Encoding Miscommunication : A Proposal Of Indicators for Non-Professional Healthcare Interpreting
Miranda, Marc (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Date:	2025
Abstract:	Non-professional interpreting (NPIT) is a common practice in healthcare settings when communicative barriers arise between practitioners and users with limited knowledge of the host society's official languages. Nevertheless, this does not ensure effective communication, which, given the sensitive context, may have adverse consequences. NPIT studies have identified this by focusing predominantly on either stable contexts, where linguistic communities are defined by the presence of stable migrant populations, or crisis contexts, such as disaster relief and refugee crises. However, linguistic diversity can be stable and ever-changing at the same time. This presentation focuses on one such context, namely the Catalan region of Lleida, where 19. 75% of the resident population is of migrant background. Additionally, every year the region welcomes about 30,000 temporary workers from different countries who come to work throughout the harvest season. Agriculture represents the primary economic engine in the region, and migrant workers, both temporary and resident, are a vital workforce. The objective of this presentation is twofold: first, to propose a list of miscommunication indicators in NPIT-mediated consultations with the aim of identifying and classifying situations of ineffective communication and their causes. Secondly, to explore the impact of linguistic and cultural barriers in healthcare. The methodology is based on the multimodal discourse analysis of a corpus of eight consultations that have taken place in a public obstetrics and gynaecology centre in Lleida known for providing medical attention to a high percentage of migrant users. The preliminary results suggest that the miscommunication indicators list might be used to identify solutions to communicative barriers in healthcare, regardless of language combinations. Following, the need for raising awareness on practitioners' side regarding epistemic differences with patients will be argued to reduce their bias and consequently improve communication.
Grants:	Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades PID2022-137113OB-I00
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra, i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials i que es distribueixin sota la mateixa llicència que regula l'obra original. Cal que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Contribució a congrés
Subject:	Healthcare interpreting ; Non-professional interpreting ; Intercultural communication ; Intercultural mediated communication ; Intercultural mediation ; Interpreting studies
Published in:	11th EST Congress: The Changing Faces of Translation and Interpreting Studies. Leeds, UK, : 2025

28 p, 2.7 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Arts and Humanities > MIRAS (Mediació i Interpretació: Recerca en l'Àmbit Social)
Contributions to meetings and congresses > Presentations