Steering ethics toward social justice

Abstract

The interpreting field has not been impervious to the call for dismantling patterns of injustice that extend down to the communication encounter. However, its engagement with socio-political commitment and change remains largely constrained by a deontological and liberal tradition. To decenter interpreting from this tradition and to steer its ethics toward social justice, this paper proposes a meta-ethical approach to and a model of interpreting. It explores activist interpreting in the global justice movement from three complementary standpoints: interpreting in the encounter (micro), politics of organization (macro) and enquiry (meso). The case study shows that social justice does not only concern the leverage of citizens’ benefits in the welfare state, but also consists of a communicational and social performance. The model can equip researchers to harness the liberatory potential of praxes, discourses and epistemologies found in the social movement milieu to refashion ethical language and thought in the field.