New Trends in Healthcare Interpreting Studies

Interpreting studies have exponentially grown over the years propelled by the realities of multicultural societies which, among other factors, include constant waves of immigration and the subsequent allocation of newly arrived citizens in their host countries—a process entailing public service access and provision. Communicative interactions between users who do not speak the same language as public service providers have been largely studied in different settings belonging to the field Public Service Translation and Interpreting (PSIT), ranging from police, asylum, legal, educational or, focus of this book, healthcare contexts. This edited book offers a unique and updated insight into the research advances and the state of the art in healthcare interpreting. Contributions cover methodological innovations, together with hot topics, such as changing roles, gender, specialized contexts, training programs, and ethical codes, to name but a few.

Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor in the University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain. She is a member of the scientific committee of several journals of specialized translation, applied linguistics and other disciplines, as well as of the International Conference on PSIT and the International Conference of Young Researchers in Translation and Interpreting. She has been a PI in several projects such as “Analysis of face-threatening acts in telephone interpreting”, funded by the Community of Madrid (January 2020–December 2021), “Design, compilation and analysis of a multilingual corpus of mediated interactions on road assistance” (January 2018–December 2018), and “Research on communication needs and translation and interpretation in prisons” (January 2015–December 2015), both funded by the University of Alcalá and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. She is a founding member and the vice president of the European Association ENPSIT (European Network of Public Service Interpreting and Translation). 

Cristina Álvaro Aranda is a Ph.D. Assistant Professor at the University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain, where she teaches different subjects of the Degree of Modern Languages Applied to Translation. Her doctoral dissertation Training and professional experience as differentiators in the performance of healthcare interpreters: a case study from the sociology of professions (2020) obtained the distinctions Ph.D. degree Cum Laude and International Ph.D. She has done research stays at Heriot-Watt University (2018) and King’s College London (2019). She collaborates with the FITISPos-UAH Research Group and AFIPTISP. She is currently a researcher for MHealth4All, an AMIF-funded project examining communication strategies and resources to promote access to mental healthcare for third country nationals.