Just as remote communication by telephone and through the internet
has become an integral part of our daily lives and professional
environments, it has also gained a firm footing in the practice of
interpreting. In medical settings, remote interpreting is increasingly being
welcomed as a means to enable better access to healthcare and increased
cost-efficiency. Studies on healthcare interpreting over the telephone or by
video link have generated predominantly positive results concerning the use
of remote modes of interpreting. However, most of these studies originate
from medical science and measure user satisfaction with the interpreting
mode (face-to-face, telephone interpreting or video interpreting) rather
than the possible impact of the different modes on interpreting quality. In
interpreting studies, empirical research investigating remote interpreting
in medical settings is scarce, but studies on remote interpreting in
settings such as conference, business and legal interpreting indicate that
the remote conditions are at the very least perceived by users to influence
the interpreter’s performance and the communication.
In this chapter, we introduce a methodological framework for a
systematic assessment of the quality of remote interpreting and the
effectiveness of the communication in dialogic healthcare settings, drawing
on methods from both interpreting studies and medicine. Central to the
research design is a corpus of simulations of interpreter-mediated doctor –
patient encounters, performed in the modes face-to-face, telephone and video
interpreting. These simulations were submitted to a comparative, multi-modal
analysis, the results of which were triangulated with the subjective
assessment by the participants.
We will first touch upon research issues and caveats relevant to
remote healthcare interpreting, emerging from medical studies and
interpreting studies. Subsequently, the research design of the present study
will be elaborated, followed by a discussion of the preliminary findings of
the first series of simulations. Although the data analysis is work in
progress, the first outcomes suggest that the use of technology in
interpreter-mediated health care impacts mostly on the interactional
dynamics of the communication.
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To repair or not to repair?
Repairs and risk taking in video remote interpreting
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