Exploring the macro-social context of voluntary and non-professional interpreting: alternative approaches?

In the majority of advanced democratic societies, in Europe and beyond, volunteer and non-professional interpreters continue to provide intercultural mediation services despite the advocacy work of professional organizations of public service interpreters and interpreting scholars to raise awareness on the standardization of professionally trained practitioners. In this light, these often untrained practitioners are often viewed are ‘intruders’ who endanger the status of the profession. The lack of financial investment on professional interpreting services, the nature of certain public sectors (i.e. healthcare sector) where there is an immediate demand for linguistic mediation, or the lack of national standards regarding the provision of public service interpreting, among others, continue to encourage these social practices despite the alleged ‘poor’ quality of the interpreting services provided by these interpreters (Meyer 2012; Meyer et al. 2010). A majority of the studies on the professionalization of the field of PSI which deal with voluntary and non-professional interpreting are carried out by Translation Studies researchers, many of whom are professionally trained translators and interpreters (Sela-Sheffy and Shlesinger 2009). These studies tend to focus on examining the performance of voluntary and non-professional interpreters in comparison with professionally trained practitioners with an emphasis on what are considered ‘errors’ in Translation Studies. This literature has mainly centered on mistakes and malpractice (Flores 2005) when compared with the ideal professional interpreter and there is little interest to understand the macro-social context in which these interpreters operate. Accordingly, the performance of voluntary and non-professional interpreters has been strongly criticized in these studies, since they argue that voluntary and non-professional interpreters have a tendency to take an active role in the communicative exchange and, therefore, modify the message and the course of the interaction (Bührig 2005; Bührig and Meyer 2004; Meyer et al. 2010). There seems to be a consensus amongst researchers regarding the use of voluntary and non-professional interpreting which often leads to inaccuracies, omission of relevant information and role reversal (Flores, 2005; Meeuwesen et al. 2010; Rosenberg et al. 2008). However, research on voluntary and non-professional interpreting cannot be approached from such simplistic point of view since many of these interpreters have not ‘voluntarily’ chosen to act as interpreters, such as the case of friends and family and bilingual workers (Angelelli 2010). Their essential contribution to society as providers of an otherwise disregarded service (ref.), their eventual acquisition of professional traits through practice (Valero-Garcés 2006), their ability to empathize with service users (Edwards 2005), or their ability to adopt roles beyond linguistic mediation according to the demands of each encounter (Angelelli 2010), aspects which are seldom explored, make voluntary and non-professional interpreting a rich area for investigation. The aim of this panel is to compile communications dealing with voluntary and non-professional interpreting in the various public service settings.status: publishe