Public Service Interpreting and Intercultural Mediation for the Chinese in Catalonia

Abstract

Chinese immigration in Catalonia has experienced a sharp increase in recent years: while in 1998 there were only 2,440 registered Chinese citizens, in 2011 they reached 47,493 –a number that keeps increasing. The presence of these new Chinese citizens, as well as of people from other origins, has motivated the emergence of two new professionals: public service interpreters and intercultural mediators. They both share the responsibility of enabling communication between citizens who do not know the official languages and public service providers of the host country. The present dissertation is set against this background and aims to combine two research lines that have advanced separately up to date: research into Public Service Interpreting (PSI) and the study of a specific immigrant community, such as the Chinese one.

The dissertation provides an overview of Chinese immigration in Catalonia and of research in intercultural communication with the Chinese, and a broad review of the state of the art of PSI in general. The main objective is to analyse the responses put forward to overcome the communication barriers with the Chinese in public services in Catalonia; i.e. to analyse the relationship between PSI and intercultural mediation. Furthermore, the thesis aims to better describe the professional profile of public service interpreters and the specificities of mediated communication with the Chinese. To this end, the thesis relies on a mixed method, both qualitative and quantitative approach. On the one hand, a sample of interpreters and mediators working with Chinese and a sample of coordinators in charge of the provision of PSI or intercultural mediation were interviewed. These informal interviews were transcribed and examined by means of qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis. On the other hand, surveys in Chinese were distributed to a sample of sixty-five Chinese users of public services. The data collected by means of the surveys has provided a quantitative approach to the object of study.

Conclusions highlight the need for a better definition of the professional profile and for coherent training, in line with this definition. Despite the current economic crisis, reduction or even omission of PSI services does not prove to be the solution; instead, mediated communication services should be restructured in order to include different modalities (PSI, intercultural mediation, telephone interpreting, translation) which could be used depending on the specific communication needs.

Regarding communication with the Chinese community, certain specificities have been detected: for instance, some aspects of intercultural communication (e.g. non-verbal communication) that should be included in training courses. The thesis concludes pointing out new research lines that arise from the study carried out; for instance, the study of new modes of mediated communication in public services (e.g. telephone interpreting and written translation of “welcome materials”) or the analysis of real interactions to shed light onto issues related to intercultural communication.