Impact and potentiality of script-based model dialogues in bi- and multilingual settings

Language barriers can have a negative effect on both the quality and efficiency of face-to-face interactions, especially in situations involving large numbers of individuals who are not speakers of the local languages (refugees, migrants, but also tourists), and where appropriate professional language mediation services are often not available. The need to find a solution that would allow us to overcome, at least partially, the communicative problems in such settings, was the starting point for two interdisciplinary projects (medicine – translation studies / tourism – translation studies) aimed at investigating the potential of plurilingual script-based communication tools able to help speakers with very different linguistic and/or cultural backgrounds to realise interactions of a certain complexity. The paper will discuss the results of empirical studies concerning, on the one hand, the evaluation of already existing materials and currently used apps, and on the other, the creation and optimization of model dialogues in plain language designed to represent a further alternative to lexicographic and terminological resources and the intervention of interpreters.