Kudos to our Founder & Director – Angela Sasso

Handbook of Research on Medical Interpreting

Founder and Director of Shifting Pictures and The Interpreter’s Lab, Angela Sasso, has been recently published in the Handbook of Research on Medical Interpreting – a textbook for interpreting students. Angela’s chapter, titled In Through the Looking Glass: The Discord Between, Practice and Education, looks at the evolution of the healthcare interpreter’s role in Canada, and the necessary educational programs to prepare interpreters to work in complex settings. Here is the overview of her chapter:

Traditional interpreter education programs were designed for conference interpreting markets. With the introduction of dialogue interpreting, some portion of the educational content was then allotted to public service interpreting and specialized settings became more prominent, programs then added courses to place more attention on specific contexts. In the last decade researchers began to view healthcare interpreting as a specialization of interpreting, and not just interpreting in a different setting. This chapter will review the evolution of the healthcare interpreter’s role in the context of alignment between education and workplace reality in Canada. The results of this review demonstrate that the work expectations of healthcare interpreters do not align with delineations of the interpreter as a language conduit nor with current educational programs and recommends a more robust and situated pedagogical schema that includes ongoing and deliberate continuing education as an interim measure to mitigate tensions between student and practitioner, theory and practice.*

The Handbook of Research on Medical Interpreting is a compendium of essential reference material discussing the educational, ethical, pedagogical, and specialized aspects of medical interpreting. Featuring research on topics such as patient care, competent healthcare, and specialized training, this book is ideally designed for hospital staff, healthcare administrators, medical specialists, professional interpreters, industry professionals, academicians, researchers, and students seeking coverage on a new, international perspective to the medical sciences.  (Taken from the publisher’s website: IGI Global – publishers)

While this is a textbook and therefore not necessarily intended for independent interpreters (the book is $276USD), individual chapters can be purchased from the publisher for $40. To find out more you can click here and be taken to IGI Global website:

*Sasso, A. (2020). In Through the Looking Glass: The Discord Between Practice and Education. In I. Souza, & E. Fragkou (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Medical Interpreting (pp. 397-420). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-9308-9.ch017