Abstract
Translator and interpreter identity came into focus with the “cultural turn” in the first decade of the new millennium (Pym 2004Shlesinger, M. and Jettmarová, Z. “Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting”. In: Pym, A.; Shlesinger, M., and Jettmarová, Z. Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2006.) and even more in the 2010s with the “sociological turn” in translation and interpreting studies (Wolf 2012Whorf, B.L. Language, Thought, and Reality. Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Ed. J. B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956.). In this paper we explore narratives as an approach to understanding complex and not rarely conflictive interpreter identities in two ways. In a theoretical sense we understand that interpreting is to process, adapt and reconstruct narratives in a cognitive way that is compatible with, accessible and acceptable for all partiesinvolved, based on Humboldt (1999)Humboldt, W. On Language, On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species. Trans. P. Heath. Ed. Michael Losonsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999., Wittgenstein (1922)Wittgenstein, L. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. C. K. Ogden. Intro. Bertrand Russell. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1922., Eco (1986)Eco, U. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986., Blikstein (1997)Blikstein, I. Kaspar Hauser ou a fabricação da realidade. São Paulo: Cultrix, 1997., and others as well as on Baker (2006)Baker, M. “The Changing Landscape of Translation and Interpreting Studies”. In: Bermann, S., and Porter, C. A Companion to Translation Studies. Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2014. who describes the world as a projection of conflicting narratives that are the same time the very reason for the need for interpreting and for identity conflicts of interpreters. On the other hand, we look at literary narratives about interpreters or written by interpreters to illustrate the findings of the first part of this article.
Keywords
Narratives; Translation and Conflict; Intercultural Identity; Interpreter Identity