Interpreting risks. Medical complications in interpreter-mediated doctor-patient communication

Risk communication is an established topic in health research, and authors widely agree that risks are socially constructed entities (Ädelsward & Sachs 1998, Alden et al 2014, Collins & Street 2009). However, the fact that important contributions in this field, such as Bennett (2010), almost exclusively refer to monolingual and written communication shows that there is still work to do. If risks are socially and discursively constructed, then cultural and linguistic barriers must have an impact on how risk information is presented to, and processed by a culturally and linguistically diverse clientele. In this paper, we investigate how doctors and ad hoc-interpreters communicate risk information in monolingual and multilingual briefings for informed consent, and, more specifically, how the seriousness and frequency of risks is constructed. The results show that medical doctors are often not concerned with the stochastic and legal aspects of risk information. Rather, risk information is often communicated as being an obligation that has minor importance for the decision-making of the patient. Ad hoc-interpreters struggle with modal expressions as well as with the embedding of risk information into the briefing.