Article in:
Translation and Interpreting Studies: Online-First Articles

Steering ethics toward social justice

A model for a meta-ethics of interpreting

| Hamad Bin Khalifa University
The interpreting field has not been impervious to the call for dismantling patterns of injustice that extend down to the communication encounter. However, its engagement with socio-political commitment and change remains largely constrained by a deontological and liberal tradition. To decenter interpreting from this tradition and to steer its ethics toward social justice, this paper proposes a meta-ethical approach to and a model of interpreting. It explores activist interpreting in the global justice movement from three complementary standpoints: interpreting in the encounter (micro), politics of organization (macro) and enquiry (meso). The case study shows that social justice does not only concern the leverage of citizens’ benefits in the welfare state, but also consists of a communicational and social performance. The model can equip researchers to harness the liberatory potential of praxes, discourses and epistemologies found in the social movement milieu to refashion ethical language and thought in the field.
Keywords: activism, meta-ethics, interpreting, tridimensional model, social justice
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The deontology of professional associations: Who benefit and how?
  • Ethics in training and research: A professional heritage
  • Toward a renewed prescriptivism: Teleological ethics
  • Meta-ethics of interpreting
  • A tridimensional model of interpreting: Meta-ethics in context
  • Explorations in the global justice movement
    • Macro: The politics of organization of interpreting
    • Micro: Interpreting in the encounter
    • Meso: Steering ethics toward social justice
  • Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 January 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.20070.boe
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