Language Difficulties in the Eyes of Polish Teenage Brokers Living in the UK

Abstract

The paper presents a short history of translation theories of the 20th century and the roles of community interpreters. It also discusses the concepts of non-professional translations (brokering), with particular attention paid to difficulties that Polish teenage brokers face in the UK regarding the processes of translation and interpretation as evidenced in the 2016–2018 study on 55 Polish bilinguals. It focuses on selected settings that child brokers enumerated in the interviews, to show that all the participants undertake the task on a daily basis, and their language assistance tends to be provided in particularly linguistically challenging contexts (i.e. medical, legal or financial) which per se put additional burden on the young bilinguals. Finally, the study sheds light on the possible impact that lack of knowledge of specialized vocabulary and translation/interpretation skills might have on the personality of the young mediators.

Keywords

• language brokering
• bilingual
• non-professional translation
• context