Dear Laura,

Do you really mean translator or interpretor ?

Official documents are not signed by their translators so I doubt readers happen to know whether the job was done by a male or a female. And actually, this is mostly teamwork, and computer aided translation rewiewed by human translators.

So I am not sure gender is relevant in this case.

However, if you mean an interpreter, I could see how in a gender biaises society, the voice of a woman could be read as a sign that the message does not deserve as much attention as a message delivered by a men's voice.

Have you tried looking for research in communication, especially in the choice of journalist to present leading TV news. In the 70's and 80's, in Fance, this was a man's job because I was told, seriousness goes with a grave, deep voice. Slowly changing.

Here is a link to a special issue of PALIMPSESTE in which you might find relevant articles for your question: Article Traduire un homme, traduire une femme… est-ce la même chose ?

Good luck with your research.

Sophie

I would imagine that gender is less important in arenas like the UN where interpreted statements are the norm, plus the factor that UN interpreters are hidden away in their interpreting booths so that physical appearance is not an issue.

In more personal arenas I suppose gender might be more of an issue, though when I have interpreted for men in business negotiations and in court I did not get the feeling that the people I interpreted for were respected less because they happened to have a female interpreter.

Professional interpreters are supposed to be unobrtusive and not draw attention to themselves.

I found that the business men were focused on the outcome of their negotiations, not on the interpreter. And in court where credibility may be an issue, the speaker is usually in plain sight, and it is their demeanor, appearance, dress, delivery, etc. that is being assessed, so that should help distract from the gender of the interpreter.

If, however, the interpreter is unprofessional, does not dress appropriately, does a poor job, makes the speaker sound like he or she is unsure, unprepared or not knowledgeable, that is probably an interpreter performance issue, not a gender issue.

On the other hand, a well-spoken interpreter could even have a positive effect on listeners, which is why interpreters are always supposed to maintain the register of the original speaker. There have been interesting studies with mock juries, and even adding "sir" can put a feather on the scales of justice (which is why they do these studies with mock juries rather than the real thing.

That said, yes, those wacky humans often do have biases, harbor prejudices against women, people who look too old, people who look too young, ethnic groups, people who speak with accents, physical traits....etc., which makes it hard to predict what the prejudices of a particular listener might be and even harder to try to filter out for those prejudices....

This is a really intriguing question... With no expertise in interpretation and gender (coming more from a cross-cultural and pragmatic background), my bet would be that this topic may need to be approached from a down-to-top angle. That is to say, what immediately pops to one's mind when reading your question, Laura, is whether one can study UN data as such, or rather it should not be more fortunate to break such data down to different cultures, considering that gendered relationships may be perceived differently across national cultures.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I would personally find it difficult to measure "belief" in this context, but then it would be interesting to study the phenomenon of "support" by looking into interactions between interpreters and clients.

I don't know if this comment is useful at all, just my 2 cents...