The interpreter as language planner

Seminar paper 9 October, 1998,
seminar series in the research project
Translation and Interpreting -
a Meeting Between Languages and Cultures

0. Introduction

I will first discuss some aspects of language and terminology planning which are relevant to this paper. After a brief section on some aspects of diffusion theory comes a short review of research on the role of interpreters in the creation and diffusion of planned terminology. Finally I will report on a pilot study of interpreter's experience of terminological neology in interpreting situations and their attitudes towards planned terminology. In conclusion I will evaluate the present study and give some ideas for future discussion.

0.1 Acknowledgement

Part I

1. What is language planning?

1.1 Language as a resource

The political goals of Swedish immigration policy, unanimously adopted by the Swedish parliament in 1976, are equality, freedom of choice, and co-operation ('jämlikhet, valfrihet, samverkan'). The equality goal states, e.g., that immigrants shall have the same access as Swedish citizens to public services. Under the heading "freedom of choice" is the freedom for immigrants to opt for retaining their own language and culture (at least as long as this does not collide with Swedish law). The co-operation goal stands for the dream of a (future) society where immigrants and natives live and work side by side, equally contributing to the common good.

For the above goals to be fulfilled, among other things a well-functioning interpreter service is required. The Swedish system of government funded community interpreter ('kontakttolk') 2 service and state authorisation of community interpreters was inaugurated with the above three principles in mind.

1.1.1 Language and nationalism

However, some of the very features of language that give it this power under some circumstances may, under other circumstances, become major sources of disintegration and internal conflict within a national system."[...] while the development of a national language may be highly conducive to the creation and strengthening of national identity, the deliberate use of language for the purposes of national identity may—at least in a multiethnic state—have more disruptive than unifying consequences" (Kelman 1971:21).

1.1.2 A case in point: Serbo-Croatian interpreting in Sweden

During the 1990s the development in Ex-Yugoslavia and the great number of refugee clients changed the situation radically. Serbo-Croatian has to a great extent been substituted with Serbian, Croatian and lately Bosnian - in Sweden a new "language", SKB, has emerged (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian). It is unclear how this has affected the training scene; we still see joint interpreter courses for Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian interpreters, and many interpreters still call their language Serbo-Croatian.

1.2 Language planning as a social activity

Practitioners of actual language planning often attempt to solve language problems in purely linguistic terms either without considering the social environment in which a selected alternative is to be implemented or without attempting to predict outcomes. Thus they can never tell whether their activity has been successful. At the same time, however, they know a great deal first hand—and are at least unconsciously influenced by this knowledge—about the full chain of the decision-making process—a process, say, that starts with themselves, as originators of a new set of terms, and leads to the subject specialists, as users of such terms.
Much of language planning has also been relatively restricted because of the minor role that some practitioners have accepted for themselves—practitioners who are either unwilling or unable to consider the full importance that their work might have for a developing society. [. . .] (Rubin and Jernudd (1971:xv)

Language planning
 

1	is deliberate language change, i.e. changes in the systems of language code and/or changes in speaking, planned by organisations that have a mandate to fulfil such purposes
2	is focused on problem-solving: finding the best (optimal, most efficient) solution
3	is future-oriented: the outcomes of policies and strategies must be specified in advance of action taken, and since such forecasting implies uncertainty or risk, planning must allow for reformulation as new situations develop
4	must consider the facts of language within the fuller social context: it must consider the relevance of a) economic variables and interests; b) social variables and interests, e.g. attitudes towards languages and users of a language; c) political variables; e.g. expression of vested interests through problems of language; d) demographic and psychological variables

Table 1-1 Definition of language planning (After Rubin & Jernudd 1971:xvi) 

1.3 Haugen's descriptive model for language planning

Table 1-2 Haugen’s language planning model (After Haugen 1990:54, Benhamida 1989:30).

Note: German linguist Heinz Kloss (1969) was the one who introduced the widely accepted dichotomy of status planning versus corpus planning. Status planning refers to the social and political position a language will be assigned; cf. Haugen’s squares 1 and 3. Corpus planning refers to changes or standardising of certain elements of the language, e.g. lexicon and orthography; Haugen’s squares 2 and 4.

1.4 Tauli’s definition of language planning

LP is the methodical activity of regulating and improving existing languages or creating new common regional, national or international languages. LP comprises all spheres of the oral and written form of the language: phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicilogy (vocabulary) and orthography. (Tauli 1968:27)

1.4.1 Basic principles of language planning

1. An ideal language must do all of the job necessary for its purpose, the means of communication, i.e. it must convey all necessary information and shades of meaning.
2. It must be as economical, i.e. as easy for the speaker and the listener, as possible.
3. It must have an aesthetic form.
4. It must be elastic, i.e. easily adaptable to new tasks, i.e. for expression of new meanings.

(1) How to reconcile the contradictory demands of clarity and economy, i.e. which is the most efficient relation of clarity, redundancy and economy?

(2) Which is the most efficient and economic structure?
(3) (In tactic:) To what extent it is expedient deliberately to change a given language at a given moment, i.e. which is the most expedient relation between tradition and ideal?

Tauli gives a large number of principles for language planning, regarding e.g. clarity, economy, and aesthetic features. Of special interest for this paper are his principles of vocabulary planning. They also give a good picture of Tauli’s practical approach to language planning (evidently influenced by his Estonian background; see e.g. Principles L3 and L5).

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Tauli’s principles of vocabulary planning (VP) (Tauli 1968:68-126)

Principle L1: An efficient language must have no fewer and no more words than are necessary for efficient communication.

Principle L2: Vocabulary planning must allow for special conditions and demands of the different styles and special languages.

Principle L3: Other conditions being equal an international word is to be preferred to a native unilingual word (the principle of internationality).

Principle L4: Foreign phonic elements which are difficult to pronounce for a native speaker must, as a rule, not be used in international words.

Principle L5: Foreign inflectional morphemes should be eliminated, as a rule.

Principle L6: When two meanings are to be used often in the same context, separate words are to be used for them.

Principle L7: When the meaning of a word is directly linked with the meaning of another word, motivation is to be preferred as a rule; when the meaning forms an indivisible integral whole, an arbitrary word is to be preferred.

Principle L8: When the meanings with a common element in case of which ML [motivated lexeme] is to be preferred, as a rule, occur frequently and in the same context, and the compound word is too cumbersome and the derivate inefficient, an economic AL [arbitrary lexeme] is to be preferred.

Principle L9: The word length must be inversely related to the frequency of occurrence [cf. Effectivity Principle E3: The more frequent the expression the shorter it must be.]

1.5 Linguistic purity

[Purism is] the struggle against neologisms, against the introduction into usage of loan and international words etc., not based on a scientific study of the developmental tendencies of a given language, and the activity of people attempting to protect their native language from foreign influence (Axmanova 1966: quoted in Thomas 1991:11).
[Purism is] an attitude towards language which disapproves of deviations from certain grammatical rules, or neologisms and borrowings from other languages. Often purists make a vain attempt to preserve the status quo of a language. (Hartmann and Stork 1972; quoted in Thomas 1991:11-12).

Purism is the manifestation of a desire on the part of a speech community (or some section of it) to preserve a language from, or rid it of, putative foreign elements or other elements held to be undesirable (including those originating in dialects, sociolects and styles of the same language). It may be directed at all linguistic levels but primarily the lexicon. Above all, purism is an aspect of the codification, cultivation and planning of standard languages. (Thomas 1991:12)

Some kind of purism is a stage every standardised language undergoes. Thomas (1991:139) sets up the following hypotheses regarding the inevitability of purism:

1. Purism is an inevitable phase through which any language must pass on its way to full development as a prestigious, autonomous and polyvalent standard language.
2. The puristic orientation, and the intensity of the puristic movement are determined by the aesthetic features which are paramount during the phase of language standardisation.

2 Language planning in Sweden

2.1 Language planning or language care?

Haugen insists on calling also the above activities language planning, which is a term that he says covers any treatment of languages both in developing and industrial countries (Haugen 1990:52). In Haugen’s model of language planning the Nordic endeavours would (at least) fit in slot 3, Implementation (educational spread): correction procedures, evaluation) and 4, Elaboration (functional development): terminological modernisation, stylistic development (see section 2.3). And this is indeed, so Haugen, what e.g. Svenska språknämnden (the Swedish Language Council) is working with: publishing literature on orthography, pronunciation, right and wrong in language, word formation, transcription of Russian characters, the language of mass media, bureaucrats and technicians, questions and answers about correct language, language history etc.:

In short, Swedish as a well established standard language has a persistent problem of implementation (information to the public) and elaboration (decisions concering new problems, e.g. the writing of neologisms). I suggest that their "[language] care" is such a continuing planning process, here called implementation and elaboration, which goes on in every language after its basic form has been established. (Haugen 1990:52, my translation/HN.)

2.2 The Swedish-Finnish Language Council

The work of the Swedish-Finnish Language Council resembles to a great deal that of other language planning authorities in the Nordic Countries. The Council has a telephone service for questions about terminology and other linguistic issues, e.g. correct language use. It compiles terminology recommendations in the form of glossaries, and publishes its own journal, Kieliviesti. The Council co-operates with its counterparts in Finland in the (attempted) harmonisation of Finnish language terminology in Sweden and Finland. Much of its work at present seems to be aiming at consolidating the Finnish minory’s self esteem, one of the problems being that Finnish has not been recognised as a minority language in Sweden, and thus the Finns have not felt that they had any rights to develop their own language variety. Fortunately, the attitude of Finns in Sweden towards their own language seems to less contemptuous now than some years ago (Ehrnebo 1996:49). The goal of many Finnish linguistic ”activists” in Sweden is bilingualism: ”Vi är inte halvspråkiga, vi vill icke bli enspråkiga, låt oss därför vara kaksikielisiä” (= ”we are not semilingual, we do not want to become monolingual, let us therefore be kaksikielisiä [= bilingual]”) (title of an article by Jarmo Lainio, cited in Ehrnebo 1996).

Director of the Swedish-Finnish Language Council Paula Ehrnebo points out:

We Finns in Sweden like to talk about bilingualism as our goal. With respect to this and to our future as a linguistic minority it is important that we have our own designations for concepts describing the Swedish society, so that we will not for the lack of words be forced to use Swedish designations when we speak Finnish. We cannot even presume that our message reaches home to the receiver if we mix Finnish and Swedish arbitrarily. (Ehrnebo 1996:50, translation by HN.)

Generally speaking the vocabulary of Finnish in Sweden does not in any decisive way differ from standard Finnish (Ehrnebo 1996:53).

Question 29 in our survey (see section 4) asks how often Finnish interpreters turn to the council for advice in terminological matters. The only participating Finnish interpreter did not answer that question. A separate study of Finnish interpreters will be conducted at a later time.