Official bilingualism meets de facto multilingualism: public service interpreting for the Chinese in Catalonia
Abstract
Catalonia is well known for being a bilingual region with language policies that give full support to promoting Catalan. More recently, the number of languages spoken in Catalonia has risen significantly due to immigration flows, while immigration policies encourage all citizens living in Catalonia to be able to communicate in Catalan with the public Administration. The same immigration policies, however, also acknowledge that interpreting (or intercultural mediation) may be necessary to facilitate immigrants’ rights to access public services during the first few years they are living in Catalonia. This article analyses the relationship between a minoritized language (Catalan), a dominant language (Spanish) and a group of recently arrived languages (Standard Chinese and other Chinese varieties) from the perspective of public service interpreting. It discusses some of the results of an empirical qualitative research which included: (a) interviews with public service interpreters and intercultural mediators working with Chinese living in Catalonia, (b) interviews with managers and coordinators in charge of interpreting or mediation services, and (c) questionnaires answered by Chinese users of public services in Catalonia. This research depicts a complex reality: it not only reflects interpreters’ and managers’ biases towards Spanish or Catalan, often motivated by their place of origin or life experience, but also the challenges when dealing with linguistic variation, i.e. the variety of languages (geolects and mutually unintelligible dialects) included under the umbrella term of Chinese.
Acknowledgements
This article is part of the project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness: “The quality in translation as an element to safeguard procedural guarantees in criminal proceedings: development of resources to help court interpreters of Spanish – Romanian, Arabic, Chinese, French and English” (FFI2014-55029-R). It has also been supported by the AGAUR’s recognition of MIRAS research group (2014SGR545).
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Building a field: translation policies and minority languages
- Translation policy and indigenous languages in Hispanic Latin America
- Official bilingualism meets de facto multilingualism: public service interpreting for the Chinese in Catalonia
- Translation as a sub-set of public and social policy and a consequence of multiculturalism: the provision of translation and interpreting services in Australia
- The dialect(ic)s of control and resistance: intralingual audiovisual translation in Chinese TV drama
- La nécessité des traductions. Translating legislation in a young parliamentary regime. The case of Belgium (1830–1895)
- Multilingual information for foreign residents in Japan: a survey of government initiatives
- Language, translation and interpreting policies in prisons: Protecting the rights of speakers of non-official languages
- Book Review
- Gabriel González Núñez: Translating in linguistically diverse societies. Translation policy in the United Kingdom
- Small Languages and Small Language Communities 84
- Transition as a focus within language maintenance research: Wellington Iraqi refugees as an example
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Building a field: translation policies and minority languages
- Translation policy and indigenous languages in Hispanic Latin America
- Official bilingualism meets de facto multilingualism: public service interpreting for the Chinese in Catalonia
- Translation as a sub-set of public and social policy and a consequence of multiculturalism: the provision of translation and interpreting services in Australia
- The dialect(ic)s of control and resistance: intralingual audiovisual translation in Chinese TV drama
- La nécessité des traductions. Translating legislation in a young parliamentary regime. The case of Belgium (1830–1895)
- Multilingual information for foreign residents in Japan: a survey of government initiatives
- Language, translation and interpreting policies in prisons: Protecting the rights of speakers of non-official languages
- Book Review
- Gabriel González Núñez: Translating in linguistically diverse societies. Translation policy in the United Kingdom
- Small Languages and Small Language Communities 84
- Transition as a focus within language maintenance research: Wellington Iraqi refugees as an example
