Dialogue Interpreting in an Italian Immigrant Support Centre: mediating constructions of social conditions

This paper is about interpreter-mediated interactions in an Italian Support Centre assisting
immigrants who need to comply with complicated bureaucratic procedures to obtain
permits and apply for jobs. The paper analyses sequences including the social worker’s
questions about the reason for the visit or the immigrant’s problem, the mediator’s
translations and the immigrant’s answers. Although the mediator pursues immediate
translations of the immigrants’ answers, in a number of cases immigrants show serious
difficulties in explaining their problems. The mediator deals with these difficulties
promoting expanded dyadic sequences with them, followed by translations for social
workers. The analysed interpreter-mediated interactions highlight the significance of
the mediating function of interpreting in promoting narratives of immigrants’ personal
and social conditions.