Empathy, Neutrality and Roles of Medical Interpreters

• Main Author: 廖婉如
• Other Authors: 陳子瑋
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/61281675312503311393

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 翻譯研究所 === 101 === This study aims to understand how empathy is demonstrated in medical interpreting and explain the inconsistent views of medical interpreting service users on different medical interpreters’ roles. Among the four roles adopted by medical interpreters, surveys on service users and interpreter’s codes of ethics show that some tasks taken by an advocate are regarded controversial while behaviors of a conduit, a clarifier and a culture broker are considered appropriate. Comparing settings, communicative skills and attitudes of neutrality between medical interpreters and empathizers, great similarities are identified. Based on the confirmation that medical interpreters empathize with service users, this study expands levels of expressed empathy and empathy cycle models in a monolingual two-way setting to a bilingual three-way setting. Published cases of medical interpreting are analyzed to find that: 1.Roles of conduit, clarifier and culture broker perform interpreting and express empathy while an advocate neither performs interpreting nor expresses empathy in most of the cases. Roles of conduit, clarifier and culture broker are thus neutral while an advocate is mostly not neutral; 2.A culture broker also empathizes with the receiver of the rendition and thus expresses advanced empathy with the speaker by making implicit culture factors explicit in rendition or domesticating the source utterance in the way the receiver is used to; 3.A clarifier and a culture broker prioritize their tasks of communication facilitation over merely linguistic transformation like a conduit while an advocate values on defending service users’ rights or more often on expressing personal opinions. Findings of this study can be utilized to provide a theoretical framework of roles for medical interpreters in practice. Medical interpreters therefore can have a clearer awareness of role switching, the possible negative consequences of adopting the non-neutral role and how to demonstrate empathy. In addition, to establish an independent organization of medical interpreting is suggested. The organization should be responsible for medical interpreters’ training and supervision, dispatch of medical interpreting services, mediation between interpreters and stakeholders of medical services when conflicts arise and so forth. Through this system, medical interpreters are more likely to maintain a neutral stance. In terms of training medical interpreters, results suggest that the content of training should include clear framework of roles, concept and skills of empathy, the demonstration of neutral attitudes and how to work with the organization.