Dialogue Interpreting in an Italian Immigrant Support Centre: mediating constructions of social conditions

This paper is about interpreter-mediated interactions in an Italian Support Centre assisting immigrants who need to comply with complicated bureaucratic procedures to obtain permits and apply for jobs. The paper analyses sequences including the social worker’s questions about the reason for the visit or the immigrant’s problem, the mediator’s translations and the immigrant’s answers. Although the mediator pursues immediate translations of the immigrants’ answers, in a number of cases immigrants show serious difficulties in explaining their problems. The mediator deals with these difficulties promoting expanded dyadic sequences with them, followed by translations for social workers. The analysed interpreter-mediated interactions highlight the significance of the mediating function of interpreting in promoting narratives of immigrants’ personal and social conditions.