On 12/1/2002 23:09, Christoph Neumann wrote the following:
>I hope that we are never going to be politically, sexually, religiously
>"correct", but only scientifically correct and adequate.
I certainly agree in principle. In practice, however, these issues can
become so convoluted and complicated that they defy any easy solution. Let
me describe a situation that a colleague and I are currently facing.
About six months ago, my colleague recorded an interview with a woman of a
certain profession who mentioned in the interview that she had done work
for a certain church. At one point, speaking of an extremely well-known
and powerful member of the clergy, she said (the local equivalent of) "X is
queer... in both senses of the word". This was clearly not meant as an
insult, but as a statement of fact. She then qualified her statement
during the next minute or so.
A couple months later, it turns out that said clergyman stands accused of
sexually abusing an impressive number of boys.
Our dilemma is, of course, what to do with this recording.
We have no intention of doing anything that could jeopardize the
interviewee's anonymity. And in fact, not even her first name appears in
the interview (which happens often enough, with interviewers trying to
establish good rapport). So at first glance, there's no problem in this
regard.
It turns out, though, that she is one of maybe 3 or 4 practitioners of her
profession in the whole country, and so identifying her would be child's
play. Furthermore, censoring all the mentions of her profession is not an
option, as something like half the interview is related to what she does
for a living.
On the other hand, we *really* don't want to throw this interview out, as
the subject belongs to the single most elusive demographic group in the
country, one which practically no one --linguists, sociologists, marketing
folk, what have you-- ever obtains access to.
Unfortunately, even if we somehow resolve the above issues, our dilemma
does not end there. Libel, slander and defamation suits are a favorite
pastime of the powerful in Chile, and the local archbishop has been
threatening to bring such suits against anyone who denounces these types of
crimes. Such suits are criminal actions here, which means that you get to
wait for your trial in jail. And to complicate matters, in truly
Kafkaesque fashion, the fact that a given statement is true is not an
admissible defense in these matters.
In short, lord knows what we'd be exposing ourselves to by including this
interview in a publicly-available corpus. It's looking more and more like
our only option is to sit on the recording and transcript, using them only
internally.
I'd certainly be interested in any thoughts anyone may have on this matter.
Cheers,
Scott
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Scott Sadowsky
Centro de Estudios Cognitivos, Universidad de Chile
sadowsky@spanishtranslator.org · ssadowsk@icaro.dic.uchile.cl
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