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This paper reports on interprofessional education (IPE), a teaching and learning strategy that is widely used in healthcare training. IPE is structured and usually situation-based training that inv...

This paper has policy as its starting point, relating both to society in general and to healthcare in particular. In Australia, both social and health policy coincide in their advocacy for language (interpreting) services, with the optimisation of healthcare outcomes for patients a desirable outcome of both. This paper relates these macro-level directives to the development of a hospital-wide Cultural Responsiveness Plan that represents policy guidelines at a lower level, and the way that this plan was applied and operationalised at a major public health facility, Northern Health in Melbourne, servicing up to 1 million people. Through the re-establishment of language services, a policy of transcultural training for all new and existing staff, and hospital-wide dissemination of information relating to communicating with limited English proficiency (LEP) patients, a 317% increase is recorded in the requests for interpreters at patient occasions of service (OOS) over an 8-year period. This increase is largely met by the further employment of in-house interpreters, whose cost per OOS drops in proportion to the greater efficiencies that are derived from in-house staff. The augmentation of interpreting services correlates with a 28% decrease in average LEP patient length of stay in hospital, with a decrease in the difference of re-admission rates amongst this group compared to those speaking English. This paper uses demographic data to quantify the likely percentage of LEP patients at Northern Health and matches these against the augmented level of service to show how far this is from a comprehensive or universal level of service which is usually one of the stated aims of macro- and local-level policy. Statistical data gathered longitudinally are presented alongside excerpts taken from interviews with three groups of informants: in-house interpreters, hospital managers outside language services, external language services stakeholders.

This paper presents extracts of three interactions that feature mediators with different roles: broker; dual-role mediator; professional interpreter. A discourse analysis examination employscategories of interpreter footing toshow how alignment to others indexes mediators’ role-relationships. At the micro-level, analysis shows the mediators’ sense of responsibility to the interaction as a social situation and to the positions and intentions of other participants. Mediators attempt to align to others in a way reflecting this, with varying consequences. The broker’s agency to assume a role of indirect recapitulator of another’s talk is not positively received and he re-assumes the role of responder in an intra-family dyad. The threat of breakdown in the communicative interaction compels the dual-role mediator to shift her role from reporter to non-interpreter principal. The professional interpreter provides collaborational re-presenting of talk to others retaining the role of reporter, sometimes swi...

Artikkel kasitleb 103 makedoonia paritolu austraallase kakskeelset konet ja keskendub koodivahetusele leksikaalses mottes (sisestus, vaheldus,viitamine teistest keeltest ulekantud leksikaalsele materjalile olenemata teise keele loikude pikkusest). Kahe- voi mitme elemendilisi konstruktsioone vaadeldakse kui koodivahetusega seotud nahtust, erilise tahelepanu all on nn kergverbi konstruktsioonid. Uuritakse leksikaalgrammatilist ja -semantilist moju, mis tekib tolkelaenude kaudu, selleks et teada saada, kas imporditud leksikaalsed elemendid esinevad samal ajal struktuuriliste uuendustega ja soodustavad nende tekkimist.

Interpreters may see affinities between their own or working language(s) and others in the same family as an opening to a broader range of professional opportunities. This paper presents data from an online survey, completed by 23 mainly Australian-based interpreters for the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages. Main points include: number of accreditations (one, two or three languages); willingness to work in languages other than one’s ‘own’; and views on adapting language to the variety spoken by interlocutors (in both everyday usage and interpreted speech). Other questions examine negotiation of mismatches between ethnicity and the language variety expected by the client, as well as personal views regarding the distinctness of the three languages. Informants form three main groups: some work in one language only, with no accommodation to others; some consider the languages as separate but might accommodate to other varieties, extemporaneously or by prior arrangement; others consider that their native-speaker status in two or three languages makes accommodation superfluous. Two smaller groups (totalling four interpreters) consider substantial accommodation unnecessary: in one case they see the languages as separate but mutually understandable, in the other they see them as one single language. Quantitative data are complemented by informants’ comments.

MonTI (Monographs in Translation and Interpreting) is an academic, peer-reviewed and international journal series (1) that is published by three Spanish universities with TI demonstrated knowledge of domestic legal terminology and legal procedures; ability to interpret consecutively. Commonly, candidates wishing to become court interpreters must apply to the relevant country's Ministry of Justice and sit for its interpreting test. However, while the code law tradition requires formal credentialing of protagonists in courtroom, it does not contemplate those working outside it. As a result, in many European countries, historically there have been few or no proficiency standards for non-court interpreting, and seldom if ever any formal requirement to provide an interpreter for certain key interactions such as lawyer-client, and even police-suspect or police-witness. National credentialing systems privileged one kind of situation as deserving of certain standards, and had little to say about other ones. Due to mass migration to most parts of Western Europe in the post-WWII period, coupled with increasing levels of European internal migration, the demand for interpreting services Europe-wide has increased greatly. A system which officially sanctioned interpreting in one setting, but not in others, has become untenable. Moving outside Europe to predominantly Anglophone countries, we find the following situation in the United States. In that country, the certification of court interpreters is loosely co-ordinated by the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT), which is the professional body for American court interpreters and translators. Various American states have different requirements and different testing authorities that administer the test. Pre-test training is typically offered by private providers and the certification exam is offered individually by a nominated authority in each state sometimes a university institution, sometimes a court authority, sometimes a private enterprise or agency. The contact details of each state's authority are provided by a US federal government authority: the Consortium for Language Access in the Courts (formerly the 'Consortium for State Court Interpreter Certification'). …

This study examines attitudes, reported actions and professional practices in regard to language from an occupational group that consists of 'language experts’ − interpreters. It focuses on the topic of linguistic variation, perceptions of ‘native-speakerness’, accommodation to other languages, and nominated accounts for perceived difficulties in working with others – due to linguistic, extra-linguistic or other situational factors. The first part contextualises the sometimes separate and sometimes shared paths that characterise the standardisation of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian and how these languages are classified formally by interpreter directories and universities in Germany and Austria. Empirical data from practising interpreters are then presented that contain responses to different features relevant to the discourse and interactional management of interpreter assignments, such as nominated first language(s) and ethnicity, perceptions of others’ designations and conceptualisations of the languages, language variant employed with ‘same-language’ vs. ‘congruent-language’ interlocutors, discourse features of German-speaking judicial officials and of allophone clients, the ‘mediator role’ of the interpreter etc.

Shifting from one language of interpretation to another (i.e. from language a and language x to language a and language y) is not an unknown phenomenon in mediated interactions between bi- or multi-lingual clients and multilingual interpreters. Typically, this occurs when clients wish to shift to their dominant language and interpreters also have proficiency (and accreditation) in this language. Twenty Australian-based interpreters (out of a sample of sixty) reported engaging in shifting in the course of interpreting. Language combinations and circumstances motivating clients to shift are presented and systematised to show that the two largest groups of potential shifters are clients who wish to revert to their (chronologically) first acquired language and those who shift from a ‘national’ or ‘majority-group’ language to a ‘minority’ or ‘regional’ one spoken in their country of origin. Responses to hypothetical shifts in the language of interpretation are discussed in which interpreter informants provide acceptability judgements of courses of action and justifications for accepting — or refusing to accept — a shift in the language of interpretation.

Interpreters are expected to have an advanced command of not only the vocabulary and grammar of their working languages, but also the pragmatic norms that speakers of their working languages employ in communicative interactions. The aim of this paper is to explore the perceptions and practices of interpreters in relation to intercultural pragmatics at work in healthcare interactions. The paper employs two theoretical frameworks: the first is based on interpretations of behavior according to speakers' discourse-pragmatic features as representative of “high” or “low” context cultures (cf. Hall 1976); the second applies Celce-Murcia's (2007) more refined notion of “communicative competence.” The data sample of this paper focuses on cultural-pragmatic features of two linguistic and cultural groups – 25 Chinese speakers and 24 English speakers – and contrasts their selected responses to five features of Chinese-English interpreted healthcare interactions. Responses from 33 Chinese-English interpreters are matched against those from speakers of the two groups to examine the degree of congruence that interpreters have with the self-reported (para-)linguistic behavior of the two groups of speakers, for whom they interpret. This study shows that the self-reported (para-)linguistic behavior of both groups is determined by their adoption of a particular approach (doctor- vs. patient-centered approach) and other micro-level features (perceived time constraints, different notions of “small talk”) that limit elaborate pragmatic enactments. Over-arching cultural-pragmatic models based on “high” (or “low”) context communication, or “vertical” (vs. “horizontal”) hierarchical perceptions of role and status appear to have limited application to the data. Instead, local features specific to the healthcare situation co-determine both English and Chinese speakers' responses to questions about their use of pragmatics. Findings indicate that interpreters attend to each group's enactment of pragmatic features and, as expert language users, are able to recognize features and components of interactions and their functions to a greater degree than the Chinese and English speakers.

This article provides an overview of the process by which potential translators and interpreters demonstrate minimum standards of performance to warrant official or professional recognition of their ability to translate or interpret and to practise professionally – commonly known as ‘certification’. Certification can be awarded by governmental or professional authorities on the basis of testing, completed training, presentation of previous relevant experience and/or recommendations from practising professionals. Certification can be awarded by a single authority for all types of translation and interpreting, or by authorities that specialise in a particular mode or type of inter-lingual transfer. This article compares certification procedures in 21 countries to present a cross-national perspective of how (and if) certification is awarded and which features and requirements are contained in it. Comparison reveals that the pragmatic, needs-based and socially focussed policies of translation and interpreting services in some New World countries such as Australia, Canada, US has led to the establishment of certification programs. In other, typically European and East Asian countries, a demonstration of minimum standards is provided through lengthy training, commonly as part of a university post-graduate degree where translation and interpreting performance is principally required for high-level political, business or literary interaction. In such countries, ‘certification’ may be a term reserved for a restricted type of performance, eg. court interpreting. Parallels are drawn between the procedures and conventions employed in various countries and how common elements may form a basis for greater cross-national equivalence and comparability.

This paper examines the phenomenon of receptive multilingualism where speakers of two different languages communicate through each speaking his/her own language and understanding the other’s. Comprehension in such an interaction is aided by the speaker and the listener employing linguistic, discourse-pragmatic and other features which represent strategies of accommodation (i.e. reduction of linguistics dissimilarities). This phenomenon is not presented as an alternative to interpreting, but in the context of interpreters who work from or into a language which is closely related, but not identical to the language spoken by one of the participating clients. Background information is provided from language pairs with a high level of mutual intelligibility and the experiences of interpreters, while the focus of the data sample is on 23 interpreters who have accreditation in one, two or three of the following closely-related languages: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Responses are elicited on the following: self-reported incidence of accommodation in non-interpreted interactions; linguistic and ethical protocols when a different, but closely-related language is used by a client; comments from clients about interpreters’ proficiency and ethnicity; attitudes on the distinctiveness of the three languages and future intelligibility. Informants’ linguistic behaviour is analysed according to the number of accreditations held and, in general, those with three accreditations report the highest levels of accommodation.

This study focuses on a language broker – a younger family member who performs lay interpreting for other family members. This paper examines three real-life interactions between a broker who relays speech from English-speakers to Macedonian-speaking family members. Adopting Goffman's notions of ‘footing’ and ‘participant roles’ that a speaker can assume, this paper examines how a broker engages with the conversational moves of others for him to assume the role of not only animator and author , but also principal . Transcribed speech shows evidence of features that are characteristic of interpreter speech: ‘relayed inter-lingual transfer’ and ‘recipient design’. At the same time, inter-lingual transfer is punctuated cyclically by responses and prompts from others to engage with the broker as a speaker in his own right. This paper shows a broker's positioning to the role of principal and how this is negotiated and re-negotiated in changes of footing in which the broker can assume this role and then relinquish it.