Interactional constraints on interpreters’ action: the case of clinicians’ comments about cultural differences

For a while now, interpreter-mediated talk has been analysed as a form of interaction under the lenses of approaches based on recorded and transcribed data. These studies converge on the idea that making sense of the participants’ contributions puts constraints on the interpreters’ activity, leading them to choices of action like explaining, clarifying, making explicit what is implicit. This paper focuses on sequences involving clinicians, migrant patients and intercultural mediators and deals with instances in which clinicians’ contributions heavily limit the interpreters’ choice of action. The cases in question are sequences where clinicians comment on patients’ different behaviour or habits. Our analysis looks at four types of mediators’ reaction that we found in the data, all showing the challenges these comments create for the mediators’ choice of action. We conclude that rendering is hardly an option and that while non-rendition may serve the purpose of protecting the patients from possibly offensive talk, it also hinders their involvement in the interaction, or their possibility of replying