A Study On The Visibility Of Interpreters In Medical Interpreting

As China’s increasingly been internationalized, foreigners are no longer new to China. With more and more foreigners coming to China for travelling, studying, working or settling down, their requests for public service necessitate the need for community interpreters including legal interpreters and medical interpreters etc., among which, medical interpreting is the one relatively new research area. Thus, intending to bring some new thinking into the area of medical interpreting, this thesis focuses on medical interpreting and pays its attention to the visibility of medical interpreters.Traditionally, interpreters are treated as the instrument in cross-cultural communication. Interpreters are required to be neutral, better invisible, so that people with different languages can interact with each other, as nearly as possible, as if they are engaged in the same language exchange. However, unlike the traditional "invisible interpreter" view, interpreters actually play an important role during the cross-cultural communication. Interpreters, as powerful figures during the interpreter-mediated encounters, are clearly visible. By depicting interpreters as gatekeeper, coordinator and co-speaker, this thesis uses real life medical interpreting cases to prove medical interpreters’ visibility.Though belonging to the community interpreting family, medical interpreting has its own characteristics, which are closely related to medical interpreters’ role. As medical interpreting is a kind of cross-cultural communication, interpreters inevitably become the gatekeeper checking on the possible cultural conflicts. And as medical interpreting is regarded as a diagnosis process between institutions and lay people, interpreters are required to act as the coordinator coordinating the relationship between doctors and patients. Also, medical interpreting is conversation oriented, which puts interpreters in the role of co-speaker, and thus interpreters have their power over the turns. These three roles of medical interpreters manifest interpreters during the medical interpreting process, and thus prove interpreters’ visibility.