Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 13:2 (2018) ► pp.163–184

Translating/ed selves and voices

Language support provisions for victims of domestic violence in a British third sector organization

| University of Manchester
This article addresses issues of multilingualism in domestic violence support services, building on Tipton (2017a) and findings from a small qualitative study involving an organization in the North West of England. The aim is to shed light on how organizations construct multilingual spaces, the role played by language service provisions in the mediation of such spaces, and how interpreters handle the specificities of working with victims given the lack of available specialist training. The concept of communicative repertoire (following Blommaert and Backus 2011) is introduced to support analysis of supported and autonomous forms of communication in relation to the semiotic practices of survival in their broadest sense, casting new light on the organization’s handling of multilingual service delivery and the role of interpreter mediation.
Keywords: communicative repertoires, domestic violence, multilingualism, translation and interpreting
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Investigating experiences of minoritized groups in relation to domestic abuse: Issues of culture and language
    • Understanding structural impediments to support for limited language proficient survivors
  • Sustaining difference, enabling transformation
  • Case study
  • Policy as a regulatory framework
    • The organization as a multilingual site: Virtual and material observations
    • Translation and inclusivity: A double-edged sword
    • Enabling/constraining participation: Interpreter and service user perspectives
    • Evidence of strategic planning
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00010.tip
References (46)
References
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. 1995. [URL] (Accessed 8 May 2017).
Blommaert, Jan, James Collins, and Stef Slembrouck. 2005. “Spaces of Multilingualism.” Language and Communication 25(3): 197–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan and Ad Backus. 2011. “Repertoires revisited: ‘Knowing language’ in superdiversity.” Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies 671. [URL] (Accessed 8 May 2017).
Bhuyan, Rupaleem and Kirsten Senturia. 2005. “Understanding Domestic Violence Resource Utilization and Survivor Solutions Among Immigrant Refugee Women.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 20(8): 895–901. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bui, Hoan N. 2003. “Help Seeking Behavior Among Abused Immigrant Women: A Case of Vietnamese American Women.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 9(2): 207–239.Google Scholar
Burman, Erica, Sophie L. Smailes, and Khatidja Chantler. 2004. “‘Culture’ as a Barrier to Service Provision and Delivery: Domestic Violence Services for Minoritized Women.” Critical Social Policy 24(3): 332–357. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Busch, Brigitta. 2012. “The Linguistic Repertoire Revisited.” Applied Linguistics 33(5): 503–523. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carbin, Maria. 2014. “The Requirement to Speak: Victim Stories in Swedish Policies against Honour-related Violence”. Women’s Studies International Forum 461: 107–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Council of Europe. 2011. Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. Available at: [URL] (Accessed 8 May 2017).
Cronin, Michael. 2006. Translation and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, Ofelia and Li Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ghafournia, Nafiseh. 2011. “Battered at Home, Played Down in Policy: Migrant Women and Domestic Violence in Australia.” Aggression and Violent Behavior 16(3): 207–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heady, Lucy, Angela Kail and Clare Yeowart. 2009. Commissioning Domestic Violence Services: A Quick Guide. Women’s Aid Federation of England. Available at: [URL] (Accessed 8 May 2017).
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. 2014. Everyone’s Business: Improving the Response to Domestic Abuse. London: Home Office.Google Scholar
Iedema, Rick. 2003. “Multimodality, Resemiotization: Extending the Analysis of Discourse as Multi-Semiotic Practice.” Visual Communication 2(1): 29–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kallivayalil, Diya. 2010. “Narratives of Suffering of South Asian Immigrant Survivors of Domestic Violence.” Violence Against Women 16(7): 789–811. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keller, Elizabeth M. and Pauline K. Brennan. 2007. “Cultural Considerations and Challenges to Service Delivery for Sudanese Victims of Domestic Violence: Insights from Service Providers and Actors in the Criminal Justice System.” International Review of Victimology 14(1): 115–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kerfoot, Caroline. 2011. “Making and Shaping Participatory Spaces: Resemiotization and Citizenship Agency in South Africa.” International Multilingual Research Journal 5(2): 87–102. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Khalili, Laleh. 2007. “Heroic and Tragic Pasts: Mnemonic Narratives in the Palestinian Refugee Camps.” Critical Sociology 33(4): 731–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Mihan. 2013. “Breaking Barriers: Addressing Structural Obstacles to Social Service Provision for Asian Survivors of Domestic Violence.” Violence Against Women 19(11): 1350–1369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mason, Gail and Mariastella Pulvirenti. 2013. “Former Refugees and Community Resilience.” British Journal of Criminology 53(3): 401–418. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia and Olivia Salcido. 2002. “Immigrant Women and Domestic Violence: Common Experiences in Different Countries.” Gender and Society 16(6): 898–920. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Anthony and Hannah Chadwick. 2009. Research in Practice Summary Paper No. 7 Key Issues in Domestic Violence. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.Google Scholar
Mouzos, Jenny and Toni Makkai. 2004. Women’s Experience of Male Violence: Findings from the Australian Component of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS). Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.Google Scholar
Moyer, Melissa G. 2011. “What Multilingualism? Agency and Unintended Consequences of Multilingual Practices in a Barcelona Health Clinic.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(5): 1209–1221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 1997. “Capabilities and human rights.” Fordham Law Review 66(2): 273–300.Google Scholar
. 2007. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. London: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Pande, Swati. 2013. “Lost for Words’: Difficulties in Naming and Disclosing Sexual Violence in Hindi.” In Moving in the Shadows: Violence in the Lives of Women and Children, ed. by Yasmin Rehman, Liz Kelly, and Hannana Siddiqui, 155–168. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Parasecoli, Fabio. 2011. “Savoring Semiotics: Food in Intercultural Communication.” Social Semiotics 21(5): 645–663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Phoenix, Ann. 1987. “Theories of Gender and Black Families.” In Gender Under Scrutiny, ed. by Gaby Weiner and Madeleine Arnot, 50–61. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Polezzi, Loredana. 2012. “Translation and migration.” Translation Studies 5(3): 345–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Amanda and Kirsty Hudson. 2011. “Different yet Complementary: Two Approaches for Supporting Victims of Sexual Violence in the UK.” Criminology and Criminal Justice 11(5): 515–533. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Runner, Michael, Mieko Yoshihama, and Steve Novick. 2009. Intimate Partner Violence in Immigrant and Refugee Communities. Princeton, NJ: Family Violence Prevention Fund.Google Scholar
Schiller, Maria. 2015. “Paradigmatic pragmatism and the politics of diversity.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(7): 1120–1136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Senturia, Kirsten, Marianne Sullivan, Sandy Ciske, and Sharyne Shiu-Thornton. 2000. Cultural Issues Affecting Domestic Violence Service Utilization in Ethnic and Hard to Reach Populations. Final Report. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.Google Scholar
Sokoloff, Natalie J. 2008. “Expanding the Intersectional Paradigm to Better Understand Domestic Violence in Immigrant Communities.” Critical Criminology 16(4): 229–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thiara, Ravi K. 2005. The need for specialist domestic violence services for Asian women and children. London: Imkaan.Google Scholar
Tipton, Rebecca. 2017a. “Contracts and Capabilities: Public Service Interpreting and Third Sector Domestic Violence Services.” The Translator 23(2): 237–254 (Special Issue on Translation, Ethics and Social Responsibility). DOI logo.Google Scholar
. 2017b. “Interpreting-as-Conflict: PSIT in Third Sector Organisations and the Impact of Third Way Politics.” In Ideology, Ethics and Policy Development in Public Service Interpreting and Translation ed. by Carmen Valero-Garcés and Rebecca Tipton, 38–62. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tipton, Rebecca and Olgierda Furmanek. 2016. Dialogue Interpreting: A guide to interpreting in public services and the community. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toledano Buendía, Carmen and Maribel del Pozo Triviño. eds. 2015. Interpretación en Contextos de Violencia de Género [Interpreting in Contexts of Gender-based Violence]. Valencia: Tirant Humanidades.Google Scholar
Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Wei, Li. 2011. “Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space: Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(5): 1222–1235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Women’s Aid Federation of England. 2015. National Quality Standards for Services Supporting Women and Children Survivors of Domestic Violence. Bristol: Women’s Aid Federation of England.Google Scholar
Yick, Alice G. and Jody Oomen Early. 2008. “A 16-Year Examination of Domestic Violence Among Asians and Asian Americans in the Empirical Knowledge Base: A Content Analysis.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 23(8): 1075–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yildiz, Yasemin. 2012. “Response.” Translation Studies 6(1): 103–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Sullivan, Claire, Karen Block, Linda Murray, Deborah Warr, Jasmin Chen, Erin Davis, Adele Murdolo & Cathy Vaughan
2023. Working with interpreters in the family violence sector in Australia: “It's very hard to be in between”. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 96 ► pp. 101871 ff. DOI logo
Seidenova, Saule & Laila Mussaly
2022. The Translation Process in the Context of the Digitalization. In Digital Transformation in Sustainable Value Chains and Innovative Infrastructures [Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, 443], ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo
Maryns, Katrijn, Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer & Mieke Van Herreweghe
2021. Introduction: Flexible multilingual strategies in asylum and migration encounters. The Translator 27:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Tipton, Rebecca
2019. Exploring the ESOL-PSIT relation: Interpellation, resistance and resilience. Language & Communication 67 ► pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Tipton, Rebecca
2021. ‘Yes I understand’: language choice, question formation and code-switching in interpreter-mediated police interviews with victim-survivors of domestic abuse. Police Practice and Research 22:1 ► pp. 1058 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.