Article,
Crossing borders in community interpreting: Definitions and dilemmas
Interpreting, (2010)
Abstract
Carmen Valero-Garcés and Anne Martin (Eds.). Crossing borders in community interpreting: Definitions and dilemmas. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008. xii + 291 pp. ISBN 978 90 272 1685 4. Reviewed by Michal Schuster. A physician in a community clinic in Israel once had this to say about the tasks of the cultural mediator in medical settings: “She has so many different tasks to perform that she is unable to fully concentrate on telling me what the client wants of me, and telling him what I want of him.” The complexity of the community interpreter’s ole, as expressed by this physician, was the core topic of the conference titled “Translation as Mediation or How to Bridge Linguistic and Cultural Gaps,” held in April 2005 at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain. The book under review is an outcome of that conference, following which researchers from around the globe were called upon to send in empirical papers and others dealing with research projects in the field of community interpreting, its needs and how these are met. The book’s central theme — the role of the interpreter — has become a matter of growing interest to researchers in recent years. The book discusses the immense complexity of this role, and the way it is perceived both by the interpreter and by those who rely on him/her, the boundaries of the interpreter’s role and any changes that have occurred — or should occur — in these over time. Some of the writers raise the question of whether cultural mediation, or even advocacy, might be regarded as part of the community interpreter’s role, or whether a distinction must be made between “pure” language mediation and more active forms thereof.
