1st Edition
Intercultural Communication in Interpreting Power and Choices
Navigating and resolving issues in intercultural communication is an integral part of the interpreter’s role on a daily basis. This book is an essential guide to the interpersonal dimensions of intercultural communication in a variety of key interpreting contexts: business, education, law, and healthcare.
Drawing on the unique perspectives of professional interpreters, Cho focuses on two key questions that remain underexamined in the field of intercultural communication: why does intercultural communication often break down, and how do individuals manage intercultural communication issues? Each chapter deals with issues pertinent to small cultural aspects of intercultural communication, including gender, ethnic migrant communities, educational cultures among migrants of Asian backgrounds, and monolingualism/monoculturalism in courtroom and refugee interview contexts. Spanning diverse geographical domains, the book highlights the impact of macro power on interpreting as well as the significance of individual agency and micro power, which can rebalance the given communicative context.
Offering a comprehensive, up-to-date, innovative, and critical perspective on intercultural communication in interpreting, this is key reading for student and professional interpreters and those on courses in language and intercultural communication.
Chapter 1 Interpreting intercultural communication
Chapter 2 Business interpreting
Chapter 3 Medical interpreting
Chapter 4 School interpreting
Chapter 5 Legal interpreting
Chapter 6 Power and choices in interpreting
Biography
Jinhyun Cho is a senior lecturer in the Translation and Interpreting Program of the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Her research interests are primarily in the field of sociolinguistics and focus on intersections between gender, language ideologies, language policies, neoliberalism, and intercultural communication. She is the author of a book entitled English language ideologies in Korea: Interpreting the past and present.
This book is an excellent account of the interface between interpreting and intercultural communication. It provides valuable insights into the difficult choices interpreters face in the fields of business, health care, education and the courtroom. Readers are given the opportunity to reflect on how they themselves would act in the intercultural interpreting dilemmas described in this book.
Juliane House, Hamburg University, Germany
Overall, this book is a meaningful exploration of interpreter-mediated communication and
represents a major contribution to the growing body of research on the interpreter’s visibility and role in
intercultural communication. [...] The book’s exploration of power relations in the various fields of communication is especially insightful, in that it sheds light on how and why intercultural communication breakdowns occur and how interpreters can make up for them in the face of power imbalances and cultural clashes.Cuiling Zhang, University of Science and Technology Beijing, International Journal of Communication
“This book is a must-have for anyone who would like to take their cultural understanding and appreciation of power relations in communication to the next level.”
Jaquelina Guardamagna FCIL CL IAPTI
