Identifying points of convergence between trained and ‘natural’ interpreters for public services
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.37240Keywords:
community interpreting, convergence, empathy, expectations, mediation, natural interpretingAbstract
This paper reviews the implications of the role assumed by community interpreters and the linguistic and paralinguistic features of the profession. It reflects on bilingualism and interpreting capacity, comparing the different attitudes observed in several research studies between trained and natural interpreters, the latter being bilingual mediators with no specific training who are frequently called on to interpret in a range of contexts. In particular, the current study covers areas of convergence between the standard profile of trained interpreters and a non-normative approach that prioritises sociocultural skills and understands mediation as the most effective path to reach successful communication. A qualitative analysis of interviews pertaining to court and medical interpreting in Spain is employed to understand what guides interpreters’ decisions, thus contributing to a broader view of daily practice. Findings suggest that role prescriptions are not necessarily incongruent with many of the non-formal, mediating procedures on which natural interpreting is based, and that a flexible active approach based on empathy and critical skills should be encouraged and developed as part of student training.
References
Angelelli, C. V. (2004) Revisiting the Interpreter's Role. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Avery, M. P. (2001) The Health Care Interpreter. An Evolving Dialogue. Washington, DC: National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. Working Papers Series. [Last accessed December 1, 2017].
Bahadir, S. (2011) Interpreting Enactments: A New Path for Interpreting Pedagogy. In C. Kainz, E. Prunc and R. Schögler (eds) Modelling the Field of Community Interpreting. Questions of Methodology in Research and Training, 177-210. Berlin: LIT Verlag.
Bancroft, M. (2015) The Community Interpreter: An international textbook. Columbia: Culture & Language Press.
Baraldi, C. (2014) An interactional perspective on interpreting as mediation. Lingue Culture Mediazioni / Languages Cultures Mediation 1 (1-2): 17-36.
Berk-Seligson, S. (1990) The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Blumgart, H. (1964) Caring for the patient. New England Journal of Medicine 270: 449-456.
Bot, H. (2003) The myth of the uninvolved interpreter interpreting in mental health and the development of a three-person psychology. In L. Brunette, G. Bastin, I. Hemlin and H. Clarke (eds) The Critical Link 3: Interpreters in the Community, 27-35. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Brathwaite-Fisher, T. (ed) (2004) Bridging the Cultural Divide in Health Care Settings. The Essential Role of Cultural Broker Programs. National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC). http://nccc.georgetown.edu/documents/Cultural_Broker_Guide_English.pdf [Last accessed November 17, 2017).
Braun, S. (2014) Comparing traditional and remote interpreting in police settings:
Quality and impact factors. In M. Viezzi and C. Falbo (eds) Traduzione e Interpretazione per la Società e le Istituzioni, 161-176. Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste.
Brislin, R. W. (1978) Contributions of cross-cultural orientation programs and power analysis to translation/interpretation. In D. Gerver and H. W. Sinaiko (eds) Language Interpretation and Communication, 205-216. Plenum Press: New York and London,
Dam, H. V. (2017) Interpreter role, ethics and norms: Linking to professionalization. In M. Biagini, M. S. Boyd and C. Monacelli (eds) The Changing Role of the Interpreter: Contextualising Norms, Ethics and Quality Standards, 228-239. New York and London: Routledge.
Davidson, B. (2000) The interpreter as institutional gatekeeper: The social-linguistic role of interpreters in Spanish-English medical discourse. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4 (3): 379-405.
De Jongh, E. M. (2012) From the Classroom to the Courtroom; A Guide to Interpreting in the U.S. Justice System. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Eraslan Gercek, S. (2008) Cultural mediator or scrupulous translator? Revisiting role, context and culture in consecutive conference interpreting. In P. Boulogne (ed) Translation and Its Others. Selected Papers of the CETRA Research Seminar in Translation Studies 2007. https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/cetra/papers/files/eraslan-gercek.pdf [Last accessed December 10, 2017].
Garzone, G. (2011) Professional discourses in contact: Interpreters in the legal and medical settings. In C. N. Candlin and S. Sarangi (eds) Handbook of Communication in Organisations and Professions, 319-340. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Graham, E., Jackson-Carroll, L. and Jackson, J. C. (1998 [1995]) Beyond Medical Interpretation. The Role of ICMs in Building Bridges between Ethnic Communities and Health Institutions. Selecting, Training and Supporting Key Outreach Staff. https://ethnomed.org/about/related-programs/community-house-calls-program/icm-manual98.pdf [Last accessed November 21, 2017].
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pensylvania Press.
Hale, S. B. (2004) The Discourse of Court Interpreting: Discourse Practices of the Law, the Witness and the Interpreter. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Harris, B. and Shewood, B. (1978) Translating as an innate skill. In D. Genver and H. Sinaiko (eds) Language Interaction and Communication, 155-170. New York/ London: Plenum.
Hsieh, E. (2007) Interpreters as co-diagnosticians: Overlapping roles and services between providers and interpreters. Social Science and Medicine 64 (4): 924-937.
Hsieh, E. and Jung Hong, S. (2010) Not all are desired: Providers' views on interpreters' emotional support for patients. Patient Education & Counseling 81 (2): 192-197.
Hojat, M. (2016) Empathy in Health Professions Education and Patient Care. Philadelphia: Springer.
Iglesias, E. (2010) Verbal and nonverbal concomitants of rapport in health care encounters: Implications for interpreters. The Journal of Specialised Translation 14: 216-227.
Jacobsen, B. (2009) The community interpreter: A question of role. Hermes - Journal of Language and Communication Studies 42: 155-166.
Lang, R. (1978) Behavioral aspects of liaison interpreters in Papua New Guinea: Some preliminary observations. In D. Genver and H. Sinaiko (eds) Language Interaction and Communication, 231-244. New York/London: Plenum.
Leanza, Y. (2007) Roles of community interpreters in paediatrics as seen by interpreters, physicians and researchers. In F. Pöchhacker and M. Shlesinger (eds) Healthcare Interpreting. Discourse and Interaction, 11-34. Amsterdam/ Philadelhia: John Benjamins.
Llewelyn-Jones, P. and Lee, R. G. (2014) Redefining the Role of the Community Interpreter: The Concept of "Role Space". Lincoln, UK: SLI Press.
Mason, I. (ed) (1999) Dialogue interpreting. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing.
Mason, I. (ed) (2001) Triadic Exchanges. Studies in Dialogue Interpreting. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Merlini, R. and Favaron, R. (2003) Community interpreting: Re-conciliation through power management. The Interpreters' Newsletter 12: 205-229.
Mestre, M., Samper, P., Frías, M. and Tur, A. (2009) Are women more empathetic than men? A longitudinal study in adolescence. The Spanish Journal of Psychology 12 (1): 76-83.
Meyer, B., Pawlack, B. and Kliche, O. (2010) Family interpreters in hospitals: Good reasons for bad practice? MediAzioni 10: 297-324.
Mulayim, S., Lai, M. and Norma, C. (2015) Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting. Context, Challenges and Strategies. Boca Raton: Taylor and Francis.
Nakane, I. (2014) Interpreter-Mediated Police Interviews. A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Real, K. and Buckner, M. (2015) Interprofessional communication: Health care teams and medical interpreters. In N. G. Harrington (ed) Health Communication: Theory, Method and Application, 147-177. New York/London: Routledge.
Russell, D. and Hale, S. (eds) (2012) Interpreting in Legal Settings. Washington: Gallaudet University Press.
Stern, L. (2011) Courtroom interpreting. In K. Malmkjaer and K. Windle (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies, 325-342. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Valero-Garcés, C. (2008) Hospital interpreting practice in the classroom and the workplace. In C. Valero Garcés and A. Martin (eds) Crossing Borders in Community Interpreting. Definitions and Dilemmas, 165-186. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Wadensjö, C. (2013) [1998] Interpreting as Interaction. London/New York: Routledge.
Walichowski, M. (2002) Language brokering: Laying the foundation for success in bilingualism. In R. Lara-Alecio (chair) Research in Bilingual Education. Symposium conducted at the Annual Educational Research Exchange, College Station, Texas.
Other sources:
Code of Professional Responsibility for Interpreters in the Minnesota State Court System (1996): https://www.revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/rule.php?name=prcode-toh [Last accessed December 2 2017].
Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreter's and Translators (2002) https://najit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NAJITCodeofEthicsFINAL.pdf [Last accessed November 22 2017].
Avery, M. P. (2001) The Health Care Interpreter. An Evolving Dialogue. Washington, DC: National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. Working Papers Series. [Last accessed December 1, 2017].
Bahadir, S. (2011) Interpreting Enactments: A New Path for Interpreting Pedagogy. In C. Kainz, E. Prunc and R. Schögler (eds) Modelling the Field of Community Interpreting. Questions of Methodology in Research and Training, 177-210. Berlin: LIT Verlag.
Bancroft, M. (2015) The Community Interpreter: An international textbook. Columbia: Culture & Language Press.
Baraldi, C. (2014) An interactional perspective on interpreting as mediation. Lingue Culture Mediazioni / Languages Cultures Mediation 1 (1-2): 17-36.
Berk-Seligson, S. (1990) The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Blumgart, H. (1964) Caring for the patient. New England Journal of Medicine 270: 449-456.
Bot, H. (2003) The myth of the uninvolved interpreter interpreting in mental health and the development of a three-person psychology. In L. Brunette, G. Bastin, I. Hemlin and H. Clarke (eds) The Critical Link 3: Interpreters in the Community, 27-35. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Brathwaite-Fisher, T. (ed) (2004) Bridging the Cultural Divide in Health Care Settings. The Essential Role of Cultural Broker Programs. National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC). http://nccc.georgetown.edu/documents/Cultural_Broker_Guide_English.pdf [Last accessed November 17, 2017).
Braun, S. (2014) Comparing traditional and remote interpreting in police settings:
Quality and impact factors. In M. Viezzi and C. Falbo (eds) Traduzione e Interpretazione per la Società e le Istituzioni, 161-176. Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste.
Brislin, R. W. (1978) Contributions of cross-cultural orientation programs and power analysis to translation/interpretation. In D. Gerver and H. W. Sinaiko (eds) Language Interpretation and Communication, 205-216. Plenum Press: New York and London,
Dam, H. V. (2017) Interpreter role, ethics and norms: Linking to professionalization. In M. Biagini, M. S. Boyd and C. Monacelli (eds) The Changing Role of the Interpreter: Contextualising Norms, Ethics and Quality Standards, 228-239. New York and London: Routledge.
Davidson, B. (2000) The interpreter as institutional gatekeeper: The social-linguistic role of interpreters in Spanish-English medical discourse. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4 (3): 379-405.
De Jongh, E. M. (2012) From the Classroom to the Courtroom; A Guide to Interpreting in the U.S. Justice System. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Eraslan Gercek, S. (2008) Cultural mediator or scrupulous translator? Revisiting role, context and culture in consecutive conference interpreting. In P. Boulogne (ed) Translation and Its Others. Selected Papers of the CETRA Research Seminar in Translation Studies 2007. https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/cetra/papers/files/eraslan-gercek.pdf [Last accessed December 10, 2017].
Garzone, G. (2011) Professional discourses in contact: Interpreters in the legal and medical settings. In C. N. Candlin and S. Sarangi (eds) Handbook of Communication in Organisations and Professions, 319-340. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Graham, E., Jackson-Carroll, L. and Jackson, J. C. (1998 [1995]) Beyond Medical Interpretation. The Role of ICMs in Building Bridges between Ethnic Communities and Health Institutions. Selecting, Training and Supporting Key Outreach Staff. https://ethnomed.org/about/related-programs/community-house-calls-program/icm-manual98.pdf [Last accessed November 21, 2017].
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pensylvania Press.
Hale, S. B. (2004) The Discourse of Court Interpreting: Discourse Practices of the Law, the Witness and the Interpreter. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Harris, B. and Shewood, B. (1978) Translating as an innate skill. In D. Genver and H. Sinaiko (eds) Language Interaction and Communication, 155-170. New York/ London: Plenum.
Hsieh, E. (2007) Interpreters as co-diagnosticians: Overlapping roles and services between providers and interpreters. Social Science and Medicine 64 (4): 924-937.
Hsieh, E. and Jung Hong, S. (2010) Not all are desired: Providers' views on interpreters' emotional support for patients. Patient Education & Counseling 81 (2): 192-197.
Hojat, M. (2016) Empathy in Health Professions Education and Patient Care. Philadelphia: Springer.
Iglesias, E. (2010) Verbal and nonverbal concomitants of rapport in health care encounters: Implications for interpreters. The Journal of Specialised Translation 14: 216-227.
Jacobsen, B. (2009) The community interpreter: A question of role. Hermes - Journal of Language and Communication Studies 42: 155-166.
Lang, R. (1978) Behavioral aspects of liaison interpreters in Papua New Guinea: Some preliminary observations. In D. Genver and H. Sinaiko (eds) Language Interaction and Communication, 231-244. New York/London: Plenum.
Leanza, Y. (2007) Roles of community interpreters in paediatrics as seen by interpreters, physicians and researchers. In F. Pöchhacker and M. Shlesinger (eds) Healthcare Interpreting. Discourse and Interaction, 11-34. Amsterdam/ Philadelhia: John Benjamins.
Llewelyn-Jones, P. and Lee, R. G. (2014) Redefining the Role of the Community Interpreter: The Concept of "Role Space". Lincoln, UK: SLI Press.
Mason, I. (ed) (1999) Dialogue interpreting. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing.
Mason, I. (ed) (2001) Triadic Exchanges. Studies in Dialogue Interpreting. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Merlini, R. and Favaron, R. (2003) Community interpreting: Re-conciliation through power management. The Interpreters' Newsletter 12: 205-229.
Mestre, M., Samper, P., Frías, M. and Tur, A. (2009) Are women more empathetic than men? A longitudinal study in adolescence. The Spanish Journal of Psychology 12 (1): 76-83.
Meyer, B., Pawlack, B. and Kliche, O. (2010) Family interpreters in hospitals: Good reasons for bad practice? MediAzioni 10: 297-324.
Mulayim, S., Lai, M. and Norma, C. (2015) Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting. Context, Challenges and Strategies. Boca Raton: Taylor and Francis.
Nakane, I. (2014) Interpreter-Mediated Police Interviews. A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Real, K. and Buckner, M. (2015) Interprofessional communication: Health care teams and medical interpreters. In N. G. Harrington (ed) Health Communication: Theory, Method and Application, 147-177. New York/London: Routledge.
Russell, D. and Hale, S. (eds) (2012) Interpreting in Legal Settings. Washington: Gallaudet University Press.
Stern, L. (2011) Courtroom interpreting. In K. Malmkjaer and K. Windle (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies, 325-342. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Valero-Garcés, C. (2008) Hospital interpreting practice in the classroom and the workplace. In C. Valero Garcés and A. Martin (eds) Crossing Borders in Community Interpreting. Definitions and Dilemmas, 165-186. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Wadensjö, C. (2013) [1998] Interpreting as Interaction. London/New York: Routledge.
Walichowski, M. (2002) Language brokering: Laying the foundation for success in bilingualism. In R. Lara-Alecio (chair) Research in Bilingual Education. Symposium conducted at the Annual Educational Research Exchange, College Station, Texas.
Other sources:
Code of Professional Responsibility for Interpreters in the Minnesota State Court System (1996): https://www.revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/rule.php?name=prcode-toh [Last accessed December 2 2017].
Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreter's and Translators (2002) https://najit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NAJITCodeofEthicsFINAL.pdf [Last accessed November 22 2017].
Published
2019-08-28
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Ciordia, L. S. (2019). Identifying points of convergence between trained and ‘natural’ interpreters for public services. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 12(3), 241-265. https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.37240
