Dialogue Interpreting as Intercultural Mediation. An Analysis in healthcare multilingual settings

The complexity of the interpreter’s cultural task as a dialogue coordinator has been acknowledged in recent studies on dialogue interpreting. Interpreters may facilitate or inhibit expressions of personal interest and perceptions by participants, active listening and appreciation of the participants’ contributions. Interpreters can thus help in promoting distribution of active participation, addressing participants’ interests and needs. In this paper, we look at data recorded in hospitals in Italy involving African and Arabian patients, Italian doctors and bilingual interpreters. We note that doctors’ expressions of personal interest or appreciations of participants’ experience may either be directly responded by the interpreter, or “translated” for the patients. This leads to different functions of dialogic actions in the intercultural interaction: while support and appreciation are expressed by interlocutors towards each others’ actions and experiences, a failure to translate such support and appreciation leads to construction of distance between doctor and patient.