Interpreting from the rice field to the people’s conference

By Aditi Pinto

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Let me talk of three very different interpretation contexts that I was confronted with as a solidarity interpreter for Farmer-to-Farmer Exchanges. My language pairs are Spanish-English, Hindi-English and Spanish-Hindi. As you will see below, I improvised in Portuguese-Hindi and Portuguese-English and vice-versa during my field interpretation stint due to the necessities of the group (though this is not advisable for genuine language access).  I was paid a small stipend each time I interpreted, in the first two cases by La Via Campesina and at the third event by Action Aid, India. This is probably due to the fact that I was interpreting in foreign languages, as so far interpreters for South Asian languages in our movements are not compensated even though they have always existed.  

In 2013, the first scenario took place in rice fields, where farmers from Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS from Karnataka), Landless Workers Movement (MST from Brazil) and the RACPABA (Haiti) met with farmers from Western Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, to learn about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method to cultivate rice. In this situation, the farmers of KRRS were the largest group who all spoke Kannada. This group was diverse in and of itself, with women farmers and male farmers, thus creating a slight power dynamic. One of the leading voices of this movement, Nandini Akka, a woman farmer and president of the KRRS Women’s Wing, was one of the most vocal at this gathering and through improvisation stepped up to be a great interpreter. The organizing team of LVC and Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) had planned for interpretation from the foreign languages, I managed in Portuguese with the Brazilian representative and the Haitian representative understood Spanish as his children and family lived in the Dominican Republic. Yet, there was no planned interpretation from Kannada-Hindi and vice versa, Bhojpuri-Kannada and vice versa, and oftentimes leaders like Nandini Akka improvised, did consecutive interpreting, and made communication happen. 

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In this scenario, one can imagine we were active in the field, seeing rice varieties, touching the seeds, walking through agroecological systems, making interpretation easier as it was not all theory. As I was interpreting for just two people, I spent most of the time interpreting simultaneously using chouchotage or whisper technique. Of course, many a times, I used relay, waiting for things to be interpreted from Kannada to Hindi in order for me to do the subsequent step from Hindi to Portuguese/Spanish. 

In 2015, The second scenario was where leadership and representatives of MST, Brazil and EZLN, Mexico met with landless, Dalit sharecroppers and shepherding communities that are part of the Food Sovereignty Alliance of Andhra Pradesh. This scenario was more like liaison interpreting as both the foreign language speakers and the South-Asian language speakers were composed of a small number of people. Here, interpretation was first done by Deepu from Telugu to English (first round of consecutive interpreting). After this, I would interpret from English to Spanish (relay round of consecutive interpreting). Relay interpreting is a very important part of many South Asian gatherings, even when there is liaison or interpretation between two small parties. 

The third exchange was when an MST expert in political education (formação) and representative from the Amazon region participated in the People’s BRICS Assembly. In this situation, Simone was on a panel along with around 4 other members. While other leaders spoke Hindi or English, Simone spoke Portuguese. I used consecutive interpreting to interpret Simone’s messages, which were very detailed and in-depth, and always reaffirming the power of mass movements and international solidarity. There was no equipment except microphones, and the main technique used by me was to interpret in the first-person as only then could I truly convey the sense of solidarity and collective power that Simone was trying to stress. Not knowing Portuguese well, I had to rely on my prior knowledge of the MST and my parallel conversations with Simone to do justice to her words despite my limited familiarity with the language.

All of these experiences have convinced me of the importance of training, planning and budgeting for local South-Asian language interpreters, and not just foreign language interpreters like myself in our meetings. After all, even foreign language interpreters are dependent on local language interpreters. Interpreters form a team, there is a dependency of on one another! All these scenarios also made me realise the importance of building up more solidarity interpreters who have a wide range and depth of South Asian language knowledge, preferably language knowledge across the language families of South Asia as well, so that multiple rounds of relay interpreting, which end up breaking the flow, can be avoided.

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