La mediazione linguistico culturale in ambito sanitario

While a distinction has been made between “public service interpreting” and “(intercultural)
mediation”, translation and mediation go hand in hand in dialogue interpreting, particularly
when delicate situations are involved, as is the case in healthcare. In this paper, I
provide an outline of the debate foregrounding the relationship between interpreting and
mediation and I discuss some examples of authentic interaction interpreted by mediators in
public healthcare services in Italy. The data show that, although not necessarily close repetitions
of turns in the other language, the forms of rendition adopted by the mediators are
in line with the goals of the interaction and facilitate understanding and rapport between
patients and healthcare providers. Renditions are oriented to achievements related to the
medical context of the examination (e.g. taking the patients’ history) and they cope with
local interactional problems.