Cover not available
Part of
Interpreting in Legal and Healthcare Settings: Perspectives on research and training
Edited by Eva N.S. Ng and Ineke H.M. Crezee
[Benjamins Translation Library 151] 2020
► pp. 263–285

Chapter 11
Medical interpreting as an emerging profession in Hong Kong

ORCID logo

Medical Interpreting (MI) as a profession is a recent development and has previously been implemented in Hong Kong (HK) on an ad hoc basis. The roles that medical interpreters play in providing ethnic minorities with equal access to public health services in Hong Kong is informally widely recognised, yet hardly discussed in either the academic or public arenas. In 2010, the Hospital Authority outsourced its medical interpreting services to social services institutions that developed their own methods for meeting the growing demand for medical interpreting services. This provided a research opportunity, which adopted a participatory action approach to developing medical interpreting training materials and courses that involved different stakeholders such as the service providers and the ethnic minority interpreters themselves. Using Schuster’s (2013) systematic sociological model of the five transitional stages of language access in the public sector, this chapter focuses on the emergence and development of the profession of medical interpreting in Hong Kong, before turning to a description of the training programme that was developed utilising materials based on real-life situations.

Keywords: medical, interpreting, professionalisation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Roles of medical interpreters
    • 1.2Training of medical interpreters
    • 1.3Tracing the developmental stages of medical interpreting in Hong Kong
  • 2.Ethnic communities in Hong Kong
    • 2.1Studies on ethnic minorities in Hong Kong
    • 2.2The Racial Discrimination Act
  • 3.Medical and health care system in Hong Kong
    • 3.1The need for medical interpreting services
    • 3.2The most frequently requested interpreting languages
  • 4.Development of medical interpreting training course
    • 4.1Recruiting the right candidates for training
    • 4.2Main components of the medical interpreting training courses
    • 4.3Involving different stakeholders in the design and delivery of training courses
    • 4.4Using authentic material involving experienced interpreters
    • 4.5Discussing role boundaries with medical interpreter trainees
    • 4.6Using discourse analysis in training: Interpreters coordinating talk
    • 4.7Building common, accessible glossaries; encouraging rapport among interpreters
  • 5.Problematising the current medical interpreting services
    • 5.1The abandoned child of the government: Medical interpreting referral services
    • 5.2Who are the medical interpreters?
    • 5.3‘What’s in it for me?’: The view of the medical interpreter
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 3 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.151.11leu
References
Angelelli, Claudia
2004 Medical Interpreting and Cross-Cultural Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “The Role of the Interpreter in the Healthcare Setting: A Plea for a Dialogue Between Research and Practice.” In Crossing Borders in Community Interpreting: Definitions and Dilemmas, edited by Carmen Valero-Garcés and Anne Martin, 147–163. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bell, Sherrill
1997 “The Challenges of Setting and Monitoring the Standards of Community Interpreting: An Australian Perspective.” In The Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community, edited by Silvana E. Carr, Roda Roberts, Aideen Dufour, and Dini Steyn, 93–108. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bischoff, Alexander
2006 “Measuring Quality and Patient Satisfaction in Healthcare Communication with Foreign-Language Speakers.” Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 5: 177–187.Google Scholar
Bowcott, Owen
2013, Feb 5. “Trials Collapsing Thanks to ‘Shambolic’ Privatisation of Translation Services.” The Guardian. [URL] (accessed September 26, 2019).
Census and Statistics Department
2016 “Snapshot of Hong Kong Population.” In 2016 Hong Kong Population By-census. [URL] (accessed September 23, 2019).
Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
2017, Mar 1. LCQ12: Interpretation Services and Public Health Education Work Provided by Hospital Authority [press release]. [URL] (accessed September 24, 2019).
Hale, Sandra, Uldis Ozolins and Ludmila Stern
(eds) 2009 The Critical Link 5: Quality in Interpreting – A Shared Responsibility. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hale, Sandra
2007 Community Interpreting. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance
(Cap. 383 1991, amended in 2017) [URL] (accessed September 23, 2019).
Institute of Medicine Committee on Quality of Health Care in America
2001 Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. Washington (DC): National Academies Press.Google Scholar
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)
1996–2019 [URL] (accessed September 23, 2019).
Karliner, Leah S., Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, and Steven E. Gregorich
2017 “Convenient Access to Professional Interpreters in the Hospital Decreases Readmission Rates and Estimated Hospital Expenditures for Patients with Limited English Proficiency.” Medical Care 55 (3): 199–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, Ann and Ruth B. Hoppe
2013 “ ‘Best Practice’ for Patient-centered Communication: A Narrative Review.” Journal of Graduate Medical Education 5 (3): 385–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
2009 Official Record of Proceedings: Thursday, 9 July, 2009: 10260–10265. [URL] (accessed September 24, 2019).
Leung, Ester S. M.
2013 “A Converted Interpreting Trainer’s Response” in Evolving Paradigms in Interpreter Education, edited by Betsy Winston and Christine Monikowski, 82–86. Washington: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Lindholm Mary, J. Lee Hargraves, Warren J. Ferguson and George Reed
2012 Professional language interpretation and inpatient length of stay and readmission rates. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 27(10):1294–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Loper, Kelly
2004 Race and Equality: A Study of Ethnic Minorities in Hong Kong’s Education System (doctoral dissertation). Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
National Council on Interpreting in Health Care
2011 National Standards for Healthcare Interpreter Training Programs. Retrieved from: [URL] (accessed September 26 2019).
Ozolins, Uldis
2013 “Role Playing ‘Pumpkin’.” In Interpreting in a Changing Landscape: Selected Papers from Critical Link 6, edited by Christina Schäffner, Krzystof Kredens, and Yvonne Fowler, 31–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pöchhacker, Franz
2009 “Issues in Interpreting Studies.” In The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, edited by Jeremy Munday, 128–140. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schuster, Michal
2013 “From Chaos to Cultural Competence: Analyzing Language Access to Public Institutions.” In Interpreting in a Changing Landscape: Selected Papers from Critical Link 6, edited by Christina Schäffner, Krzystof Kredens, and Yvonne Fowler, 61–82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tebble, Helen
1996a “A Discourse-based Approach to Community Interpreter Education.” In Proceedings of the XIVth World Congress of the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (FIT) Vol. 1 and 2, 385–394. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators.Google Scholar
1996b “Research into Tenor in Medical Interpreting.” Interpreting Research (Journal of the Japan Association for Interpretation Studies – JAIS) 6(1): 33–45.Google Scholar
1999 “The Tenor of Consultant Physicians: Implications for Medical Interpreting.” The Translator 5 (2): 179–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “Using Systemic Functional Linguistics to Understand and Practise Dialogue Interpreting.” In Voices around the World: Proceedings of the 35th International Systemic Functional Congress (ISFC), edited by Can-zhong Wu, Christian Matthiessen, and Maria Herke, 146–151. Sydney: Macquarie University.Google Scholar
Wadensjö, Cecilia
1998 Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman.Google Scholar