Linguists Collective Conference & International Mother Language Day IMLD Celebration
Linguists Collective Conference & International Mother
Language Day Celebration
Saturday, 21st February 2026
Development of interprofessional competence among trainee interpreters
This presentation explores whether inter-professional competence can be explicitly taught within interpreter training, rather than left to develop through workplace experience. While interpreter education has traditionally focused on specialised terminology, ethical decision-making, and interactional management. More complex professional abilities such as negotiating role boundaries, proactively coordinating with service providers, and making context-sensitive decisions, are often assumed to emerge later in practice. Drawing on a pedagogical intervention based on an interpreter-mediated neuropsychological assessment simulation inspired by a real-life clinical case, the session aims to stimulate discussion on how these critical competencies can be integrated more intentionally into interpreter education.
About Rodríguez-Vicente
Natalia is a Lecturer in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex, where she serves as Director of Research Impact (Modern Languages and Linguistics) and Director of the MA in Translation, Interpreting and Subtitling. Her research centres on interpreter-mediated interaction in mental healthcare settings, with a particular focus on how interpreter mediation shapes relational practices, culturally influenced understandings of mental health, and interdisciplinary collaboration between clinicians and interpreters. She is the Principal Investigator of the British Academy-funded SPARK project (2024–2026) and previously contributed to the NIHR School for Social Care Research-funded INForMHAA project (2021–2024). Natalia holds a PhD in Interpreting Studies from Heriot-Watt University, for which she was awarded the CIUTI 2021 Award for an outstanding contribution to Translation and Interpreting Studies.