The Interpreter as Observer, Participant and Agent of Change

This paper is a reflection on the position of the interpreter as a third party in communication settings which were originally designed for two. For this reflection I propose to take the work of the German sociologist Georg Simmel on the Third and the Stranger as a conceptual framework. In order to ground this positioning of the interpreter as the Third, I will begin with a comparison of the interpreter with the ethnographer. I have introduced the idea to regard the interpreter as a professional participant observer—i.e. an ethnographer in earlier publications which were largely inspired by the work of the German cultural sociologist and translation scholar Göhring (Göhring 1977, 1978, 1980 in 2002; Bahadır 1998, 2004, 2007, 2008a, 2008b). The reason why I am so eager to make certain sociological and ethnographical concepts fruitful for our reflections on interpreter positioning is not only my enthusiasm for the sociology of the stranger and poststructuralist thinking on ethical issues. My eagerness stems from a desire to propose this meditation as a conceptual framework out of which to develop innovative pedagogical approaches for the education of interpreters on the one hand and innovative research methodologies for critical empirical field studies on the other. In this chapter, I will only hint at research-related aspects. ¹