ABSTRACT
The ever-increasing mobility of people across boundaries, be it for economic, political or educational reasons, has led to the creation of multilingual and multicultural societies where the need for language and cultural mediation is also ever growing. Even if this is a worldwide phenomenon, it is most conspicuous in countries which have been traditionally considered as countries of emigration and have become countries of immigration in the last 20 years, thus evolving into complex multilingual and multicultural societies. This is also the case of Spain, a country where the high influx of immigrants and tourists poses challenges which require adequate responses to ensure a balanced coexistence (Valero-Garcés, 2006, p. 36). This need for translators and interpreters is even greater in public services like schools, hospitals, police stations, courts . . . where users who do not command the official language of the institution must be catered for. As argued by Corsellis (2008, p. 2), “it benefits no one if a proportion of the population suffers increased infant mortality rates, miscarriages of justice, substandard housing, education and social care [due to] barriers caused by lack of language and related skills”.
