Spoken language interpreters are commonly used to facilitate communication for emergent bilingual service users in social work. Children often have greater English language proficiency than their parents and may interpret for family members in a variety of contexts, including social work. This article approaches the topic of child interpreting from social workers’ perspectives and presents findings from in-depth interviews about child interpreting. Social constructionist theories are used to examine the way social workers manage child interpreting. The findings indicate that social workers manage child interpreting by monitoring, scaffolding or stopping encounters. Through talking about child interpreting, the social workers conceptualise children as passive, vulnerable or untrustworthy. Social workers recognised the potential contributions that child interpreters offered but remained concerned about their ability to translate technical and emotionally laden messages. Given that child interpreting was found to be unavoidable in social work, there is scope to develop a framework for safe and effective child-interpreting practice. Future research directions include an exploration of children’s perceptions about interpreting in social work contexts.

中文翻译：

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社会工作者对儿童口译的管理：定性研究

口语翻译通常用于促进社交工作中新兴的双语服务用户的交流。儿童通常比父母具有更高的英语水平，并且可以在包括社交工作在内的各种情况下为家庭成员提供口译服务。本文从社会工作者的角度探讨儿童口译的主题，并提出有关儿童口译的深入访谈的结果。社会建构主义理论用于检验社会工作者处理儿童口译的方式。研究结果表明，社会工作者通过监视，脚手架或停止相遇来管理儿童口译。通过谈论儿童口译，社会工作者将儿童概念化为被动，脆弱或不信任。社会工作者认识到儿童口译员的潜在贡献，但仍对他们翻译技术性和情感性信息的能力感到担忧。鉴于在社会工作中不可避免地需要进行儿童口译，因此有足够的空间来制定安全有效的儿童口译实践框架。未来的研究方向包括探索儿童对在社会工作环境中进行口译的看法。