Letters to a Young Interpreter

[An address delivered to the Interpretation Australia (IA) National Conference in Melbourne, November 2012. It was in part fulfilment of the 2011 Georgie Waterman Award I received in Perth last November. 

According to IA, "heritage interpretation is a means of communicating ideas and feelings which help people understand more about themselves and their environment."] 

[An interpreter at work, Ubirr Rock, Northern Territory]

Just over a century ago, a 19 year old Austrian military cadet wrote a letter to renowned German language poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. The young man wanted advice on how he could become a great poet. The correspondence continued for nearly six years, and Rilke’s advice was later published as the volume “Letters to a Young Poet”.

In Rilke’s first letter to young Franz Kappus, he said this.

"There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple 'I must', then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."

What if we altered the above situation, and the particular advice, and applied it to interpreters; to those who interpret our natural and cultural heritage? If we were asked to mentor a young interpreter, to offer advice on how someone at the start of their interpretive career should proceed, what is it that we would say? Given what you have learned, both obvious and profound, what might you say to help a novice interpreter who’s itching to set foot on the long and winding road to interpretive success?

That is the premise of my address. You, me, we all have found – or will find – ourselves in the position of advising someone who wants to be an interpreter. For us it’s more likely to come in the form of an email exchange, a snatched conversation, or a meeting over coffee, but the concept is the same. What would you put in your letters – or emails – to a young interpreter?

One of the crucial first thoughts I had was that our young interpreter should learn from others. I would suggest that they be a sponge; that they listen to, watch and learn from others who have been on the road longer. In the end I decided to apply that piece of advice to this address, i.e. to seek the wisdom of some of our interpretation elders.

[Interpreting military history, Rottnest Island, WA] 

So I approached the past winners of the Georgie Waterman Award, five interpreters whose long contribution to interpretive excellence has been recognised by Interpretation Australia. I asked each for one paragraph, around 100 words, containing one single, crucial lesson, reflection or piece of advice they would want to pass on to our young interpreter. I will share their wise and generous responses with you now.

Pamela Harmon-Price (Qld)

Pamela Harmon-Price’s advice can be distilled into four words: “Stick to the fundamentals.” She elaborates. “Don’t get caught up in the bells and whistles. Always try to marry the message and medium to your audience and you are more likely to make a difference to people’s experiences and the special places we value and want to protect.”

Pamela’s finely honed interpretive brevity comes into play again with one closing piece of advice. “And the personal touch always works magic.”

John Pastorelli (NSW)

John Pastorelli believes that interpretation “is the key to facilitating those experiences that become the stories we hold dear, the stories we keep within us long after the physical journey has ended.” It can aspire to become “the music in our hearts”, borrowing from William Wordsworth’s poem “The Solitary Reaper”, in which the poet observes a young woman working in a field.

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang 

As if her song could have no ending; 

I saw her singing at her work,             

And o'er the sickle bending;—           

I listen'd, motionless and still;            

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,             

Long after it was heard no more.    

  

John suggests the young interpreter should learn to recognise “that deeper sense of connection, meaning and story within each of us. It happens all around us - it is the chat around a coffee table, the tears in the backrow of the cinema, the smiles and laughs over a beer at the pub, the solitude of a wilderness landscape. Interpretation reveals and makes personal the richness and meaning of life. Interpretation is home.”

Robin MacGillivray (NT)

Robin suggests that we “aim for heartfelt, authentic interpretation that presents a  variety of perspectives, including Indigenous voices, because Indigenous perspectives are vital - especially in Australia. Interpretation without them is incomplete.”

She suggests the young interpreter might achieve this by “researching the topic through those who know and care (interviews, writings, stories, art and music), and passing on the joys the topic gives.”

Robin warns that this will be complex, advising that we “build in the time and money . . . that is required to do the job well. Research the pitfalls and dance around them. The process and the product will be long lasting and beyond expectations. The experience for the audience will be surprising and memorial.”

Gil Field (WA)

For Gil Field there is one thing so central that he says it could well become his interpretive epitaph. “See things from your audience’s perspectives as much as seeing the things you want to communicate.”

To do this he suggests the young interpreter should do the following. “Ask what my audience wants (their perspective) as much as what they need (your perspective, your intent). Then ask what it will take for them to take the actions I want them to take? What is their mind set? What will persuade them to see it my way and to act accordingly? You need empathy with your audiences. You then need to talk in the language they will understand – their language, their mind set, their perspective. It is not that hard as we are all humans with more similarities than differences – particularly when we are visitors to parks. We are more complex when we are members of a local community.

So be the manager’s voice AND the audience’s ears.”

[Interpreting colonial heritage, Woolmers Estate, Tasmania] 

Cath Renwick (NSW)

For Cath one fundamental is to “involve people who know about lots of different things: communication; various sciences; heritage; design; free-choice learning - to simply ask for input/advice. It is amazing how often people are glad to consider one's question or challenge, and respond.”

Next comes the synthesis. “If you can, take in what's offered (even when it is a LOAD of red corrections on your finely edited copy!!) then work out what needs to be presented to engage, provoke thought, conversations, googling.”

“The bottom line is that ‘less is more’ when it comes to interpretive devices and ‘more is more’ when it comes to good research, community engagement, and evocative and accessible design.”

Of course, all interpretive projects should provide orientation, promote exploration and make meaning, but we should also strive to encourage participation and scaffold conversations to build meaningful partnerships.

While it’s difficult to distill all of that wisdom into a few words, there are some key words that our elders mention. These include some that we would hope and expect to find: audience, research, story, fundamentals and engagement … But I also notice some other words that we might consider left-field. Did you hear them: heart, music, dance, magic, joy, empathy? To me it is no surprise that our elders seek to involve art alongside science, heart as well as head. Isn’t this what Tilden meant when he called interpretation an art?

Please let me acknowledge and thank the “elders” for their generous insights. Also let me thank our one and only Georgie Waterman Encouragement Award winner, Jen Fry, my friend and colleague in Tasmania. It was her suggestion that led to me contact the elders.

But I turn now to my own few paragraphs of advice. I have cunningly allowed myself the advantage of having more that one paragraph. Still, I will try to be brief.

      * Gain first-hand experience of your subject. Get out there and look, touch, listen, feel and even smell, whether it’s a place, an artefact or an experience. You are doing this not so you can tell your audience everything you have learned, but because it will help you to appreciate, even to love, what you interpret. And when that subtly leaks out, your interpretation will be the better. 

* Read widely, starting with actually reading Tilden. Don’t let yourself succumb to what CS Lewis called “chronological snobbery”, where everything new is per se better than that which is old. Yes Freeman Tilden wrote “Interpreting Our Heritage” in 1957, and was dead before computers were part of our lives. But wisdom is wisdom. The longer I am an interpreter, the more I come to appreciate just how insightful Tilden was.

[Reading interpretive panels, Kakadu National Park, NT] 

* Feed your creative side. Take deliberate time out to do it. Whatever it is, whether painting, writing, cooking, playing an instrument, climbing a cliff or picking a line down a whitewater river, just do it. Even if you do it poorly, it presents you with other challenges that will nourish you and that part of your brain that interpretation can also tap into.

* Leave your ego at the door. You are a conduit, not the focus. This is easier said than done, because we do all have egos. We’re interpreters after all! And there is a place for your personality – a very important place. It adds a unique flavour and authenticity. But it is the spice, not the meal itself.

* Be generous, collaborate, willingly share what you know and the sources of your knowledge, with other interpreters. This is another aspect of the ego issue. If interpretation is about audiences gaining appreciation, and ultimately caring for that which is interpreted, then it doesn’t matter who played what role in getting it out there.

* Don’t rely on technology alone. By all means embrace what technology has to offer: I personally have found things like apps, blogs, podcasts and vodcasts powerful and helpful. But in and of themselves these are just media. To revert to an old 20^th century acronym, it can be a case of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). As Pamela and Cath have both reminded us, we need to get the fundamentals right first. Good content might then be enhanced by innovative technology.

[Wordless interpretation, Otago Museum, Dunedin, NZ] 

* And finally consider interpretation as a long game. Some of you may only be in the interpretive profession for a short time. But if you become a good interpreter, it is something that will stay with you for life, whatever your profession. Some time in the next few years, I will probably retire from my interpretive role with Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service. But - and you may pity my friends and family - I fully expect that I will be interpreting until I draw my last breath.

And if it’s a long game, then we will need patience. Which brings me back to Rilke. Reading between the lines, it seems that the young poet’s letters to Rilke may have been displaying impatience. In Letter 3 Rilke responds with this advice. (Again I will change “poet” to “interpreter”.)

“Being an [interpreter] means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

Peeling Back the Interpreter

[My keynote address to the Interpretation Australia Symposium in Launceston, Tasmania - November 12, 2010]

[Curiosity, openness, wide-eyed wonder: characteristics of children - and of good interpreters. My grandson Felix models it here.]

Introduction

It is common to think of interpretation as layered. Many of us layer our interpretation to cater for different audiences. Some neatly categorise these audience types as streakers, strollers and studiers.

But have we considered that interpreters too are layered? Sometimes we stay on the surface and focus on what is plain to see. Sometimes we peel back the surface layers, and dig into difficult topics. And sometimes the interpretive process takes us very deep indeed; not only into our topic, but into our very selves.

It is this inner delving that forms the core of this paper. Using Tilden’s six principles of interpretation as a starting point, we ask whether it’s time to develop some new principles. Can we advance a set of principles that address the personal formation of interpreters?


We put forward some suggestions for this inward journey. We consider how these might affect the place of the interpreter in the interpretive process. And we put a question that is both idea and a challenge. If we interpreters are committed enough to our subject to go deep within ourselves, might we paradoxically end up presenting that subject to its greatest advantage?

Finding what cuts through

I live near the Hobart Rivulet. It is a narrow, brief, rushing thing, literally cobbled together from dolerite boulders torn off the crumbling flanks of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington. Steep-banked, scrubby-sided, pocked and youthful, it is a duckling with few prospects of a serene swanhood. But every so often – perhaps every other year – the rivulet asserts itself, and floods so profoundly that boulders the size of lounge chairs are tossed and tumbled by the force of water.

One such episode occurred in early August this year. The rolling boulders could be heard – or felt – from inside our house, some 100 metres away. We were inside the house, the rain thumping heavily on our corrugated iron roof clashing with the roar of the water and the loud music coming from our sound system. Yet above – or beneath – it all was a deep, visceral, almost animal thrum. The sound of boulders grinding, tearing, bouncing so vigorously that the ground shook.

[Hobart Rivulet in South Hobart in a quieter mood]

What is it in your life that thrums so deeply that it can cut through all the other things that clutter your life? Theologian Paul Tillich spoke about “the ground of our being” – what he called God. Whatever we call it, I believe most of us have that growl, that rumble – for some subliminally – that can cut through everything else; make all else seem trivial. It is worth finding the source of that thrum; worth cultivating it, and worth growing our souls in the process.


Revisiting Tilden

Such an approach actually arises straight out of Interpretation 101, that is the basics of interpretation as outlined by Freeman Tilden more than half a century ago in his book “Interpreting Our Heritage”.


In this 1957 work Tilden comes up with Six Principles. As if anticipating a generation or more of queries about the number and nature of the principles, he asks: “Now, what are these principles? I find six bases that seem enough to support our structure. There is no magic in the number six. It may be that my reader will point out that some of these principles interfinger.” Or, he continues, “since I am ploughing a virgin field so far as published philosophy of the subject is concerned, some of my readers may be provoked into adding further furrows.”


Tilden deliberately focuses the principles on what he calls the interpretive effort. But interestingly he also mentions the matter of style, which he calls a “priceless ingredient of interpretation”. Style, he says, “is just the interpreter himself.” He goes on to ask how the interpreter might give forth style, answering his own question thus: “It emerges from love.”


Was this wise elder deliberately leaving open a door to the re-interpretation of interpretation by his mention of style and “the interpreter himself”? And through his metaphor about adding “further furrows” to the field? In the early 21st century, where technique and technology are merging, and threatening to dominate the interpretive effort, I am willing to argue that he was. To me it seems the right time to turn the focus back onto the inner life – the personal formation – of the interpreter.


To do this I have attempted to re-mix Tilden’s principles with the inner life of the interpreter in mind. I hope I’ve done this with the greatest respect for Tilden who, as Sam Ham puts it, was so far ahead of his time that he could fairly be called the Einstein of interpretation.


My own humble effort is necessarily brief and tentative, with more questions than answers. But hopefully it will plough some furrows which others may follow, or into which they might sow.

Tilden’s Six Principles of Interpretation re-mixed


Principle 1) Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.


Re-mixed : “Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the interpreter will be sterile.”


This is the starting point for using Tilden to explore the inward journey: the personality/experience of the interpreter. Interpretation may be an outward, audience-focused work, but in a very real sense every piece of interpretation starts within the interpreter.


There at the start of the interpretive piece we have the subject/object and we have the interpreter. And the interpreter needs to relate to that subject/object in some manner, even if it is with disdain! Otherwise a rote recital or a robot will do fine; or interpretation as a paint-by-number exercise will suffice.


So how do we learn to relate to our subjects? The poet Les Murray once said “I am only interested in everything.” We can develop an interest in many things if we cultivate an intellectual curiosity; if we read widely; if we listen to others; if we realise we don’t have all the answers; if we understand what an incredible gift life is, and how rare it is in the universe; if we not only observe life, but actually live it.


In having our personality as a focus, I am NOT suggesting that we interpreters need to necessarily have our personalities out there on show. But they should be in there and relating to our subject (and of course to our audience).


Principle 2) Information, as such, is not interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However, all interpretation includes information.


Re-mixed: “Interpretation is not just about information, but about revelation. The interpreter must be open to revelation.”


Revelation to the audience presupposes revelation first to the interpreter. And nothing is revealed to those who aren’t looking. So again an attitude of openness is required of the interpreter. We have already touched on intellectual curiosity. To that I would add developing intelligence per se. Tertiary study is one way, but there are many others, including specialist study; careful research; wide reading; subscription to journals and good old fashioned asking questions.


Let’s seek to stay both open-minded and intellectually lithe as we grow older. Let’s resist succumbing to forces and habits that entrench and ossify our thinking. Being open to revelation, open to being shown new things, or perhaps old things in new ways, also means that we will resist fundamentalism of any sort. A closed mind will not be open to new thinking. Have an opinion; know what you believe; defend your position by all means. But remain open-minded, including to the possibility of your own biases, prejudices and fallibilities. Above all, remain open to what your life has to show you.


A willingness to sometimes be quiet and still seem important to this. In the 1940s E.H. Burgmann, Anglican Bishop of Canberra/Goulburn, reflected on the special places of his Australian bush upbringing, and the place of humans in the natural world.


“It is foolish for man to think of Nature as below him. If he lives in the bush long enough he will find that reverence is the only worthy attitude. But the bush will take its own time to do the work. It will not speak to a man in a hurry. Its message is worth waiting for. Only the soul that is stilled in its presence can hear the music of its song."

If Bishop Burgmann is right, learning from nature – and from the wider universe – may take a great deal of patience; a willingness to listen; a capacity to be still. Such openness is a kind of spiritual labour.


Principle 3) Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical or architectural. Any art is in some degree teachable.

Re-mixed: “Interpretation is in part an art. The interpreter needs to consider how to be/become artful.”


As well as cultivating a broad intellect, this principle asks that we cultivate art within ourselves. I see art as an attempt to give shape to the shapeless. Be it via visual arts, music, literature, movement or performance, art at its best explores big questions; questions about meaning, love, justice, and some things that we struggle to otherwise articulate.


Have you ever stood in front of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles at the National Gallery? Or any of Giacometti’s extraordinary sculptures? I know little of the questions asked, or the answers given by those works, and yet somehow my life is the richer for having seen them.


Consider now some of the art or music or poetry or performance that has moved you. Perhaps it is this power to move us that makes art so important. As interpreters are we still open to being moved? Are we still teachable? Or do we tend to be “know-it-alls”?

Let’s determine to remain wide-eyed and open-minded; in touch with our emotions, and self-confident enough to be moved. Because life, in all of its triumph and tragedy; its banality, joy and pathos, is an extraordinary phenomenon that ought to move us. If we are unmoved by life, if we allow a carapace of casual cynicism, a shield of self-protective fear or a façade of fascinating facts to protect us from being moved, then both we and our interpretive audiences will be the poorer.

[Power, silence, green peace: The Mersey River cuts through forest near Tasmania's Overland Track]

As well as simply experiencing art, I believe it’s important to explore and cultivate our own artistic, creative side. Whether or not this is incorporated into our interpretation is irrelevant. Every single one of us has a creative side that is wanting to be expressed, even if it’s only for ourselves or our most tolerant family and friends. What art do you, or might you practice?



Principle 4) The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.

Re-mixed: “The chief aim in the inner formation of an interpreter is not just to be instructed, or to learn, but to provoke ourselves.”


If we are to provoke our audience, we can start by provoking ourselves. The literal meaning of provoke, coming from the Latin provocare, is “to call forth”. Tilden is following and quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said that “it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul.”


Again we are talking about the things that are already there inside each one of us. The re-mixed principle asks us to “call forth”, to give expression to, to be moved by those things that matter to us.

What is it inside of you that needs to come out? I’m not speaking here about those fault lines in your personality that might best be poured out to a therapist or a confessor, as important as that may be. Rather I’m speaking of such things as your love of history; your passion for place; your anger at destructive practices; your amazement at a natural phenomenon; even your desire to connect with an audience and see the light bulb flickering on above their heads.


We can have all the knowledge there is to have about our subject, but if we haven’t been provoked in some way concerning our thoughts and feelings about that subject, then why are we trying to interpret it? We might as well be a robot.


Finding out what it is that needs to be called out of you will require reflection. This can be individual and private, but it might also come out through group work or significant relationships with others. Self-help is rarely the sole answer here, so it will be helpful to seek out others who are willing to explore these issues with you.


Principle 5) Interpretation should aim to present the whole rather than a part, and must address itself to the whole person rather than any phase.

Re-mixed: “In presenting to the whole person, the interpreter needs to strive to be a whole person themselves.”


All of the principles seem to lead to this one point. For how can people who aren’t personally striving to be whole aim to present the whole.


It’s not that the interpreter is some kind of perfect being, a Renaissance “man” who simultaneously rides a horse while shooting a bow and arrow, composing a love sonnet and playing a lute. Rather we ask ourselves “what is the whole; how can I be whole”? We seek for ways to integrate everything in our lives; to bring things together rather than to dissect and scatter.


Earlier I talked about true openness being a kind of spiritual labour. I used the word spiritual advisedly, because I think that part of the thrum that registers in most of our lives – more for some than for others – has to do with spirit, with soul, with the transcendent, with the mysteries that we grope towards but don’t often know with certainty.


We can approach the transcendent in many ways, and from many traditions. Prayer, music, art, meditation, poetry, worship, literature: these are some of the tools we might use. If we are to strive towards being whole people, it’s my contention that we need to find some way of approaching the transcendent.

And we need to find a language in which we can share such strivings. Australians have not always been good at articulating their spiritual or internal struggles. If we can’t easily raise such things in the average morning tea room, then at least we might try to find people with whom we can share such things. Because another truth about wholeness is that it is a corporate and not just an individual matter. We are not whole as a person if we are not in some kind of human community.


Principle 6) Interpretation addressed to children (say, up to the age of twelve) should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults, but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.

Re-mixed: “Interpreters presenting to children follow a fundamentally different approach. In so doing they are also recognising the value of childlike characteristics for the interpreter.”


I think it would be fair to say that, as important as this principle was to Tilden, it appeared at first to be something of an afterthought. And yet … few things that look casual or throw-away in Tilden turn out to be so. Time again we find that he knew – or intuited – what later study would bear out. So here, we find him early among those who recognised the importance of reaching children through interpretation, and doing so in an age-appropriate manner.


In recognising both the importance of, and the different nature of children, we are acknowledging the importance of child-likeness. Think of characteristics we often associate with children: playfulness; curiosity; naivety; a capacity to keep asking questions; a sense of fun; a wide-eyed sense of wonder; the ready expression of emotions; a willingness to depend on others; a capacity to acknowledge ignorance … the list could go on.


Aren’t these some of the characteristics that we interpreters would want to be cultivating in ourselves? As an interpretation manager I would be more than happy to see some of them re-mixed into an interpreter’s statement of duties!

To sum up this attempt to find principles for the interpreter’s inner journey, I would like to bring together two golden threads: one from Tilden, the other from Blind Willie Johnson. The former, as we have already seen, believed that the defining ingredient for the interpreter was love. The latter, in his Depression era blues classic, asked “what is the soul of a man?” Blind Willie Johnson’s guileless answer was “it ain’t nothin’ but a burnin’ light”.


Our life, our light, isn’t going to burn forever, at least not here on earth. But while it burns, fuel it with love and shine it on things that matter.