ABSTRACT

This article reports of a study on 19 Australian community interpreters and their experience in facilitating mediated communication in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which was introduced in Australia in 2016. These interpreters were among those who attended a training workshop comprising of a pedagogical segment explaining this new scheme in detail, and a hands-on segment to translate a selection of NDIS terms into their target language to highlight possible linguistic and cultural challenges they may encounter. The training aimed to enable the interpreters to facilitate NDIS communication with clients from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds in ways that make sense to their culture and experience. The purpose of the current study is to understand the extent the participant interpreters applied their learning in NDIS communication, and their perspective about specific challenges in this new contextual area, where certain concepts and terms may be hard to translate, and the understanding of disability may be culturally bound. The aim of the study is to deepen the understanding of multicultural communication in disability services, and to inform similar future professional development during major changes to systems in the disability sector, and more broadly in health and welfare.

摘要

本文报道了一项对 19 名澳大利亚社区口译员的研究，以及他们在 2016 年在澳大利亚推出的国家残疾保险计划 (NDIS) 中促进中介沟通的经验。这些口译员参加了由教学法组成的培训研讨会。详细解释这一新方案的部分，以及将 NDIS 术语选择翻译成目标语言的实践部分，以突出他们可能遇到的语言和文化挑战。该培训旨在使口译员能够以对他们的文化和经验有意义的方式促进 NDIS 与来自不同语言和文化背景的客户的沟通。当前研究的目的是了解参与口译员在 NDIS 交流中应用他们的学习的程度，以及他们对这一新背景领域中特定挑战的看法，其中某些概念和术语可能难以翻译，对残疾的理解可能受文化约束。该研究的目的是加深对残疾服务中多元文化交流的理解，并在残疾部门以及更广泛的健康和福利系统发生重大变化期间为类似的未来专业发展提供信息。