Translating Migration : everyday and research practices of interpreting in the context of flight and migration

Kurzfassung/Abstract

In the course of globalization and transnationalization processes, it is true for
numerous professional fields of practice and research that conversations can no
longer be conducted in the first language of the respective participants. In the
context of refugee, asylum and migration regimes and policies, the complexity
of translation and communication processes becomes particularly clear. Without
the help of interpreters, migrants and refugees are often unable to communicate
in conversations (interviews, hearings, therapy), which usually entail vital deci�sions. Also in qualitative social research, such as ethnographic or sociolinguis�tic field research on flight and migration, the increasing diversity of languages
in research fields requires the involvement of language mediators/interpreters in
the research process. Here, too, multi-layered, multilingual situational commu�nication constellations arise in the conversational constellations that are already
characterized by hierarchical relations of inequality and emotionality.
Interpreting in migration-related multilingual, often tense situations has di�rected research interest above all to procedural strategies to be developed con�textually in order to overcome linguistic as well as culturally conditioned com�munication barriers