Indirect interpreting: Stumbling block or stepping stone?Spanish booth perceptions of relay
ElenaAguirre Fernández Bravo
Universidad Pontificia Comillas
Abstract
Indirect interpreting, known by practitioners as ‘relay’, takes place in contexts where interpreting between two
languages is carried out by means of a third, pivot language, thus creating a communicative chain between two interpreters: the
one rendering an original speech into a pivot language, and the other rendering the first’s version into a different target
language. Relay is used in many multilingual settings to ensure that all interlocutors can use their mother tongue, and the
European Union institutions are a prominent example of such settings. Indirect interpreting is thus a reality that many
professionals deal with on a daily basis. Despite this, it has not been the subject of much research as yet. This article explores
the connections between indirect interpreting and the construct of quality in the ears of the interpreters who regularly give and
take relay. The research first involved a focus group comprising six European Union-accredited conference interpreters with
Spanish as their mother tongue. A focus group discussion aimed to identify salient issues in the giving and taking of relay across
different contexts and meeting formats. The itemised concepts emerging from the discussion were then used to devise a
questionnaire to gain further insight into interpreters’ concerns and ideas regarding quality indicators in indirect interpreting.
Thirty professionals responded to the questionnaire. The results are analysed with a focus on the lessons that may be insightful
for Translation and Interpreting Studies.
According to Toury (1995), the study of indirect translation “presents a convenient means of moving from observable phenomena to underlying factors, precisely because its external manifestations are often easy to discern and its contours relatively simple to draw” (130). The increasing use of indirect translation in recent years can be explained by globalisation, “given that within an international network of power relations, intercultural text transfer is often mediated by dominant systems” (Assis Rosa, Pięta, and Bueno Maia 2017, 114). Interpreting in multilingually complex contexts, where indirect interpreting, or relay, is used to cover a wider range of working languages, is no exception to this.
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