Intercultural communication and cultural transfers in the colonial context. The encounter between Pizarro and Atahualpa in 1532 ans its discursive representations in early-modern cultures

This contribution treats the historical representations of the encounter between the Inca King Atahualpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on november 16th, 1532, in the Peruvian town of Cajamarca which was one of the decisive turning points of the Spanish conquest of South America. After theoretical and methodological reflections on the relations between intercultural communication processes and cultural transfers in the context of the conquista, it focuses first on the various contemporary Spanish discourses on the event of November 16th, 1532, which represented predominantly an official ideological version of it. In a further step are analyzed the new 18th-century discourses, influenced by different historical sources, like the work of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, which reveal very different ‘constructions’, based on a transcultural network of cultural transfers and intercultural mediators, of this event.

In Search of the Essential Competences for Overcoming Language Barriers in Public Services

It is argued in the article that despite the relatively strong presence of English in Slovenia, the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) alone does not guarantee access to quality public services. To supplement the use of ELF interpreting support is needed, in particular in high-risk situations. A step in this direction was the certification of a national vocational qualification for community interpreters for Albanian in 2020. Since at the same time a new vocational profile for intercultural mediators was created, which also aims to assist the inclusion of migrants in the Slovene society, we investigated the differences between these two profiles by comparing the competences defined in both. The results show that despite some overlaps Slovene vocational standards for both professions differ significantly: while transfer and linguistic competences are central to community interpreter’s profile, conflict resolution and mediation competence figure more prominently in the intercultural mediator’s profile.

Language as a Trigger for Racism: Language Barriers at Healthcare Institutions in Slovenia

The article analyzes the impact of language barriers on the medical treatment of foreign-speaking patients and illustrates that the absence of systemic, institutional responses to language barriers in healthcare facilities exacerbates racist attitudes toward migrants and ethnic groups. The article is based on 201 interviews with healthcare workers, employees of public or non-governmental institutions as well as users of healthcare services that were conducted between 2018 and 2019 in twelve local communities in Slovenia. Following the methodological and conceptual framework, the first part of the article highlights the various negative consequences of language barriers experienced by healthcare workers and foreign-speaking patients. The second part shows that in the absence of an accessible network of professional intercultural mediators or interpreters, healthcare workers are left to their own devices with respect to overcoming language barriers. Finally, the last part of the article shows that many interlocutors are increasingly searching for the culprit for this situation. Some healthcare workers attribute the responsibility to the abstract concept of the “system”, while others attribute the responsibility exclusively to migrants, thus perpetuating key elements of the culture of racism present in Slovenia. In this culture of racism, knowledge of Slovene language becomes one of the most important criteria that distinguishes deserving from undeserving migrants. The latter are a privileged object of racist responses at the level of cultural, institutional and personal racism, which is proving to be mutually toxic.

An integrated approach to the higher education terminology in Spanish-Russian university texts

The commitment of European and non-European countries for the convergence of educational standards happened decades ago. In the beginning, in 1999 (Bologna Declaration) Spain became an integral part of the Bologna Process. Meanwhile the Russian Federation required four more years to respond to this initiative and sign in 2003 the Berlin Communique. Many issues were raised by the alignment of different education systems and their adaptation to common quality standards. However, few solutions were offered to tackle terminology issues in university domain. In this study, we will focus on how we can overcome higher education terminology differences. We will analyse Spanish-Russian university texts, exploit a mixed monolingual and bilingual corpus as well as investigate the system for terminological equivalence of terms. Finally, we will elaborate a bilingual glossary of terms, synonyms and abbreviations conceivably to meet the needs of intercultural mediators, translators or education experts.

A multidimensional approach to improve migrants’ health in the new context of living

Background Quantitative data analysis performed by the multidisciplinary team in a Primary Care setting, addressing migrants' health in Parma, showed poor adherence and lower completion rate of Latent Tuberculosis Infection (LTBI) treatment among 2701 refugees and asylum seekers, registered from 2013 to 2018. Soon afterwards, qualitative data analysis revealed that health operators, intercultural mediators and operators working for no-profit-organizations (NGOs) did not share the same approach towards LTBI care cascade. Different knowledge about patient engagement, Health Literacy (HL) interventions, disagreement about the objectives and motivation to screening and treatment of LTBI, could be the consequence of an ineffective communication and not well-structured cooperation between health operators, private sectors and other stakeholders. Objectives In order to enhance migrants' capability for self-care management of LTBI, the multidisciplinary team plans seven meetings with intercultural mediators and operators working for NGOs, from March to June, within the I.C.A.R.E European Project. The interactive meetings aim at improving knowledge about Tuberculosis (TB) and LTBI, awareness about the relationship between self-decision making and health outcomes, motivation to patient engagement and finally at identifying culturally competent and HL oriented strategies. Results It is expected a structured, evidence-based approach, according to national guidelines, enabling newly arrived immigrants to improve self-care management of health and LTBI. Indicators, outcomes, challenges managed within the participatory meetings will be presented at the conference. Conclusions A co-construction of a multidimensional approach, supporting individual capacity building to improve self-care management of LTBI among newly arrived immigrants, could be an effective strategy for patient engagement and health promotion. Key messages Newly arrived immigrants’ health is not only a matter of individual capability but also of a multifactorial approach, actively involving stakeholders from the public, private and no-profit sectors. This multidimensional cooperation to improve migrants’ health considers HL as a fundamental factor, supporting individual engagement and decreasing in fear about TB.

Community interpreters versus intercultural mediators

This article compares the professional profile of community interpreters to that of a particular group of intercultural mediators who work as non-professional, untrained interpreters, mainly in healthcare settings. Through a textual comparison of 13 deontological documents for community interpreters and intercultural mediators, this article investigates differences in the ethical positioning of these two profiles. The results show that while the codes of ethics of community interpreters tend to emphasize impartiality, the documents defining the emerging profile of intercultural mediators position advocacy more prominently. Beyond the differences in ethical positioning, the article also considers other reasons for the formation of this new profile and outlines several challenges related to the partial overlap between the two profiles, which include distorted definitions of the interpreter’s competences and performance, conceptual confusion in the research literature, and mismatched expectations of language services consumers.

Ethics, accuracy, and interpreting in social settings

Accuracy tops most of the codes of ethics for public service interpreting. This dominant position is not accidental, since the lack of truth in the transmission of the message may entail a violation of the users’ and providers’ fundamental right to truth. In Catalonia, where intercultural mediators have taken on the role of interpreters for many years, the issue of accuracy becomes even more complex due to their dual roles as professional mediators and non-professional interpreters. Drawing on more than four hours of video recordings and post-task interviews with study participants, this paper analyzes the accuracy of five intercultural mediators working with Arabic, Spanish, and Catalan when in the role of interpreter.

Managing uncertainty in healthcare interpreter-mediated interaction

This paper analyses healthcare interactions involving doctors, migrant patients and ‘intercultural mediators’ who provide interpreting services. Our study is based on a collection of 300 interactions involving two language pairs, Arabic–Italian and English–Italian. The analytical framework includes conversation analysis combined with insights from social systems theory. We look at question-answer sequences, where (1) the doctors ask questions about patients’ problems or history, (2) the doctors’ questions are responded to and (3) the doctor closes the sequence, moving on to another question. We analyse the ways in which mediators help doctors design questions for patients and patients understand and eventually respond to the doctors’ design. While the doctor’s question design aims at obtaining details which are relevant for the patients’ care, it is argued that collecting such details involves complex interactional work. In particular, doctors need help in displaying their attention to their patients’ problems and in guiding patients’ responses into medically relevant directions. Likewise, patients need help in reacting appropriately. Mediators help manage communicative uncertainty both by showing the doctor’s interest in what the patient says, and by exploring and rendering the patient’s incomplete, extended and ambiguous answers to the doctor’s questions.

Mejoras en el aprendizaje de la mediación lingüística e intercultural a través de la inclusión de la atenuación / Improvement of Linguistic and Intercultural Mediation thanks to the inclusion of mitigation

Resumen: La fluidez de una lengua y sus matices son algo imprescindible que los estudiantes tienen que aprender y saber reconocer si quieren convertirse en buenos mediadores lingüísticos e interculturales. Se presenta, pues, una actividad didáctica en la que, en primer lugar, y dando por sentado las competencias lingüísticas generales de los estudiantes franceses (con nivel B2-C1 de E/LE según el MCER, 2001), con los que se ha llevado a cabo la actividad, se pretende hacer reflexionar los mismos sobre sus conocimientos pragmáticos atenuantes previos con el fin de mejorar sus destrezas comunicativas que necesitan para desenvolverse en la profesión de mediadores lingüísticos. A partir de ello, en segundo lugar, se pretende que los estudiantes aprendan a reconocer no solamente cuando es necesario emplear elementos atenuantes como estrategia lingüística sino también cuando pueden y deben hacerlo puesto que la situación lo requiere. Palabras clave: mediación lingüística e intercultural, mediador, atenuación, destrezas comunicativas atenuantes Abstract: The fluency of a language and its nuances are essential for the students in order to learn and know how to recognize to become good linguistic and intercultural mediators. This paper therefore presents a didactic activity in which, in the first place, and taking for granted the general linguistic competences of the French students (with level B2-C1 of Spanish as a Second Language in accordance with CEFR, 2001) with whom the activity has been carried out, the aim is to make them reflect on their previous attenuating pragmatic knowledge in order to improve their communicative skills that they need to develop in the profession of linguistic mediators. Based on this, it is intended that students learn to recognise not only when it is necessary to use attenuating elements as a linguistic strategy but also when they can and must do so as the situation requires. Keywords: intercultural and linguistic mediation, mediator, mitigation, communications and mitigation skills