Non-professional Medical Interpreting as a Contextualized Practice: Chinese Volunteer Interpreters’ Role-Spaces in Mediating Provider-Patient Conflicts Amid the Pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Non-professional medical interpreters are frequent participants of bilingual health communication. Yet, scholarly attention paid to this group’s roles in less routinized medical encounters is insufficient. Adopting the concept of “role-space,” this study explores volunteer medical interpreters’ (VMIs) roles in mediating provider-patient conflicts at a designated hospital tasked to admit and treat foreign patients in City Y, China. In-depth interviews with eight VMIs, two doctors, two patients, and one Foreign Affairs officer indicate that VMIs took on the roles of provider proxy, patient advocates, information gatekeepers, and emotional supporters while navigating through challenges at the macro-, meso- and micro-level; Their practices led to four role-spaces that featured high presentation of VMIs’ self-driven actions during dyadic communication with patients only and, in most cases, minimal interaction management and participant alignment in provider-patient encounters.