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In:Interpreting in Legal and Healthcare Settings: Perspectives on research and training
Edited by Eva N.S. Ng and Ineke H.M. Crezee
[Benjamins Translation Library 151] 2020
► pp. 263–285

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Chapter 11
Medical interpreting as an emerging profession in Hong Kong

ORCiD logo with link | The University of Melbourne
Published online: 3 June 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.151.11leu
Abstract
Medical Interpreting (MI) as a profession is a recent development and has previously been implemented in Hong Kong (HK) on an ad hoc basis. The roles that medical interpreters play in providing ethnic minorities with equal access to public health services in Hong Kong is informally widely recognised, yet hardly discussed in either the academic or public arenas. In 2010, the Hospital Authority outsourced its medical interpreting services to social services institutions that developed their own methods for meeting the growing demand for medical interpreting services. This provided a research opportunity, which adopted a participatory action approach to developing medical interpreting training materials and courses that involved different stakeholders such as the service providers and the ethnic minority interpreters themselves. Using Schuster’s (2013) systematic sociological model of the five transitional stages of language access in the public sector, this chapter focuses on the emergence and development of the profession of medical interpreting in Hong Kong, before turning to a description of the training programme that was developed utilising materials based on real-life situations.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Roles of medical interpreters
    • 1.2Training of medical interpreters
    • 1.3Tracing the developmental stages of medical interpreting in Hong Kong
  • 2.Ethnic communities in Hong Kong
    • 2.1Studies on ethnic minorities in Hong Kong
    • 2.2The Racial Discrimination Act
  • 3.Medical and health care system in Hong Kong
    • 3.1The need for medical interpreting services
    • 3.2The most frequently requested interpreting languages
  • 4.Development of medical interpreting training course
    • 4.1Recruiting the right candidates for training
    • 4.2Main components of the medical interpreting training courses
    • 4.3Involving different stakeholders in the design and delivery of training courses
    • 4.4Using authentic material involving experienced interpreters
    • 4.5Discussing role boundaries with medical interpreter trainees
    • 4.6Using discourse analysis in training: Interpreters coordinating talk
    • 4.7Building common, accessible glossaries; encouraging rapport among interpreters
  • 5.Problematising the current medical interpreting services
    • 5.1The abandoned child of the government: Medical interpreting referral services
    • 5.2Who are the medical interpreters?
    • 5.3‘What’s in it for me?’: The view of the medical interpreter
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • References
  • Appendix
References (27)
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