Claudia V. Angelelli, Medical interpreting and
cross-cultural communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004. xiii, 153. Hb $75.00.
Claudia Angelelli's study of medical interpreting, based on her
2001 Stanford dissertation, constitutes a valuable addition to a series of
empirical studies of community interpreting (Wadensjö 1992, 1998; Metzger 1999; Bolden 2000; Roy 2000) that make use of discourse analysis to uncover
what actually takes place in interpreter-mediated encounters between
professionals and their clients (or patients) who do not speak the same
language. These studies share a common theme: to reveal the interpreter as
an interactive participant in cross-cultural communication rather than a
mere relayer of linguistic messages from one language to another. Adopting
a primarily ethnographic approach, Angelelli sets out to refute the
“myth of invisibility” (p. 2) by showing that medical
interpreters are visible, interactive agents in interpreted communicative
events.