Axiological and Ideological Reframing in the Interpreting of Syrian Refugee’s Trauma Discourse: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Interviews as an Example

Trauma discourse can actively participate in truthfully reflecting victims’ painful experiences. The importance of this kind of discourse increases when it is delivered at certain times, in certain places and to certain people. If the speaker succeeds in the convincing audience, different reactions take place the least of which is driving people’s understanding towards a point that the speaker hopes to. This happens when both the speaker and his audience share the same language. When a discourse is delivered in a language foreign to the audience the only alternative is translation and interpreting. It is expected that throughout interpreting, refugees’ feelings and ideas are and have to be reflected to foreigners. To achieve such a goal, interpreting has to be as transparent as possible. The interpreter’s axiology and ideology may, however, play a decisive role in obstructing the transference of these significant experiences. The present article tries to investigate the degree to which Arabic trauma discourse is distorted in interpreting. It hypothesizes that interpreters are consciously or/and unconsciously socio-politically motivated to delete, add or improperly substitute the linguistic indicators used to convey emotional responses to the crisis. It adopts Baker’s (2006) understanding of narrative reframing. It investigates the rendering of the interpersonal linguistic tools suggested in Martin and White’s (2005) proposal of appraisal theory. The data is taken from the UNHCR’s interviews with Syrian refugees. The thorough

interpreters play an effective role in discursively underestimating or exaggerating the interviewees' suffering.

Introduction
Influenced by the Arab Spring uprisings launched in some countries in the region against their tyrannical rulers such as Tunisia and Egypt, prodemocracy protests erupted in the city of Daraa in southern Syria in March 2011. The peaceful uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has turned into a full-scale civil war. This conflict brought death to many people, destroyed Syrian cities and dragged other countries into it. Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey struggle to contain about ninety-three per cent of the largest wave of displacement in modern history. The suffering of refugees continues after crossing the sea, as they have to cross several European countries on a journey of additional dangers that become more severe with the harsh climate, and the presence of children and women in refugee convoys. This suffering has also multiplied with the accumulation of thousands on the borders of European countries, some of which have resorted to closing their borders to restrict refugees and limit their use of their lands as transit countries to reach the target destination, which is often Germany or some Western European countries that have a good reputation for receiving refugees and providing them with the requirements of a decent life. The observation of the Syrian refugees over the past years reveals many facts that summarize the torment and tragedies of the war. Many of them left their homes without bringing any document proving their identity. Some died by drowning at sea without anyone hearing or knowing about them, and without even having their bodies recovered for proper burial. Some of them died of suffocation in trucks that were not intended to pile people up in such inhumane ways. Other refugees died in camps in neighbouring countries, either from the cold in the harsh waves of snow, or from burning when they tried to light their tents to protect them from the harsh winter.
Many humanitarian organizations champion providing relief for refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is among the pioneers as it 'has used its authority to shape how the world understands refugees and their circumstances, but also, potentially, to control their lives and determine their fates (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004: 120)'. The socio-political neutrality of humanitarian organisations, including the UNHCR, is however questionable, as these 'organizations are not immune to the iron law of bureaucratization. As humanitarian organizations have become better established and more deeply involved in politics, they have become more deeply political (Barnett, 2001)'. That is to say, the UNHCR can 'manipulate the interests of stakeholders by publishing (or threatening to publish) reports on states' human rights violations and their failure to adhere to their obligations (McKittrick, 2008).' But basically, it 'has been understandably sensitive to the needs of the powerful states, and such matters have duly shaped its "pragmatic" character (Loescher, Betts, and Milner, 2008)'.
To observe Syrian refugees' living conditions and find out the causes that have led them to migrate from their cities, the UNHCR usually held periodic interviews and meetings with the affected families. Interpreters played an important role in transforming this pain and suffering to foreign observers, especially as these interviews were filmed and published live or recorded in the media or on the official websites. Therefore, it has played a decisive role in listening to the voices of these refugees and then transforming them to the whole world, as it was periodically broadcasting interpreted interviews of United Nations officials with the affected refugees. Among these officials was the American actress Angelina Jolie, who was appointed as a goodwill ambassador at that particular period. However, it is controversial that the observer can discover many violations in the English renderings of these meetings, which led to a distortion in the transmission of the refugees' traumatic experiences. Let's have a look at the following excerpt extracted from Angelina Jolie's meeting with the Syrian refugees, particularly a 9-year-old female orphan child at Naaman's Land Border Point in Jordan on Jun 20, 2013:

Angelina Jolie (to the child): Can you tell us what happened to your family?
Female interpreter (to the child): Female interpreter: My father died because of the shelling, and we had to leave right away.
As can be examined, the orphan child's message has been manipulated or rather reframed by the interpreter, especially the child's belief that her father's death is an act of martyrdom and not an accidental one. Such interpreting intervention may be affected by, and stemmed from, two main sources, the first of which is personal, i.e., axiological, which is the interpreter's emotions, feelings, and values, and the second is social, i.e., ideological, denoting the interpreter's influence by the beliefs, opinions, or hegemony, of her employing institution. In the following paragraphs, we will explain how can these two aspects impact interpreters' actions or reactions in a way that distorts the transmission of source messages. Afterwards, emphasis will be shifted to reviewing the rendition of the interpersonal devices showing occasions of reframing.

Axiological and Ideological Reframing
The understanding of the role played by translators and interpreters has changed significantly by the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century as the primary focus became on the factors that guide their translation and interpreting behaviour. Here we must refer to many translation scholars who have investigated the role of the translator and interpreter in different contexts, and the consciousness or unconsciousness of the process of reformulation. Lefevere (1992:14), for instance, describes translators and interpreters as 'rewriters' where the perspective through which they 'understand themselves and their culture is one of the factors that may influence the way in which they translate'. On the other hand, Hatim and Mason (1997:122) treat them as 'mediators' who 'intervene in the transfer process, feeding their own knowledge and beliefs into their processing of a text'. From a different standpoint, Baker (2006:132) considers them as 're-narrators' or 're-framers' who 'can actively reframe the immediate narrative as well as the larger narratives in which it is embedded by careful realignment of participants in time and social/political space'. Similarly, Tymoczko (2006:453)  Based on these in-depth proposals, the re-framing of texts (to use Baker's terminology) and utterances may be driven by personal factors such as the translators' and interpreters ' emotions, judgements, and valuations, or what Bakhtin (1981:305) calls, the 'axiological belief systems' as well as 'the tacit assumptions, beliefs, and value systems which are shared collectively by social groups' known as ideologies (Hatim and Mason, 1997:120). Fairclough (2003:10) asserts that 'ideologies are representations of the aspects of the world which can be shown to contribute to establishing, maintaining, and changing social relations of power domination and exploitation.' The UNHCR interpreters' outputs may, therefore, be affected by the power of their and their society's belief systems. The more influential aspect is the social represented by the interpreters' conscious or unconscious subscription to the beliefs of their employing institution throughout a strong invisible power. Bourdieu (1991:163-164) underlines this 'symbolic power', and assumes that it 'can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it'. In terms of this, the UNHCR interpreters could be socio-political agents that are consciously or unconsciously manipulated by their employer to pursue certain agendas. They can provide a concrete example of how power is first exercised and then reproduced, in the way that the organisations policy offers to be transformed to their English-speaking audience.

Research Methodology
To assess the degree to which Syrian refugees' traumatic experiences are deformed by the UNHCR interpreters, the present study follows a qualitatively descriptive product-oriented approach, where 'the analysis of texts in their context of production and reception offers evidence of translators' decision making, which allows some insight into the translation process (Saldanha and O'Brien, 2014: 50). That is to say, the utterances being analysed are not considered as an end in themselves but as vehicles that can derive to certain ends, especially drawing inferences on the individual and social factors urged interpreters to consciously or unconsciously reframe. Speakers', or in this context the UNHCR interpreters', subjectivity or agency is best conveyed at the interpersonal level of language (Halliday, 2004:29-30), therefore, carrying a discourse analysis to the interpreters' outputs is significant. In this respect, since 'evaluation, expressed of course interpersonally, is central to communication and central to translation (Munday, 2012:11)'; the investigation of evaluative language both at the axiological and ideological axes can reveal the positions in which the UNHCR's interpreters have obstructed the transference of the speakers' messages. White (2001) underlines that appraisal provides 'the linguistic resources by which text speaker's come to express, negotiate and naturalise particular intersubjective and ultimately ideological positions.' The UNHCR interpreters are also text speakers where they can also express, negotiate, and naturalise axiological and ideological positions throughout appraisal semantic resources (these positions may not necessarily be identical with those of the original speakers). Because of the wide semantic area covered by the appraisal framework, it is divided into three 'interacting domains': 'attitude' (emotions, judgements and evaluations), 'engagement' (stances or positions), and 'graduation' (adjusting value positions) which are, in turn, subdivided into more specific semantic resources as in 'attitude' which is composed of 'affect' (registering human feelings), 'judgement' (attitudes of people's behaviour concerning conventions or rules), and 'appreciation' (evaluations of things and natural phenomena) (Martin and White 2005: 35-152).

Data Analysis
For the economy of space, the data to be investigated here consists of only two UNHCR interpreted interviews (subsequent subtitled versions were also released by the UNHCR). The first one includes Angelina Jolie's, the UNHCR' Goodwill Ambassador, conversation with two women, Um Mohamed and Um Basil in Zaatary Camp, Jordan on June 21, 2013. The second indicates Jolie's meeting with some orphan children in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon on July 10, 2015. These interviews are transcribed to qualitatively identify locations of the interpreter's conscious or unconscious reframing. Back translations to the refugees' utterances are suggested to act as reference points. Priority will be given to tracing three main strategies of reframing: deletion, addition, and substitution of appraisal indicators, then attempts will be made to establish some sort of interrelatedness between these reframing decisions and the interpreter's individual and social belief systems. Now let's investigate an excerpt from the transcription of the first interview:

Jolie (to Um Mohamed's son):
What do you think about your mother working as a nurse suddenly? Are you proud of?

Back translation of the child's answer: She is Strong.
Female interpreter: She is very strong.

Back translation of Um Mohamed's answer: Especially whose husband is detained or wanted or her son is detained or wanted.
Female interpreter: Yes, especially women whose husband or sons are detained.

Female interpreter: Why is no one is standing by the Syrian people? No one is helping us.
The careful examination of the interpreter's version shows that the refugee's utterances have not been transformed transparently, i.e., the interpreter's agency is strongly present in many occasions. First, when Jolie asks the child to evaluate his mother, he judges her as ( ‫اٌٗٗة‬ ) which means (strong), nevertheless, the interpreter intrudes and inserts her evaluation throughout adding the graduation (appraisal) indicator 'very'. This conscious or unconscious reframing decision has strengthened the rendered evaluation. It may stem from the interpreter's influence by the mother's experience. Second, the interpreter overlooks twice providing acceptable equivalence to Um Mohmed's emphasis that the women abused by the Syrian regime are those whose husbands or sons are not only detained ‫)ٍعحقو(‬ as appears in the rendered version but also ‫,)ٍطي٘ة(‬ i.e., (wanted). Throughout the deletion of this judgement (appraisal) indicator, the listener is driven to believe that abused women are only those whose husbands or sons are detained. The interpreter's de-selectivity here may be motivated by her dissatisfaction with this particular cause of abuse which can be seen in a subsequent occasion when she also disregards Um Mohmed's insistence that a woman can be detained even if her wanted husband is hidden. This can be observed in the interpreter's deletion of the judgement (appraisal) indicator ‫,)ٍخحفً(‬ i.e. (hidden). The most influential aspect of reframing can, however, be monitored in altering Um Mohamed's criticism of the international community. Out of her pain and suffering, Um Mohamed asks Jolie about the justifications behind the international community's powerless stand with the Syrian people. She thinks that they want to follow the same scenario they are following in the Palestinian issue ( ‫ثذٗ‬ ‫فيسطٍِ؟‬ ‫ٍحو‬ ‫ٌسبٗٗ‬ ُ ). She draws a very impressive comparison between the victims, i.e., Syrians and Palestinians, from the one side, and oppressors, i.e., the Syrian regime and Israelis, from the other. The utterance she uses is socio-political charged. Rendering this socio-political stand into English may not satisfy the interpreter's employers (UNHCR officials) because it may impact their long-term interests. To avoid the tension and embarrassment that could be resulted, the interpreter changes Um Mohamed's message from ‫فيسطٍِ؟(‬ ‫ٍحو‬ ‫ٌسبٗٗ‬ ‫,)ثذُٗ‬ i.e. (They want to do as in Palestine), into (No one is helping us.).
It is both possible and productive to see that some interested researchers may view the above-mentioned occasions of reframing as interpreting mistakes, though the employed interpreters are supposed to be specialized highly-trained professionals. The recurrence of these 'mistakes' not only in the single interview but also within at least two of them may, however, strengthen the present study's hypothesis. This is what can be arrived at by examining the rendering of Jolie's second interview which was with the refugees, especially Nemer's family, in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon on July 10, 2015: Nemer's utterances convey not only his painfulness, suffering and depression, but also his responsibility to take care of his wife, newborn daughter, and traumatized brother and younger sisters. It is the same story of hundred refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and some European countries. He wants to share this experience with Jolie who is supposed to transform into an English-speaking audience. The transparent follow of the conveyed messages has, nevertheless, been obstructed by the interpreter's recurrent intervention.
The first obstruction is clear in the utterance on the value of having a female child at this particular time. Nemer assumes that she evoked a lot of positive feelings (such as hope, intimacy, happiness, sweet memories, etc.). The suggested rendering reduces these feelings to happiness, which is inadequate. The deformation of meaning is yet more influential in the interpreter's disregard of the justification behind naming this child after Nemer's mother. Nemer says he did so ‫حذا(‬ ‫ٍشبُ‬ ٍ٘ ‫اخ٘اجً‬ ‫)ٍشبُ‬ for the sake of his brother and sisters, an aspect which is totally neglected in the interpreter's version.
In the second utterance, Nemer reflects on his hope that this child could survive cold and hunger. In addition, he confesses that her arrival has intensified his responsibility because he already had a burden to act as a father and mother at the same time. His fair of the unknown future is apparent even in his hesitation and closing the discussion by saying that he does not know what to do. These revolutionary feelings of painfulness have been variably devalued in the rendering: the reference to coldness is substituted by 'bad situation we are in'; his state of being little anxious( ‫شٌ٘ٔ‬ ‫)جيجنث‬ was removed; his reporting that he already has a responsibility and now it has intensified ‫امحر(‬ ‫ٍسؤٗىٍة‬ ‫عْذي‬ ‫ٗطبر‬ ‫ٍسؤٗىٍة‬ ‫عْذي‬ ‫)مبُ‬ is shifted to 'I already had a huge responsibility; his role to stay at home to guard his family as a father and mother ( ‫ا‬ ‫ثذي‬ ‫ٗال‬ ‫ؤ‬ ‫ٗاٍِٖ‬ ‫ثٍِٖ‬ ‫ٍثو‬ ‫عْذِٕ‬ ‫عذ‬ ) is reduced to that of the mother, and his task of bringing food ‫ٗادٌِٖ(‬ ‫اشحغو‬ ‫رٗح‬ ‫ثذي‬ ‫)ٗال‬ is attached to that of a father. The most influential decision of reframing is when his whole utterance ( ‫اثنً‬ ‫اضو‬ ‫جذ‬ ‫عِ‬ ‫ٌعًْ‬ ‫إٌبٓ‬ ‫ىل‬ ‫اؤىث‬ ‫اىيً‬ ‫اىحنً‬ ‫ٌحسمر‬ ‫ىَب‬ ‫ٌعًْ‬ ‫أمثر‬ ٍِ ‫,)سبعحٍِ.‬ which literally means 'Really, when I remember what I have just said to you, seriously I start crying for more than two hours' is substituted with (The aid is not enough for all of us to live on).

Conclusion
In light of the surveyed evidence, the following insights could be proposed.
1. Contrary to the common perception, the transparency and, therefore, the neutrality of interpreting outcomes produced or sponsored by the UNHCR is questionable. This has to be publicly clear for the refugees, UNHCR officials, and the international audience to determine their stand towards such process of reframing.