Experimental Analysis of Service Providers’ Assessment of Interpreter Mediated Communication

Abstract

Modern world is characterized by a high degree of multilingualism as developed countries experience an inflow of immigrants. The attitude to them in host societies varies considerably. This unavoidably triggers some changes in the attitude to public service interpreters, whose professional goal is to eliminate language barriers for people with limited language proficiency in their communication with public institutions. The purpose of the article is to carry out experimental analysis of service providers’ assessment of interpreter mediated communication in healthcare and legal settings from two perspectives: professional and social. The authors conducted a survey on medical professionals’ and court personnel's opinion of interpreter mediated communication. For this purpose we worked out a questionnaire consisting of seven questions universal for both categories of the respondents. Both medical and legal professionals assess their experience of interpreter assisted communication as positive in terms of effectiveness, respect for professional roles and promoting institutional values. However, this holds true only in case of professional interpreters. Medical professionals tend to be frustrated by interpretation done by ad hoc interpreters, usually patients’ relatives. In turn, legal professionals, especially at pre-trial stage, tend to have less difficulties working with ad hoc interpreters, they evidence greater preparedness to such communication and appear to be more in control, comparing to medical professionals.