A critical review of church interpreting research

Abstract

This article presents a critical review of literature on church interpreting, also called interpreting in church and sermon interpreting, and introduces the public Bibliography of Interpreting in Christian Settings. The review argues that this literature can be usefully organised into three separate approaches: publications aimed at practitioners, descriptive research, and prescriptive research. These approaches each presuppose a different relationship between interpreting and practice and between the researcher and the object of study and thus show distinct trajectories. Publications aimed at practitioners were developed as a tool for educating interpreters and later turned to empirical investigations. Descriptive research was developed from historical research on interpreting in Judaism and from two studies on the relationship between church interpreting and its contexts. Prescriptive research seeks to professionalise church interpreting, mostly through locating errors or challenges in interpreter output. This difference in research focus has led to a mix of methods and foci, from an autoethnography of interpreting to international surveys. It is argued that the separation of these approaches now impedes research progress. The article ends with a suggestion of how to synthesise these approaches, taking into account the social, spiritual, and personal nature of church interpreting.

1. Introduction

Interpreting in churches is now sufficiently well-established as a research interest to have gained mentions in the Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies (see Hild, 2015), two articles in the recent Routledge Handbook of Translation and Religion (Furmanek, 2022; Hokkanen, 2022), and a brief summary in a leading textbook (Pöchhacker, 2016, pp. 163, 212). Using the public Bibliography of Interpreting in Christian Settings (hereafter BICS), the Bibliography of Interpreting and Translation (hereafter BITRA), the Translation Studies Bibliography (hereafter TSB), and Google Scholar, this article will map research in this area, with particular attention paid to the different assumptions that researchers have made regarding the purpose of research and the relationship between the researcher and research subjects. It argues that developments in research and practice require researchers to be aware of the importance of their own starting assumptions and to work co-operatively with the people whose actions they wish to study.

Researchers have used terms such as “sermon interpreting,” “interpreting in church,” “interpreting in religious settings/contexts,” “church interpreting,” and “faith-related interpreting” to describe such research. Finding some level of terminological agreement may be important in the future as this will improve clarity in terms of the kinds of phenomena each researcher has in view. To ensure that as wide a pool of closely related research is included, however, this article views all these terms as synonymous, with the exception of “interpreting in religious settings/contexts” and “faith-related interpreting” which are here taken as general terms for interpreting in any religious context, not just Christianity. Representatives of this wider literature include the research on the work of mufassirs in Islam by Salawu (2009) and the use of interpreting within Buddhist translation practices found by St. André (2010).

For both reasons of space and to make this article more targeted and therefore useful, clear exclusion and inclusion criteria have been used. With the exception of BICS, which has its own inclusion criteria (see section 2 below), three online Bibliographies (TSB, BITRA, and Google Scholar) were searched using the terms “sermon interpreting,” “interpreting in church,” and “church interpreting” in the first instance. Items returned from this search and items found in BICS were only retained for later analysis if examination of their abstracts led to the view that they were clearly related to interpreting carried out in church buildings, during formal church meetings or events, such as conferences, training sessions, Bible studies, confessions (in cases where a church has a permanent presence in an area), and home groups or to do with the online streaming of church services. Items meeting the aforementioned criteria were labelled as covering “church interpreting,” which is the preferred term in this review. Items that referred to church interpreting articles in their bibliographies were not included in this review, unless church interpreting was the main topic of the article. Thus, Downie’s (2014) theoretical account of the basis of then-extant research was included, while the introduction from the collected volume by Antonini et al. (2017) was not. In addition, a bibliography search was performed on the sources fitting the criteria. Any additional materials were submitted to BICS for inclusion and are included in this article. The use of these criteria allows the study to be replicated in the future.

The definition of “church interpreting” used here accords broadly with the views of Tipton and Furmanek (2016), who find in their summary of “faith-related interpreting” that “the term church interpreting [. . .] needs to be used carefully since it seems that its meaning has been narrowed down to interpreting inside a building/during a service for Christian congregations” (p. 237). The points where there is a difference between their definition and the one used in this review which is in the case of interpreting between clergy and lay people in confession and pastoral counselling, which would be defined as church interpreting in this article but would not fit the “narrow definition” of church interpreting given by Tipton and Furmanek earlier. As only one reference was found for interpreting in confession and none were found on interpreting in pastoral counselling, the difference had minimal impact on this study. It is also important to note that this present article has a deliberately more restricted scope, in contrast to that of Tipton and Furmanek (2016), whose discussion of “faith-related interpreting” includes discussion of liturgical interpreting (p. 252), missionary interpreting (pp. 252–256), and pilgrimage interpreting (p. 260).

In an effort to reduce missed sources, Google Scholar, BITRA, and TSB were also queried using the terms “faith-related interpreting,” “interpreting in religious settings,” and “interpreting in religious contexts” with the same criteria used. Studies covering missionary interpreting were not included unless they met the criteria of “church interpreting” set out in the previous paragraph, and no search was made for the keyword “missionary interpreting.” These criteria tend to exclude historical studies and privilege studies that examined interpreting that was going on while the researcher was studying it. While historical studies of church interpreting and interpreting in religious settings at large are worthy of attention, prioritising research that involved the observation of interpreting that took place while the researcher was studying it offers important insights into the importance of researcher positionality in church interpreting. The bibliographies of the sources discovered using this second approach were also checked for additional sources, which were added to the list and submitted to BICS for inclusion.

The concerns of historical studies such as Furmanek (2022), Sarmiento Pérez (2018), and Kurz (1990) tend towards the interaction of interpreting with the macro context of national and international politics and the implementation of regulations made in church councils. In this article, an emphasis on the micro context of the interpreted church service and the context of the individual local churches allows precise methodological, ethical, and theoretical insights to be generated. This article focuses on published academic research and published books and does not include articles in professionally oriented magazines or personal or ministry websites, which corresponds broadly to the “Articles in Professional Publications” and “Other” tabs in BICS. Such material is likely to be far broader and more widespread than suggested by BICS, with websites such as ChurchInterpreting.com looking to collate it in a single place. Thus, while they are worthy of detailed analysis and are likely to provide important insights into how non-academic stakeholders view church interpreting, such publications are beyond the scope of this article.

While it is common for systematic literature reviews to follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., 2021), in this case, a more eclectic approach has been taken, reflecting discussions on different types of literature reviews and their relationship to each other (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2020; Boell & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2014, 2015; Watson, 2015). For the purposes of this particular review, the emphasis in PRISMA on quantitative data and statistical meta-analyses (PRISMA, 2020), the resulting difficulty in integrating case studies and qualitative research into traditional systematic methods (Elsbach & van Knippenberg, 2020, p. 11), and the tendency for reviews using the PRISMA model of systematicity to focus on very specific research questions at the cost of providing broader account of the state of knowledge in an area (Boell & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2015, p. 163) all mitigate against the use of traditional systematic frameworks. Church interpreting research is largely qualitative, with only a small number of quantitative studies and even fewer with thorough statistical analysis. It also presents a rather broad field of research, even in the restricted sense used in this article.

Thus, while the inclusion/exclusion criteria and search methods are detailed earlier in this section to allow for replicability, this review does not follow the rest of any traditional systematic guidelines. Instead, it draws from the approach suggested in Alvesson and Sandberg’s account of a “problematising review” (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2020), which instead seeks to reveal the internal contradictions, gaps, and difficulties in a literature, with full awareness that selecting, analysing, classifying, and presenting literature is necessarily based on subjective criteria. This present review therefore presents a way of classifying the literature on church in terms of the intended audience and then in terms of the rhetorical relationship between the researcher and the object of study. This is, of course, one way among many to structure such a review, but it has the advantage in this case of offering a repeatable, although subjective, approach that allows theoretical and methodological commonalities and innovations to come to the fore. As the primary source of references used in this article, it is important to first explain the history of BICS and its current position.

2. Introducing BICS

According to its “About” section, the aim of BICS is “to have comprehensive coverage of all research done on interpreting in Christian settings, with some coverage of literature on interpreting in Judaism, given its ongoing relevance for research on church interpreting” (Church Interpreting and Bible Performance Research Group, 2023, sec. About). The same section explains that the bibliography began as a Microsoft Word table created in 2014 by the members of the now-defunct “Church Interpreting and Bible Performance Research” group, with gradual additions until 2015, when Irina Peremota created an Excel version of the bibliography with a significant number of new additions, especially publications in professional magazines, as part of her master’s dissertation (Peremota, 2017). The entire bibliography was made public in 2022, with the 30th of June being marked as the first time that a reverse reference search was performed, by combing through every reference in every peer-reviewed article in the bibliography to locate new entries (Church Interpreting and Bible Performance Research Group, 2023, sec. About). As such, it now serves as a unique resource for researchers in the area, containing 93 entries as of May 2023, spanning 36 peer-reviewed articles, 6 books, 15 articles in professional publications, 20 theses/dissertations, 11 book chapters, and 5 other publications. In April 2023, new inclusion and exclusion criteria were added, which excluded articles appearing in “predatory journals,” those making spurious claims, those showing no awareness of previous church interpreting research, and those not meeting “the basic criteria for academic publication” (Church Interpreting and Bible Performance Research Group, 2023).

Given its coverage and the fact that it provided more included sources than any other bibliography, BICS has been used as the primary source of literature for this critical review. Despite cross-checking BICS with other databases, it is always possible that some sources have been missed. The findings of this article should therefore be read as indicative, rather than final. Indeed, one important purpose of this article is to inspire further research in this area and related sub-fields.

3. Church interpreting research: a division by audience and approach

Church interpreting research can be divided into three distinct approaches, according to the intended audience and the purported relationship between the researcher and research subject. In looking for an initial organising principle to this research, the author noted that there is a clear division between publications whose primary audience is practitioners such as preachers and interpreters and publications aimed primarily at an academic audience. The majority of the books on church interpreting (such as Bearden, 1975; Owen, 2014; Sampley, 1990; Yates, 2006) are addressed to a practitioner audience, with one article in an academic journal (Borrman, 2004) and a book chapter (Cheong & Scheuermann, 2022) also showing signs of being addressed to the same audience. Of all the sources found using the search criteria, eight were classified as research aimed at practitioners.

Among the sources addressed to academic researchers, a further split was evident, which appears both in early citation patterns and in earlier treatments of this specialism. Both Downie (2016, pp. 68–73) and Parish (2018, pp. 40–41) point to a cluster of research on the interpreter as a performer or “co-preacher.” Examining this cluster closely reveals that researchers tend to take a descriptive approach to research, noting the contexts in which the interpreters work (Karlik, 2010; Rayman, 2007; Vigouroux, 2010, and so on), their emotional states (Hokkanen & Koskinen, 2016; Tekgül, 2020), and the role within the wider church context (Balci Tison, 2016). These observations are made without any attempt to point out what the researcher believes should or could happen. Descriptivism is also found in survey research on church interpreting (Peremota, 2017). This allows descriptivism as a researcher position to be used as a broad category of research, within which the co-preaching and performance approach represents an important sub-category. There is a high degree of cross-citation within this approach. Forty-one sources were classified as being aimed at academic researchers and using a descriptive approach.

Distinct from descriptive research is a category that takes a prescriptive approach, mostly through applying some sort of evaluative criteria to observed church interpreting. Clustering here is evident in titles with mentions of “challenges” (e.g., Biamah, 2013a; De Tan et al., 2021), “problems” (Musyoka & Karanja, 2014), or “evaluation” (Salawu, 2010). Much of this work shares a common methodological core of the use of transcripts as tools to examine the output of the interpreter through the expectations of the researcher. Closely related to this is research that uses different methods, but which takes a similar approach of trying to relate church interpreting to the researcher’s view of “professionalism.” These latter studies either place “professionalisation” as the specified aim of the research (Mlundi, 2021) or look to compare the practices of church interpreters to those assumed to be used by “professional interpreters” (Alvarenga, 2018). Given the common feature of comparing church interpreting to an outside standard, this category has therefore been extended to cover both the transcript-based core of research and the research which draws on other data sources but still sees a view of “professional interpreting” as the phenomenon against which church interpreting is compared.

Research in all three approaches continues, but there is a tendency for researchers to focus on their own approach. Of course, such specialisation may be an important part of disciplinary development, yet, in the case of church interpreting, the focus on specific approaches within a still quickly developing domain of interpreting has meant that theoretical and methodological discussions have remained limited to specific groups of scholars. As discussed in section 4.1, this specialisation has led on at least one occasion to researchers making claims that other research has already shown to be invalid, due to a lack of awareness of research outside of a particular approach. Thus, while specialisation in itself is not necessarily an issue, it becomes problematic when it leads to theoretical and literature blind spots. In later sections of this article, the benefits of cross-fertilisation between approaches will be discussed. It is therefore important to briefly outline each approach in turn, beginning with research aimed at practitioners and then the two approaches to research aimed at academics: namely the descriptive approach and the prescriptive approach.

3.1 Research aimed at practitioners

Church interpreting research aimed at practitioners seems to have developed out of a need to provide materials for practising interpreters, irrespective of the data available. The earliest reference found using the aforementioned search methods is A handbook for religious interpreters for the deaf by Carter E. Bearden (1975). This was followed chronologically, although not theoretically, by similarly practitioner-oriented books by Sampley (1990), Blake (2004), Yates (2006), and Owen (2014), with each book taking a different approach to the subject and drawing on different epistemologies and literatures. Yates (2006), for example, viewed church interpreting through the lens of professional practice and discussed the ethics, rates of pay, and certification requirements of this area. Owen (2014) meanwhile based his book on his reading of a Biblical view of the ethics and practice and put forward a model of interpreting relevant to work in church. This difference in focus means that it is not feasible to read the publication of these books as some kind of progression of research. On the contrary, each seems to be an independent endeavour, with Owen (2014) bemoaning the paucity of resources available and explicitly disavowing any connection to interpreting research, while the book by Yates (2006) claimed uniqueness. In other words, these books tend to position themselves as claiming hitherto unexplored or at least underexplored territories.

These books represent attempts at advising or training church interpreters, with less interest in what can be empirically shown to happen in churches. In all the aforementioned cases, the assumed audience was also current or future practitioners, with advice on such practical issues as dealing with scripture readings and hymns, common terms, and ethical decisions.

This focus on practical problem-solving also fed into early peer-reviewed research in this area. The article by Borrman (2004) examined challenges inherent in interpreting of specific, unchanging stretches of speech that are referred to as “frozen text” and whether these are then rendered as “a universal rendering; every time and everywhere it is used, it is delivered in the same way” (p. 75). This differs from the study by Burke (2014), who argued that a “frozen text” was “static unchanging text that is typically spoken.” While Borrman’s (2004) article discussed arguments as to whether frozen text existed in American Sign Language (p. 77) and the unique characteristics of such text (pp. 78–81), the emphasis of the article was on certain practical attempts to provide approaches for interpreters to interpret such texts consistently (pp. 85–90). Thus, while this article sits comfortably as an instance of church interpreting research, it is research for church interpreting rather than research on it.

A similar observation can be made regarding the work of Cheong and Scheuermann (2022). Drawing on both church interpreting research in the work of Downie (2014, 2016) and Parish (2018) and various strands of missiology and theology, Cheong and Scheuermann offer insights into how preachers and interpreters—or, in their terms, “translators”—can work effectively together to create something where “the sum is greater than their parts” (Cheong & Scheuermann, 2022, p. 20). The basis of this discussion is, however, the theoretical discussions of existing authors, rather than any available empirical evidence. Much the same can be also said about the MDiv thesis from Duve (2014), who uses existing theological discussions to justify the use of sign language interpreting as a tool for churches to evangelise deaf people.

The difference between such research for interpreting and the research on interpreting that developed from the early 2000s is that research for church interpreting does not need to claim an empirical basis but uses what is known from other fields or from the researcher’s own experience and knowledge to posit theory to improve, regulate, or suggest new ways of viewing practice. This contrasts with research on church interpreting, which takes as its basis available empirical data and findings, from a single case study to the aggregation of findings across a high number of such studies that have some common ground. Instead of looking to say what should or can happen, research on interpreting looks to provide accounts of what did happen, with an explanatory theory as to the conditions that produced it.

Both approaches to research are found in research aimed at academics. Research on interpreting leads to a descriptive approach, where the researcher seeks to understand what is currently happening in a context, without any attempt to argue for what they think should happen. Research for interpreting takes as its starting point what the researcher views as the interpreting ideal and compares the observed interpreting to that—the prescriptive approach. The next section will examine how these two approaches have affected church interpreting research, beginning with descriptive research.

3.2 Research aimed at academics

3.2.1 Descriptive research

Descriptive church interpreting research seeks to understand how this service is used, viewed, and understood by those taking part in it. This has often led to researchers examining the meaning that interpreting has for churches and for interpreters. The view that interpreting has meaning above and beyond the semantic meaning of the interpreter’s utterances is called the “co-preaching and performance approach” (hereafter CPA) in this review. The conceptual roots of CPA and indeed to descriptive research in general can be traced to historical research on interpreting in Judaism by Kaufmann (1994, 2005). Most notably, she argued that by examining the history of interpreting in Judaism:

on peut remettre en perspective et réévaluer les normes actuelles de la profession, et se demander dans quelle mesure la pratique contemporaine pourrait profiter d’une comparaison avec des normes différentes qui ont fait leurs preuves.

[We can put in perspective and re-evaluate the current norms of the profession, and ask ourselves to what extent contemporary practice may benefit from comparison with different norms that have proven their worth.] (Kaufmann, 2005, p. 973; author’s translation in square brackets)

The root of these “norms” was the rather uncomfortable position of the interpreter as one whose role was deemed to be divinely instituted (Kaufmann, 2005, p. 976) but was nonetheless strictly regulated, with rules on turn-taking between the reader of the sacred text and the interpreter (Kaufmann, 2005, pp. 980–981) and a clear set of rules, including one that no interpreter was allowed to lean on a column while interpreting (Kaufmann, 2005, p. 982). In addition, interpreters’ freedom to make decisions in their interpreting was restricted, as they were committed to stay faithful to the original text as read aloud by the reader while still following the exegetical preferences of the rabbi leading the service (Kaufmann, 2005, p. 983).

What is at issue here then is the complex interplay between four different forces: the spiritual nature of interpreting in such contexts, the relationship between the interpreter and the source text, the relationship between the interpreter and the speaker or leader, and the relationship between the interpreter and the audience hearing their work. While neither co-preaching nor performance are explicitly mentioned in Kaufmann’s work, the same forces underlying the complex practices discussed in her work underlie much of the findings of CPA.

Rayman’s (2007) article exemplifies the interplay of the relationship between the interpreter and the original speaker and the relationship between the interpreter and the audience. It reflects the researcher’s attempt to understand the actions of an interpreter who deliberately softened the contrasts between the deaf and hearing communities made by a preacher during the dedication of a building used by two congregations, one from each community (Rayman, 2007, pp. 73, 89). In this case, the interpreter and preacher had different ideas as to the appropriate means of fostering unity through the representation of the relationship between the congregations using the building (Rayman, 2007, p. 97). While the author was still critical of the decisions taken by the interpreter (e.g., Rayman, 2007, p. 95), these criticisms were set within a context in which the interpreter was allowed to speak about their role in the specific interpreted event and their work in fostering a relationship between the two congregations (Rayman, 2007, pp. 85–87). Interpreting decisions were therefore viewed as a representation of the interpreter’s views and the constraints of the interpreted event.

Two articles, both published in 2010, are the sources of the most common theoretical terms used in CPA. In an article on the expectations and performance of those hearing interpreted Scripture in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, Karlik reported on one preacher who called the interpreter his “co-preacher” (Karlik, 2010, p. 167). In this particular case, the term seems to reflect the role of the interpreters as those who take into account both what the preacher or Scriptures say and how they will be understood by the audience (Karlik, 2010, pp. 166–167, 171–174).

While the concept of performance is present in Karlik’s work (e.g., 2010, p. 162, 2012), it encompasses a wide range of features, from texture to public speaking. In an article by Vigouroux (2010, pp. 342–343), “performance” describes how the actions, words, and vocal tone of the preacher and interpreter work together to represent how the Spirit is moving in the sermon. Performance here also reflects the fact that, while the interpreting was not linguistically required and made no sense to someone who only spoke the language used by the interpreter, it illustrates the church’s vision to reach people from across Africa and to integrate into their local South African church community (Vigouroux, 2010, pp. 344, 349, 351, 354–355).

The term “performance” in this case therefore indicates that the interpreting fulfilled a symbolic function as well as, or even instead of, its semantic function. The performance of interpreting enacted both the power of the sermon, with the interpreter being the first audience, and became the demonstration of the church’s vision and position. It is in this symbolic, representational sense, often exemplified through certain actions, feelings, or words, that performance became a key term in the CPA.

Symbolism and performance are integral parts of theological examinations of church interpreting. In the work of Parish (2018, pp. 187–199), all respondents viewed nonverbal communication as important, with most arguing for the interpreter to mimic the actions and emotions of the preacher, precisely because the preaching and interpreting were received at the same time due to the use of the short consecutive mode. This lends empirical support to the theoretical work of Downie (2014) on the basis of then-extant empirical data, most notably the aforementioned work of Karlik (2010) and Vigouroux (2010). Downie (2014) proposes that the view that preaching and interpreting are received as a single performative whole, with the interpreter as a “co-preacher,” be called “the single performance hypothesis” (pp. 64–65).

The doctoral thesis of Balci Tison (2008, 2016) provides a clear case of the single performance hypothesis in operation and of the importance of church interpreting in the worshipping community. The interpreters in the church she studied in Izmir, Türkiye, played a vital part in the creation of an independent identity for the church, separate from that of its founders (Balci Tison, 2016, p. 111). It is therefore not surprising that this church shares with others studied within this approach a preference for interpreters who are members of the church (Balci Tison, 2016, pp. 120–122, cf. Downie, 2016, pp. 132–138, 154–157; Karlik, 2010, p. 167). Preferring interpreters from inside the church places importance on the personal commitment and engagement of the interpreter with the context to produce such performance.

Later investigations would show that the single performance hypothesis does not hold in all cases (Downie, 2016, pp. 173–175). Taking into account this exception, Downie (2016, pp. 168–173) argued that the extent to which the single performance hypothesis holds in a church is determined by how much the church perceives it needs interpreting and its perceived value for the future of the church. Church interpreting is therefore the performance of the organisational values and priorities of the church.

To this can be added that church interpreting performs the church’s theological view of interpreting and of the texts being interpreted, as shown in the discussion of Roman Catholic views of interpreting by Furmanek and Baldyga (2020, pp. 138–140) in their report on interpreting at a World Youth Day. The performance of theological values is also described in historical accounts of interpreting during Roman Catholic confessions in the work of Sarmiento Pérez (2018). In both cases, interpreting is circumscribed within the position given to it in Canon Law and the requirements of the historical moment during which it takes place. This reflects a global institutional positioning of interpreting that is absent from the protestant contexts described elsewhere in the literature, as protestant churches tend to allow each individual local church to decide on its own interpreting use and position.

The work of Giannoutsou (2014) reflects similar, although more local, concerns by viewing church interpreting as the instantiation of the translation and missionary politics of the individual church, as well as discussing the close relationship of preachers and interpreters. The research of Lee (2019) similarly argues that the partnership between interpreters and preachers contributes to meaning-making. The importance of the internal politics of each church is also listed among the reasons for church interpreting by Biamah (2013b) and among the factors explaining language provision in the work of Krihtova (2016). Church politics and a desire to reach a wider community were also found to be explanatory factors as to how and when churches used different languages and interpreting by Campbell and Anderson (2023). All these studies therefore provide evidence to the performative nature of church interpreting as an act with specific meaning in the specific contexts in which it takes place. This suggests that attempts to understand church interpreting that do not take into account the wider context within which it takes place could run the risk of missing the determining factor of church practice.

3.2.1.1 The intersection of co-preaching and performance and expectations of interpreters

Viewing church interpreting as a reflection of this wider sociological context and the spiritual nature of the task is at the heart of Kotzé’s (2018) questionnaire and focus group research on church interpreting in Afrikaans, English, IsiNdebele, Setswana, Sesotho, and Sepedi in Pretoria, South Africa. Starting from the assertion that church interpreting is an example of community interpreting, the researcher sought “to determine which role (as described by Niska’s [2002, pp. 137–138] role pyramid for community interpreting) the respondents identified with the most, and why” (Kotzé, 2018, p. 4). What the researcher found instead was that respondents tended to understand their role as being moulded by the local linguistic and cultural context (Kotzé, 2018, p. 7) but mostly in terms of the spiritual nature of what was being interpreted. As one interpreter said,

Because to me it is important to convey the meaning and the context of the message but retain the spiritual intent that is guided through the Holy Spirit, because that paramount as meaning is produced I mean have to be accountable for what we are speaking, ‘cause it might be the first time a person has ever heard the word of the Lord. (Kotzé, 2018, p. 7)

This role, labelled the “spiritual conduit” by Kotzé (2018, p. 7), shares important parallels with Hild’s (2017, p. 185) assertion that the spoken language interpreters she observed working in a Pentecostal church in Switzerland viewed their interpreting as “service to the community, God and his Word.” It also aligns closely with Hokkanen’s (2016) claim that a church interpreter is “an involved participant” in the interpreted event (p. 68). The study by Kotzé (2018) therefore underlines the importance of understanding the spiritual aspect of church interpreting when studying this phenomenon. Taking this aspect seriously would lead to serious questions being posed as to the suitability of comparing church interpreting to professional interpreting.

The master’s dissertation of Bonin (2017) meanwhile shares commonalities with prescriptive research (see section 3.2.2) by examining the expectations of interpreting users and situating this work within a discussion of the relationship between church interpreting and what the researcher views as professional interpreting. Yet the methods and findings, which prioritised the voices of interpreting users, place this research firmly in the descriptive paradigm. Unlike most prescriptive research, Bonin’s work offers a fairly clear view of what a professional interpreter might be and thus the standard against which church interpreting is intended to be compared. In this case, the standard in view is that set by the local sign language interpreting association (Bonin, 2017, p. 20). The logic therefore runs that to be a professional interpreter is to work according to this standard. Yet interviews with deaf churchgoers found that their expectations went beyond what was common in the standard, with interpreters expected to play a part in the life and culture of the deaf worshipping community (Bonin, 2017, pp. 79–80).

This is similar to the findings of the participant observation and interview research on sign language church interpreting by Friedner (2018), who found that interpreters felt that personal commitment and engagement, as well as readiness to be led by the spirit, were key criteria, precisely because the interpreters were expected to play the role of those who offered access to both what was said and the spirit behind it. This is also reflected in the master’s thesis of Elias (2019), who found that four interpreters and four church leaders of the same evangelical church all agreed that the personal religious commitment of the interpreters was more important than their professional training. The research of Lozano Navarro (2021) likewise found that interpreting clients in a church in Lima, Peru, prized linguistic and interpreting competence, the ability to adopt appropriate body language, and their personal religious commitment. Taken together, these studies suggest that personal commitment is prized above or at least alongside professional training precisely because it is assumed that such commitment will give interpreters a level of engagement that might not otherwise be possible. This engagement is then taken as the key to providing access to the deeper spiritual meaning behind what was said or signed.

The importance of the interpreter’s engagement and personal commitment is present in examples of church interpreting research where the experience of the interpreter was at the forefront, rather than the expectations of those using their services. While her earlier work sought to situate church interpreting within established theories in interpreting studies and within wider discussions of Pentecostalism and service (Hokkanen, 2012), Hokkanen’s later work extends the concerns of the co-preaching and performance approach by examining the importance of the interpreter’s own lived experience. The conceptual framework used in her PhD argued that religious experience, interpreter involvement, and interpreting as service were closely intertwined (Hokkanen, 2016, p. 27, 2022). This led to a close analysis of the interpreter’s feelings of involvement with or detachment from the sermon (Hokkanen, 2017b), the importance of emotions in meaning-making (Hokkanen, 2022; Hokkanen & Koskinen, 2016, pp. 15–18), and the methodological tools needed to collect and analyse such data (Hokkanen, 2017a).

The theme of performance and emotions being closely intertwined is also present in the work of Tekgül (2020), whose examination of an interpreter in a protestant Armenian church in Istanbul led to the conclusion that church interpreting was “emotional labour,” in that it requires the interpreter regulate their emotions for organisational goals (p. 46). While the concept of “emotional labour” is complex, what matters most for the purposes of this article is that such a characterisation of church interpreting is very similar to the one discussed in the autoethnographical research of Hokkanen (2016, 2017b; Hokkanen & Koskinen, 2016) and provides further evidence to support the assertions regarding the importance of the interpreter as a co-preacher found in the work of Karlik (2010), Vigouroux (2010), and Downie (2014). To this should also be added the historical research by Harkness (2017), who examined the semiotic strategies used by Billy Jang Hwan Kim in his interpreting of American evangelist Billy Graham to the effect that watching preachers felt as if the two worked together harmoniously and seemed to preach as one. This is a very clear confirmation of the single performance hypothesis.

Not all research on interpreter performance pays such close attention to emotion. Wheeler (2016), for example, examined the problem-solving skills shown by two young non-professional interpreters at religious services, concluding that their work showed signs of complex collaboration with other parties. This corresponds closely with the view that interpreters function as co-preachers. Similarly, the work of Ngana et al. (2020) concentrated on the strategies used by interpreters to cope with the cognitive difficulties inherent in the short consecutive mode used in the church they observed in Bali, Indonesia. Here, the lack of interpreter note-taking and a mixture of technical and non-technical content led interpreters to use compression and word order shifts (Ngana et al., 2020, p. 11) as well as terminological borrowings (Ngana et al., 2020, p. 14). The analysis of Ngana, Suastra, and Puspani therefore shares with prescriptive research a focus on the interpreter, rather than the preacher-interpreter partnership, but offers an account of interpreter decisions rather than an evaluation.

Szentirmay (2022) instead focused on the source texts interpreted at the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, concluding that the terminological and discoursal features required unique skills of the interpreter such as knowledge of how to handle intertextuality and context-specific words. This parallels the work of Khachula et al. (2021) who listed the linguistic and cognitive constraints that made it difficult to interpret between English and Luhya in churches in Kenya. These included grammatical mismatches and polysemous words (Khachula et al., 2021, p. 215) and culture-specific concepts (Khachula et al., 2021, pp. 215–216). These four studies therefore represent attempts at characterising the text linguistic challenges presented by church interpreting and the subsequent partnership and problem-solving required. They also show that it is possible to focus on the challenges faced by interpreters without recourse to an outside ideal or standard.

3.2.1.2 Survey research on church interpreting

Survey research offers both support and a level of challenge to the co-preaching and performance approach, while permitting a broader understanding of the contexts in which church interpreting takes place. The doctoral thesis of Shin (2013) reported on a survey of 247 protestant Korean churches who had used interpreting. In this case, consecutive interpreters were mostly male while simultaneous interpreters were mostly female, and both interpreting skills and spiritual commitment were highly prized. Peremota’s (2017) master’s dissertation, which surveyed 146 churches from 24 countries in which interpreting was provided into or out of Russian, did not report a strong requirement for spirituality, with respondents instead emphasising the need for interpreters to mirror the speaker and be trained.

This survey of churches parallels the master’s thesis on the career intentions and motivations of church interpreters working with American Sign Language (ASL) by Kinnamon (2018). With 112 total respondents (Kinnamon, 2018, p. 6), this study offers a much wider view of church interpreting than the case study approaches that are more commonly seen in church interpreting research. Among those respondents who worked weekly in church, the most common reasons for offering this service were “a sense of calling” (26%), “an act of service” (22%), and “fulfilling a need” (21%)” (Kinnamon, 2018, p. 26). All respondents reported an affiliation with a religious organization, and 75% of respondents reported interpreting within the organisation within which they were affiliated (Kinnamon, 2018, p.27). While 48% of respondents began working in church before they were certified, 75% reported that they had become certified before responding to the survey (Kinnamon, 2018, p. 31). This survey therefore offers a picture of ASL church interpreters being motivated by internal factors and applying this motivation to their ongoing personal professionalisation.

Peremota’s (2017) survey of 258 respondents from 146 churches and 24 countries also reflects a felt need for professionalisation, as the ideal church interpreter was viewed as having extensive Bible knowledge and professional qualifications, while being invisible. Alongside the aforementioned exception to the single performance hypothesis in the study by Downie (2016, pp. 173–175), this illustrates the ongoing need for research within the co-preaching and performance approach not to assume that all users of church interpreting will view interpreters as co-preachers. Indeed, given that research has not shown a difference between consecutive and simultaneous interpreters in terms of involvement and user expectations (Balci Tison, 2016; Downie, 2016; Hokkanen, 2017b), it would seem that whether interpreters are expected to be co-preachers and what this might involve will vary from church to church, rather than from mode to mode.

Recent questionnaire research from Spain (Valero-Garcés, 2022) also suggests that the use of interpreting in churches and similar religious organisations varies more widely than might be evident in in CPA. The researcher in this case received 14 replies from 60 questionnaires sent out and engaged in further phone conversations with an unstated number of the 14 respondents (Valero-Garcés, 2022, p. 294). Those respondents tended to indicate that interpreters were recruited through informal networks, mostly comprising those who were connected to the organisation in some way (Valero-Garcés, 2022, pp. 296–297). Insiders were chosen as much for financial reasons as for their terminological knowledge (Valero-Garcés, 2022, p. 301). In only one case was the active participation of the interpreter mentioned (Valero-Garcés, 2022, p. 298). A wide range of events were reported as being interpreted, from colloquia to life events such as weddings and funerals, in addition to the church services commonly analysed in church interpreting research (Valero-Garcés, 2022, p. 299). The use of informal networks and those connected to the organisation echoes the research of Mężyk (2022), who found that, while all the interpreters used in the nine Polish Evangelical churches she surveyed were Christians, only 3 of the 56 interpreters in those churches (5.35%) were professional interpreters, with the rest being language graduates, native speakers of the target language, or those married to a native speaker. All worked as volunteers (Mężyk, 2022, p. 299).

In the light of the exceptions to the idea that church interpreters always function as co-preachers, the performance aspect of CPA therefore seems to be on firmer empirical ground than the notion of co-preaching, as long as the meaning of “performance” is clearly defined. In CPA, the meaning of “performance” has been progressively widened to include the words, actions, and fulfilment of user expectations by the interpreter as well as the wider spiritual and organisational meaning given to interpreting within each church. Performance within this approach is therefore multi-layered, and great attention will need to be paid to clarify which layer is being addressed in each study. In fact, CPA can be read as suggesting that separating the layers of the social, symbolic, and spiritual meanings of church interpreting, from the expectations users have of interpreters, and the actions and vocal or signed output of interpreters may be more complicated than it might initially seem.

What this research does not do however is provide any tools for measuring or improving the extent to which the church interpreting offered fulfils the needs of those experiencing it. Of course, since this is not a stated aim of any of the studies discussed earlier, it would not be correct to view this as a flaw of the approach. Yet, the emphasis on the interpreter and their relationship with the preacher in the context of the wider theology and aims of the church, which is evident throughout this work, risks sidelining the concerns of those who will receive the interpreting. Indeed, studies where the views of the audience have been explicitly analysed, such as Downie (2016), Peremota (2017), and Bonin (2017), have consistently shown that audience expectations are complex and do not always reflect the view that the interpreter is the “co-preacher.” Indeed, the existence in all three studies of a group of respondents who did not specifically look for religious affiliation or personal commitment but instead looked exclusively for the carrying over of semantic meaning provides evidence of a need for evaluative research. How that can be done fairly and empirically is a question that forms both the foundation and the critical weakness of the next approach to church interpreting—an approach that seeks to evaluate the service using perceived challenges and problems found in interpreter output.

3.2.2 Prescriptive research

Contrary to the descriptive approach, the prescriptive approach looks to evaluate church interpreting against the views held by the researcher on what “professional” interpreting is like. This differs from research aimed at practitioners in that prescriptive research depends more directly on empirical data generated during evaluations of authentic interpreting, rather than the theological and theoretical emphases found in research aimed at practitioners. The core of this approach involves locating, characterising, and prescribing fixes for what researchers see as challenges and problems in church interpreting or offering an evaluation. This is why this core is called the “problems, challenges, and evaluation” (PCE) approach in this article. Both PCE and prescriptive research more broadly view the interpreter as the person responsible for carrying over the totality of the semantic meaning of the words of the speaker. This approach involves the interpreter’s output being transcribed, analysed, and evaluated by the researcher. Contextual factors are rarely discussed. Articles within this approach therefore tend to share a common structure and often reach similar conclusions.

All the articles within this approach present themselves as evaluations (Salawu, 2010), quality assessments (Franke, 2014; Mwinuka et al., 2022), or discussions of problems (Biamah, 2013a; De Tan et al., 2021; Musyoka & Karanja, 2014) or challenges (Makha & Phafoli, 2019) found in interpreting within churches in very specific locations. The literature review of each study offers straightforward accounts of either general translation theories (Biamah, 2013a, pp. 148–149; Musyoka & Karanja, 2014, pp. 196–201; Salawu, 2010, p. 130) or statements of a general nature about interpreting, based on textbooks (Odhiambo et al., 2013, p. 190; Thembhani, 2016, pp. 112–113).

The most frequent method used is the analysis of transcripts in the search for errors (Makha & Phafoli, 2019) or problems (Biamah, 2013a; De Tan et al., 2021; Musyoka & Karanja, 2014). Any deviation from the exact representation of what the researcher deems to be the semantic content of the source text is seen as representing a fault by the interpreter (Musyoka & Karanja, 2014, pp. 202–205; Thembhani, 2016, p. 214). The findings are summarised before common but not universal recommendations that either churches switch from their existing interpreters to professionals (Salawu, 2010, p. 133) or that the existing interpreters are trained to behave more like professionals (Biamah, 2013a, p. 157; Musyoka & Karanja, 2014, p. 205; Natukunda-Togboa, 2022; Thembhani, 2016, p. 118). Rarely, however, is there a clear description of what sets apart “professional” interpreting from church interpreting in this context, nor is it always clear what “professional” behaviours church interpreters are supposed to adopt.

One recent PCE study has questioned the prevailing view within such research that professionalisation, however defined, is the route towards improving interpreter performance in church interpreting. De Tan, Amini, and Lee instead argue that

non-professional church interpreters are able to perform overtime cognitive abilities of professional interpreters despite not undergoing interpreting training, which points to questioning the need for professional interpreting in religious setting. It may be premature to question the level of performance professional interpreters are capable of in comparison to non-professionals, more research is needed to substantiate this audacious claim (De Tan et al., 2021, p. 70).

This passage not only points to flaws in the claim that turning church interpreting into a reflection of “professional interpreting” will necessarily produce output that is more suitable, but it also points to cracks in the entire PCE approach. This approach relies on data from a limited number of case studies and assumes that the researcher knows what interpreting should be like. Despite the common use of very specific locations in both the titles of the papers and their abstract, discussions of the social and theological context in which the interpreting takes place are often conspicuous by their absence, with the exceptions of discussions of the limited educational or language-learning opportunities available to interpreters (e.g., Musyoka & Karanja, 2014, p. 205). The claim of De Tan et al. (2021) that “[i]t may be premature to question the level of performance professional interpreters are capable of in comparison to non-professionals” (p. 70) therefore also reflects the wider problem in PCE research that evidence is often selectively presented and thus may not fairly represent the work of interpreters nor the contextual factors that impinge on their decision-making. Indeed, initial descriptive experimental work by da Silva et al. (2018) found that experienced church interpreters performed better than students who had completed 60 hours of interpreter training, in terms of their ability to interpret long turns with a high number of religious terms. As only three church interpreters and two students took part in this study, it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions. This also has to be set against the research by Franke, which found the performance of five of six church interpreters tested performed poorly when measured against a composite model of quality taken from the work of Bühler (1986) and Collados Aís (1998). Further research using different methods will therefore be needed to substantiate both the claims and key arguments of the PCE approach.

Taken together, the flaws in PCE research point to the importance of the positionality of the researcher (see Mellinger, 2020), specifically in these cases, the power dynamic between the researcher and the research subjects whose output they examine. In the prescriptive research examined in this article, the majority of sources show researchers setting up their own, often vaguely stated, view of what good interpreting should look like as the standard against which the interpreting is judged. This places the researcher in a place of power with little to no accountability to the research subjects and obviates the need for thorough engagement with the social context in which the interpreting takes places. The standard set by the researcher is deemed to be universal. Thus, the researcher becomes both the observer and judge of the interpreting, as well as being the selector and reporter of evidence. Even where criteria are clearly stated, there is little space for the voices of those for whom or by whom the interpreting was produced to reflect on the interpreting they experienced or produced. This power dynamic is characteristic of all prescriptive church interpreting research, and its ethical implications merit closer examination in future research.

3.2.2.1 Researcher position in prescriptive research outside of PCE

The position of the researcher as the sole judge of the interpreting is evidence in prescriptive research, even outside of PCE. Alvarenga’s (2018) master’s dissertation, for example, surveyed stakeholders’ expectations of the quality of interpreting in a church in London. He concluded that,

This study’s findings may be correlated with a superficial/simplistic view of what optimum church interpreting quality entails and thus suggest that [. . .] there is a casual attitude toward interpreting quality from church interpreters, [. . .]. Arguably, the very fact that untrained, unqualified volunteers accept serving in this manner, and even interpret at professional-style conferences, also constitutes a casual attitude. (Alvarenga, 2018, p. 55; emphasis in original)

The evidence for this “casual attitude” is clearly that the interpreters and others involved in the event do not carry out the steps that the researcher deemed necessary, on the basis of their reading of the available literature on quality in professional interpreting, especially the criteria set up by AIIC (the international association of conference interpreters; Alvarenga, 2018, pp. 16–19). This reflects the role of AIIC as what Zwischenberger (2015) has elsewhere called the “norm-setting authority” (p. 108) for conference interpreting. Alvarenga (2018) applied this same role to church interpreting, due to the “professional-style conferences” (p. 55) examined in the dissertation.

Thus, while Alvarenga’s work does not reflect the methods of the PCE approach, it does reflect its conclusions that church interpreting needs to become more like “professional interpreting,” which here seems to be defined as adhering to the rules and principles set by AIIC. This makes it representative of the wider category of prescriptive research, of which PCE represents the theoretical and methodological core. Reaching the conclusions found in the work of Alvarenga became possible not only due to the acceptance of AIIC as the norm-setting authority but via the same brief attention to immediate social context—taking up around a page and mostly dedicated to the history of the church and devices available (Alvarenga, 2018, pp. 21–22). The research therefore rests on the assumption of there being a homogeneous and unchanging standard against which church interpreting can be compared.

A more complicated case is that of Adebayo and Zulu (2023), who sought to understand the “divergences and conventional assumptions” (p. 301), through interviews and non-participant observation of interpreters in South Africa. While very little of the data they generated are reported in the article itself, based on their data and a theoretical account of different types of interpreting, they conclude that church interpreting should be deemed as a unique case of community interpreting, most closely related to medical interpreting (Adebayo & Zulu, 2023, p. 307). While their accounts of interpreting do not make the same homogeneity assumptions as are common in other areas of prescriptive research, they do assume that categories such as community interpreting, public service interpreting, medical interpreting, and court interpreting and the relationships between them are unproblematic. This assumption has been challenged in the growing area of comparative interpreting studies (Downie, 2021).

The work of Mlundi (2021), which sought to understand the quality criteria required of interpreters in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, also makes assumptions as to the nature of professional interpreting. Once again, the term “professional interpreting” is nowhere defined. Using interview and focus group data, it was found that most of the quality criteria used by church interpreting stakeholders were close to those that the author felt were present in the literature on professional interpreting (Mlundi, 2021, p. 309). The key word here is “most.” The criteria of “spirituality” (Mlundi, 2021, pp. 303–304), “knowledge of Biblical terms” (Mlundi, 2021, p. 306), “flexibility” (Mlundi, 2021, p. 307), and “proper use of Biblical and cultural expressions” (Mlundi, 2021, p. 308) do not fit easily into this view. Judgements as to whether the interpreters attained these criteria were also reserved to the author of the article (Mlundi, 2021, pp. 309–310). Indeed, the lack of any data as to the total sample size and the discussion of methods that lacks detail as to the survey items, focus group questions, or even who took part in which method (Mlundi, 2021, pp. 298–299) make it very difficult to interpret the results.

Mlundi’s (2021) conclusion that “this paper calls for churches and other Christian institutions to provide professional training to church interpreters to improve their services” (p. 310) therefore seems to go beyond the available evidence. It is, however, a conclusion that is very close to common findings within the prescriptive approach, and the research itself shares with the PCE core the lack of any discussion of social context. In addition, there are additional close similarities in the tendency to discuss interpreting in general terms in the literature review with scant coverage of existing church interpreting research (Mlundi, 2021, pp. 295–298).

3.2.2.2 Understanding the core assumptions of prescriptive research

The prescriptive approach to church interpreting research is therefore founded on a set of common assumptions, even if their methodological operationalisation can differ. The first of these is that there exists such a thing as a universal, context-independent definition of what a good or even perfect interpreting performance looks like. The second assumption is that “professional interpreting” exists as a more or less homogeneous unit against which the linguistic output of church interpreters can be compared, without “professional interpreting” needing to be clearly defined.

While such assumptions often go unstated, their existence is foundational for work in this approach. Take away the assumption of a universal, context-independent definition of good interpreting, and not only does the examination of “inaccuracies” make no theoretical sense, but the search for “problems” itself becomes problematic as it is no longer possible to define what a “problem” might be with any precision. It is only possible to say what a problem is when there is clarity as to what interpreters are trying to achieve.

If the assumption of the homogeneity of “professional interpreting” is removed, then calls for church interpreting to professionalise lose at least some of their direction. This is not to say that calling for training is itself problematic but that calling for church interpreters and their work to be professionalised is problematic without an agreed definition of that “professionalism” means in this context. For example, while church interpreting research has borrowed theoretical constructs from community (Kotzé, 2018) and conference interpreting (Alvarenga, 2018), each of these has historically operated according to very different social expectations (Angelelli, 2004). A decision would therefore have to be made as to which part of “professional interpreting” church interpreting is to be compared to. If these expectations can change over time (see Zwischenberger, 2015), it may make more sense to instead target training to the specific needs of church interpreting contexts, as suggested by Karlik (2010). Quite simply, if church interpreters are already performing in a way that is deemed acceptable within their context, calls for their work to accord with an outside standard are likely to be ignored anyway.

The importance of these assumptions for prescriptive research becomes even clearer when it is realised that they were never automatic. At the same time as Salawu (2010) was calling for church leaders to switch to professional interpreters, Vigouroux (2010) was viewing church interpreting as a complex form of religious performance, and Karlik (2010) was explaining the important social role of interpreters. The common call for the professionalisation of church interpreting found in prescriptive research is therefore the result of the theoretical presuppositions of the researchers. The choice to see church interpreting through the lens of what the researchers believed “professional interpreting” looked like led to the view that church interpreting had to change.

The theoretical presuppositions of this approach therefore illustrate the need for greater attention to be paid to the importance of a researcher’s pre-existing ideals. It may well be possible for research that targets improvements in interpreter output to have a place in church interpreting research. Indeed, this may allow for the gap between research on church interpreting and research for church interpreting detailed earlier to be closed. For that to happen, however, extensive theoretical and methodological development will be needed, not least as regards closer attention to the specific social contexts in which church interpreting takes place.

It is also possible to produce research that is separate from the social contexts in which church interpreting takes place and yet aims to produce improvement. In a master’s dissertation, Du Plessis (2017) carried out an experiment of simulated church interpreting, to ascertain the coping strategies used by the interpreters and to use these strategies to outline a training programme. In this case, the use of simulated interpreting allowed the researcher to compare the work of eight interpreters, with the same language direction, working on the same authentic sermon (Du Plessis, 2017, pp. 38–39). This provided a wider range of data than is usually analysed within the prescriptive approach.

4. Synthesising the evidence

4.1 General trends

Perhaps the most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the aforementioned literature is that any claim that research into church interpreting is somehow rare—and such claims have been repeated as recently as 2021 (De Tan et al., 2021, p. 54)—no longer have any support. For the sake of space, this article has not discussed articles in professional magazines, conference presentations and panels, personal or ministry websites, or articles on the history of religious interpreting. Even without such literature, a close examination of research on church interpreting has revealed a complex mixture of methods, both quantitative and qualitative, and data ranging from autoethnographic field notes to close analyses of interpreted texts. To this can be added a variety of theoretical, methodological, and even disciplinary perspectives.

The pace of academic publishing in the area picked up in the 2010s, with church interpreting research being discussed in major textbooks (Pöchhacker, 2016, pp. 163, 212; Tipton & Furmanek, 2016, pp. 237–276), an Encyclopaedia (Hild, 2015), and a recent handbook (Furmanek, 2022; Hokkanen, 2022). Ironically, this growth has come at the cost of the creation of three largely independent approaches. Despite mentions of prescriptive research in some studies in the co-preaching and performance approach (e. g. Downie, 2016; Parish, 2018), these have largely developed with little common ground. Each approach is therefore easily identifiable by its foci.

Research aimed at practitioners largely concentrates on training and on the interpreters’ themselves, with little crossover in either direction between this approach and empirical research. The descriptive approach largely emphasises ways to understand interpreting as the performance of organisational values, thus focussing on the link between the context of interpreting and the work of interpreters. In two prominent cases (Hokkanen, 2012; Tekgül, 2020), the interpreter themselves were at the heart of the study and the involvement of the interpreter’s whole person was in view, underlining the importance of interpreter involvement in research in this approach. The prescriptive approach, meanwhile, focuses on church interpreting as an instance of interpreting, and more specifically, as an errant instance of “professional interpreting.” Even where the evaluation of specific interpreted texts is not in view, this approach is evident through the explicit or implicit comparison to what the researcher believes professional interpreting to be.

It is possible to view the development of multiple approaches as part of the natural development of research within an area. The problem is that silo thinking can easily lead to researchers coming up with explanations that have already been shown to be invalid or to be a duplication of existing work. Specialisation in a single approach may well lead to important developments within that approach, but it can also lead to a lack of awareness of relevant research outside of it. The discovery by De Tan et al. (2021, p. 70) that calls for professionalisation were, at best, too simplistic was one that already had theoretical and evidential support almost a decade earlier by Hokkanen (2012, p. 298). To the evidence from both sources can now be added the recent rise in paid remote church interpreting, to the point where one remote interpreting platform now dedicates specialist resources to the practice (Interactio, 2022). Professionalisation, of a sort, is now happening.

Church interpreting now needs research that shows awareness of the strengths and limitations of all three approaches and takes into account recent developments in the practice. To do so, it will be important to reflect on the social position of church interpreting research, as this article will now do.

4.2 The social position of church interpreting research

The multiplicity of approaches to church interpreting research reflects a variety of researcher positionalities. These range from researchers taking the position as teachers, found most commonly in research aimed at practitioners, to the researcher being themselves the subject and object of research, as found in autoethnographic work.

This is shadowed by the differences between research for interpreting found in research aimed at practitioners and the prescriptive approach to the research on interpreting found in the descriptive approach. Indeed, it could be argued that these approaches to research require their own positionalities, with the researcher as expert prevailing in research for church interpreting and the researcher as observer prevailing in research on church interpreting. Yet this would be an oversimplification. Within the co-preaching and performance approach, researchers such as Hokkanen (2016, pp. 52–54) and Downie (2016, p. 112) have discussed the complex positions involved in being a provider and receiver of church interpreting respectively of the same service that is being researched.

Church interpreting therefore contributes to the growing conversation on researcher ethics (Tiselius, 2019) and researcher positionality (Mellinger, 2020) already happening in interpreting studies. The split between the three approaches to church interpreting research detailed earlier illustrates the extent to which the researcher’s relationship to the object of study drives other decisions. What Vigouroux (2010) could observe as a performance of organisational values would likely be read as a problem or inaccuracy by those working in the prescriptive approach. In church interpreting research, as in interpreting studies as a whole, it would seem imperative for researchers to reflect deeply on the interaction between their positionality, their theoretical stance, and their findings. Thus, while research has long shown an interest in the people delivering church interpreting (Hild, 2017; Karlik, 2010, 2012; Kinnamon, 2018; Rayman, 2007), it would seem useful for researchers to clearly state more about their own background, aims, and perspectives. This might also include clearer statements of the relationship between the researcher and the people and churches being researched, information that, as yet, seems to only appear in CPA (e.g., Hokkanen, 2016; Karlik, 2010; Rayman, 2007; Vigouroux, 2010).

Any such statement might also include whether the changing practice is an explicit objective of the research. Whether the calls for professionalisation found in the prescriptive approach are well-founded or not, this approach shares with research aimed at practitioners the advantage of being explicit about its objective to improve practice. This may be an important advantage. It is almost a truism that it is easier to have people agree to be researched when they can see some benefit. While it has produced much of the theorisation specific to church interpreting, the descriptive approach cannot boast such a clear line to practical application.

This returns to the heart of the distinction between research for and research on interpreting. The former is inherently practical but runs the real risk of providing guidance that is limited or even flawed, as it tends to give little place to the views and findings of others. Research on interpreting meanwhile reverses these priorities. Such research aims for empirical robustness and looks to build on existing literature but tends to shy away from practical recommendations of how to improve interpreting practice. This makes sense given the overall aim of understanding what is happening in specific cases but runs the opposite risk of research for interpreting. Churches and indeed anyone agreeing to take part in research are entitled to enquire about the return for the sometimes considerable effort involved in accommodating researchers, answers that are not always clear when the aim is research on interpreting.

A possible way of uniting the concerns of application in research for interpreting and robustness in research on interpreting, while increasing participation in research, can be found in the “on, for, and with” approach to research advocated by Turner and Harrington (2000). This approach argues for no longer seeing people as just research subjects but as partners in the definition, operation, and dissemination of the findings of research projects. This means sharing power over the research process and taking into account the interests and desires of research participants. In this way, it nullifies the boundary between research for and research on as both are achieved at once. While the purpose of interpreting research can still be a matter of debate (Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation (UNIGE), 2019), the “on, for, and with” approach has the marked advantage of boosting the possibility for research to create impact, something often prized by funders. It might also encourage greater participation in research as people and organisations see its benefits.

Concerns over robustness, research participation, and sharing power over research are, of course, not specific to interpreting research. Any research that involves people stands to benefit from involving research subjects in the research process. This is even more important if producing or precipitating change is a goal. Such investigations are sometimes labelled “action research” (Nicodemus & Swabey, 2015); however, since this term is hotly contested (Hinchey, 2016), this article makes no particular claim as to its suitability for use in this case. What matters more is that the positionality of researchers in prescriptive research tends to lead to analyses that make little room for the views of those involved in the interpreting. It is therefore appropriate to argue in favour of research that changes this dynamic. Even in the descriptive approach, the emphasis on the interpreter, the preacher, and the strategic policies of the church as an organisation means that the views of those receiving the interpreting merit further attention.

This kind of research is possible in church interpreting. In fact, given what research within CPA has argued about the social, symbolic, personal, and theological nature of this activity, there is a strong argument that such a co-operative research should be preferred. In this vein, the descriptive approach suggests that social, symbolic, personal, and theological nature of church interpreting should form the theoretical and methodological foundation of any research in this area. While it has been common across all approaches to view church interpreting as a form of interpreting, the available evidence suggests that linking research and practice will involve deepening understanding of the wider aspects of this practice, including its spiritual importance for the churches within which it takes place.

5. Conclusion and call for further research

This article critically examined the state of the literature on church interpreting. It was found that such literature can usefully split into three approaches: publications aimed at practitioners, prescriptive research, and descriptive research. Each approach has its own set of aims, assumptions, and approaches to theory and methods. The differences between approaches were also seen as reflecting the difference between research for interpreting, which prioritises practical application, and research on interpreting, which prioritises building an empirical understanding of the phenomenon.

This led to a brief reflection on the social position of researchers and research itself and how this affects the process and findings of research. This position is of ethical, practical, and theoretical importance, and it was argued that paying attention to the social position of research and researchers can and should lead to methodological and theoretical developments, crystallised in the “on, for, and with” approach suggested by Turner and Harrington (2000). Indeed, the immensely personal and spiritual nature of church interpreting is a topic that has been discussed in the literature and has received some theoretical attention. Yet the ethical and methodological aspects of this side of church interpreting remain to be seen. This is especially salient in an “on, for, and with” approach that sees the researcher work alongside the research subjects. One of the latent questions in this area of research is the extent to which the spiritual and often deeply personal nature of church interpreting requires specific approaches to research and theorisation.

It is important to mention that dividing this literature into broad approaches is not the only way for it to be analysed. It may well be useful to reinterpret the same sources through the lens of methods used or geography or into historical periods. There is also an urgent need for research in this area that cuts across the approaches mentioned here to produce research on and for interpreting at the same time. It may also be beneficial to import a wider range of methods and approaches from interpreting studies and from other relevant fields, such as sociology of religion, theology, performance, and migration studies. Finally, the recent growth of professional church interpreting, perhaps enabled by the growth of remote interpreting, is a phenomenon yet to be studied and is one that is of both theoretical and practical importance in this area.