Prof. Dr. Aymil Dogan

Emergency and Disaster Interpreting

Emergency and Disaster Interpreting (ARÇ) is a unique type of community interpreting, which emerged out of necessity following the two successive earthquakes around Marmara sea region  in  1999, which ended up with a death toll of 30 thousand people.  In a short while search and rescue teams arrived from all around the world, which created another challenge due to the necessity of interpreters. This paper will tell how this situation gave rise to the birth of another type interpreting, which will help get rid of the language barrier at the disaster site. Previous example of interpreting is Relief Interpreting, which served during the delivery of relief but not at the disaster site. ARÇ is not under AFAD, Presidency of Disaster and Emergency Disaster but works to help them during disasters.  We have been developing this system through the years a SİMEX Exercise Drill in England in 2018 and two EU MODEX Earthquake Drills in Turkey lin 2022 and 2023 were the two international drills, where ARÇ participated together with AFAD. This paper aims to share our experiences about the development of this kind of interpreting and an organized interpreters’ team, in the hope to create international awareness.

BIOGRAPHY

Prof. Dr. Aymil Dogan has been the first academic professor of interpreting having started conference interpreting in 1989 and has been working as conference interpreter since then.  She has written the first PhD, a psycholinguistic one on simultaneous interpreting, the first to write academic materials, the first to create or translate  terminology. She has a unique interpreting laboratory, the functions of which have been defined to serve the needs during the training of interpreters. She got retired 2 months ago due to the age limit from Hacettepe University, Translation and Interpreting Department in Ankara but teaching in three universities and continuing with all the academic work she had been doing. She is a graduate of English Language and Litarature at undergraduate level, psychological counseling and guidance at MA level and Educational Sciences,  and MAS on Training of Conference Interpreting Trainers in Geneva University Ecole De Traduccion and d’Interpretion, where Miriam Shlesinger and Barbara Moser Mercer were the professors. She is also involved in different kinds of community interpreting. Since 2000, she is among the first members of Association of Translation and Interpreting- Turkey, which is affiliated to FIT and she  started her membership with IAPTI after the Buenos Aires meeting.