Brokers, dual-role mediators and professional interpreters: a discourse-based examination of mediated speech and the roles that linguistic mediators enact

ABSTRACT

This paper presents extracts of three interactions that feature mediators with different roles: broker; dual-role mediator; professional interpreter. A discourse analysis examination employscategories of interpreter footing toshow how alignment to others indexes mediators’ role-relationships. At the micro-level, analysis shows the mediators’ sense of responsibility to the interaction as a social situation and to the positions and intentions of other participants. Mediators attempt to align to others in a way reflecting this, with varying consequences. The broker’s agency to assume a role of indirect recapitulator of another’s talk is not positively received and he re-assumes the role of responder in an intra-family dyad. The threat of breakdown in the communicative interaction compels the dual-role mediator to shift her role from reporter to non-interpreter principal. The professional interpreter provides collaborational re-presenting of talk to others retaining the role of reporter, sometimes switching to principal. Mediators’ agency and awareness of macro- then micro-level features, are located in the interactions. Discussion draws on work on intercultural communicationand reflective practice that locates interpreting as acomplex ethical and political activity.

KEYWORDS:

• Brokers
• dual-role mediators
• interpreters
• interpreter roles
• discourse of interpreting
• Macedonian

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. By May 2016, three conferences on ‘non-professional interpreting and translation’ had been hosted by prominent universities with Interpreting Studies teaching and research centres.

2. All three excerpts were gained through a project on the language of Macedonian-speakers in Melbourne which included audio- and video-taped recordings, recalled interactions of interpreted interactions and sociolinguistic questionnaires (cf. Hlavac 2016). Permission to conduct this research was granted by Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee, Project No. CF10/2366 – 2010001346 on 11 October 2010.

3. This school has four Multicultural Education Aides (MEAs) whose duties include interpreting/translation, pastoral care and team-teaching. At the school, and within the Victorian state education system, an MEA occupies a ‘normative role’ that includes being a representative of the school and addressing the educational and social-emotional needs of school students.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jim Hlavac

Dr Jim Hlavac is a senior lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. He is an accredited and practising professional interpreter and translator (Croatian, English and German). He has published widely in the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies and also in the disciplines of multilingualism, contact linguistics, intercultural communication, pragmatics and language maintenance/shift.