The Development of Prison Interpreting Roles: A Professional Ecological Model

Abstract

This paper explores prison interpreting from the perspective of professional role, understood as a socially, institutionally, ethically and culturally determined function. As a consequence of the growing need for language access services in most industrialized nations, ad hoc and professional interpreting solutions are provided routinely; but interpreters, currently lacking an established position of power in public service contexts, face numerous sources of tension. The purposes of this qualitative research are: first, to describe the professional function of PSI in penitentiaries adapting an existing ecological model with different nested environments or systems (individual, micro, meso, exo, macro, topo and chrono); second, to identify facilitating and hampering factors for an appropriate role development and, third, to offer a broad theoretical model that helps conceptualize the multiple interacting elements that shape the interpreter roles in penitentiary contexts.