Objective: The study investigated how healthcare personnel communicate with families when experiencing language barriers, and the use of interpreters in Nordic paediatric oncology care.

Methods: A cross-sectional multicentre survey study with registered nurses (RNs) and medical doctors (MDs) at 20 Nordic paediatric oncology centres. The “Communication over Language Barriers questionnaire” (CoLB-q) was used in the respective Nordic languages. Descriptive analysis and non-parametric tests were used to summarize and compare data.

Results: A total of 489 RNs and MDs completed the survey (response rate of 55 %). Although most respondents reported often or sometimes caring for families with limited proficiency in the country's majority languages, only 20 % had received education in how to use an interpreter. When communicating without an interpreter both professions had used relatives and children as language brokers to some extent. Most respondents assessed that the use of interpreters increased families' participation and improved their care relationships with the families. MDs used interpreters more often than RNs, who in turn used children as language brokers more frequently than the MDs did.

Conclusion: Although most respondents believed that a professional interpreter increases patients' and families' participation and safety in care, children were used as language brokers by both professions. Few had received education or training on how to use an interpreter despite that most participants often met families with limited proficiency in the country's majority language.

Innovation: This study highlights a critical gap and underscores the necessity for healthcare personnel to receive education and training on utilizing professional interpreter resources.

Building on the foundations of Roderick Jones’ authoritative and popular text, this brand-new textbook is a comprehensive, up-to-date and easily accessible introduction to conference interpreting. Elisabet Tiselius combines practical approaches and their theoretical underpinnings to guide beginning students. The text links exercises to the theory behind them, from early theories to modern understandings of the demands of conference interpreting.

This guide includes invaluable material on freelancing and professional development. Tiselius integrates remote interpreting and computer-aided interpreting throughout the book. The volume also includes a range of exercises from self-assessment, speech-writing, and note-taking to consecutive and simultaneous. Theoretical concepts are illustrated with anecdotes from Elisabet Tiselius’ personal experience, taking readers behind the scenes of conference interpreter education, and equipping them with the tools to understand how to practise and why different exercises are necessary.

This chapter describes the method of cued retrospection and how to implement it into research designs. Cued retrospection orginated in psychology and has been used in interpreting studies since the mid 1990s. It is based on the participants’ own recollection of the processes of tasks collected immediately after those tasks. The chapter reviews the method and its key concepts, the state of the art, and ethical issues of data collection using cued retrospection. We also describe how it has been used in CTIS research and which tools can be applied for the efficient collection and analysis of cued retrospection data. Finally, we discuss some challenges of employing cued retrospection.

The last special issue of Target focusing on cognitive aspects of translation was published in 2013 (25:1) and edited by Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Susanne Göpferich, and Sharon O’Brien. More than a decade later, we are pleased to revisit this field of research with a new special issue as it presents us with the possibility of observing and highlighting continuities within the field as well as taking stock of some theoretical and methodological developments.

Many of the topics and focuses in the current special issue were foreshadowed in 2013. For example, Hanna Risku and Florian Windhager’s (2013)   launch of the notion of ‘Extended Translation’, which puts a spotlight on the interdependence of action, social and material environment, interaction, and cognition, has gained momentum. In the current issue, the socio-cognitive theoretical perspective is reflected in Álvaro Marín Garcia’s approach to modelling cognition in Multilectal Mediated Communication (MMC). Further, Juliane House (2013)   called for a linguistic-cognitive orientation in Translation Studies which could be employed to examine the processes of comprehension and re-verbalization in the translator’s mind. Her call is echoed in Rhona Amos and Martin J. Pickering’s examination of language processing during simultaneous interpreting using insights from psycholinguistic studies. Finally, Inger M. Mees, Barbara Dragsted, Inge Gorm Hansen, and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen (2013)   presaged the professional importance of adopting new technological advances and learning hybrid practices, with an examination of oral translation with speech recognition. In the current issue, Elena Davitti and Anna-Stiina Wallinheimo follow in this vein by studying upskilling in interlingual respeaking and the cognitive and interpersonal factors that influence success.

Utgångspunkten i den här artikeln är Ozolins (2000,2010) kartläggning och ramverk för länders sätt att möta tolkbehov, där Sverige placerar sig i skaran av länder med stort statligt engagemang.Engagemanget visar sig exempelvis genomen bejakande lagstiftning och statligt finansierade tolkutbildningar för att tillgodose behovet av tolkservice. I denna artikel beskrivs varför tolkprofessionerna har kommit olika långt, och befinner sig på olika ställen, i professionaliseringsprocessen, och att processen inte innebär en linjär utan snarare är en böljande process som påverkas av kontextuella faktorer. Ozolins ramverk används som utgångspunkt i beskrivningen av den svenska kontexten, men differentieras genom att särskilja mellan de tre vanligaste tolkprofessionerna: konferenstolkning, teckenspråkstolkning och tolkning i offentlig sektor. Tolkprofessionernas skilda historiska utvecklingsprocesser är viktiga att känna till för att förstå tolkfältet i Sverige idag. Särskiljandet av tolkprofessionerna möjliggör också en mer precis beskrivning av faktorer som påverkat och påverkar professionernas utveckling.Några faktorer av särskild vikt som dominerar den aktuella diskursen om tolkning är de nya politiska vindarna och den tekniska utvecklingen. De är exempel på faktorer, som trots den statliga involveringen i Sverige och en bejakande lagstiftning, kan bidra till att bromsa, och i vissa fall även urholka, tolkyrkenas pågående professionaliseringsprocesser.

Stretching over the northernmost parts of Europe, with Norway, Finland, and Denmark as its closest neighbors, Sweden remains a sparsely populated (10.5 million inhabitants) and linguistically a fairly uniform country. It is the cradle of the world famous social-democratic “welfare state,” which emerged over the course of the 20th century and is characterized by a strong vision of full inclusion for all members of society (Haualand & Holmström, 2018). Over the same period, Sweden also transformed from a monolingual and homogenous society to a much more multilingual and culturally diverse society; of Sweden’s approximately 10.5 million inhabitants, about 20% were born abroad (SCB, 2022). The deaf population consists of about 10,000 individuals (SDR, 2021), and in addition there are approximately 2,000 people who are deafblind (NKCDB, 2021). The Language Act states that the public society shall protect and promote Swedish Sign Language (svenskt teckenspråk [STS]) and that deaf people have the right to learn, develop, and use STS. This means that deaf people have the same legislated rights as other minority groups (Sami, Meänkieli, Finnish, Romani Chib, and Yiddish) or allophone language speakers to have access to interpreting services. Deaf people’s right to interpreters was affirmed in the 1994 Disability Reform (Swedish Government Official Reports [Statens offentliga utredningar;SOU], 2004:64). The right to use interpreters is also codified in several other Swedish laws. For example, the following laws all directly refer to interpreters: the Language Act (Swedish Code of Statutes [Svensk författningssamling; SFS],2009:600); the Health and Medical Services Act (SFS, 2017:30); the Support and Service for Persons With Certain Functional Impairments Act (SFS, 1993:387); the Administrative Procedure Act (SFS, 2017:900); the Code of Juridical Procedure (SFS, 1942:740); and the Administrative Court Procedure Act (SFS, 1971:201). Interpreting services are also codified, though more indirectly, in the Patient Act (SFS, 2014:821). We begin by contextualizing translation and interpreting of both signed and spoken languages in Sweden. We then talk about the status of STS and the professionalization of sign language interpreting (SLI) and discuss the development of interpreter education, with reference to deaf and hearing interpreters alike. We discuss the issue of readiness to work after formal education, as well as continuing professional development. Finally, we reflect on the status of STS/Swedish interpreting in the present day and on the current state of research into SLI and interpreter education.

In this essay I use discourse analysis to scrutinize and discuss language and metaphor use about interpreters on Swedish and Norwegian public service websites, editorial articles and scientific papers. Sweden is a country where access to interpreters is free for the individual in public service and healthcare encounters. Furthermore, public servants and healthcare personnel have a legislated obligation to ensure access to interpreters. Yet both research and the public debate point to both lack of interpreters and inadequate collaboration with existing interpreters. I argue in this essay that reasons for these problems related to both provision and collaboration may lie in the fact that language use in different sources are more or less subtle examples of discursive discrimination, which may in turn have an impact on the understanding or approach to collaboration with interpreters. I propose that the way to increasing awareness of language use and improve collaboration with interpreters is interprofessional collaboration already at undergraduate level education.

Conference interpreter is the most professionalized of the different interpreting professions. Conference interpreters work for national and international public institutions as well as for companies and organizations on the private market. A conference interpreter is a trained, multilingual professional who masters the different modes of interpreting, simultaneous and consecutive, as well as other interpreting techniques, such as sight interpreting, whispered interpreting (chuchotage) and simultaneous with text. The conference interpreters interpret from several different languages into their A-language (L1), and sometimes also from their L1 into a B-language (strong L2). This entry will give an overview of the origins, and the task of the conference interpreter. It will also briefly describe the conference interpreter training. The entry does not aim to provide a definition of the term conference interpreter, but will describe the requirements, job profile, potential employers and other job opportunities. Finally, the entry addresses research avenues focusing on the conference interpreter.

Educational systems change in top-down and bottom-up processes. One example is when authorities introduce a new curriculum, but it can also be changed by agents active in the system. In education, agents of change include educators, students and institutions. In this article, we explore the narratives of educators (n = 4) in the bachelor’s programme for signed language interpreter education (both deaf and hearing students) at Humak University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland. Data were collected through interviews conducted in 2016. We used content analysis and the theory of agency as a framework for analysis. Here, agency is understood as threefold building on the past, present and future. We explore the different dimensions of becoming an agent of change, being an agent of change and being an agent in a changing field. We find that within the context of this sign language interpreting programme, educators’ previous experiences, intercultural competence and ideas about the future contribute to changes in the curriculum and possibly to social change.

As pointed out by Horv.th and Tryuk (2022: 291), the codes of ethics of different

interpreting professions share certain characteristics such as commitment to accuracy,

competence, confidentiality, impartiality, integrity, invisibility, neutrality, transparency and

working conditions. Although, these can be seen as a least common denominator for ethics

in interpreting, it can also be argued that depending on the profession or specialisation,

the ethics differ, just as the expectations on the interpreter differ.

Skaaden (2019) has introduced the concept of discretionary power to interpreting and

argues that just as public servants have a certain margin of manoeuver when making

rule- based decision, so has the interpreter when making language- based decisions. One

could argue in this context as well that different interpreter professions may have different

margins of manoeuver when it comes to the discretionary power.

This article will discuss the ethics and loyalties of different interpreter professions (see

also Tryuk 2015), how they may differ and in what way they are similar.