The interpreter in multi-party medical encounters

The author’s contribution is part of a research project based on video recordings of interpreter-mediated medical consultations which explores several linguistic and interactional aspects of a multi-party interaction in English and Italian. This study investigates the active participation of interpreters in some paediatric face-to-face consultations where they are called upon to translate for doctors, patients and their parents who do not share the same language. The patients are Italian children with a spinal injury and in these encounters they are the object of the verbal interaction between doctors and Italian parents but never actively interact with the American doctor. The study assumes, on the basis of evidence provided in literature, that interpreters do not merely repeat in another language every single utterance by other participants and it shows that, in fact, interpreters may not translate what is said by a primary participant, may undertake conversational initiatives and may choose a conversational axis and a specific orientation towards the other participants. Applying the categories of zero renditions and non-renditions (original utterances which are not translated by the interpreters and autonomous conversational initiatives respectively) the turn-by-turn analysis highlights some recurrent patterns in zero renditions and a high variability in non-renditions. For the first category the findings show that: i) the doctor was the “most translated” participant not only in terms of proportion of turns but also in terms of content; ii) parents’ turns addressed to the child were never translated; comments or assessments pertaining to compliance with prescriptions were not translated unless they contained open disagreement; iii) exchanges between parents were often only partially translated for the doctor. As for non-renditions, the interpreters’ conversational participation ranged from very active and patient-oriented to less active and more aligned with the doctor. In particular, one interpreter negotiated more favourable dietary prescriptions for the patient while another restricted the doctor’s dietary prescriptions in her renditions. This suggests that some discretionary decisions by the interpreters may come into play in medical settings in relation to the management of the interaction and the construction of interpersonal rapport. The comparison with data from countries where there are professional healthcare interpreting standards is recommended as a possible way to underpin the development of training tools to provide a more uniform quality of language service