Until recently, community interpreting was one of the most ubiquitous practices in the domain of interpreting and at the same time one of the most neglected areas of study in the field of Translation and Interpreting. Fortunately, this state of affairs is changing, and the last two decades have seen an enormous growth in the literature in this area, the implementation of numerous academic and vocational courses, and a series of local and international conferences devoted exclusively to community interpreting. Today, it is one of the most rapidly growing areas in Translation/ Interpreting Studies. Given the global migration trends in the 21st century, it is destined to continue growing both as an autonomous academic discipline and as a profession.

In its academic guise community interpreting is an intrinsically interdisciplinary field (touching on discourse analysis, pragmatics, institutional discourse analysis, domain-specific language, T/I studies, anthropology, sociology, cross-cultural studies, etc.) and in its practical manifestation it is perhaps one of the most intrinsically and tangibly intercultural fields in language studies today. The interface between profession and academia and between profession and ideology is particularly potent and touches upon numerous aspects of politics and culture: The politics of power in institutional, ethnic and linguistic hierarchies, the politics of multilingualism, and the politics of minority language rights (the non-native speaker’s statutory right to be understood and to make herself understood, to communicate effectively and receive basic services safely). Moreover, the practice of community interpreting exposes that politically delicate and often volatile interface between immigration policies, medicine and law: no doctor, no lawyer and no judge can be assured of or assure basic statutory services for a non-native speaker without the aid of an interpreter.

This panel invites abstracts for papers on all aspects of community interpreting, in particular those that probe the links between the different areas and fields of application (medical, legal business, welfare, etc.), or probe links between its macro-structural aspects (politics and ideology, culture, migration, identity-building) and its micro-linguistic aspects. The panel particularly welcomes abstracts relating to the African situation or other countries with similar language policies and similar multilingual histories and realities.

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