ABSTRACT
Community interpreting encompasses bilateral spoken and signed language interpreting in different domains such as health and social care, and in different settings such as prisons, schools and asylum tribunals. It is usually made available by the state at no cost to the service user. Academic research on community interpreting addresses questions at various levels. At the societal level, professionalization, standardization and regulation of community interpreting are recurrent themes, reflecting the pace and nature of its development in different countries. A significant body of research on community interpreting is largely qualitative and empirical in orientation, and often employs multi-method approaches. The findings of this research are often limited in terms of generalizability due to the small sample sizes involved and because community interpreting research is “particularly susceptible to a constructivist epistemology that combines an engagement with empirical data with interpretive procedures that are necessarily relative to situational contexts, settings and socio-cultural backgrounds”.
