Linguistic Choice for the Booths

Allocation of Booths

1. Requirements

In order to allocate languages to booths, the following information is required :

a. Final version of the ESF Programme with the location and time slot of each session, and the languages in which the speakers wish to express themselves.

b. List of selected interpreters

2. Allocation Protocol

In Brussels / Istanbul, Babels decided to organise a mixed booth interpretation system : 4 booths and 5 languages per session. As the ESF was in London, the fifth language was English and had no physical booth (flying language). This meant that in each booth, the couple of interpreters had to cover the language of the booth plus English.

Deciding on which languages were matched to the booths went through the following process :

a. Requests of the speakers

We first of all allocated languages to booths based on the speakers’ requests.

e.g. if the speakers of a given session say they will speak in French and Spanish, we first of all allocate French and Spanish to two booths in this session and leave the other 2 booths free to fill with languages later in the allocation process.

b. Calculation by timeslot of how much a language is requested We then calculated how many times a language was requested overall in each timeslot (e.g. 9am-12pm)

e.g. for the 20 sessions in the timeslot Friday 9-12, French is requested 10 times, Italian 10 times, Spanish 9 times, etc.

c. Estimation of number of interpreters needed in a given language.

For example, for the whole of the ESF, a maximum of 18 French booths were required at any one time. So 18 x 2 interpreters per booth x 2 teams per day = 64 French interpreters needed for the ESF.

d. Assessment of ’critical’ requests

This was done by comparing the demand for a given language with the amount of interpreters selected in that language. Where there was too much demand for the supply, we endeavoured to quickly select more interpreters where possible. We also, as a last resort, would liaise with the coordinator of the panel to ask speakers with ’critical’ language requests if they were willing and able to speak in a different language

e.g. ask a Turkish native coming from Berlin if she can speak in German

This second option should obviously be avoided where possible.

e. Allocation of the languages requested by Babels

Where there is no specific request from the speakers, languages are added according to the potential audience (example A) and / or according to the issue (example B and C).

Example A : where given sessions only have 2 languages requested by speakers (e.g. Spanish and German), then Babels will fill the other 2 booths with languages that are not in too much demand in that timeslot. If, say, English and Italian were requested 20 times in the same session, but French and Portuguese were requested only 10 and 5 times respectively and there was a large pool of interpreters in these languages, were would add a French and a Portuguese booth to that session.

Example B : if in a seminar on or hosted by groups from Cyprus German and Spanish are requested, Babels will add Turkish and Greek for obvious political reasons. The same applies for sessions on Palestine/Israel : even if Hebrew is not requested by the speakers nor likely to be needed in the audience, Babels will provide Hebrew interpretation.

Example C : if there is a session on the global peace movement and the US bases and Italian has not been requested, Babels will still ensure that there is an Italian booth as the peace movement in Italy is very strong.

f. Returning the final allocation plan to the Programme Group

When the booths have been allocated, the final document with the languages of the booths is sent back to the programme group to allow them to print the ESF programme. The programme includes reference to all the languages available in each seminar and each plenary, enabling the participants to go where their linguistic needs are covered by Babels.

3. Difficulties in London

The allocation process is clearly quite complex and depends on a number of work-areas within both Babels and the ESF Programme Group coming together at the same time and at the right time. In other words, deadlines must be met and information must be communicated.

During the process towards the ESF in London, the information required to facilitate the allocation of languages to booths was given to Babels just ONE WEEK before the ESF. This meant that tasks a to d above were effectively dealt with and finalised in ONE NIGHT by 2 Babels UK coordinators when the selection of interpreters was already over, and task 5 by 2 coordinators in one day in the office (Babels UK and Babels DE).

5. Conclusions

1. There must be an ongoing flow of information between ESF coordinators, the programme working group and Babels coordinators throughout the whole process from day one.

2. The programme group must deliver the final programme on time in order to give Babels the time to allocate the languages to the booths and deal with any last-minute selecting of interpreters and booth planification.

3. It is Babels responsibility to ensure in the future that a system is put in place so that both participants and speakers can inform the ESF process and Babels when they register of the languages they speak and understand. This can be done very simply through ticking a box or filling a space on an electronic or paper form. This is apparently being done for the FSmed being held in Barcelona in June 2005.

4. Consulting the Babels coordinations involved in the process

In order to allow a smooth consultation of and feedback from the Babels coordinations involved in the process, it would be advisable if those leading the Babels project in the host country make a proposal on the allocation of languages, underlining what can’t be changed (because the language was requested by a speaker for example) and what can be changed (because it is a language added to an empty booth).

It would be advisable to create a working group with one person per coordination for these tasks.

5. Number of languages/booths per room : one size fits for all ?

During the allocation of languages per session we realised that in many sessions the necessity of a 5th of even 4th language was not that evident. In many sessions the speakers were speaking only 2 or 3 different languages and the obvious expected audience would also be speaking the same languages. The process of allocating the remaining 2 or 3 languages was pure guess work and/or based on the languages of the interpreters left available at any particular time slot (rather than on appropriate information relating to the the potential audience). ESF coordinators should also know that at the WSF there were meetings with 5 languages available, 4, 3 or even 2. It seems that it would be worth thinking about a system whereby we have rooms with different numbers of languages available. This would allow that with the same number of interpreters, there could be more meetings with multilingual communication facilities and it would avoid ’wasting’ interpreters by adding booths that are not specifically relevant to meetings, simply because we have to fit extra languages to reach the agreed figure of 5.

6. Pure vs mixed booth

Babels coordinators need to discuss the pros and cons of the mixed and pure booth system to decide which one is the more appropriate for the Social forum. A pure booth is delivering interpretation in one single language all the time i.e English booth, the interpreters are working all the time into English and if a speaker is English speaking then the English pure booth remains silent. The mixed booth is delivering interpretation in two languages. i.e a room has 4 booths (ES ; DE ; IT ; FR) and there is also interpretation in English. This means that each booth works into and from its respective language + English. The second option allows to have 5 languages in 4 booths which enhances linguistic diversity BUT it is much more complicated to organise, the interpreters are also relying on each other too much in a context where a lot of non experienced interpreters are in the booth which make it even more difficult to ensure quality.

The Babelites who decided to adopt a mixed booth system (mainly Babels-UK, with what they had learnt from babels-fr) simply copied what had been done in the previous ESF without asking ourselves very much whether there was interesting alternatives or not to this system. The issue should therefore be debated in babels.

7. Where do Babels volunteers should interpret

Plenary

Babels should come to a position regarding the necessity of plenaries in the ESF. As mentioned in the programme report, those meetings are usually rallies (not always even that big !) and not necessarily the place where good and productive work between social movements take place. This is a question that not only Babels will discuss but also the entire EPA as there are more an more people who feel that not only those meetings are not very useful, but also that too much time is being wasted during EPAs trying to come to an agreement on the final lists of plenary speakers at the expanse of many other important things.

Workshops

Babels should discuss the role of workshops and whether we should interpret in those meetings. It is often said that in those smaller meetings, more interesting debates are taking place than in bigger meetings. This may be a place where important international linkages could be done if there was interpretation. In the last ESF, many workshop organisers asked us if we could help them with interpreters in whatever languages they needed. In principle, most (if not all) Babels coordinators were sympathetic to those demands, but in practice it was simply impossible to organise since the information on the programme and the planning of booth that follows were available so late in the process. If we decided to interpret at some of the workshops, we will need to make proposals, on what type of workshops should have interpretation, how many languages etc... Note also, that whereas the great majority of seminars do require interpretation because they are very often trully international meetings (both in terms of speakers and audience), the workshops will not always need interpretation facilities. In fact a lot of them are monolingual meetings and will not mind not too have access to interpreters. However, a number of those still would highly benefit from multi-lingual communication facilities, and it would be politically very interesting for Babels to find some solutions for those types of workshops.

8. Mode of interpretation

Should Babels only provide simultaneous interpretation in booths ? From my experience at the International Youth Camp that was taking place during the last World Social Forum, many small and international meetings functioned quite well with whispering interpreters to a small number of interested participants. This of course is only viable in small meetings and where the level of noise interference is minimum. But is quite a flexible way of helping people to participate to meetings where they do not speak the language.