Translating (in) the Public Service – When interpreting facilitates migrants’ understanding of the institutional context

Abstract In contexts where migrants need to access public services, intercultural mediators have been shown to make autonomous choices while providing their interpreting services. Thus, they do not act merely as translators but also as coordinators of the exchanges. One of the problems potentially arising in this type of context is that migrants might struggle to correctly understand how institutions function from an administrative or organizational viewpoint. When service providers do not compensate this lack of understanding, intercultural mediators are observed to do so in a variety of ways. Based on audio-recorded mediator-interpreted gynaecological visits and parent-teacher meetings gathered in the North of Italy, this study aims to shed light on this phenomenon, investigating the types of strategies that intercultural mediators employ to help migrants understand the functioning of institutions and the operations needed to achieve their aims. For the analysis two methodologies have been applied, Conversation Analysis and Wadensjö’s taxonomy of interpreters’ renditions. The results of the analysis show that intercultural mediators orient to employing three types of strategies, from rephrasing specialised lexis to expanding service providers’ utterances, and integrating additional explanations. These practices prove useful to prevent potential inconveniences for migrants using public services, and to reach interactional success between migrants and the institutions.