Fifty years of parliamentary interpretation.

• Author: Delisle, Jean
• Position: Essay

January 15, 1959 was a historic day for Parliament. On that date, simultaneous interpretation was introduced in the House of Commons. During the 1958 election campaign, John Diefenbaker had promised Francophone Canadians bilingual cheques and "instantaneous translation" of Commons debates. On election day, March 31, 1958, his party received the largest majority in the country's history, winning 208 out of 265 seats, including 50 of Quebec's 75 seats. Since January 15, 1959, every word spoken in the House of Commons is interpreted simultaneously, whatever the political adherence of the person speaking. Unilingual Members can speak freely in their own language, safe in the knowledge that they will be understood by everyone, including visitors and journalists in the galleries. This new service was considered a constitutional necessity that would give tangible rather than merely symbolic support to bilingualism in Parliament, the cornerstone of Canadian institutions. This article highlights the development of simultaneous interpretation in Canada.

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The introduction of simultaneous interpretation did not unleash the same uproar as the bill to centralize translation services within the federal government, which had been introduced 25 years earlier and led to the creation of the Translation Bureau in 1934. While Secretary of State Charles H. Cahan's bill raised a great hue and cry among translators and journalists, the proposal to introduce interpretation services in the House of Commons promptly rallied everyone involved. Only a few Members were critical, and their comments focused mainly on the slow pace of decision making.

In 1936, Belgium was the first country to introduce parliamentary interpretation, following repeated demands by Leon Degrelle's Rexist Party. Switzerland launched a service in 1946. In the late 1940s, several Canadian organizations began experimenting with mobile facilities for simultaneous interpretation. The University of Montreal was a pioneer in "microphone interpretation," which it introduced on a trial basis in 1949. The course was integrated into a master's program in translation and interpretation two years later.

The Origins of Parliamentary Interpretation

The history of parliamentary interpretation in Canada can be traced back to December 11, 1952, when J.-Eugene Lefrancois, MP for Laurier, rose to speak in the House of Commons for the first time since his election. He ended with this statement:

In closing my remarks, I should like to express the hope that the government, after having gratified us with such a perfect loudspeaker system, will favour us with a system of simultaneous translation which would allow everyone to hear all the speeches in his own language, regardless of the one used by the speaker. This was the first time that the possibility of providing parliamentarians with interpretation services had been raised in the Commons.

Four months earlier, a journalist at the Montreal daily Le Canada had suggested the idea in an editorial. He felt that the innovative service offered definite advantages and could lead to another marvel:

simultaneous and mechanical translation," which was being used to great effect at the United Nations and had been a huge success when tested the previous year in Ottawa at the North Atlantic Alliance conference. The journalist remarked that Anglophone and Francophone Members would hear and understand each other better, and the whole country would benefit. Pierre Vigeant, a reporter at Le Devoir, hurried to support the proposal the next day.

He supported the installation of such a system, stating that it was virtually impossible to be a Minister if you could not speak English well. No matter how skilled and eloquent French-speaking Members might be, a parliamentary career in Ottawa demanded a knowledge of English. And no matter how well Francophone Members spoke English, he continued, they could rarely impart the same clarity and nuance as in their mother tongue. Consequently, they could not participate fully in debates. The two journalists made a convincing argument: Simultaneous interpretation would strengthen parliamentary democracy.

Lefrancois's wish did not go unnoticed by Alderic-Hermas Beaubien, Superintendent of the Translation Bureau. He realized that no one on his staff was truly competent in simultaneous interpretation. He feared that the Bureau would be caught flat-footed if the government decided to introduce the service in the House of Commons. He asked his deputy minister, Charles Stein, for permission to travel to New York to see how translation and interpretation services were set up at the United Nations. One of the ideas he brought back from his research trip was to give dictating...