Presentation

Act-utilitarianists argue that an ethical decision is one that results in the most

favourable consequences for the largest number of people in a given context.

Torture would thus be acceptable if those authorizing it believed it could lead to

information

that would prevent death and injury to many innocent civilians. It is unacceptable

by the same logic if, as Brigadier General David R. Irvine argued in 2005,4 it is found to

produce unreliable information, because those being tortured will say

anything to put an end to their ordeal. The argument here is not concerned with the

rights of those being tortured, but merely with the efficacy of the practice. In one of

many such incidents reported in the media since 2001, the decision taken by the

cabin crew and Spanish airport police on a flight from Malaga to Manchester in 2006

could be thought of as ethical in the same terms. In this case, several passengers

who had ‘overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic’,

according to the British newspaper the Daily Mail,5 decided that they may be

terrorists and refused to allow the flight to take off. The men were then removed,

and the flight proceeded on its course. The decision to comply with the passengers’

demands produced the ‘best’ consequences in the sense of avoiding major disruption

to the plans of a large number of people and dealing effectively with their anxieties.

However, many would consider it unethical, both because of its violation of the rights

of two passengers who had committed no crime, and for its larger implications in

terms of sustaining racism and vigilante practices.

In translation, act-utilitarian logic would support a decision that results in the

largest number of participants, including the translator, achieving their objectives on

a given occasion, even if the rights of one participant, perhaps an immigrant or the

foreign author, are undermined. Like almost all ethical arguments, this statement is

not straightforward and can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Someone could

argue, for instance, that the ‘participants’ include not only those involved in the

immediate interaction, but also the profession represented by the translator, the

society in which translation takes place, the community to which the immigrant

belongs and indeed the whole of humanity. This would fi t in with the second version

of utilitarianism, namely rule-utilitarianism, which considers that ‘the right action is

that action which is performed in accordance with a rule, or set of rules, the following

of which maximizes utility’ (Driver 2007:64).6 Act-utilitarianism and ruleutilitarianism

can thus yield quite different decisions based on utilitarian principles.

The classic case here would be the typical hostage crisis: an act-utilitarian would

probably opt for yielding to the hostage-takers’ demands, while a rule-utilitarian

would not, because doing so would not maximize utility overall. However defined,

any form of utilitarianism can lead to some very questionable decisions. Following

the rule ‘don’t steal’ because it maximizes utility overall when one’s family is starving

and their lives can be saved by taking food from someone who has more than

enough does not seem fair or realistic. Act-utilitarianism is similarly problematic and

can lead to gross injustices, although it does reflect the decision-making processes

that many people seem to adopt in real life.7

The ethical dilemmas that can lead many to adopt utilitarian decisions are

brought to life vividly in Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel, The Kite Runner. In the

following scene, the main character returns to war-torn, Taliban-controlled Kabul to

find his nephew and take him to safety. He is led by a taxi driver named Farid to the

orphanage where his nephew was last seen. In talking to the director, Zaman, he

discovers that like a number of other children his nephew had been handed over to

the local war lords. The following exchange captures the ethical dilemma of the director,

which he chooses to resolve on the basis of utilitarian principles (Hosseini

2003:235–236, 237):

‘There is a Talib official,’ he muttered. ‘He visits once every month or two. He

brings cash with him, not a lot, but better than nothing at all.’ His shifty eyes

fell on me, rolled away. ‘Usually he’ll take a girl. But not always.’

‘And you allow this?’ Farid said behind me. He was going around the table,

closing in on Zaman.

‘What choice do I have?’ Zaman shot back. He pushed himself away from

the desk.

‘You’re the director here,’ Farid said. ‘Your job is watch over these

children.’

‘There’s nothing I can do to stop it.’

‘You’re selling children!’ Farid barked.

…

Zaman dropped his hands. ‘I haven’t been paid in over six months. I’m

broke because I’ve spent my life’s savings on this orphanage. Everything I

ever owned or inherited I sold to run this godforsaken place. You think I don’t

have family in Pakistan and Iran? I could have run like everyone else. But I

didn’t. I stayed. I stayed because of them [the children in the orphanage].’ …

‘If I deny him one child, he takes ten. So I let him take one and leave the

judging to Allah. I swallow my pride and take his goddam filthy … dirty money.

Then I go to the bazaar and buy food for the children.’

This is clearly an extreme case, but it captures the nature of ethical dilemmas and

the appeal of utilitarianism in some contexts.

Particularly taxing ethical dilemmas, then, arise when the consequences of any

decision we make are morally reprehensible, however small the number of people

affected by them; in this rather exceptional case, the director cannot avoid doing

serious harm to others, whatever his choice. It is worth noting here that one of the

weaknesses of utilitarianism is that it does not take account of emotional factors,

which come into play strongly when one or more of those who may be negatively

affected by a difficult decision are very close to the agent: few people would in

practice be able to sacrifice their son or daughter to save others, whatever the

outcome of an abstract cost-benefit analysis.8 But ethical dilemmas also arise if we

follow universalist ethics, specifically when two or more of what we might think of as

universal principles come into conflict, as when following the principle of truth or

honesty would result in doing harm to someone.

Because of the difficulty of reconciling principles on the basis of consequences

or universal values, some argue that Kantian ethics is a better option than both

utilitarianism

and universalism. Broadly speaking, Kantian ethics maintains that actions

are right or wrong in and of themselves, irrespective of their consequences and of

contextual considerations. A similar logic, or sentiment, is often expressed in the

blogs and writings of professional translators. In an article which appeared in the director,

which he chooses to resolve on the basis of utilitarian principles (Hosseini

2003:235–236, 237):

‘There is a Talib official,’ he muttered. ‘He visits once every month or two. He

brings cash with him, not a lot, but better than nothing at all.’ His shifty eyes

fell on me, rolled away. ‘Usually he’ll take a girl. But not always.’

‘And you allow this?’ Farid said behind me. He was going around the table,

closing in on Zaman.

‘What choice do I have?’ Zaman shot back. He pushed himself away from

the desk.

‘You’re the director here,’ Farid said. ‘Your job is watch over these

children.’

‘There’s nothing I can do to stop it.’

‘You’re selling children!’ Farid barked.

…

Zaman dropped his hands. ‘I haven’t been paid in over six months. I’m

broke because I’ve spent my life’s savings on this orphanage. Everything I

ever owned or inherited I sold to run this godforsaken place. You think I don’t

have family in Pakistan and Iran? I could have run like everyone else. But I

didn’t. I stayed. I stayed because of them [the children in the orphanage].’ …

‘If I deny him one child, he takes ten. So I let him take one and leave the

judging to Allah. I swallow my pride and take his goddam filthy … dirty money.

Then I go to the bazaar and buy food for the children.’

This is clearly an extreme case, but it captures the nature of ethical dilemmas and

the appeal of utilitarianism in some contexts.

Particularly taxing ethical dilemmas, then, arise when the consequences of any

decision we make are morally reprehensible, however small the number of people

affected by them; in this rather exceptional case, the director cannot avoid doing

serious harm to others, whatever his choice. It is worth noting here that one of the

weaknesses of utilitarianism is that it does not take account of emotional factors,

which come into play strongly when one or more of those who may be negatively

affected by a difficult decision are very close to the agent: few people would in

practice be able to sacrifice their son or daughter to save others, whatever the

outcome of an abstract cost-benefit analysis.8 But ethical dilemmas also arise if we

follow universalist ethics, specifically when two or more of what we might think of as

universal principles come into conflict, as when following the principle of truth or

honesty would result in doing harm to someone.

Because of the difficulty of reconciling principles on the basis of consequences

or universal values, some argue that Kantian ethics is a better option than both

utilitarianism

and universalism. Broadly speaking, Kantian ethics maintains that actions

are right or wrong in and of themselves, irrespective of their consequences and of

contextual considerations. A similar logic, or sentiment, is often expressed in the

blogs and writings of professional translators. In an article which appeared in the

translation and interpreting. As Donovan (2011) argues, conference interpreters’

(and translators’) insistence on ‘professional neutrality and confidentiality as the

pillars of their professional codes of practice’ is at least partly motivated by the fact

that ‘this position protects them from awkward and even threatening criticism and

deflects potential pressure from powerful clients’. Assuming we are not egoists,

however, how ethical or unethical we think the resulting behaviour is will depend

primarily on the extent to which we believe it impacts negatively on other participants,

rather than merely on ourselves.

Other situations present different types of ethical challenge, for both Kantian

and other approaches. What should a sign language interpreter do, for instance,

when asked to make a phone call to a sex service on behalf of a deaf client?9 On the

one hand, the interpreter may feel that the sex industry is demeaning and exploitative,

and that by supporting it he or she would be doing harm to others. On the

other hand, it is possible to argue, in Kantian terms, that the interpreter has a duty to

empower the deaf person, who should be able to make his or her own ethical decisions.

Similarly, in a focus group study undertaken in several US hospitals in order to

explore the difficulties encountered by interpreters in implementing standards drawn

up by healthcare organizations in California, Angelelli (2006:182, 183–184) quotes

two participants expressing quite different views, with different implications for the

autonomy of the patient in a medical encounter:

Let’s say you are a good interpreter, right? And you are interpreting everything

that is going on. All of a sudden, I am a nurse, I come in the room and I

tell the doctor, ‘you are giving the patient erythromycin and he is allergic to it.

Do you still want to give him that or change it?’ Now there is no need for you

to interpret that. It has nothing to do with the patient.

Sometimes when there is an English-speaking patient, the doctor and the

nurse do not discuss certain things in front of the patient. They go outside.

But when the patient is non-English-speaking, I have been in that situation. I

had someone, an older person, come in and he was dying and the two

doctors were standing in front of the patient saying ‘he is going to keep

coming here until he dies, until he gets pneumonia and finally …’ I can’t

translate that for the patient. And I ask the doctors, ‘Would you like me to

translate that?’ And they say, ‘Oh, no. This is among ourselves.’ ‘Then

please step outside.’ That is what I said.

The first interpreter is clearly not aware of any ethical questions relating to the

patient’s right to have access to the full interaction in which he or she is not only

involved but is also the subject of conversation and decision-making. The second

interpreter finds it unethical to exclude a participant from an ongoing conversation in

which he or she is physically present, and acts accordingly. A utilitarian approach

would minimize the ethical implications here: there is no physical or psychological

harm done to patients, as long as they do not find out that something was said about them

to which they were not privy (‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’ is a

common, utilitarian saying in English that probably has its counterpart in many other

languages). But a Kantian would point out that by allowing one participant to be

excluded from the interaction and failing to inform him or her about an exchange that

impacts his or her well-being, the interpreter has effectively failed to treat that

participant with the dignity he or she deserves. A similar argument could be advanced

with respect to significant shifts introduced in some forms of translation, such as

literary translation, without the knowledge and consent of the author10 and/or without

alerting the target reader. A good example is the 1969 English translation of Milan

Kundera’s The Joke, in which the chapters of the book are reordered to reflect the

chronological development of the plot, even though Kundera had specifically opted

for a different order in the original (Kuhiwczak 1990). Kundera’s subsequent

outrage, expressed in a letter published in The Times Literary Supplement in the

same year, is understandable in ethical terms on the basis that he remains a key

participant in any interaction that involves a text which still bears his name, and as

such is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect: his consent should have been

sought for such a major form of intervention.

Whatever theory of ethics informs our thinking, when principles clash or our

choices are severely restricted there will be no easy answer, no ready-made solution

that can be extracted from any code. Ethical dilemmas are just that: dilemmas. As

Goodwin explains in his discussion of the choice of subtitles in a politically charged

documentary, ‘like the technical question,11 the ethical question does not admit of an

easy answer’ (2010:25). And yet, we have to be able to anticipate ethical difficulties

in our professional life and to think of the various options available to us critically,

because however difficult the decisions we have to make we are still accountable for

them, to ourselves as well as others.