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Article published In: Ethics of Non-Professional Translation and Interpreting
Edited by Esther Monzó-Nebot and Melissa Wallace
[Translation and Interpreting Studies 15:1] 2020
► pp. 108–131

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Who defines role?

Negotiation and collaboration between non-professional interpreters and primary participants in prison settings

ORCiD logo with link | John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Published online: 11 February 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.20005.mar
Abstract
This article analyzes the communicative behaviors of non-professional interpreters and primary participants in the context of therapy/counseling sessions in a prison setting. It describes the negotiation and collaboration patterns established among all members of the communicative triad in order to co-construct the interpreter’s role dialogically, in a corpus of 26 mental health interviews in a prison setting between therapists/counselors and allophone prisoners, with other inmates as interpreters. Using . 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar concept of footing as the main analytical tool, it sheds light on the conversational strategies that all members of the triad use to initiate, accept, or resist the interpreter’s shifts to different footings, especially those that depart most dramatically from widely accepted “translator” ones.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The issue of role in interpreting ethics
    • Ethical principles of interpreting and the invisibility myth
    • Role as a dynamic entity
    • Footing as a dynamic concept
  • Non-professional interpreters and the question of role
  • Material and method
  • Analysis
    • Types of footing shifts in this analysis
    • How do footing shifts start?
      • Shifts initiated by the primary participants
      • Shifts initiated by the NPI: The influence of social and institutional factors
    • Negotiation and collaboration strategies over the interpreter’s footing
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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