Summary of Findings

5.1.1 Answering the First Research Question: What is the role of the church interpreter?

The first research question asked what the role or roles the interpreter takes on in an ethnic Chinese immigrant church setting in the USA. The questionnaires and interviews that were used to prompt members from a select group of ethnic Chinese immigrant churches in the USA about the various possible roles interpreters in this specific setting showed that attitudes, perceptions and expectations towards the eligibility and roles of the church interpreter were virtually the same as those for professional interpreters with the exception of a few key differences. The major ways that interpreting in the ethnic Chinese immigrant church setting differs from interpreting professionally include the church interpreter’s identity in the faith, the service nature of church

interpreting, the co-communicator role of the interpreter, the metaphysical component of interpreting. These differences are integral to identifying the distinctive roles of the church interpreter.

Ratings from the questionnaire showed that Christians who took the survey are more expectant of church interpreters to identify as Christians than they are of professional interpreters to identify with a specific industry or field. The results suggest that professional interpreters do not qualify to interpret in the church setting based on technical ability alone. As discussed in the Literature Review and Results & Discussion chapters, those who commission and listen to church interpreting believe the source text (e.g. sermons, prayers) originates from a divine source, so the non-believing secular interpreter lack the spiritual faculties to render the spiritual content of sermons and prayers. Therefore, professional interpreting skills without personal spiritual conviction would not qualify someone to interpret in the church, at least not in the eyes of the majority of the Christians surveyed in this study. This is not to say that non-Christian professional interpreters would necessarily do a poor job interpreting sermons or prayers in church, as secular interpreters could still technically succeed in rendering all the information if they are familiar enough with the subject matter. Nevertheless, the perception of what a church interpreter ought to be is what the questionnaire aimed to uncover. Thus, according to the results from the questionnaire and interviews, one clear aspect of the role of the interpreter in the ethnic Chinese immigrant church setting is inextricably tied with the interpreter’s identity with the faith. In other words, one of roles of the interpreter in this setting is to be a believing Christian.

Based on the results in this study, another major expectation for church interpreters that differed from expectations for professional interpreters was that church interpreters are expected to perform their duties out of “altruistic love” without expectation of pay or material compensation.

Or as Hokkanen (2012) put it, church interpreting is a form of altruistic service. The responses from both the interviews and the questionnaires were overwhelmingly indicative of this perception, though it was revealed in the interviews that this is a tacit understanding among those in the church community, especially those who serve and work for the church institution. As discussed in the Literature Review with Hokkanen (2012) and Owen (2014), church interpreting is seen as a service done unto God without expectation of material compensation. The rewards for those who serve God are reaped spiritually rather than financially, though financially compensating a church interpreter (or anyone rendering services for church) varies from church to church depending on the church’s leadership and culture. Thus, in response to the first research question, the results in this study corroborate altruistic service (or in religious terms “serving God”) as an aspect of the role of the church interpreter that is distinct from the role of the professional interpreter.

Lastly, the results from this study suggest that the church interpreter does have a co-communicator or co-speaker role, though how this role is interpreted varies among the respondents in the study. In the interviews, those who unequivocally agreed with this role description for the church interpreter were members of bilingual churches in Taiwan. They fully endorsed the idea that church interpreters should think of themselves as a co-preacher alongside the preacher when interpreting. Respondents from ethnic Chinese immigrant churches in the USA answered more conservatively when talking about whether the church interpreter had a communicator or co-speaker role. Those who generally agreed supplemented their responses with specific emphasis on how the interpreter differed from the church interpreter while respondents from bilingual churches in Taiwan focused more on the similarities between church interpreters and the preacher. Both groups of respondents intersect on the perspective that church interpreters are an integral part of communication activities (e.g. sermons, corporate prayers) in the church and act as one unit with

the preacher/speaker when interpreting.

In summary, the results from the study answered the first research question, revealing that the church interpreter’s role, insofar as the interpreters at the churches in the study are concerned, is multifaceted. The results generally corroborated certain church interpreter roles that were brought up in past studies while shedding more light on aspects of the church interpreter’s role in contrast to that of the professional interpreter’s role. As presented in the research results, church interpreters are expected to be devout believers in the Christian faith who are enabled and qualified to interpret in the church setting by their belief and spiritual identity with the faith and the church institution.

As confirmed in this study, an interpreter who interprets in the ethnic Chinese immigrant church settings are expected to carry out their role as a believing Christian whose goal is to edify the members of the church through their interpreting of both the textual context of the what is being said by the speaker as well as deliver the spiritual dynamic of the communication, especially during the interpreting of prayers; the church interpreter is expected to carry out their duties out as a “servant” of God and provide an unpaid service to the benefit of the members of the church; in addition, while striving to fulfill their roles, church interpreters may take on aspects of a performer (e.g. hand gestures, mimicking sounds or motions) or even become speakers or co-communicators to the speaker (i.e. preacher, pastor).

5.1.2 Answering the Second Research Question: What is the role of interpreting in the church?

While the questionnaire (and parts of the interview questions) was used to answer the first research question regarding the role of the interpreter, the interviews aimed to gauge perceptions and expectations of the role of interpreting itself in the ethnic Chinese immigrant church setting (i.e. the second research question). In the attempt to pinpoint the role of interpreting in ethnic

Chinese immigrant churches, the researcher prompted pastors and preachers to divulge the “origins of interpreting” in their respective churches. Their responses revealed that interpreting generally started out as an ad hoc service to meet a growing internal need, i.e. English-speaking American-born members. As time progressed, the role of interpreting in the ethnic Chinese immigrant church evolved from being an ad hoc service to being a formalized one, becoming an integral part of church operations due to a growing number of English-speaking members (e.g. American-born ethnic Chinese, non-ethnic Chinese members). Some pastors even indicated that the amount of English spoken in their churches has grown throughout the years, rivaling the amount of Chinese spoken in some cases. A couple pastors mentioned that as a result the directionality of the interpreting has begun to shift from being predominantly Chinese-to-English interpreting (e.g.

preaching in Chinese) to English-to-Chinese interpreting (e.g. preaching in English). However, if the role of interpreting in immigrant churches began as a way to mitigate language and cultural barriers between its internal members, the question that needed to be addressed was whether interpreting would eventually become unnecessary if the immigrant church becomes predominantly English-speaking with a decreasing Chinese-speaking immigrant membership.

When prompted about the future of interpreting in ethnic Chinese immigrant churches, pastors responded optimistically, arguing that interpreting services have since become an integral part of the church’s mission from the beginning to reach all people, regardless of their language, ethnicity, or cultural background. In summary, based on the interview responses in this study, the role of interpreting in ethnic Chinese immigrant churches in USA is akin to an adhesive, used to

“bandage” fractured cultural and linguistic cracks from within the church community and

“fastening” memberships from outside the ethnic Chinese immigrant community.

The interview responses are not by any means representative of all ethnic Chinese

immigrant churches in the USA, but they do offer perspective on how interpreting can impact ethnic Chinese immigrant church development and operations in the USA. The researcher acknowledges that there may be many more perspectives on the role of interpreting in the immigrant church setting, some that may even run contrary to the perspectives documented in this study. However, as far as answering the second research question goes, this study was successful.