Perceptions of the 'Occupational Other': Interpreters, Social Workers and Intercultures

This article investigates occupational intercultures generated between interpreters and social workers, and is informed by research in Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Bourdieusian concepts of field, habitus and zones of uncertainty are used to illuminate the particular status of interpreter mediation within the interculture as a backdrop to theorising about the impact of interpreter mediation on the nature of social workers’ change agency and reflexive approaches to practice. The article reports on an exploratory and mixed-methods qualitative study in which interpreters and social workers in statutory and non-statutory services were interviewed about their perceptions of the ‘occupational Other’, and in which a discourse-analytical approach to the data helped take account of the researcher’s position as an insider of the interpreting community in the final analytic write-up. The findings suggest that the interculture can often be weakened due to poor understandings of the structural weaknesses in the constitution of public service interpreting and the ‘recontextualising’ practices that occur in interaction; furthermore, interpreter mediation appears to challenge communicative practices in social work in ways that practitioners do not always have the resources to address effectively. The article ends with a call for more research at the micro level of interaction.