Didactics of interpreting: specialized application in the field of medicine

Abstract

Medicine has become one of the most relevant fields for interpreting in the last decades, both for conference interpreting and for community interpreting. This is especially true for interpreters who include English in their language combination as English is considered today the lingua franca of the international scientific community. Thus we should ask ourselves whether interpreting schools are responding to this increasing demand of specialised interpreters in the field of medicine. The present article is structured as follows: first of all, we will describe the rationale that led us to explore the field of medical interpreting; secondly, we will explain the current situation in Australia, United States and Canada as far as medical community interpreting is concerned; thirdly, we will describe the results of an analysis on the current training in interpreting, both in conference and social interpreting; fourthly we will deal with previous studies underlying our proposal of training in interpreting in the medical field which will be then put forward. We will finally conclude with some general considerations.