Abstract
The question this article tries to deal with is: how does mental health talk differfrom dialogue in other public service areas? The contribution starts with a description of the organization of interpreting in health care and the level ofprofessionalization of the field in the Netherlands, which is really not all that different from that in other western countries. Then a description and discussion of some major publications concerning interpreting in (mental) health care and their methodological backgrounds will be presented. However, only a few publications are based on a systematic investigation. Summarizing the findings from these research projects, we can conclude that the interpreter influences the content of the communication in several ways. Firstly, because of language pair dependent changes and, secondly, because of changes that are dependent on the interpreter: his1 (lack of) knowledge of the type of communication in hand; his (lack of) knowledge of the institutional setting in which the communication takes place and the specific linguistic characteristics of that type of talk; his (un)conscious personal ideas, values and norms which make him diverge from the original text. Finally, we will summarize where we stand as far as the knowledge about interpreting in mental health is concerned, and the contribution closes with some proposals for further research.
Highlights
The question this article tries to deal with is: how does mental health talk differ from dialogue in other public service areas? The contribution starts with a description of the organization of interpreting in health care and the level of professionalization of the field in the Netherlands, which is really not all that different from that in other western countries
Healthcare providers are responsible for the use of a professional interpreter, who has to be engaged by the health provider
Professional interpreters interpret for a living, i.e. they are paid to do so, they have an independent status with regard to the people they interpret for and they have to respect a code of conduct, including a pledge of secrecy
Summary
In the Netherlands, the use of interpreters in health care has been laid down most clearly in the law concerning ‘informed consent’2 This states that information has to be given to the patient in a language he can understand. In a number of other laws concerning the quality of health care, the necessity of adequate communication is emphasized This means that interpreters have to be used in case a patient does not share a language with the healthcare provider. In its communication to the healthcare institutions, the Ministry of Health has prescribed that health providers ought to train in the necessary skills to communicate with an interpreter. At present, such training does not exist. The emphasis is on their task as translators, they are neither co-therapists nor culture brokers
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