Search results

An estimated 50 million people in the United States do not speak the same language as their healthcare provider, and 23 million are considered limited English proficient (LEP). Federal and state laws mandate language assistance services, such as interpreting, to all LEP patients at all points of medical care. Despite longtime and widespread use of interpreting in healthcare, efforts to assure interpreting access and quality are now slowly emerging. An interpreter may be a family member or friend, a bilingual staff member, or professional interpreter. As with trends in other ancillary staff in medicine, the majority of interpreters are female. Research is not available to clarify how gender may influence the process and outcomes of care during an interpreted medical visit. This chapter draws from the results of a brief qualitative study on medical interpreting and published standards on medical interpreting to critically reflect on the role of gender during an interpreted healthcare visit. Recommendations for research and practice are offered to raise awareness of the interpreting process and how it may be influenced by gender. Attention to the role of gender during interpreted medical visits is important to improving healthcare and health for persons with LEP.

Describes a number of rule interpreters, each of which is represented as a set of production rules which can be executed as an ordinary ruleset in the ELEKTRA system. The interpreters override the default behaviour of the ELEKTRA interpreter: the default behaviour is forward‐chaining; shows how to implement backward‐chaining and content‐directed control. Some of the interpreters described are capable of interpreting themselves. Shows that ELEKTRA is powerful enough to support a wide variety of different interpreters without requiring any changes to its code. None of the interpreters requires additional system code in order to work: ELEKTRA provides all of the facilities used by the rulesets as part of its standard library. Provides additional evidence of the enormous power of reflective systems and of ELEKTRA in particular.

Purpose: In this chapter, I explore how American Sign Language/English interpreters came to enact an ally role with members of the American deaf community during the 1988 Deaf President Now (DPN) protest. The DPN protest, led by students at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, was a historic moment in the deaf community's struggle for civil rights (Christiansen & Barnartt, 1995). During the events that unfolded over the week-long rebellion, students engaged in a variety of claims-making activities (Lindekilde, 2013), such as participating in media interviews and organizing rallies. To share their message with the world, the deaf protesters developed alliances with American Sign Language/English interpreters, who mediated a wide variety of protest-related activities.

Method: The data I analyze in this chapter come from (1) archival review and (2) semistructured interviews I conducted with DPN stakeholders, including interpreters and protesters.

Findings: Through these data, I explore how the protesters and interpreters came to develop shared understandings and expectations of allyship, including the roles that interpreters enacted in the protest.

Implication/Value: I frame this discussion within the context of a variety of metaphors that have been used to describe the role of signed language interpreters (Roy, 1993, 2002) and the concept of role-space (Llewellyn-Jones & Lee, 2014) to demonstrate the process of interpreters becoming allies in contentious political settings.

In an effort to address health care disparities, U.S. laws mandate that health care organizations provide free language interpreting and translation anytime a patient and health care provider cannot communicate in the same language. The heretofore absence of legislative and professional oversight in health care interpreting allows for anyone to interpret. A qualitative study was conducted to understand the conditions and practices of bilingual staff who interpret as a secondary part of their job in community health clinics.

Four focus groups were conducted as part of a study on shared decision-making during interpreted medical visits in a busy, urban clinic serving a large number of limited English proficient (LEP) patients. The focus groups were designed to understand the process of interpreting and how interpreters influence medical decisions between LEP patients and their health care providers. To understand the interpreting process from multiple perspectives, one focus group was conducted with users of interpreters – monolingual health care providers (N=6), two with Spanish speaking men (N=10) who were experienced with interpreted health visits, and one with bilingual staff (N=5) who interpret as an ad hoc feature of their job, also known as dual-role medical interpreters.

Dual-role interpreters use different styles while interpreting what is communicated between health care providers and patients. In some cases, they provide near word-for-word interpretation of what is said. In other cases, they summarize and or paraphrase multiple sentences, seek clarity through questions, and deconstruct culturally laden and technical terms. In still other cases, dual-role interpreters combine interpretation styles within a single interactional exchange. Each of the three major styles of interpreting has advantages in medical settings. Specific style is influenced by health care provider preference, interpreter–health care provider trust and familiarity, and interpreter medical knowledge. Interpreters are challenged by the patients’ dialects, educational level, provider personalities, gender issues, and out of clinic relationships with the patients. Contextual conditions and contingencies of reinforcement contributed to varying methods of interpretation. These conditions included organizational policies, language and bilingual communication, and social relations with both the health care providers and the patients.

These findings demonstrate the complexity of medical interpretation and the critical involvement of health care providers and bilingual staff in facilitating interpreted encounters. Findings suggest the need for training both health care providers and interpreters and possible change in reimbursement for services.

General education and special education teachers may have limited experience working with students who are deaf/hard of hearing and be unaware of the professionals and specialist who may work with those students. When a student has a hearing loss, there are a variety of additional professionals with whom teachers must collaborate. The roles of these professionals may be different than those experienced by other educators. An understanding of the roles of these various professionals is important to ensuring the most appropriate service provision for students with hearing loss. This chapter will specifically discuss the roles of teachers of the deaf, interpreters, and audiologists as well as some other related service providers within the context of a fictional case scenario.

In this chapter, we focus on the processes of communication during peace missions in far-away countries, where local people in general do not master Western languages such as English and French. Afghanistan is such a country where the international community conducts large-scale peace operations that bring along many situations in which the military needs to talk to local people. In such situations, interpreters mastering the local languages (Darsi and Pasthtu) are needed. In our study, we focus on their work, how they think they should fulfil their task, and their relation between the military who hire them and the local people to which they in fact belong. This in-between position makes them strangers in their own country. Goffman's work on strategic interaction, the management of face and embarrassment as well as interaction rituals in general constitute the theoretical backbone of this study.

Language use is a highly controversial issue in the United States (Schmidt, 2000). Among all the linguistic access issues (e.g., bilingual education, multilingual ballots), however, the issue of access to justice is probably the least contentious. Most people in the United States seem to agree and appreciate the fact that access to justice premises on the ability of court users to understand the process in which they participate. The integrity of the legal process, particularly for the common law system (like the American legal system), which features an adversarial trial process, would be compromised if litigants were unable to communicate with or understand the judge, witnesses, or opposing parties or counsel. The guiding theory behind the common law is that adversarial trials set up two or more parties to be in conflict with one another in a zero-sum game; it is therefore important for all participating parties to be on equal footing (Thibaut & Walker, 1975).

This study aims to explore the patterns and transformational dynamics of the executive–interpreter network in the innovation processes of small- and medium-sized enterprises in hospitality.

Grounded in social network theory and adopting a case-based approach, this study features a multi-case design focusing on three Chinese boutique hotels. Data were collected through Web page and document reviews, participant observations and semistructured interviews.

Results capture how executive–interpreter network dynamics contribute to innovation in small- and medium-sized hotels. Key factors in social networks (e.g. size, scope and strength) shift throughout innovation. This study presents a design-driven approach as a means of innovation. Findings also delineate the network development conditions under which innovation dynamically occurs in boutique hotels.

Practical implications center on how network dynamics help small- and medium-sized hotels innovate more effectively. These insights can assist hotel operators and prospective market entrants in improving their hotels’ performance and competitiveness.

This study blends social network theory with a design-driven approach to explore innovation mechanisms in small- and medium-sized hotels. It offers empirical evidence for practitioners regarding design-driven innovation. Findings enrich the body of knowledge on both design-driven innovation theory and hospitality innovation.

Access to professional interpreter services is a critical facilitator of positive health-care experiences when health-care professionals and women accessing maternity care are not proficient in a shared language. Understanding interpreter demand is essential for the provision of professional interpreter services. This study aims to characterise interpreter requirements among women from nonrefugee and refugee non-English-speaking migrant backgrounds in Australian maternity hospitals.

This study analysed administrative data from four public maternity hospitals in Victoria, Australia. The primary outcome was the proportion of women from non-English speaking migrant backgrounds who required an interpreter during their maternity care, both overall and stratified by refugee and nonrefugee background. Adjusted logistic regression was used to estimate the association between migrant background and interpreter requirements.

Among the 6,771 women from non-English speaking migrant backgrounds included in analyses, 1,344 (19.8%) required an interpreter during their maternity care. The odds of requiring an interpreter were fivefold higher among women from refugee backgrounds compared to migrant women from nonrefugee backgrounds [adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 4.83; 95% confidence interval (CI): 4.13–5.65].

The study highlights the diversity in cultural backgrounds and migration experiences of women accessing maternity care within metropolitan public hospitals. The high interpreter requirements, particularly among women from refugee backgrounds, underscores the need for comprehensive and woman-centred interpreter services to attenuate disparities in hospital maternity care.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to quantify the interpreter requirements of women from non-English-speaking migrant backgrounds in maternity hospital settings and make women comparisons between women from refugee and nonrefugee backgrounds.