Telephone-based remote interpreting has come into widespread use in multilingual encounters, all the more so in times of refugee crises and the large influx of asylum-seekers into Europe. Nevertheless, the linguistic practices in this mode of communication have not yet been examined… read more
The transfer of linguistic findings into institutional practice sometimes appears to be a one-way street in which language experts provide solutions for communication problems but, in return, don’t receive insight from the institutions they work with. To emphasize the potential value of applied… read more
This article presents results of a project which looks into new ways of publishing and sharing community interpreting corpora. Section 2 introduces CoPilot, a pilot database containing material from two corpora of interpreted doctor-patient communications and one corpus of interpreted court… read more
This paper explores the question how language corpora can enhance discourse analytic research as well as communication trainings. To do this, we refer to the language corpus “Interpreting in hospitals”, and begin by describing it in detail. Subsequently, the paper exemplifies how the corpus was… read more
This article builds on previous research on ad-hoc interpreting in German hospitals. It discusses the concept of interpreters as “intervenient beings” and its consequences for interpreter training. Although the concept seems to be descriptively adequate, it disregards difficulties of interpreters… read more
This paper describes how to access and use a corpus of comparable consecutive and simultaneous interpreting (Brazilian Portuguese and German). The corpus is available free of charge. Our aim is to stimulate discussions on the use and the accessibility of corpora in interpreting studies, and, more… read more
The article discusses the notion of ‘language barrier’ regarding communication with patients with a migration background. These patients usually show some level of proficiency in the official language of the hospital. However, their proficiency is usually limited so that they still need… read more
This article examines the challenges of societal multilingualism and language barriers for communication in the context of medical services in Germany. Although there is evidence that ad-hoc-interpreting may cause communication problems, bilingual employees are often engaged in communication… read more
This paper analyzes data from doctor-patient interaction mediated by nonprofessional ad hoc-interpreters with a focus on the performance of ad hocinterpreters and their use of verba dicendi (“to say”, “to tell”, “to mean to say”). Our analysis of the Turkish and Portuguese language data shows that… read more
This paper will outline how the theoretical and methodological framework of Functional Pragmatics can be applied to interpreting research. The aim is to show that mental dimensions of the interpreting process can be reconstructed from transcriptions of interpreted discourse. The scope of such an… read more