Deciphering ‘Voice’ from ‘Words’: Interpreting Translation Practices in the Field

The presence of an interpreter influences the dynamic between the researcher and the participants. This influence penetrates the multiple layers of the research process: speaking, listening, interpreting and contextual understanding. This paper seeks to move beyond a formulaic approach to research methods and to unpack how researchers respond to the interpreted interview, understood here as an encounter fully embedded in the practices and experiences of the field outside the linguistic act of translation. It draws its insights directly from recent qualitative fieldwork undertaken in Nicaragua and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In both countries, interpreters were used in a context of heightened politicisation and in fieldwork that crossed political, economic and cultural divides. Empirical and theoretical insights are obtained from this work, demonstrating that the positionality of the interpreter and the responses to this by the researcher require consideration. Indeed, it suggests that the interview encounter cannot be understood or properly analysed without reference to the presence of the interpreter and his/her mediation of ‘words’ into ‘voice’.