Interpreter at the crossroads of communication, culture and language: A study on Amistad

The aim of this thesis is to explore the status/task and multiple roles of the interpreter in the film Amistad. Bringing together the approaches developed within communication and cultural studies with the approaches from the field of translation and interpreting studies, the thesis examines what the film reveals concerning the intricate relations between culture, language, communication and power in a case of linguistic, cultural and socio-economic asymmetry. The film narrates the story of the 'slaves' of the ship Amistad captured and put into trial in a legal setting where the medium of communication is a language foreign to them. The captives are deprived of a verbal tool to communicate with until an interpreter steps in, whose presence and intervention dramatically changes the course of events leading to their freedom. The analysis of Amistad as a film on language, communication, culture and translation has revealed that the film reflects both the multidimensional roles and a professional profile of the interpreter, the ethics of translation in terms of the relations of freedom and responsibility and the positions of the interpreter in communication as a process of encoding and decoding. As an eminent example revealing the central and critical role and function of the interpreter even in the fields in which translation is seen marginalized, the film shows the key role of the interpreter in the communication as a meaning creation process and power struggles. Amistad portrays the interpreter as one of the prominent players in the power games, struggles and conflicts, who incorporates, experiences, both reflects on and reflects and carries the complex and interrelated relations between the linguistic, cultural, discursive, ideological practices/constructs and power, infrastructure and hegemony, and who knows what lies behind and beyond the codes and the discourse of the dominant. Thus, the interpreter is the one who has the potential/power to either reinforce/re-produce or unsettle, even dissolve and abolish the well-organized, multi-dimensional and multi-level operating hegemonic systems structured by the power. The thesis concludes also suggesting that films may serve as potential sources of future research to explore what is behind and beyond all the workings and mechanisms of the activity of interpreting and to further explore the pivotal and critical roles of interpreter and interpreting in the encounter and clash of cultures.