Brokering communication in sacred spaces: Bilingual youth interpreters in religious settings

Abstract

Although research on 'language brokering' has grown steadily over the past two decades, the specific characteristics and challenges of this type of interpretation work have yet to be fully explored. The present analysis examines the specific practices involved when bilingual youth interpret in religious services. Although underexplored in the language-brokering scholarship, religious services present a novel and revalatory context for the examination of non-professional interpretation practices. Framed through a discourse-analytic lens, this analysis explores how two youths demonstrate problem-solving skills and linguistic expertise in the interpretation process. I argue that the problem-solving activity in which the youth are participating is multifaceted and collaborative, and that the youth themselves must necessarily exercise great skill to solve each problem. I then position this analysis within the broader scholarship on language brokering and demonstrate how these practices expand our knowledge regarding the linguistic abilities of bilingual youth.