Medical Interpreting

Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez

Foreword

The needs of our modern superdiverse societies have set the ground for the emergence and consolidation of new knowledge areas, research disciplines and professional figures (Vertovec 2007). Multiculturality and multilingualism are two of the main characteristics of contemporary societies, and communication is acknowledged as essential for healthy conviviality, inclusivity and sustainability in communities of all kinds, as reflected in the description of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (<https://sdgs.un.org/goals>). Equal and efficient public service provision for all implies dealing with barriers to access in an effective way, and interpreters, in the broadest sense of the word, have been considered key agents in this task (Lázaro Gutiérrez and Tejero González 2022).

It is true that interpreting studies have grown exponentially over the years, and this is a clear sign of consolidation for both a knowledge area and a research discipline that is intimately connected to the needs of superdiverse societies. Ever-increasing population movements and interactions, which are no longer exclusively physical but are also giving way to hybrid and virtual modalities, put communication in the spotlight. Multilingual institutional interactions in the domain of public service provision are increasingly the object of research in the field of translation and interpreting studies. In particular, research into medical interpreting has been addressed in several monographs published during the last two decades: Montalt i Resurrecció and Shuttleworth (2012), Varela Salinas and Meyer (2015) and Ji et al. (2019), combining interpreting and translation; or Pöchhacker and Shlesinger (2005), Andres and Pöllabauer (2009), Lázaro Gutiérrez (2012), Nicodemus and Metzger (2014) and Souza and Fragkou (2020), dealing exclusively with interpreting.

One of the most salient topics in publications on public service interpreting in general, and medical interpreting in particular, is that of professionalization. Lázaro Gutiérrez and Gauthier Blasi (2020) reflect upon the professionalization of medical interpreters and, importantly, their role as change agents in modern societies. The authors’ work is based on the sociological work of Spencer (1992), who states that all structures in society arise from the specialization of a relatively homogeneous group. This specialization generates knowledge, which is transformed into symbolic capital and thus strengthens the group by giving it a certain symbolic power. Besides, from a business and financial point of view, generators and indicators of power have changed from the possession of land and the production of material goods to the possession of specialization and the production of knowledge. This change is due, in part, to the democratization of access to university education for the former working class of the industrial era. As the acquisition of power in modern societies is based on specialized knowledge, professions turn into new power elites, and each group of professionals struggles to activate and impose its symbolic capital in order to ensure its recognition and permanence (Bourdieu 1986). In the case of public service interpreting in general and medical interpreting in particular, the sociology of professions also informs us that an orientation towards the well-being of society is one of the minimal characteristics and requirements of professions, as they intend to contribute to social improvement and progress (Rodríguez Ávila 2008: 17). This volume constitutes one of the outcomes of the ReACTMe project and presents a range of interesting contributions on the social role of medical interpreters, the status of their professionalization and their training in several European countries.