Item Details

Understanding interpreters’ actions in context

Issue: Vol 15 No. 2 (2018) Special Issue: Interpreter-Mediated Healthcare Encounters

Subject Areas: Healthcare Communication Linguistics

Abstract:

This article examines the organization of interpreter-mediated communication and demonstrates that interpreters, as autonomous social actors, continuously monitor and analyze the unfolding interaction and make moment-by-moment decisions about their actions. Drawing on a larger conversation-analytic study of audio- and video-recorded consultations (24 in total) between English-speaking doctors, their Russian-speaking patients, and bilingual interpreters (ad hoc and professional), I present a close examination of short segments from two such consultations and show that interpreters’ involvement is not limited to translation. The article demonstrates that interpreters’ actions are shaped by the demands of the interactional and medical activities they are engaged in. The analysis focuses on two kinds of interpreter involvement: first, their management of situations in which participants experience difficulties in understanding each other; and, second, their participation in a physical examination that requires a close coordination of bodily actions. In the first case, interpreters’ orientations to their normative responsibilities as translators may compel them to act in ways that are divergent from doing translation per se. In the second case, we see that interpreters’ participation in the interaction may be primarily constrained by the demands of the ongoing physical examination and so be only minimally responsive to the talk produced by the other parties.

Author: Galina B. Bolden

View Full Text

References :

Angelelli, C. V. (2004) Medical Interpreting and Cross-Cultural Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486616

Baraldi, C., and Gavioli, L. (eds) (2012) Coordinating Participation in Dialogue Interpreting. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.102

Baraldi, C., and Gavioli, L. (2016) On professional and non-professional interpreting in healthcare services: The case of intercultural mediators. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 4 (1): 33-55.
https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2015-0026

Biagini, M., Davitti, E. and Sandrelli, A. (2017) Participation in interpreter-mediated interaction: Shifting along a multidimensional continuum. Journal of Pragmatics 107: 87-90.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.11.001

Bolden, G. B. (1998) Practices of Medical Interpreting: An Interactional Account. Unpublished Master’s dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

Bolden, G. B. (2000) Towards understanding practices of medical interpreting: Interpreters’ involvement in history taking. Discourse Studies 2 (4): 387-419.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445600002004001

Bolden, G. B. (2008) Reopening Russian conversations: The discourse particle -to and the negotiation of interpersonal accountability in closings. Human Communication Research 34 (1): 99-136.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00315.x

Bot, H. (2005) Dialogue interpreting as a special case of reported speech. Interpreting 7 (2): 237-261.
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.7.2.06bot

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.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00121

Davidson, B. (2001) Questions in cross-linguistic medical encounters: The role of the hospital interpreter. Anthropological Quarterly 74 (4): 170-178.
https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2001.0035

Davitti, E., and Pasquandrea, S. (2014a) Enhancing research-led interpreter education: An exploratory study in applied conversation analysis. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8 (3): 374-398.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2014.972650

Davitti, E., and Pasquandrea, S. (2014b) Guest editorial. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8 (3): 329-335.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2014.973143

Davitti, E. and Pasquandrea, S. (2017) Embodied participation: What multimodal analysis can tell us about interpreter-mediated encounters in pedagogical settings. Journal of Pragmatics 107: 105-128.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.04.008

Garces, C. V. (2005) Doctor-patient consultations in dyadic and triadic exchanges. Interpreting 7 (2): 193-210.
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.7.2.04val

Goodwin, C. (1996) Transparent vision. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff and S. A. Thompson (eds) Interaction and Grammar, 370-404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620874.008

Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32 (10): 1489-1522.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00096-X

Goodwin, C. (2003) Pointing as situated practice. In S. Kita (ed.) Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet, 217-241. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Heath, C. (1986) Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628221

Hepburn, A. and Bolden, G. B. (2017) Transcribing for Social Research. London: Sage.
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473920460

Heritage, J. (2007) Intersubjectivity and progressivity in references to persons (and places). In T. Stivers and N. J. Enfield (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives, 255-280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hsieh, E. (2008) ‘I am not a robot!’: Interpreters’ views of their roles in health care settings. Qualitative Health Research 18 (10): 1367-1383.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732308323840

Kaufert, J. M. and Koolage, W. W. (1984) Role conflict among ‘culture brokers’: The experience of native Canadian medical interpreters. Social Science & Medicine 18 (3): 283-286.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(84)90092-3

Knapp-Potthoff, A. and Knapp, K. (1986) Interweaving two discourses: The difficult task of the non-professional interpreter. In J. House and S. Blum-Kulka (eds) Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies, 151-168. New York: Mouton.

Leanza, Y. (2005) Roles of community interpreters in pediatrics as seen by interpreters, physicians and researchers. Interpreting 7 (2): 167-192.
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.7.2.03lea

Levinson, S. C. (1992) Activity types and language. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, 66-100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mason, I. (2012) Gaze, positioning and identity in interpreter-mediated dialogues. In C. Baraldi and L. Gavioli (eds) Coordinating Participation in Dialogue Interpreting, 177-199. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.102.08mas

Merlini, R. and Favaron, R. (2005) Examining the ‘voice of interpreting’ in speech pathology. Interpreting 7 (2): 263-302.
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.7.2.07mer

Pasquandrea, S. (2011) Managing multiple actions through multimodality: Doctors’ involvement in interpreter-mediated interactions. Language in Society 40 (4): 455-481.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404511000479

Pöchhacker, F. (2004) Introducing Interpreting Studies. London: Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203504802

Raymond, C. W. (2014a) Conveying information in the interpreter-mediated medical visit: The case of epistemic brokering. Patient Education and Counseling 97 (1): 38-46.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2014.05.020

Raymond, C. W. (2014b) Epistemic brokering in the interpreter-mediated medical visit: Negotiating ‘patient’s side’ and ‘doctor’s side’ knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction 47 (4): 426-446.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2015.958281

Rowland, M. L. (2008) Enhancing communication in dental clinics with linguistically different patients. Journal of Dental Education 72 (1): 72-80.

Roy, C. B. (2000) Interpreting as a Discourse Process. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007) Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791208

Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977) The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53 (2): 361-382.
https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1977.0041

Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. (eds) (2013) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325001

Stivers, T. and Robinson, J. D. (2006) A preference for progressivity in interaction. Language in Society 35 (3): 367-392.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404506060179

Wadensjö, C. (1998) Interpreting as Interaction. Harlow, UK: Addison Wesley Longman.

Wadensjö, C. (2001) Interpreting in crisis: The interpreter’s position in therapeutic encounters. In I. Mason (ed.) Triadic Exchanges: Studies in Dialogue Interpreting, 71-85. Manchester: St Jerome.