Translating/interpreting register in healthcare and court settings

Abstract

Register has long been a hot issue in translation and interpreting studies. For translation and interpreting trainers it is still a controversial aspect to deal with, especially when training future professionals to work in institutional settings. However, there are two factors that can generally determine whether to keep register level or to accommodate it, namely the communicative objective and the specific characteristics of the setting. By analysing the communicative objective of every situation and the characteristics of the institutional setting, translators and, especially, interpreters can stop thinking of register accuracy as an absolute requirement and start dealing with it in a relative, context-sensitive way