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Part of
Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research
Edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi
[Benjamins Translation Library 129] 2017
► pp. 157–175

Chapter 8
From confinement to community service

Migrant inmates mediating between languages and cultures

This paper presents a spin-off study from the research project In MedIO PUER(I), launched at the University of Bologna in 2007 (see Antonini 2010a; Antonini 2010b; Cirillo et al. 2010; Bucaria & Rossato 2010; Antonini this volume), and sets out to investigate the under-researched phenomenon of language and cultural brokering among migrant inmates. In countries such as Italy, where immigration is still a recent experience and resources for institutional interpreting are scarce even in ordinary public contexts, professional language services are virtually non-existent in secluded environments such as prisons. Foreign inmates and jail personnel face linguistic problems that they tend to handle through spontaneous forms of mediation: a convicted migrant, who is fluent in Italian, may act as a mediator between fellow-country inmates with poor knowledge of the host language and jail officers. This form of language and cultural brokering is a common form of ad hoc interpreting that responds to the communication needs of both inmates and detention institutions. This paper sets out to map the phenomenon and to investigate whether this practice has an impact on inmates’ self-perception and rehabilitation process.

Keywords: migrant inmates, ad hoc interpreting, identity, rehabilitation, integration
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of the literature
  • 3.Appalling conditions of inmates in Italian prisons
    • 3.1Crime perception in Italy
    • 3.2Language and cultural mediation in detention centers: A European issue
  • 4.Study objectives and methodology
    • 4.1Research design
    • 4.2The survey
    • 4.3The respondents
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Frequency of occurrence of language brokering practice
    • 5.2Attitudes and feelings towards the language brokering practice
    • 5.3Translation strategies and awareness of the mediator’s role
    • 5.4Identity issues
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.129.08ros
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