Announcing Panace@ next issue
for December 2014
Intercultural Communication in the Healthcare
Setting / Comunicación intercultural en el ámbito médico
Lissie Wahl-Kleiser, Carmen Valero-Garcés, Bárbara Navaza &
Effrossyni (Effie) Fragkou (coords.)
Call for papers
The professionalization of medical interpreters to
ensure proper training as well as official recognition by governing bodies in
the field of interpretation, has over the past decade become equated —either stricto sensus or latisimmo sensus— with strict sets of rules, whether labelled Code
of Ethics, Code of Conduct or Norms. These, as understood and practiced by
healthcare providers, interpretation service departments and interpreters
themselves have become synonymous with a mandate for interpreters to remain
invisible. To many, quality in medical interpretation is invisibility for medical
interpreters. On-the-ground practice demonstrates in contrast that for
interpreters to fully perform the tasks with which they are entrusted,
transcending their prescribed role makes them more effectual, when bearing in
mind the ultimate goals of medical interpreting.
Hence, so-called invisible interpreters are not as
invisible as one would like to think. While this brings on a set of ethical
dilemmas, an underlying concern is how then to define and circumscribe intercultural
communication while, at the same time, considering institutional/professional
interpreting requirements and power differentials among doctors, patients, and
interpreters.
Emerging research in the field of medical interpreting
in various milieus, languages and countries acknowledges the problem of
invisibility in connection with prescriptive requirements. In 2004, Claudia
Angelelli in her seminal work entitled Medical
Interpreting and Cross-cultural Communication observed the disconnect
between the prescribed role for medical interpreters in various Codes of Ethics
in the United States and the actual, day-to-day practice of these interpreters
in hospitals and other healthcare settings. While ground-breaking research continues
to take taking place, researchers’ valuable conclusions are rarely finding
their way into the act of medical interpreting, that is, real-life interpreting
situations
Currently, third parties such as hospitals,
interpretation agencies, not-for-profit organizations, and medical
interpreters’ associations with limited authority and legal foundation issue
certificates sanctioning training in medical interpretation. College- or
university-based education, while incorporating language-neutral interpreting
teaching and learning methodologies, remains by and large language-specific. They
are also often part of a larger program leading mainly to a university diploma
in conference interpreting. Judging from various curricula descriptions, such training
programs emphasize intercultural communication and the Code of Ethics as
pre-requisites to quality interpretation. However, they fail, first, to provide
consistent conceptualization of the notion of intercultural communication; second,
to explain how intercultural understanding presupposes knowledge of contextual
factors through thinking, interacting and behaving within socially-defined historical
contexts; and, third, to demonstrate how understanding other cultures and
acting accordingly can go hand-in-hand with such presently expected professional
attitudes as are impartiality, invisibility and detachment.
This special issue of PANACE@ strives to move forward this
effort in multilingual and multicultural complex societies by exploring key synergies
and discordances between academia and real life interpreting. We are looking to
include theoretical and case study discussions of: (1) intercultural
communication; (2) new approaches to intercultural communication training; (3)
challenges and dilemmas for medical interpreters "being ethical" and "acting
ethically;" (4) the implications of
medical interpreters' (in)visibility in specific situations; (5) working
together: the influence of healthcare providers' in general and patients' views
in medical interpreting; (6) structural factors influencing medical
interpretation, including legal, economic, and social determinants; (7)
approaches to medical interpreting in public and private healthcare services;
(8) transdisciplinary professionals and their role as medical interpreters; and
(9) whether a single
framework for medical interpreting can apply to different settings, as are
home-health centers, NGO's, emergency services and other specific contexts.
We look forward to
receiving contributions in Spanish, English and French that address these
subjects from an interdisciplinary vantage point. If interested, please submit a
500-word abstract by no later than May 15th to the
editors:
Lissie Wahl-Kleiser : Elizabeth_walh@hms.harvard.ie.edu
Carmen Valero-Garcés: carmen.valero@uah.es
Bárbara Navaza: barbara.navaza@gmail.com
Effie Fragkou: effie.fragkou@gmail.com
(Information
about submission guidelines in: http://www.tremedica.org/documentos/Normas_Publicacion_Panacea_2011.pdf)
