Problems and strategies in public service interpreting as perceived by a sample of Chinese-Catalan/Spanish interpreters

ABSTRACT

Problems and strategies have been widely discussed in Translation and Interpreting Studies, but they have received scarce attention in the field of Public Service Interpreting (PSI). On the basis of interviews with 20 public service interpreters working in the Chinese-Catalan/Spanish combination, this article analyses their answers in relation to the problems and difficulties they usually encounter, which are classified into two categories: word level and discourse level. Different ideas on curriculum design and training approaches are suggested and discussed on the basis of this analysis, while also considering that most interpreters had not received formal training in PSI at the moment of the interviews.

KEYWORDS:

• Public service interpreting (PSI)
• community interpreting
• dialogue interpreting
• PSI training
• PSI problems and strategies
• qualitative interviews

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Mireia Vargas-Urpi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6302-581X

Notes

¹For a critical review of the terminology used by scholars to study the translation process (e.g. ‘strategies’, ‘techninques’, ‘processes’, ‘methods’, etc.), see Gil-Bardají (2009).

²Despite describing themselves as ‘intercultural mediators’ and assuming other functions than interpreting, these interviews only focused on their function as interpreters.

³In Spain, Translation and Interpreting degrees have not included PSI contents until relatively recently, after the creation of the European Higher Education Area, implemented during the course 2009-10.

⁴Numbers are used to preserve informant anonymity.

⁵Interviews were conducted in Catalan or Spanish. The excerpts presented in this article have been translated by the author.

⁶She refers to Universal Doctor Speaker. URL: http://www.universaldoctor.com/ (accessed 12^th August 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Catalan Agency for Administration of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) [2014SGR545] to MIRAS research group.

Notes on contributors

Mireia Vargas-Urpi

Mireia Vargas-Urpi is a visiting professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she teaches the subjects of interpreting, intercultural mediation and English-Catalan/Spanish translation. She has previously taught Chinese for translation purposes (UAB) and public service interpreting in different courses and MA degrees in Spain (UAB, UAH, UPO). She holds a Ph.D. from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, with a dissertation on public service interpreting and intercultural mediation with the Chinese in Catalonia. She is an active member of InterAsia, MIRAS and TXICC research groups (UAB) and has also participated in SOS-Vics, a European project on interpreting for gender violence victims led by the University of Vigo.