Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet, and Miriam Shlesinger, eds. 2011.

Identity and
Status in the Translational Professions. Benjamins Current Topics 32.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. XIII + 282 pp. ISBN 978 90 272 0251 2.
€95.00. $143.
Reviewed by Gisella M. Vorderobermeier (University of Graz)

This volume sets out to “contribute to the emerging research on the social forma-
hkpolyuhkg/1 IP: 158.132.124.180 On: Mon, 27 Aug 2018 03:02:26

tion of translators and interpreters as specific occupational groups” (blurb). It does

so with a focus on the “translator’s social background, status struggles and sense
of self.” The extension “in the translational professions” in the book’s title does
not promise too much; in reality, the volume covers considerable ground, ranging
from the uneasy co-existence of legal and translational occupations in translation-
related sectors of the legal field to literary translation and conference and sign-
language interpreting. This wide thematic (but also geographical) scope makes it
all the more appropriate to re-issue these 14 articles — previously published in two
consecutive special issues of Translation and Interpreting Studies — in the series
Benjamins Current Topics. The volume provides valuable insights to practitioners
of other disciplines that take an interest in the translational professions and offers
a wide-reaching and differentiated view of the theoretical resonances of the pro-
fessional sphere in the academic context of Translation Studies.
In a concise but helpful introduction, Rakefet Sela-Sheffy aims at pinning
down the difficult and dazzling notion of “identity” in view of the volume’s objec-
tives. Her contention is that “identity,” when “conceived not as a fixed entity, but
rather as a dynamic and multi-layered cultural construct, collectively produced
and re-produced through social struggles” (2), might be considered as having
“everything to do with status and self-esteem” (ibid.). The introduction does not
refer to earlier publications in Translation Studies which have focused explicitly
on the theme of “translation and identity” (Cronin 2006), which in view of the
volume’s concentration on the occupational side of these processes seems to be a
justifiable choice. Sela-Sheffy also states how the editors perceive the aims of the
volume, which is neither “meant as a call for yet another shift of paradigms in TS,
as it were, towards purely sociological research” (5) nor as “a call for a new theory
of translation” (ibid.), but should rather enhance existing frameworks.
The volume is divided into two sections: “Questions of Status and Field” and
“Questions of Role and Identity.” The rationale behind this editorial decision is to
promote a rapprochement between macro-perspectives (questions of professional

Target 26:2 (2014), 322–328.  doi 10.1075/target.26.2.16vor

issn 0924–1884 / e-issn 1569–9986 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Book reviews 323

status) and micro-perspectives (questions of identity). The articles are almost

evenly distributed between translation and interpreting with a slight preponder-
ance of studies on interpreting. The editors clearly position this collection with
respect to other research pertaining to the sociology of professions and it becomes
evident how much an editorial project can profit from being embedded in an over-
arching project conducted by the editors themselves (for a general outline of the
project, see the preface; for first results, see Sela-Sheffy and Shlesinger 2008, Sela-
Sheffy 2010). This lends the volume its specific contours when compared with oth-
er publications venturing in a similar direction such as the special issue of Hermes
dedicated to a Focus on the Translator (van Dam and Korning Zethsen 2009) or
publications which exhibit a narrower focus on professionalization, while at the
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same time also striving to accommodate the micro-/macro-perspective within

their overall structure (e.g., Wadensjö et al. 2007).
What makes this volume remarkable is the combination of rich empirical data
and theoretical acumen displayed in most of the articles. This quality immediately
becomes apparent in the first contribution to the first section (“Questions of Status
and Field”): Esther Monzó’s article “Legal and Translational Occupations in Spain:
Regulation and Specialization in Jurisdictional Struggles” (11–30) is a laudable
effort to combine concepts derived from the sociology of professions with those
of Bourdieu’s theory of practice. The author distinguishes two major strategies
for status advancement of occupational groups, “distinction” (in Bourdieu’s sense)
and “legitimation” (in the sense of Bledstein), and applies this framework to ac-
count for status struggles between certified translators and interpreters (TIs) and
court interpreters in one instance, and between certified TIs and notaries public
in the other. Both conflicts are explored in the Spanish context and on the basis of
data derived from that context.
In his contribution on the effectiveness of translator certification, Andy Chan,
in what can be considered a fairly original approach, takes as his point of departure
theories in economics centred on the signalling function of certain formal quali-
fications, credentials, etc. for potential employers. As far as general stance is con-
cerned, it needs pointing out that concepts like ‘employability’ would merit, and
indeed have already received, a more critical reception elsewhere (cf. Boltanski
and Chiapello 2005; Schultheis 2009). Relying in his experimental study on the
use of fictitious résumés accompanied by interviews amongst translator recruit-
ers in Hong Kong, he demonstrates that formal education and work experience
outweigh the signalling power of certification. He arrives at the assumption that
this might, in part, be a consequence of a lack in knowledge and understanding re-
garding certification; hence his plea for a concerted effort by those involved (trans-
lation companies, training institutions and professional associations) to develop
reliable “multilateral signalling mechanisms.”
 324 Book reviews

While most of the articles have a very clear-cut focus on one of the transla-
tional professions, three contributions — namely those of Andy Chan (discussed
above), David Katan and the piece co-authored by Robin Setton and Alice Guo
Liangliang — span either the whole professional arena of translation and inter-
preting or at least a major part of it, albeit for different reasons.
David Katan’s contribution, “Occupation or Profession: A Survey of the
Translators’ World” (65–87) is characterized by a certain nonchalance in arrang-
ing his data, which is not, however, detrimental to the article as a whole. The same
holds true for some of its methodological flaws. His aim is nothing less than gain-
ing an insight into translators’ and interpreters’ mind-sets or “perception of their
working world” (66), perhaps even to find “a supranational practitioner identity”
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(ibid.), which he hopes to achieve by means of a worldwide web-based survey. The

question underlying the article’s title, namely whether the step from an occupation
to a profession has already taken place (which is, needless to say, a crucial issue in
the context of a volume such as this), is answered in the negative.
As a first attempt to explore the peculiarities of the translation and interpret-
ing professions in mainland China and Taiwan, Robert Setton and Alice Guo
Liangliang’s article has several merits, including the proper contextualization of
the article’s scope and aims, positioned against the backdrop of more general po-
litical and economic developments. In addition to some valuable general explora-
tions (demographical data and professional profiles, e.g., self-definition, training,
membership of associations, etc.), it poses some research questions which, given
the exploratory nature of the study, are quite ambitious and sophisticated (e.g.,
the degree of commitment to translation or interpretation as profession, or norms
regarding allegiance or neutrality and their respective presumed or actual rooted-
ness in cultural contexts). The article is methodologically sound and presents its
conclusions (e.g., the tendency to tone down offensive language in general or vari-
ous kinds of criticism in particular) with due caution.
Closing the first section, Cornelia Zwischenberger, in one of three articles
dedicated to conference interpreting, presents well-chosen examples from a larger
ongoing research project addressing the self-representation of practitioners (her
respondents being AIIC members worldwide) as compared with role-perceptions
promulgated by the AIIC as a professional body. According to the data from her
survey there is a considerable overlap between role-perceptions in these kinds of
“meta-discourses”: on the one hand, perceptions elicited in the course of the proj-
ect, and on the other, those found in texts by early practitioners and texts by the
AIIC. Here it would have been interesting to break these data down according to
different sub-categories of respondents (e.g., to relate it to identifiable formative
periods in their careers), as she does with regard to self-estimates of practitioners’
(own) importance in relation to enabling successful communication.
 Book reviews 325

In this first section, the juxtaposition of several empirical studies with di-
verse methodological designs (among them several survey-based studies) in itself
renders the volume particularly valuable in terms of its potential for stimulating
further research and inviting methodological reflection. A meta-methodological
“survey of surveys” (49) like that of Franz Pöchhacker (“Conference Interpreting:
Surveying the Profession,” 49–63), included in the first section, is also well placed
in a book such as this. Although it is compiled according to an explicitly person-
ally informed perspective and as such does not lay claim to exhaustiveness, this
piece offers a much-needed overview of what has been achieved in survey-based
research in the area of conference interpreting. Here, the perception of practitio-
ners’ roles emerges as one of the major concerns within the corpus.
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The section on “Questions of Role and Identity” starts with an article by Reine
Meylaerts, which is a thorough and carefully composed piece on the socio-biogra-
phies of native literary author-translators in a diglossic society (Belgium) marked
by linguistic conflicts. On this basis she derives a tentative typology of the habitus
of the individuals in question, which is moulded not least by these conflicts and
the ensuing hierarchies between (their working) languages.
The article is followed by Hannah Amit-Kochavi’s contribution. Drawing on
more than three decades of data-collection, the author presents a picture of the en-
tire population (consisting of 170 individuals) of literary translators from Arabic
into Hebrew from the late 19th century until today. Set against the background of
changing historical and political contexts in British-ruled Palestine and later in
Israel, the author concentrates on ethnic affiliation, education, occupations and
ideological attitudes as well as on analysing recurrent work patterns. As the blurb
puts it, this volume aims to study “ ‘the group of individuals’ who perform the
complex translation and/or interpreting task, thereby creating their own space of
cultural production” (blurb); Amit-Kochavi’s contribution matches this aim to
perfection. The wealth of empirical material renders it a fascinating and unique
piece of research.
The highly interesting and convincing article by Elena Baibikov, aptly titled
“Revised Translations, Revised Identities: (Auto)biographical Contextualization
of Translation” and taking as its central example one of the eminent figures in
literary translation in Japan, Yuasa Yoshiko, deals with the mutual influence of
life experiences and processes of the construction of (professional) identity (as
expressed in a given translational approach). Regrettably, though, some notions,
such as “gender identity” (174) or the “cognitive as well as emotional map of the
world” (ibid.), remain under-conceptualized.
Kumiko Torikai’s article recapitulates some of the central findings of her
monograph Voices of the Invisible Presence: Diplomatic Interpreters in Post-
World War II Japan. Using oral history as a method, she arrives at finely nuanced
 326 Book reviews

conclusions in what is certainly one of the most valuable recent contributions to

the discussion surrounding the role of the interpreter: a comparison of perceived
and actual role in terms of Goffman (‘animator,’ ‘author’ and ‘principal’) shows that
the two almost invariably differ for the five conference interpreters interviewed by
the author. Interpreters take a more active stance in actual performance than they
perceive themselves. This, moreover, has to be seen against the backdrop of the
mostly indifferent, if not negative attitude of the interviewees towards discussing
issues of culture and cultural barriers with regard to (their) interpreting. A minor
flaw seems to be that in her theoretical discussion of the concept of ‘culture,’ inter-
spersed with the interpretation of the interviews, the author could perhaps have
benefited from a more critical engagement with the diverse concepts of ‘culture’
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that can be found in the humanities.

In “Images of the Court Interpreter: Professional Identity, Role Definition and
Self-image” (209–229), Ruth Morris explores images of the court interpreter from
both historical and contemporary perspectives. Basing her study primarily on
court records, she is able to reveal the awareness (or lack thereof) of the different
parties involved with regard to issues which have been shown to be “perennial” in
an earlier article by the author (Morris 1999), namely, “entitlement” (to interpreta-
tion), “determination” (with regard to a need of interpretation) and “quality” (of
interpretation). The article is well documented and well argued and does justice
to its (historical) sources whilst at the same time gaining new insights precisely by
confronting the past with data from recent cases.
The importance of Claudia Angelelli’s article, “A Professional Ideology in the
Making: Bilingual Youngsters Interpreting for their Communities and the Notion
of (no) Choice” (231–245), lies in its insistence on a differentiated view of bilin-
gualism within Translation Studies in general and more specifically on the need to
take into account the experiences of early interpreters in translation research and
didactics as well as in the educational system as a whole. The author concentrates
her discussion of this issue on the distinction into “circumstantial” and “elective
bilinguals.” Her article is profoundly imbricated in the discussion about linguistic
rights and is a ground-breaking piece of research with major implications both in
our discipline and beyond.
In one of the most inspiring articles of the book, Nadja Grbić seeks to apply
boundary theory to the construction of the field of sign language interpreting in
Austria. After usefully setting her research project and her theoretical point of de-
parture against the backdrop of the ubiquitous nature of classification processes,
she elaborates on “boundary work” in general and demonstrates its pertinence to
her field of study, describing it as a “sensitizing concept” (255). As such it allows her
to trace the ‘when,’ ‘where,’ ‘who,’ ‘why’ and ‘how’ with regard to practices which
consist in drawing boundaries (e.g., between different categories of interpreters).
 Book reviews 327

These practices, as becomes evident from the article, are very meaningful for the
professional group and have been shaping professionalization in this area from its
very beginnings in the late 1980s.
Şebnem Bahadır’s thought-provoking article touches upon “critical discourse
on translators’ ethics and ideology and the activist demand on interfering with and
reformulating translators’ social role” (5) and as such is a suitable conclusion to
the volume. The article’s section headings indicate its thematic range: “The task”;
“The third person”; “The paradox”; “The voice.” With its bare eleven pages, the
paper struggles somewhat to accommodate the ideas of thinkers like Simmel and
Derrida (and Zygmunt Bauman, en passant); more room would have been needed
for an elaboration of how their thinking can be related to translational matters.
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The author refers to Simmel and his notion of “der Unparteiische” to describe the
position of the interpreter as “the third” who by his/her very presence introduces a
qualitative change in the constellation (dyad to triad), while she invokes Derrida’s
notion of “to profess” in her thoughts on the necessity of a performative turn in
interpreting research and teaching.
To sum up, the contributions in this carefully edited and eminently readable
volume (with an excellent and useful index) present a wealth of empirical material
as well as a great deal of stimulating conceptual work. The volume is indispensable
reading for Translation Studies scholars interested in the sociology of professions
and it offers a number of insights with respect to the sociology of translation in
general. It is, moreover, highly recommended to anyone trying to keep up with
the not-so-mechanic mechanisms and driving forces underlying differentiation
processes within our field of study and the “effets de théorie” (Bourdieu 1981) in-
forming them.

References

Boltanski, Luc, and Ève Chiapello. 2005. The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1981. “Décrire et prescrire.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 38: 69-73.
DOI: 10.3406/arss.1981.2120
Cronin, Michael. 2006. Translation and Identity. London: Routledge.
Dam, Helle, and Karen Korning Zethsen, eds. 2009. Translation Studies: Focus on the Translator.
Special Issue of Hermes 42.
Morris, Ruth. 1999. “The Face of Justice: Historical Aspects of Court Interpreting.” Interpreting
4 (1): 97-123. DOI: 10.1075/intp.4.1.10mor
Schultheis, Franz. 2009. “Rethinking the Capability Approach for the Younger Generation:
‘Youth’ as a Factory to Produce a Flexible and Employable Workforce.” In From Employability
towards Capability, ed. by Klaus Schneider, and Hans-Uwe Otto, 71-83. Luxembourg: Inter-
Actions.
 328 Book reviews

Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet, and Miriam Shlesinger. 2008. “Strategies of Image-Making and Status
Advancement of Translators and Interpreters as a Marginal Occupational Group: A
Research Project in Progress.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies. Investigations in
Homage to Gideon Toury, ed. by Anthony Pym, Myriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni,
79-90. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/btl.75.07sel
Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet. 2010. “‘Stars’ or ‘Professionals’: The Imagined Vocation and Exclusive
Knowledge of Translators in Israel.” MonTI 2: 131-152. DOI: 10.6035/MonTI.2010.2.7
Torikai, Kumiko. 2009. Voices of the Invisible Presence: Diplomatic Interpreters in Post-World War
II Japan. Benjamins Translation Library 83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/
btl.83
Wadensjö, Cecilia, Birgitta Englund Dimitrova, and Anna-Lena Nilsson, eds. 2007. The Critical
Link 4. Professionalisation of Interpreting in the Community. Benjamins Translation Library
70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
hkpolyuhkg/1 IP: 158.132.124.180 On: Mon, 27 Aug 2018 03:02:26

Reviewer’s address
Gisella M. Vorderobermeier
Institut für Translationswissenschaft
Universität Graz
Merangasse 70
8010 Graz
Austria
gisella.vorderobermeier@uni-graz.at