Abstract:

Health care interpreting constitutes an important domain of interpreting which has a considerable area of profession and application today. In particular, due to the mobility caused by reasons like immigration, tourism, trade etc., this type of interpreting emerges as a field which is worth considering and investigating. The health care interpreting activities require a healthy dialogue between the foreign patient and the health care professional. In this regard, the communicational quality, type, dimension and effectiveness of the relationships to be established between the physician and the patient are important. In this study, Health Care Interpreting will be addressed within the scope of Community Interpreting and the factors which play a role in the physician-patient communication will be demonstrated and assessed. To this end, first the concepts of Community Interpreting and Health Care Interpreting will be explained and the definition and scope of these concepts will be dwelled on. Within the framework of the subject of the study, the importance and characteristics of Health Care Interpreting and the physician-patient communication will be given place and afterwards, the “asymmetrical” structure of the physician-patient relationship will be examined. One of the communication problems faced in physician-patient encounters is the different expectations of the parties in terms of communication. In this relationship where inequality prevails, it should be known that the main factor creating this inequality is the medical language (medical jargon); using the medical language is the physicians’ tendency to establish authority on those who are not associated with the medical field. Regardless of whether the health care interpreter is present or not, a professional (medical) communication taking place between the specialist (physician) and the non-specialist is in question; this encounter is carried out between unequal parties. Specialists have medical information as well as professional experience whereas patients do not have a command of this field. The fact that the experts have content knowledge and they use the medical language, creates the language of medicine which is a special channel of communication and this language of medicine renders it difficult and/or impossible for physicians to be understood by persons who are not physicians (patients). This language which is preferred to be used leads to an asymmetrical communication between physicians and patients. In social terms, the use of such a differentiated language accentuates the boundary between physicians and patients and reinforces the “asymmetrical” relationships. With the purpose of demonstrating this relationship more concretely, for instance, the structure of “anamnesis” (medical history of the patient) interviews will be elaborated, the “asymmetrical” structure prevailing in the physician-patient communication will be examined and the role played by the health care interpreter in the physician’s position of power in the physician-patient communication will be examined. The “asymmetrical” relationship prevailing between the physician and the patient in this communication (in the physician-patient-interpreter triangle) will be demonstrated through examples.

Keywords: