Contextual factors as an analytical tool: Exploring collaboration and negotiation in mental health interviews in prisons mediated by non-professional interpreters

This article proposes a framework for analysing interpreted events mediated by non-professionals. It is based on an examination of individual contextual factors rather than on traditional definitions of setting-based features. This approach promises to be more productive for the study of non-professional interpreting and for analysing contexts that do not fit into existing categories of setting. For these purposes, this article examines a corpus of 26 prison-based mental health interviews mediated by non-professional interpreters in order to analyse the collaboration and negotiation processes that emerge among the members of the communicative triad. First, it outlines contextual factors from a conceptual perspective. Second, it describes those contextual factors that are most relevant to analysing collaboration and negotiation processes. Finally, it describes the context of prison-based mental health interviews through the lens of these factors and examines their influence on specific instances of collaboration and negotiation extracted from this corpus.

A survey of Korean elementary schoolteachers on their communication with students and parents from migrant backgrounds and the need for quality language services

This paper investigates communication problems facing teachers when they interact with students and parents from migrant backgrounds, and explores the need for quality language services in educational settings. According to a questionnaire-based survey of 142 elementary schoolteachers, about 20–25 per cent of respondents frequently experienced difficulties in communicating with students and parents who lacked Korean language proficiency. However, the teachers usually managed without outside assistance largely because of the lack of language support services. Effective communication is needed through the delivery of more language services to support children’s learning, school education and parents’ meaningful participation in both. Most teachers surveyed supported more effective language services in their schools, but were not very vocal in advocating for professional interpreting services. Instead, they tended to emphasise other forms of language and cultural training for multicultural students and their parents. This response may derive from their lack of experience with professional interpreting services, and a lack of awareness of the limited resources available for quality service provision or the influence of assimilation policies. The findings also indicate that teachers do not consider the interpreting and translation skills of language service providers as highly as cross-cultural mediation skills, understanding of the education system or interest in individual students’ needs. The results call for further research into what would constitute best practice in educational interpreting to effectively mediate cultural differences between schools and multicultural families, and address the needs and concerns of teachers, students and parents from multicultural backgrounds.

Professional interpreting translation education in the Chinese mainland

This paper reviews the history and achievements of professional interpreting and translation education in the Chinese mainland since 1979, discusses the internal and external challenges it faces in the new era and puts forward some measures to accelerate and upgrade its development so as to offer some insights for the future development of translation education in China and beyond. It is hoped that this paper will enable interpreting and translation teachers and scholars around the world to better understand the achievements and status quo of professional interpreting and translation education in the Chinese mainland and will enhance understanding, communication and exchanges of the interpreting and translation education circle internationally.

Effects of simultaneous interpreting experience and training on anticipation, as measured by word-translation latencies

This study aims to investigate the influence of interpreter training and conference interpreting experience on anticipation, as measured by word-translation latencies in a semantically constrained context. It involved professional conference interpreters, on the one hand, and, on the other, interpreter trainees being tested at the beginning and at the end of their two-year training programme. Both groups were asked to translate words embedded at the end of high-context constraint sentences (thus easily predictable), low-context constraint sentences or those appearing in isolation in both directions (from and to their native language). The data suggest that word-translation latency improves in the course of interpreter training but it is not enhanced further in the course of professional experience, whereas anticipation is not improved by either training or experience. All the participants, being late foreign language learners, manifested an advantage in native language comprehension by anticipating more in an A–B versus a B–A translation direction. The findings also suggest that professional interpreting experience might facilitate inhibition and lead to the selection of the appropriate translation equivalent.

When roles within interpreter-mediated psychiatric consultations speak louder than words

In South Africa, clinicians working in public psychiatric hospitals are mainly fluent in English and Afrikaans, while the majority of patients are not proficient in these languages. Due to a lack of professional interpreting services, informal, ad hoc interpreters are commonly employed in public psychiatric hospitals. We collected data on language practices in public psychiatric care in South Africa, and provide a detailed account of what happens when bilingual health care workers and cleaners haphazardly take on the additional role of interpreter. Data were collected during 2010 at a public psychiatric hospital in the Western Cape, South Africa. Thirteen interpreter-mediated psychiatric consultations were video-recorded, and 18 audio-recorded semi-structured interviews were conducted with the interpreters and clinicians who participated in the interpreter-mediated psychiatric consultations. Patients were proficient in isiXhosa (one of the 11 official languages of South Africa), the clinicians (all registrars) were first language English or Afrikaans speakers, while the health care workers (nurses and social workers) and cleaners were fluent in both the patients’ and clinician’s language. Our findings suggest that interpreters took on the following four roles during the interpreter-mediated psychiatric consultations: regulating turn-taking, cultural broker, gatekeeper and advocate. Our findings suggest that, despite interpreters and clinicians having the patient’s best interests at heart, it is the patient’s voice that becomes lost while the clinician and interpreter negotiate the roles played by each party.

Third party insurance?

This paper deals with general practice consultations where there is a third party present, as a companion, to support the patient and act as a mediator between doctor and patient. Our study contrasts with most, but by no means all, of the studies on interpreting, which (1) focus on a transmission of information model in professional interpreting, (2) do not address monolingual mediated consultations where the third person is a carer and/or (3) do not address issues of trust and feelings which can characterise consultations mediated by family members. The data for this paper is drawn from a Londonbased project: Patients with Limited English and Doctors in General Practice: Educational Issues (PLEDGE). Using Goffman’s participant framework and aspects of narrative performance, we propose a cline of mediation, which can be mapped onto the structure of the clinical consultation – as evidenced through two case studies. The analysis indicates that consultations with companions that act as lay interpreters have more in common with monolingual triadic consultations than with professionally interpreted consultations. The shifts in role-relationships and alignments between the three participants subvert their official position to produce a remarkable intimacy and collaboration, while often subduing but sometimes amplifying the patient’s voice. There are implications of our findings both for family carers as mediators and for primary care health providers.