Non-Close Renditions: Ways and Consequences of Saying Something Different in Interpreter-Mediated Healthcare Interactions

In interpreter-mediated interactions the interpreter’s translational activity constitutes the core of mutual understanding. Translating other participants’ verbal productions implies various interactional moves on the part of the interpreter, which reveal his/her coordinating role within the interaction. These two activities originate from the interpreter’s knowledge of the languages and cultures involved as well as of his/her expertise in interpreting, which, in turn, result in his/her power to promote, modify, or block the interaction. Of course, interpreters do not act in a vacuum: it is through the interplay of all interlocutors that interpreters fully participate in the co-construction of the interaction. In this contribution we consider all those cases in which interpreters’ translations depart from the corresponding primary speakers’ turns. These cases are identified here as non-close renditions, a new analytical category integrating Wadensjö’s (1998) classification. We investigate how non-closeness may affect the interpreter’s translation and what repercussions it may have on the unfolding interaction. We specifically focus on the interactional efforts – or the lack thereof – made by the interpreter his-/herself and by other speakers in order to try to retrace their steps back to what was originally said.