Community Interpreting in Greece. Building the future

Greece is at crossroads. People from innumerous countries come together in to Greece either as tourists or permanent residents or illegal immigrants. Foreigners, legal and illegal, are contacting Greek authorities, the health system, police, coast guard, refugee camps without having the necessary knowledge of Greek. The book provides an overview of the project Community Interpreting in Greece (CiGreece).The project deals with the neglected issue of community interpreting in Greece, i.e. interpreting before authorities between non-Greek speakers and public servants. There is no formal training or assessment for individuals functioning as community interpreters in Greece; in the majority of the cases where a trained interpreter would be needed, authorities either go ahead without or use untrained individuals at hand declaring to be speakers of the language in question. It has been the objective of the proposed project a) to map, for the first time, the situation in Greece concerning the provision of community interpreting services, b) to highlight the shortcomings in the provision of interpreting services in delicate environments such as the authorities, refugee camps, hospitals, educational settings and police in Greece and c) to increase awareness and to provide the stakeholders with the necessary information to take the measures that will improve the situation in Greece. 

The research leading to these results has received funding from the [EEA] Mechanism 2009-2014 under Project Contract n° 3681.