are the ones who carry someone else’s message along, not having their say in the matter. I personally believe that it is important to give credits to the interpreters because there are many struggles in interpreting as well as translating. It takes talent, training and skill to do something like that. I recently found out that translators and interpreters planning on working in Australia are not granted the residency from the government. It is sad how despite having a NAATI certificate, interpreters still have a hard time finding a way to stay here. Perhaps this is why less and less people are taking the exam as years go by.

Thank you for sharing your experience, Arslan! Did you also experience that your role as interpreter was downplayed or erased, as described in the post?

While language translation can be complex in many contexts, it becomes even more critical and poignant when dealing with refugees. Their stories often revolve around profound emotions and the ever-present fear of homelessness, making the role of an interpreter even more crucial in such situations. The ability to capture not just the words but also the underlying sentiments is a delicate skill, one that can significantly impact the understanding and empathy extended to these individuals. It’s a role that I deeply appreciate and respect, having been in a similar position.

This essay is a great piece and example of applied interlingual analytics with a general aspect by far exceeding the peculiarities of Australias actual praxis to handle a problem, that is gaining global importance and impact in the near future up to the end of the century, since it will come to the foreground of global geopolitics in the wake of the complex of the syndrom the global economy and ‘society’ are facing.

As you analyze it, you in fact go far beyond linguistics, since there is a whole complex of actors, organizational structures and comminication partners and adversaries interacting across multiple instances and lsnguages, culturally difetent habits and criss crossing intentions, universes of meaning (semantics), such, that in fact what you do is and affords a ‘universal pragmatics’ as is explicated in Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, to be as aware of the topic in question as will be recommendable and in fact necessary to get at the ‘armament’ that is to be applied to make the desirable progress in the gereral case you are engaged in, and of course, not alone.

Thanks for the piece from the engaged lawyer’s point of view. It came in handy.

With best wishes