The use of dialogue interpreting corpora in healthcare interpreter training: taking stock

This paper addresses the teaching of dialogue interpreting (DI) in healthcare settings. Based on the technique developed by Stokoe (2011a) – the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM), which was applied to healthcare interpreting by Niemants (2013, 2015), – the author replicates Niemants and Stokoe’s (2017) experiment within her English-Italian healthcare interpreting classroom, by adding the observation of real-life data to traditional role-playing. Data were collected within the Healthcare Interpreting Quality Corpus (HIQC) project, comprising both real-life data involving doctors, patients, and professional interpreters; and simulated interactions involving trainers and DI students. The first section of the paper is dedicated to the illustration of the methodological choices made during the real-life data selection process. It focuses on the real-life sub-corpus and recurring phenomena within it, which are discussed in relation to their relevance for DI training and their use in the classroom. The second part of the paper illustrates the results of the application of Niemants and Stokoe’s training method, the validity of which was verified during the examination sessions at the end of the DI course held by the author