ABSTRACT
Translators and interpreters play a pivotal role in global processes of communication. Some of the key issues raised in the context of globalization are enacted in the political asylum context; these include national sovereignty, the construction of individual and collective identities and rights, and the question of territorial borders. The right to asylum is simultaneously a national and an international issue. Most empirical research on asylum interpreting and translation has been conducted in legal and medical settings. Analyses of micro-interactional interpreter-mediated exchanges in the asylum procedure, audiotaped and transcribed for close textual analysis, have focused on asylum interviews, asylum appeal hearings. Research on interpreting and translating for asylum seekers in both legal and medical settings has encompassed five overlapping areas of practical and theoretical concern, evident in studies that engage in micro-interactional as well as macro-contextual analysis.
