Vanessa Piccoli. Plurilingualism, multimodality and machine translation in medical consultations. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 2022, 17 (1), pp.42-65. ⟨10.1075/tis.21012.pic⟩. ⟨hal-03806654⟩
- HAL Id : hal-03806654, version 1
- DOI : 10.1075/tis.21012.pic
Abstract : This contribution deals with the use of Google Translate as one among many resources that participants mobilize to overcome the language barrier in plurilingual medical consultations. It is grounded on a two-hour interaction involving a family of Albanian asylum seekers newly arrived in France and a French general practitioner. To reach mutual comprehension, participants rely on the mediation of a lay interpreter (one of the family’s children) who translates for the doctor and the other family members. In this interaction, English is used as a lingua franca, while machine translation is conducted between French and Albanian. The analysis will focus on the interactional work that participants accomplish in order to: (1) propose or solicit the use of Google Translate and make the computer accessible to all participants; (2) detect and repair misunderstandings caused by an unsuitable translation.