INTRODUCTION TO HEALTHCARE INTERPRETING IN SLOVAKIA
Keywords:
Healthcare interpreting, public service interpreting, patient with language barrier, professionalization, language accessibility, integrationAbstract
Healthcare interpreting represents a specialized domain of public service interpreting that has long remained on the periphery of academic and institutional discourse in Slovakia. This article analyzes the current state of healthcare interpreting services in the country, identifying key challenges related to their institutionalization, professionalization, and legislative framework. The study focuses on the absence of systematic mechanisms for ensuring healthcare interpreting, the lack of quality regulation in interpreting practice, and limited educational opportunities in this field. Through an analysis of relevant legal frameworks, it highlights the discrepancy between patients' right to receive information in a comprehensible language and the actual conditions in healthcare institutions, where communication with patients facing language barriers is often managed through improvised solutions, such as reliance on family members or ad-hoc interpreters. The article also examines the critical role of non-governmental organizations in providing linguistic support during periods of heightened migration pressure, using the Ukrainian refugee crisis as a case study to illustrate the growing demand for systematic solutions in this field. The concluding section formulates research objectives that are partially integrated into an ongoing doctoral research project while also aiming to stimulate interdisciplinary academic interest in healthcare interpreting, as this issue intersects with linguistics, sociology, medicine, law, and public policy.
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