Gruppi e dispositivi di traduzione clinica

Abstract

Group and device clinic translation

We present some conclusions of a research project that was developed in the “Azienda Sanitaria” of Prato between the 2004 and the 2005. This multi-disciplinary research aimed at a) the quantitative analysis of immigrant people who accessed the mental health ser-vices, b) the qualitative analysis of the interactions between the social service and the immi-grant users, and c) the experimentation of a research and clinical setting implemented by the linguistic mediation to cope with the problems of immigrant patients (children and adults). This article focuses on the last point, and reports a series of observations that were made dur-ing the clinical group-sessions. Through the analysis of some clinical sketches we try to under-stand how translation works, and which field-effects a multi-professional and multi-linguistic setting has on the clinical work. The following remarks were made: 1. the clinical translation elicits new contents, that would remain unexpressed or even unthought without the interlin-guistic exchange; 2. the use of the ‘matrix-language’ allows the patient to be active, and to re-take possession of his/her own thought system; 3. thanks to the multi-linguistic setting the clinical field becomes more complex, new phenomena appear; 4. the interpreter in particular is put under stress by this type of setting, and his/her conditions should be attentively monitored during the clinical process.