Interpreters as cultural experts? Asylum practices in Slovakia

Abstract

Cultural expertise can be a meaningful part of judicial proceedings, including asylum appeals. In countries where it is not yet common, the need to address questions of cultural identity might be communicated indirectly through interpreters. As a result, interpreters implicitly and explicitly respond to co-producing the Other. This paper uses empirical data from long-term ethnographic research on interpreting asylum hearings to trace their institutional conditions in Slovakia and the actors’ approaches to the culturally sensitive aspects of interpretation in these proceedings. The perspectives of asylum applicants, their legal representatives, interpreters and decision-making authorities are analysed through the concepts of sayability and interpretability—the relationship between representations of legal, cultural, and linguistic identities. This article discusses how the research participants’ norms of interpreting, awareness of positionality, and procedural neutrality influence the spoken and written file narrative. Legal terms and administrative jargon are often not translated into plain language, accessible to laypeople. The often unacknowledged misinterpretation also affects the flow of the proceedings. Thus, systemic training of interpreters is essential, particularly public service interpreters who actively shape their informal role as cultural experts. At a time of increased demand for cross-cultural understanding, this article provides new perspectives on exploring the challenges for interpreters as well as other public service professions in relation to the notions ascribed to cultural identities.