27: Why Bother with Interpreting Research

Jonathan: Why bother with research? Who does that?

Jonathan: I have never seen interpreting studies connected with innuendo before and I'm not sure I will ever again.

What do you do

Jonathan: If your, if your data is rubbish, you just redefine the terms. That's interpreting for a given definition of interpreting.

Alex G: Ah.

Jonathan: Significant also has two meanings in academia

Ha I like it true.

You don't need to know what that means.

Very [00:01:00] good really good. Here you go.

Hello and welcome to the podcast about topics at night. On today's concrete temptation of the Peruto principle you know what I mean we have a theoretically sound empirically robust truth. Here we go.

First up is a man who always said something significant given definition of significant Alexander guns mind. Good evening Alex how are you.

Hi guys I'm doing really well and I don't want to disappoint you so that's why I actually did some research for tonight's episode and I'm happy to tell you that banging your head against a wall burns a 150 calories per hour.

So there is something that I'm sure you didn't know.

It also makes your head fast enough that you can rest a kind of coke on it. I mean nothing but benefit. Do not try this at home. Well I was in a meeting about Brexit today. That was none of that anyway. Brexit chatter heads against our heads between [00:02:00] legs I'm not sure which. All of that. Anyway let's move on. You've heard him already. He's with us. He's been kept by a rector but not quite as Scotland football team whatever that means.

That was an obscure reference to the fact that while I have degrees I have never been chosen to play football for Scotland which is kind of I'm not sure whether that's sad or just normal.

Kind of surprising given you had a German head coach for a while. A picture.

Yeah. Well for a while there was a running joke that the one qualification that you need to get picked for Scotland was to not have been born in Scotland.

I get calls when asked. Yeah I was going to say it's really nice because it feels much better to be a Scot this year because we didn't even qualify for the World Cup and Germany went on really quickly.

So you know. Yeah that's the way it is. Anyway I'm Alexandrite and I'm not going to amend anything because we didn't put anything on this script about myself. But that doesn't matter. [00:03:00]

Let's move on straight to the night's show because what we are going to do is we will be expanding our discourse on reaching Vinces. Let's. See they did so on tonight's show we will be reaching synthesis and of course offering a critical review of a community of practice which is what this podcast is all about. So yes you guess we are taking on the Possley accessible for the right subscription fee world of research. If you know what I mean and worth it is a very simple one. Jonathan why bother what's the point of it. Because you've done a little bit of research and you know as I can tell.

So I'm just trying to get over that if you know what I mean. I have never seen an interesting study is connected with innuendo before and I'm not sure I ever will again.

So that's what this podcast is for.

Why bother with research. The main thing that aiport is terrifying at the moment faces some of its biggest challenges [00:04:00] yet so we have mission and tempting technology. We are remote more tempting we have issues with race we have issues status we have issues being replaced by nonprofessionals we have issues with airstrikes. And the answer is that people are looking forward to these questions. We can't find them by just saying well that's the way we've always done it and we can't just go up to the people buying machine and do everything and see a loser making the wrong decision. Actually we need to have an informed scientific opinion and on a good day. That's what research is about and even something as basic as you or how do we train interrogators to still give good service when you have all these challenges going on. That's something that Richet researchers look out routinely. And although I know there are issues with research covering a minute I think actually unless we are a little bit naive I think we need to accept that research is going to play an important part in the future terror in fight without good research and targeting might not have [00:05:00] a future Yeah that's a good point although some people I don't know if that's still the case but at least when I was at university some people would say that interpreting research isn't actually research or you know cobbled together from different disciplines and it was a bit of linguistics and a bit of I don't know communication that kind of thing sociology.

I don't know what you say to those people.

A search for a given definition of research. No. Okay. There are two things going on. One I'm beginning to become critical of this interesting study is as a lot of our is a discipline that picks up anything we can back up. We can recycle fees and try to use them. Now that has had its benefits because we wouldn't have discovered a lot of the things we've discovered without being able to just pick up stuff from anywhere. We feel like the thread is one of the other hand I think when they get to the point where that's becoming an issue I think I talked about this on the podcast with depths of the shadowing Leer [00:06:00] is that no we've got to the point where graffitis had a little bit like someone's got a church that they haven't been in for 20 years and they've just you know every few months they throw something else in there that they don't know what to do with the House and the carriage just chock full. And I remember having this conversation with my supervisor Jeremih PGE saying we need to actually source which of these cities are useful and what chart. And it's an incredibly controversial thing to see. And in an incredibly controversial research program to do. But I think as much as anything else for the sake of our link between interpreting research and the profession we need to be brave enough to go yeah that doesn't work and not just because of fashion because of actual data. Too often we've had these abandon just because they're not fashionable anymore and I'm sorry guys that's not science that's just nonsense.

But it illuminated the sort of the two sides of the middle when it comes to interpreting research being either called a [00:07:00] non-scientific or maybe call it multidisciplinary or whatever you want to call it so it has a word pros and cons because the pros are that you can pick from different fields that are relevant and then you can smash it together and make it into something interesting on the other hand as you said you know not everything that gets cobbled together may fit together or may stand the test of time.

So there's probably both upsides and downsides.

I mean there's a basic thing so for a long time even in a sense the present day. And there are things that these people in community interpreting have borrowed from the work of Aaron Goffman Who is it was a very good performance theatre stroke social scientists got a book called the Self and everyday life has become incredibly influential when people looking at you know what role was an interrupter playing and then you realise that actually the you have to be very very careful with that because there seems to be a suggestion that largely those rules are freely selected so you know [00:08:00] someone is choosing to be away Ted and when they are away they know that there's a rule of the way for them to play. Personally I think I have issues with that because I think there are far more constraints on interpreting than that media allows for. I also think our rules are far more porous than most of our discussions and you know fighting and interpreting. I think our rules are a lot more porous and then to each other a lot more. And so I actually make quite a lot happier with some of the older performance theory does a great quote that I find that I used my thesis from Eric Chechnia which says when you're performing your boast not you because you're awake aware that you're performing a role but not know you because you're aware that as a person you still have a responsibility to be ethical and still someone behind the mask. And I find that far more useful to describe what I was seeing in my own practice and my thesis then this kind of fitting thing of however many different roles Goffman [00:09:00] talks about you know which one are we in there. I feel really uncomfortable with that easy division of the world up into subcategories I don't think it works like that.

Yeah the method it maybe a little bit of pain in the whole performance thing that's interesting but I wanted to get something off before just talking about not having research in general.

Now to Alex's on this podcast are usually considered the sort of the practitioners where you are more and more firmly based in Research also in practice of course but given everything and the book that I'm curious did you have any proper into interpreting research lectures or anything of that sort during your university studies in Germany or the UK.

We were not in Germany. There was more vocational training. But in the UK we had a theory of interpreting class which wasn't so much about us doing the research and more about learning research that had already been established in [00:10:00] the end. At the end of the day it was more about preparing us to ride ah ah dissertation which obviously for a lot of people who like myself hadn't had a lot of that preparation before and I was a very brutal class because as those who've done it know that writing a dissertation or a thesis or even an asset is a longer than two pages and actually has forces in it it makes sense it's quite um thing.

So we had that do you remember any of it having that sort of the content the things that were telling you about. Sorry to interrupt because I mean of course I remember everything and we had the best lecturer in that in that class but I just find it

The reason why I'm not the biggest fan of Rieser just because I don't know how to how it applies to my everyday life and I oftentimes feel like it does it in [00:11:00] a very abstract fear that is with those somewhere out there with them. And I always feel like I'm usually reassured me that there wouldn't be any problems in the world of nobody did with a resort near me but it was going to work on their own thing. But I find it's just kind of to out there and for me it was very intangible. I can do anything with it from his ethereal as it comes out.

I mean I'm going to be mentioning my whole life in this episode but my supervisor Graeme Turner came up with this idea that if you're researching a group and your research is dependent on getting data from them then your research should be done on them for them and wear them he borrowed that from wildling from sociolinguistics and it's a great idea. So the kind of research they want to do more of their kind of research I'm really interested then is when you are actually catching something that people are interested in already. So for example people are already interested in what [00:12:00] my clients expecting me to do. Well actually that's something that you can Brissette really practically and I could put my thesis changed my business strategy overnight because I would I am able to look at a client and who did approaching me and begin to classify them according to the theory that I worked my speech. It seems to be helping and that I can see from quite early on you know what can a. Is this where am I going to stand with them. You know and you keep you build up an approach and you see that there are different kinds of clients in the world. There's also been research where people have come to research and said we've got this problem how do we fix it. That's incredibly practical research. One of Graham's favourite lines was there's nothing more useful than a practical feelie and I think thankfully there are such things as practical theories they are there. I think the best way to teach and turning 50 is with real life examples or pseudo Justine Odessa's hypertechnical Postini set then in Gorki you've got a conference [00:13:00] or something. Right let's talk through how this theory would apply there and they when people see it concretized they think they are or what we see at work in everyday life you understand that better and I've found that my practice has changed according to the way that I've seen research develop I think about understand completely differently than I did even three four years ago.

You know what so what did he do there what does anybody do for down in Lego. We break it down for parents like myself.

Well funnily you know what we're doing today. So they are with an intervention.

So my refrigerator into my first book try to do that with some feeling they and that is that I was writing a specific I had a very specific aim in mind for that book. And so I couldn't cover the entire breadth. But there's a book to be written I mean it could be like a practical version of France per hiker's book introducing interrupting studies which is a wonderful research book but yeah it would be possible and quite [00:14:00] doable to set that. All right let's talk about neutrality. Let us talk about what researchers are finding neutrality let's talk about real life and terrifying vision of the majority of research on untapped neutrality was done real interpreted events. You can't get more much more practical than interpreters watching and TERF does interrupting our real life event and going that doesn't look like it says it shouldn't the textbooks and talking about that. That's why I'm a field researcher because fuel researchers necessarily practical you can not be practical when you turn the fuel going oh why has that happened. It's so yeah. Thank you for giving me another book I will be writing a proposal for a village in the next few weeks a bit but it is a book idea to be done for someone to set a angle. There's a breadth of stuff here. Let's talk about neutrality in real life. Let's talk about Scorpius in real life. And as you do that you [00:15:00] start to see where the weakness is out as soon as you margin hey this stuff was working a really Venne good interp I would go. Yeah but life doesn't work like that. And the researchers we go yes we know. Help us get a better fiti. That's what we should be doing.

You know so how could you I don't know maybe we'll get to the solving problems later. Maybe we should stick with the perceived actual problems of research.

We've seen now that one of the issues is that many interpreters would say that research has nothing to do with everyday practice which is probably a perception and maybe not necessarily true. And I think another reproach that I've had recently with research and we talked about this Jonathan in another context which I forget right now is that research is I think necessarily very slow because of things like you know he need to you need you prepare your study you need to have units you collect data. You have to evaluate the data you go through peer review and all that kind of thing. So it's kind of unnecessarily slow [00:16:00] or is it. Jonathon

So there are different definitions of slow. I'll give you an example in 2012 McGinnis's on tamago 2012 I sat down and wrote a chapter of my thesis and the chapter was was what do we know so far about client expectations of an I concentrated on conference and therapy. I looked up and saw what I did was I spent a month or so looking up all the research I possibly could on expectations of conference and territories and sat down and wrote the chapter. But a month after I wrote that I presented it to my supervisors supervision meeting this is still fairly early 2012 and gamins fanya said to me we think this chapter was good enough. We think you should send it for publication. So I contacted the journal sent sent out to the Journal the journal sent out for review. I kid you not.

It appeared in print in 2015 two years after it had been approved publication [00:17:00] I believe that straight away because I'm in a similar situation with a paper that I've written with a few colleagues. Would you. Yeah me too foosball.

So on the other hand I saw an article on the number one and then John on the water which was called interrupting international drug research practice in interpreting coedited by one of my researchers Franz for hacker. And I saw an article on there that I vehemently disagreed with. It was in the discussion section so I emailed them and said Dear Professor firecrackers he was my external examiner. I said I have to respect them. And I said Can I write a response to this. He said sure. So I wrote a response to it and that appeared in print. Three six months after I sent it. So it really depends on the journal. I think two things robustness which is what we call doing it right. That takes time. It will take you know from plotting a study where it's not cain't the getting funding thing. That's a whole other question from [00:18:00] planning a study to gathering the data to analyzing the data you're talking about at least a year to 18 months because to do a study where you've got to have shed wads of data and then you've got go through it. But there is one other way.

Yes towards us. You know schedule. You measure the quality of your thesis by how many shades of data you have. I think it is like 0 9 when shared. Within I deep rather than wait. So that takes time. But on the other hand what could be quicker is if we were to adopt what the hard sciences have to do what's called pre-print which in the hard sciences they prepared a paper goes straight to preprints server and before it even goes to peer review people are already judging it and saying things about and reading it. No. There are dangers with that because you know some journalistic pre-print servers and don't realize they haven't been peer reviewed and think it's automatically great which is a problem. But [00:19:00] on the other hand it's a great way of getting research out there quicker and there's an argument if you put on a pre-print server and let anyone judge or at least anyone who registers for the site judge it you're actually going to get better quality than waiting six months for a couple professors somewhere to review it because I said of getting two pairs of eyes on it.

You've now got a couple hundred new bethink crowdsourcing solution. Yes one that was written by the Veber.

Yes so like in the hard sciences sometimes you have peer review and they have pre-print and if it gets a good pre-print result then it goes to pure review in a major drug not that I'm sorry anything that gets through that doing pretty well. So I have suggested to people do we need pre-print for interpreting the reactions have been mixed but I think we do need to talk about this because you know the thing with like machine interpreting the profession is not going to wait for 3 4 years where we go through it the scientific publications schedule it by then [00:20:00] it's too late. So we need to figure out a way of how do we get robustness and safety if you like and not prejudice Corty but speed up to meet the challenges that are speeding up to meet us. The are more difficult than it looks but I think is something that if we put our heads together we could see actually maybe we should do like a pseudo Sitwell not sad or semi academic server where you know where you're waiting for the paper the data is available to everyone was it was somebody Adam or no must be some way of making it available so the profession can go yeah nice idea but or can see we love that can we use you know what. What better stamp on your research and professional saying We'll have that piece of work. Can we use it today.

Yeah I think there were a lot of points in there that are maybe worth unpicking. I mean one one is the whole question of access to results of scientific work and the length of which is a difficult topic which does not belong in this podcast.

I think [00:21:00] views I can imagine third right question of accessing scientific work that was done using taxpayers money and then you know it's a big company and big publishing house that makes money with that. Anyway that's another topic. But I think there were two other things that we've noted done as well as issues with research. One is terminology weird terminology which is kind of a necessity in research of course. There is a gigantic. And then the whole field of writing about research communicating research both from the scientific community but also from media in general. And my impression at least is please correct me if I'm wrong is that there isn't much reporting going on about interpreting research so I don't see in the sort of big industry publications that are intended for practitioners I'm not talking about Mirto of interpreting. There isn't much going on. I think or not enough where you know new results from interpreting research are presented and explained to lay people so [00:22:00] that it's actually useful and where you again can then put it into practice or at least feel that it's more relevant to your everyday work.

So not necessarily new your work but I have for those of you listening I have an 8 year bulletin in my hands. I have a permanent column in The Bulletin if I look at a career where I try to do something like start a new research access has its own issues so I will tend to pick either something that's semantic. So I think in the worst excesses a June July August issue I've got an article here basically saying that hey Perone machine translation is a bit like the Wizard of Oz and hooker pulling back the curtain on all that. And so it really depends. The problem is is that on the one hand we do want more research summaries Daniel Scheele has the saidin bulletin which for academics is a goldmine not only for academics yet and people too. There's a real need for more of this kind of summarizing and [00:23:00] I'm I'm in the background working on a project on that at the moment which I can't say anything about. There's a long term project. I'm not actually doing any work on it I've just got the idea and I'm talking to someone. But yes there are there is at least one project in the pipeline to improve that. The problem is again that if you start saying OK we want to know what is new in research. Well the thing is is it was new in research in any three to six month period. It could just be researchers discussing things among themselves getting the technical details of something right. And there's a need for that because of researchers get a method drong we screw up the study. The research was no good. On the other hand what could be new is you've got a ton of new results and I don't know.

Conference interpreters Malmedy Well one of the things that we know about research that the public tends not to know is no study is ever final. So I was reading today on the BBC that they've changed their mind on whether you should be taking omega 3 supplements [00:24:00] for your heart. If they find they actually the effect is negligible. You know if you were watching you and research every six months or three months and you said you know watched him researches every interpreter should be taking or make he for their heart. Face to Face might change in six months. So it's the it's the putting things in perspective and saying does it affect you. And that's a really cool interesting result. And we're confident enough about this that we're you know it's pretty much proven. So I would draw a difference between I don't know. Ed does this particular to me contempt was more effective. That's at the moment for all of the tools you've got. That's kind of our we've got results at the moment but we need more testing vs. Dutch neutrality have any a neutrality have followed. We're pretty sure it's not and we've had enough work over the past 20 odd years that you know most researchers would turn to golden child in invisibility. [00:25:00] Not really use them. But that's two different things. No one's taken us 20 years to get to know the other ones. It's got three four years at work on some of the new interesting tools that there's no way we can be sure after that might not work.

But coming back to the question of terminology I mean Alex as an interpreter you often have to deal with you know weird terminology and jargon and that kind of thing you find I don't know how much exposure you have to interpreting research to you find it particularly difficult to get into or do I don't know who put in the script here.

I mean I been there was it was me actually put it that I find it rather inaccessible because I think that actually speaks to the terminology purpose.

Also Jonathan what you were you were just discussing be the access through summaries or don't know because believe it or not there was actually a time when I was quite interested in interpreting research.

But the number one problem that I found was that if you google interpreting research or you find those articles on how you interpret [00:26:00] research results of whatever so until you actually land at interpreting research pertaining to conference interpreting or legal or whatever that takes.

So once you're there it's behind a paywall usually but that they are going to different topic. So what you get is usually an abstract. And honestly I've found that abstracts are just about the worst thing that you get. If I'm really interested in a topic let's say I want to desperately read something on neutrality and I get an abstract and then they pump the abstract full with like the most biggest words they can think of to make it not as fancy as possible telling me exactly zero about what this is actually going to be about even if I were to paper the thing then actually don't get just like a glimpse of it. So basically what I want is you know the proverbial iceberg when you do public the. I want to get the tip of the iceberg but what I get is just like the tip top PTF iceberg with the abstract that is not going to tell me anything and if I take it one step further I'll get the whole iceberg and [00:27:00] I don't want that either. So it's either you get nothing or you can wait a minute and that's it then. And that's why I think it's just like in a inaccessible to me. So I would like to get like a two page summary that tells me like enough to that it tells me enough that if I'm actually interested then I can actually go on and read the whole piece of work because obviously of your exuberance in Zambia you would want to get all the background and you would want to read all the different sources. But then if I'm not interested I can actually also say relatively safely I read these two pages on topic X even not my cup of tea. Whereas if you read the abstract you don't know anything so you ice cubes basically. Well yeah I went to a nice big glass of wine.

So one of the things I've spotted in medical research is really cause they have the abstract from their eyes and there's an art to writing a truly useless abstract and I have no idea. Even as an academic I look at some abstracts and go. So what you're saying is I threw a bunch of terminology up in the air and we [00:28:00] didn't tell it one didn't then all my abstract but this is at the Wall Street and having the suits as a general rule that the more crazy terms you see the wishes is for the research especially in the first kind of abstract paragraph anyway. And one of the things we've done in some medical journals which I would like to start troublesome Trump's campaign to get our publishers to do this is as above the abstracts they have four or five bullet point Executive Summary In layman's terms. So I would like to start a troublesome turps campaign. Every interesting journal I mean I know I know a few editors we kids we could push them towards us. I would like us to start the troublesome TARP's executive summary campaign Becquerel as well as having your academic how they write every journal has four or five Billpoint no more executive summary. What did your paper do. What did you find. Why is it interesting Retin for people [00:29:00] who don't understand the terminology written for me. Richard Ray you're somebody for it for Alex and for Alex JI it would be like we should take your picture right and they make it the front of you like a confused face on it.

So you do a confused face when we say episode like screen thing and what do the Alex G campaign for understandable research because it is no we need a flat rate. OK some of the terminology is needed. OK some of us get some of it. Like okay I'll let you have sometimes you go. I'll let you off with that because I know that the culture you come from is perfectly acceptable to coin a new term when you don't really need one. Oh yeah totally. And I know have done that a couple of times myself but you should try to make your terminology fairly transparent. So for instance we do not need the terms three terms to describe the gap between the speaker or something saying [00:30:00] something and the the are seeing it you have decay flash like an evil Yanquis an why does it all mean the same thing. Lag probably is never going to be academic because it's only three letters and by academic use Ethelbert up there. I think that sounds cool because it's French but actually probably the most I kid it is GVs and probably the best one to you. I would imagine the Eevee s are probably the most useful one because then certainly from a scientific point of view you know what exactly what you see fashion and you know exactly what you're measuring and some of the terminology has been coined because a question has been what may we measuring here and the next person who brings a paper on quality with a definition of quality gets a spot in quality.

Yet I don't know if it's even the Holy Grail it's kind of the Loch Ness monster of Antwerpen is that is are some people you Loy's [00:31:00] it cannot possibly be the holy grail of interpreting studies because what it is.

You know that's actually one of the fun parts about interpreting research that I've always been flabbergasted by because once upon a time I actually thought about doing a deal just because I thought it would be cool to have you know it's going in my head. That's pretty cool. And then I did my visas and I realized that I don't ever want to do anything like that ever again just because you know we talked about it today it takes forever and you need to work very thoroughly and read a bunch of stuff that might not be interesting or at the end of the day not even help you at all in your mission is prepping for a job. It's

Exactly the same feel. No it's not. And that's exactly the thing that I'm always been flabbergasted by that interpreters who usually are all about you know doing stuff fast to react parasailing Catholic on our feet. And then you actually sit down and do like twelve months of combing through a journal than writing down. Nothing like almost acting [00:32:00] like a translator but. Defining the term is like oh my god I die of boredom. I've always been fascinated that there's actually interpreters out there who enjoy doing that kind of stuff and I'm thankful that there are because it sure as hell is a myth. I'm really glad that it's somebody other than joy.

But OK I would liken it to this every time every interrupting job I've ever done I've come across that annoying term that has three or four different versions and the target language. No no one of the things that you use your realization or maybe you come across at a wheel or something and you go okay well it remains the booth there instantly going well what people realize this and our research will have had to have gone OK. There are four ways of translating whatever this term is. We need to know when you use each of these four so that we use them right. And it's the same process in interpreting research as I'm not naturally a really tiny detail person but I do work when I'm sitting doing a study. Gorki I need to know what these which [00:33:00] which of these terms are you use when so I use them right. And it's things like OK if I want to measure I was measuring client expectations I very quickly came across this problem. If you mention clan expectations is that the same as measuring what they think of the entire thing after they've helped the interpreter. Well it's probably not. Because if you want an expectations you're assuming that they are coming to the event thinking this is what they want the Internet to do. Now as if you're coming to them afterwards and say what should an interpreter be like.

The result has been lifted by what they've just seen. And that's a really simple example of if you're doing expectations the fact that you've put the world expectations means you have to do your research before the event or at least as early in the event as you can. And that itself has problems and it is little things like that whereas you know we would know as an interpreter if you've got the world expectations in English [00:34:00] I'm sure you would automatically think of Use a German word which means something. You come to the event with already in your mind. Now I automatically know that the French automatically comes into my. I've said it so many times. Academic events you instantly so your brain is doing this process when you're interacting just a lot quicker and with a lot less kind of Gabriele's in place. Whereas when you're doing an interesting study you're thinking actually okay I have this thing that I want to discover how do a name so that people know exactly what I mean. And so that there was no room for people to go there's no room for people to argue with you for what you actually find. It's kind of like a lawyer setting out a case as her day. How do I push people into the idea that this is the only or at least the mean reasonable argument for what I've found.

We'd like framing almost. Now you know it's funny that you mention that the Nobel Prize because as far as I know [00:35:00] I mean there certainly is no Nobel Prize for interpreting it but there anything out that that could be called the Nobel event happening recently.

So we were often the neatest I've seen and it's not strictly a research prize is there. And he said then it's Wasilewski which that's more of a lifetime achievement award. Personally I would like to see a prize for the best practical research and anthropology and I would go to someone from the sign interpreting thing because I'm very impressed with how they combine research training community work political work.

It's quite impressive especially in Scotland.

So you know the interesting thing there is that I have a cheeky saying that if you want to know what research was and spoken language and therefore are going to be talking about 10 years time you see what the say language and certain people talking about that sort resort where we were still going couldn't do it modeled after us just see what the person said then let's see how quickly they [00:36:00] say whatever you know. Testing for accuracy you know this and they were already talking about the ethical decisions it doesn't make it. And I kid you not until 2004 2005 there were still people going around saying well conference and turf wars don't really have the same kind of ethical issues as corporate Aftel and community after us you know all of this act of theft our stuff doesn't apply in the booze and then you see the resets from people like everyday day care a whole wouldn't be Morvan beta and there's a whole load of people who went. Yes actually that's it. Maybe there are ethical decisions aren't the same ones of course not to be the same ones as someone watching someone die on a hospital ward. But we are doing ethical decision making all the time and basic things like you know imagine you have a speaker who has said something offensive but didn't mean to. And you realise that if you simply [00:37:00] relay what he and it's always a he you simply really want the meeting the meeting will go south and everyone knows if Russia conference and turf thing is if the meeting's going bad Who are they going to blame.

We know this one in.

Yes. And so you then you in this position and more than after I've talked to if you get them in the corner a conference somewhere that I'm not in front of people you'll hear them talking about ethical decisions and the will we all have our stories. But in terms of framing them differently or we get something else but very often it's really about ethics or will say things like it's what he meant to say it's like maybe it's at source and I've become like some kind of psychic. And it's like no let's just be let's just so my my new catchphrase I change my catchphrase every so often because people what are the mind you catch phrase as interrupting as interrupting wherever [00:38:00] you are. Wherever they live in terror of thing you're doing it's terrifying. So therefore at least as a starter we can kind of imagine to begin with that if something applies in sign language interpreting it is likely to be an equivalent or apparently a London conference interpreting court interpreting and community interacting and likewise people are beginning to talk about community and theft or do cognition like really okay.

But I say go is a good that's a good segway actually because it's almost like what you said is that there's kind of a basic interpreting skill or a basic interpreting competency to use a password.

Because when I studied in the university we had a professor word develop this competence model. So in interpreting model that was based on different kinds of skills or competencies that you had as an interpreter that kind of reminded me of that. But anyway I was just using this as a way that [00:39:00] we wanted to talk about which is which is kind of to really just touch the surface of some of the basic sort of models or concepts that exist in interpreting research to give people a few pointers where they can get started. Because if you just say well you should image that interpreting research from people maybe you know may not really know where to start so maybe give them give them a few pointers. So I don't know if I would want people to this particular model I was just talking about that awful lot of publications about it but there are certainly other models like the effort model from which properly taught at most universities in which it I don't know if there's a gold standard of interpreting models but it's certainly a model that is used very often in which I used as well in my thesis so I don't know John as we have.

So the FAA models are excellent for teaching and they're excellent for kind of breaking down some of the component scales just a really nice [00:40:00] case not next big fight this kind of a fight going on about home publicly saying they are but you know if anyone's doing a dissertation you can do a dissertation looking at you know debates over the effort models and we really need more stuff on that than usual vs. Killian's Sieber from Geneva. Great great debate to read as well as that I would say. I really do read this stuff on air neutrality being that saw Cynthia Roy Sisily avowed Anisha claim Graham Turner was great. Gabriel let's finish name there. There are great people to start with. Graham Turner's work if you can find on his concept of real interpreting or quantum interpreting as highly recommend it takes away to get your head around a bit it's worth it. Incidentally although neutrality is dead stuff as in chapter 1 of my first book The majority of it is. I would also suggest I have to [00:41:00] my paper called Finding and critiquing the invisible interpreter for free online with permission. That's called a pre-print. So it's interrupting but I got permission to put pre-print Luchs out one up and you'll get kind of are very very quick summary of the whole neutrality invisibility thing is worth reading. It's worth knowing about. Elisabet to say Illius work or an expertise. Again it's one that's being debated but I would say it's another debate that turtle should know about and should look at.

I would highly recommend her thesis which again is free and transfer Harkers work on school choice theory in interpreting. I tested my thesis. Despite my results I would still say it's worth reading and thus he's got people on media interacting. I would say imagine that is just uncertain in general and kind of try to get as many [00:42:00] of his papers on school postilion and tempting as you can when you crack the code of some the terminology he's using it becomes really interesting and really helpful. And also if you come across anything on normal so we're beginning to wake up to the mean and terrifying stuff this has been some good work going on. Definitely worth doing that and one last one for the basics before the whole video will be more interesting thing. There's a project called The Vedic US project run by Sabine Brown. If you didn't and if you're considering doing that work I would ask you borderline beg you to read as many of those papers as you can Sybian wholesale for writing a really excellent summary which is available for free. Those are the basics for practical purposes but I would say for me that the number one stuff that I think helps a lot is the stuff on the end of neutrality from kind of synfuel ROI all the way through to my own recent paper. It's going to take [00:43:00] you a while to get through all. But by the time you get through all that source it because you suddenly. Actually no I get it.

Yeah it sounds like it's very practical and something could be useful that you could try to integrate into your work but that could help explain your own work as well.

If you'd a conference and after are really there is a really nice book which is actually very well written by a lady called Deddick its title is stupidly long slow put it in the short notes. If you can get a copy of that book it's definitely a book that that really deserves to be read and we'll put other links to this stuff in the notes that you can get as much as you can. One thing you will have to pay for the books had an image. I've had several messages from people on academia e.g. use saying I saw you've got a book. Can I get a copy and my answer has always been yes. There is an amazing service called Amazon riot update. So yeah [00:44:00] most of these books are available on Amazon or somewhere and maybe if we sweet talk from Benjamin to make a scanner data we can try.

There's one that I would recommend Akeley which is called the interpreting studies reader edited by Yoko and Miriam Slesinger and it contains a lot of I guess they all want effusions from you know all the big names in interpreting research. So there's those journo G.L. of course. Bethel had Teamsters Union Masons since we're talking about Zimbra the leader of a Muslim so and so on. So lots of yes and stuff.

Well and then this one of course there's a really good book to pick up so everything that I've talked about will put all the links on the show and if you want can have the one book gate interrupting studies Franz Prohaska recently brought a new edition of his book introducing interpreting studies and teaching through all of the mean stuff that's happened and it's [00:45:00] great because he's written it. I don't know if he meant Homer wrote it like a small text book. And so it's immensely readable. It's not the kind of book you are going to set even in an armchair and read with a cup of coffee. But it is the kind of book where you can go hold on a minute. So for instance a lot of us have complained about you know and can't remember. Yeah I did. I can't remember no words in your head that you can't find it. Well you open his stuff on what we've learned about therapy or cognition and literally you can like put you could put tabs in the book and see. I want to read the book. What do we know about Arendt after all brains work. OK they want to read about what I know about community interacting and you can Tab's book out like that and he'll give you like a four page summary of all of these things in a single book and it's written with. With as little of the jargon as possible I will get permission. He's a superb writer of that kind of accessible research. When he have admonishes was on the show or something like a book. [00:46:00] I actually watched it. I already had the first edition when the second edition came out. I bought the second edition as well. I almost almost took my copy the first edition to my favorite ask them to sign it either way it became this hard to France if you're listening to this can you say my second edition to get him to.

Yeah I wanted to say that I think at least one of the ideas of podcasts was always to talk a little bit about interpreting research in a minute maybe we should do that a little bit more in trying to get people on or does because some of the more recent discoveries may be invented that he referred. Like the whole Neutrality thing he's tried to make it a little bit more approachable to people so it's one of the things that I didn't realize until I did Mokete.

He is interpreting researchers are great at falling out with each other sorry having academic [00:47:00] debates. So friends. Yes like in the 90s there was a massive debate between Delia cat in France for a hacker which you can all the papers are available for free. You can look them up and it's a lovely baby in the pages of the interpreter's newsletter. It's an incredibly nerdy methodological debate but it's a fun one. And though there is still a debate going on between Daniel Geale and Chilian Sieber who are both quite charismatic people both superintelligent and you know some of these debates you think you know as a practical a way. But they cared about the debate over the effort was we're actually seeing something about how we work and if one of them are afraid is saying something quite profound about turf and stuff that we're going to be able to apply to our work and her work in the future. You know there's always a chance. We've been doing it wrong for all this time. But it is. But [00:48:00] this is the problem with research is that you know you can spend like 20 years looking at something and then some jerk P.H.

the ocean comes along and goes ever it doesn't work with literally any anyone can wreck anyone's feet is a massive free for all it's like a wrestling match sometimes anyone can take anyone's EDI's you know we're talking about flat hierarchy in the profession in a way it's like that in interpreting studies because you can mess up someone's TV sometimes meaning to sometimes not meaning to be search. This is the sort that does a whole lot of books to recommend my own book. I've done my best. It is not all that done research on that I've done my best to make it accessible. Well see. We're going to make research more accessible. And I would see part of the why bother question involves researchers themselves [00:49:00] changing the way that we do business and I'm all for Graham Turner is on foreign way approach to research. It's harder. It means so much more difficult for researchers but it pays off in the long run because you end up with better research.

You know we talked about it at Nesi page.

These two didn't we don't even have to go that far because there's a lot of people out there and I think a lot of them are listening to this very podcast as well who are doing research at university in the form of a master's thesis or something like that. And I think we've all come across a situation that we get an invitation to participate in a in a survey or in a question as I don't know if we want to discuss this with a quick before we before we finish off the is there any way to go.

I have a lot to say about this. I mean that there's probably there probably is a lot to be said and if I think back to my own survey it was probably no it was definitely terrible from a scientific

Mind to always be those. But I think we all have [00:50:00] to do them.

So I don't know if there's a good resource out there that people could go to although ideally they would get the training from their professors or from their university you know the sort of basic toolbox that they need to get a proper questionnaire going. I don't know.

Right okay. Off we get I was clearly Alex kanssa Myracle first because I need to work at home make this not a rant. Condoleezza Rice observing Bill Othello's kids are someone like Chuck a message in the Japp boxing run please. So first things first. No surfie is any better than your sampling saw for example. And this is a really silly example. Someone being a member of a Facebook group with the word than terrifying in the title does not make them an interpreter. Literally anyone can join and anyone can pretend you know. There's an [00:51:00] old story on the Internet an old saying on the internet no one knows you're a dog. If I'm playing by dropping a survey into Facebook groups. Literally anyone can respond to that. Maybe not a good idea. Okay let's get onto the second thing. For academic research you should not be using Google Forms other servery to. Know People welcome me when I Celenk. Why keep because Google Forms are not very secure. So if you're asking people emails for follow up is not a good place to put them. Judy V.R. GDP aka also looks garbage. And also there are perfectly lovely much better servery tools that are free that you can use online. Your university has access to stuff as well.

I was going to say university usually.

Yeah universities have access to those things and also like doing [00:52:00] a good survey. It really really really hard. I mean one of the hardest parts of my speech the writing and analyzing the survey. It's a method the easiest kind of research that there is to do a survey. You're probably better off and I say this advisedly. You're almost certainly going to be better off finding people who you know what interpreters and then reviewing them. It's actually easier to do a semi decent interview than this. I mean these ones are much much easier. So you've got a sampling you've got do something that was professional and actually has decent functionality. And the last thing that I would see is that you're gone and it's going to be very difficult for you to get your questions good. There's a hole there so there's a book called Real World Research the one hour from that in the short notes as well which covers a lot of the stuff for social scientists really good as fuck. [00:53:00] Think of a book. But you know so some of the basic things are. For example if you're doing a survey and you only analysis is to do how many people said yes and then many people said no. Not a good way of doing this. Every of bar chucks.

Yes. So I mean there are things you can measure your stuff and survey so that there are accepted ways to disagree that you can read about in an error. There's really no excuse for things like so I came across one survey I will not mention where it was. It was not done by a master shouldn't which makes it even worse where the person with the possible responses were yes yes sometimes or no. I have also seen surveys where like 4 of the put so does a very common survey technique incline expectation research when they ask [00:54:00] people to mark how important is this out on a scale of zero to four. And it's like very important. And every single one is a level of importance apart from zero and that it's not important. And they wonder why everyone's calls everything a flaw because a survey is biased. Seriously I wrote a paper on that garbage. So yeah it's very very small. If you're going to do a survey in your master's dissertation no one probably doesn't like it if you go with a bachelors in marketing fine or if you've got access that Brooklyn real world research that tells you how to do Fayne. But if you're going to do really really think carefully and think you know homemaking to do sampling where it could be that you do something as simple as look up when there's are Barkham or a Foulk at the meeting or IATA meeting or an eight meeting near you drop [00:55:00] a letter to the organizer and said I'd love to come to this meeting because I'm a student and while I'm there I really love it if I could get some people to fill in a survey.

It's a far more widget form of sampling to say that the paid hundred euros to come to any event for is far more likely to go. I went on a Facebook group called interpreters and because I know got my sample from there half of them maybe because half the other half hot dogs burgers owners like seriously you know if it's a grip on you a intemperate new to interrupting please don't just wouldn't be so Cerveris are super hard to get right. Please don't do them until you unless you have access to the very best tools to do the words and the very best methods to do them because there is a really tough and even peer I even know of at least one the thesis that has a critical methodology [00:56:00] methodological error in the survey. That's how hard they are to get right.

They're really hard for me just say that and then we don't know. People do it all together but maybe take take them very very seriously and it has all the support that you can get.

Yeah I would say if the person supervising your situation has experience with them you're probably going to be okay. And if you have access if you have access to a really good guide books Haina you wouldn't find them in the trafficking side. Apart from Japan and apiaries but don't do them unless you really know what you're doing because we have. We already have quite a lot of results where people have said look we did a survey on this and then you go yeah. And there's nothing worse. I'm in the middle of writing a paper and I have the horrible thing of writing a paper pointing out the flaws in works that some people spend like 3 4 years of doing it. Again it's a critical methodological flaw. It's not [00:57:00] one you can ignore if you're doing an honest review and I'm having to point to the fact that they're making a mistake that they would have made had they read any paper that came out after 2005 that no one wants to prove it.

To be fair I do want to say that again to the few who are listening I know servies are very tough and you should really take them seriously but sometimes you just have to do something else. If you're writing your there's reason and you want to do a survey take it seriously good you can.

You can do is very well forgive you see if you're doing a Master's isolation and you say I'm going to conquer the servery thing seem to have really sewn Cerveris. We actually have very few and the entirety even tripling studies. I'm going to get hit from this but we have very very few really well done service if you do really well done Soviet masters I will send you a personal e-mail saying you are a genius I want to be like you when I grow up. Do you have the Jonathan promise for all intents and purposes. If [00:58:00] you're if you're listening to your Masters dissertation just think if you if you want to do the easy way. Grab some data that someone else has already gathered. Or it's probably easier to do good interviewing than a good survey. If you want to do a survey go for it. But make sure it's the best your service can be is going to take you away. But you're going to come out of it going either. Then amazing piece of work and everyone's gonna be so proud of you. And we're going to love you.

Call going a WW WWT. What would Jonathan do.

Oh and I would say well if you've done amazing piece of interpreting research it's not about making it so that that could be interesting. So we have the Jonathan promise we have the tropism talks promise that we're going to cover more interpreting research to make it accessible to people.

We have that we have the troublesome twerps executive summary campaign that as well. I think that's that's pretty good. That means going from one episode [00:59:00] I mean guy. The what he promised how many hashtags is this episode having. That is like three four hours to put him on the show. And speaking of notes of course you can find all our episodes and all the links and book recommendations and so on and so forth.

That's going to be a lot of that this time around but you can find all of that on troubled up the column of course.

Have we forgotten anything what about research because otherwise I am just going to see if are an amazing experimentalist and I haven't mentioned you I'm really sorry. I'm a days out just I tend to automatically recommend the field research people. Yeah. So if I have forgotten your name and your world leading internet research I'm really really sorry but I can't remember everyone's name and there are certain people who are just like Jeffrey they like the work.

Don't forget that we probably had to cut it from the episode because of fogger interference or something. That's probably where the name isn't there.

You get a courageous siege. Just to make it clear I'm not the chairman [01:00:00] of the transfer Harka fan club no matter what my research friends say but it could be more.

No he doesn't even have a signed copy of the book. Oh it's horrible. Although it does.

I am expecting that when we do the wife show everyone like everyone's gonna want us to sign stuff. Usually they can shoot enslavers

Anyway but when like an and I'm just going to repeat that that's going to be on the 17th of November at the Robocup tickets. I don't know if they're still available when the episode comes out to.

Anyway there will be elopement no matter what. And again.

So all the information on this episode and the entire back catalogue of early episodes can be fun. I'm troubled though. Come get in touch on the website or through social media. Were pretty troubled turps pretty much anywhere not on Instagram but suddenly on Twitter and Facebook. And [01:01:00] that's it.

Can I just see by the time this episode goes life I will be a dad for the fourth time you. It's completely strange yet Saenger. Congratulations. If by any chance you like send me an email after this episode and the only response you get back is because I haven't slept in a month.

You get it you next time you go. Get to get a formal media training at some point. I mean honestly like with 2000 you probably are going to train them into 3 2008 dollars. I get it. Can you imagine us all with with long beards and gray hair. I already have long long beard sitting in a rocking chair still doing TV episodes.

User troub was a terrible lie from the old folks home rule with interpreters. [01:02:00] We're gonna be debating whether tablets and the birds will take care of. The. Young ones are doing no wrong loud shit you be interrupting for teeth. But

Please tell redoes can appear to be 80.