Aspectos inmunológicos de la EPOC y potencial papel de la interacción

In this section I consider social workers’ use of informal interpreters and the contributions and challenges of using bilingual social workers to interpret. As discussed in the preceding

section, the social workers did not assume that formal interpreters would be technically more competent than informal interpreters. Figure 8 extends figure 5 (p.124). Figure 8 outlines the broad services available for families’ LEP and identifies that there are three main linguistic resources: formal interpreting provision, bilingual employees and bilingual family members. In the absence of a formal interpreter or employee with the capacity to interpret, family members including children may be called upon to translate. Hence, it can be argued that family members provide an informal linguistic resource, and compensate for absent or deficient linguistic resources

183 Figure 8: Linguistic Resources

The use of bilingual social workers as informal interpreters was not reported to be

problematic in terms of their capacity to interpret. However, the bilingual social workers illuminated tensions related to their colleagues’ expectation that they would be willing to translate. The bilingual interpreters conceived this as a form of role-anxiety, in which their capacity to interpret was treated as a commodity, which had ramifications for their personal workload. Hence the bilingual social workers were critical of being treated as an informal linguistic resource, which disregarded their professional capacity as social workers. This corresponds with research by Harrison (2007) which found that bilingual social workers recognised their capacity to speak multiple languages was characterised as a resource yet was taken for granted. This augments the idea that linguistic-matching alone does not relieve the challenges of social work with persons LEP (Temple, 2002; Sawrikar, 2013a).

The co-existence of trained and untrained translators and interpreters has traditionally been considered as a source of tension in the translating field, since untrained interpreters have been willing to work for low or no fees. This has been associated with an erosion of recognition for translator’s training and professional merit (Pérez-González and Susam- Sarajeva, 2012). Despite this tension, research has suggested that non-professional

interpreting takes place in a number of settings: in churches, on online forums, in schools and in health care (Cohen et al.,1999; Meyer, 2001; Crafter et al., 2009; Orellana, 2009;

Hokkanen, 2012).

…non-professional mediators fill the gap left by the retrenchment of the state as the default provider of mediation services, at a time when the funds required to facilitate

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184 social integration within our ever more multicultural and cosmopolitan societies are becoming depleted by global economic austerity (Pérez-González and Susam- Sarajeva, 2012:p.156).

The above quotation can be applied to the present study, as it suggests that bilingual

colleagues and individuals may fill a gap and be taken-for-granted. Following this outlook, it could be argued that informal interpreters are not rewarded for their contributions, despite providing an essential form of labour as they compensate for unavailable or inadequate provision. The contributions of CLB may reflect the ‘logic of the market’, as children are a pliable workforce and can be considered economically productive actors (Stack and

McKechnie, 2002), hence child interpreting could be considered as a form of invisible labour.

As stated in chapter six, the youth workers shared concerns from school teachers that some of the young people were known to language broker during school time and this was confirmed by one young person. In light of this, tensions of whether or not it is acceptable for children to language broker relate to ideas about children’s activities within their regulated and structured lives. This corresponds with understandings of child labour; whether CLB is a form of child labour and whether or not this is harmful to children. On one hand child labour is considered to be profitable for children and parents, with benefits to the whole family (Song, 1996; Nieuwenhuys, 2009). On the other hand, child labour can be understood to be harmful and exploitative to children’s health, development and detrimental to child and family relations (Lee, 2001; Wyness, 2006). This relates to arguments by Orellana (2009), who argues that it is not straightforward to categorise CLB as beneficial or problematic.

9.3.1 Young People’s Experiences of Language Brokering

The findings indicated that young people language broker in a variety of settings with a range of people, including family members, a range of professional bodies and members of public. From these examples, CLB can be considered in three ways: first, as a gateway for effective communication, in relation to the practical purposes of communication; second, as a signifier of group membership, given the way that the young people recognise the need for people to translate for persons from the same linguistic minority community; and, third, as a marker of difference, given the young people’s capacity to speak multiple languages and their position as young people in an adult regulated world (Moran-Ellis and Sünker, 2013).

185 CLB was found to be an activity that went beyond translating and had benefits for themselves and others. CLB was found to be a practice that had benefits for members of a linguistic community who spoke limited English. CLB could also be identified as a practice entwined within the family as language brokering was found to play an important social and economic role in the family. The findings demonstrated that through language brokering, the young people enabled their parents to get the necessary knowledge, for example, at the jobcentre, from the housing department, at the doctors and the hospital. The practice of CLB could therefore be said to be outcome driven, as it enabled the person LEP to access necessary advice and information. As previously mentioned, the young people used their linguistic and cultural knowledge to identify the needs of the people who required linguistic support. They also read the norms of the setting and identified the ‘type’ of English required to interact with the particular English speaker. In this regard, CLB could be considered as a type of ‘language game’ (Wittgenstein, 1958) as the young people recognised and/or demonstrated awareness of desired norms and conventions of language practices and had awareness of persons LEP and the distribution of interpreting provision in the community.

English dialect was found to be an important identity marker for the Czech young people, who were aware that they sounded in some ways different to those who they presumed to be ‘native’23

English language speakers. This could be related to their more recent migration to England. For the British Pakistani young people, accents were not found to be markers of difference, however they alluded to the accents of people who they language brokered for and referred to different types of English. Amongst all of the young people, there was recognition that they had been in situations in which they did not have extensive vocabulary to translate all of the speakers’ words. Some of the language brokering was found to be challenging for a number of reasons, and required the young people to retain their emotions, or to challenge professionals and advocate on behalf of the person they were language brokering for. Such challenges may be related to the position of the young people in adult-orientated environment and thus highlight the productive and limiting modes of power (Tew, 2006). The productive mode being the young people’s capacity to translate and the limiting modes being the setting or knowledge base that restricts these activities.

23 _{The term ‘native’ speaker is used in this sense to refer to those who speak English as a first language}

from a variety within the UK. This term is problematic, given the increasing varieties of English spoken across the globe (Crystal, 2012).

186 None of the young people claimed to be the only interpreter used by their family. The young people stated that family members used additional interpreting resources including people within the family, in the community or translation and interpreting services. The findings highlighted the fluid nature of people’s need to interpret and indicated that people LEP have variable need. Some of the participants identified that their parents were learning English, and indeed that they helped their parents with this, and thus they were no longer needed to language broker. First, this emphasises the idea that the young people can be considered as a flexible resource for people who do not share a mutual language. Second, CLB can be understood to be a practice that is negotiated by the young people and the people involved. For instance, the young people would language broker if they were able to and wanted to do so. Third, the young people were aware that they may not have the necessary linguistic knowledge to translate all words and they were aware that professionals, rather than their parents may critique their practice. Fourth, the findings reject the conduit-model of

interpreting (Wadensjö, 1998) and extend Sharon and Weaver’s communication model (figure 1, p.27) as the interviews with young people suggest that they are not passive receivers of messages. The young people were not trained interpreters, and therefore did not claim to be impartial to the people who they interpreted for. This suggests that the young people may extend or add their personal understandings of the situation, and extend the instructions of the person who required the interpreting (Pérez-González and Susam-Sarajeva, 2012). In sum, the findings suggest that CLB yields symbolic value within the multilingual landscape, as the young people are a source of knowledge and a linguistic and cultural resource for the people they language broker for. In the following section I consider these findings with findings from the interviews with the social work participants.