CIMAS: Comunicación Intercultural Mediada en el Ámbito Sanitario

Summary: This project aims to study and evaluate mediated intercultural communication in health systems in Catalonia to identify issues and offer specific solutions. These solutions would be beneficial to foreign users of the health systems and would improve the efficiency of the health systems themselves.

Entity: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

Duration: 2024-2026

Derived publications:

  • Rubio-Carbonero, Gema, & Gil-Bardají, Anna. (2025). Health providers’ perceptions on language barriers in Catalonia’s public healthcare system. Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, 84, 33-54. https://doi.org/10.58992/rld.i84.2025.4479
  • Tagourramt El Kbaich A., Cussel M., Branchadell A. y Gil-Bardají A. (2026). La intermediación lingüística y cultural en el ámbito sanitario: en busca de un derecho expreso en la normativa española y catalana. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, 105, 65-79. https://doi.org/10.5209/clac.107871 (enllaç directe a l’article en accés obert: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/clac)

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New ABC: Networking the Educational World Across Boundaries for Community-Building

Summary: This is a research and innovation project funded by the European Union through the Horizon 2020 programme, which started in January 2021 and concluded in December 2024. It is a strategic partnership between several European universities and educational and third-sector institutions and entities. The main objective is to improve the educational, cultural, and social inclusion of immigrant and refugee children and young people in Europe.

The project’s pillars are co-creation and a transformative approach, which seeks to ensure that the voices of vulnerable groups are truly heard to influence public policy. The project implemented 9 pilot actions in 9 different European Union countries, and each pilot action addressed a specific local need.

Entity: Comissió Europea. Horizon 2020. Immigration

Duration: 2021-2024

Derived publications:

  • Vallejo Rubinstein, C., & Tonioli, V. (2023). Exploring the Linguistic and Cultural Identities of Transnational Background Children in Catalonia, Spain. Societies (Basel), 13(10), 23. Article 221. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13100221

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Empowering Young Language Brokers for Inclusion in Diversity

Summary: EYLBID (2020-2022) is a strategic partnership formed by five higher educations institutions and a company. This partnership is focused on one of the horizontal priorities of the European Union: social inclusion, specifically, linguistic and intercultural mediation and interpretation carried out by adolescents.

Entity: Comissió Europea, Servicio Español para la Internacionalización de la Educación (SEPIE)

Duration: 2019-2022

Derived publications:

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Young Natural Interpreters: Child Language Brokering in Education, Social Services and Healthcare Settings

Summary: Child language bokering (CLB) [in Catalan: intermediació lingüística per part de menors or ILM] is a reality in our society since the arrival of immigrants from all around the world during the last decades. From an academic perspection, it did not draw much attention. Therefore, this project aimed to explore and describe the CLB situation in the Barcelona province. It was based on a methodological approach that combined quantitative and qualitative methods, specifically: surveys, discussion groups, interviews…

Entity: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

Duration: 2019-2021

Derived publications:

  • Vargas-Urpí, Mireia; Aran Romero-Moreno (2022). El fenomen de la intermediació lingüística per part de menors (ILM). Recull de citacions.URL: https://ddd.uab.cat/record/259030
  • Arumí-Ribas, M. ., Bestué, C., i Gil-Bardají, A. (2023). Los menores de origen inmigrante en la intermediación lingüística: visibilización de un fenómeno social. Lengua y Migración, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.37536/LYM.15.1.2023.1673
  • Arumí, M. i Vargas-Urpí, M. (2025). Towards a tentative Model of Contexts for Child Language Brokering: How the Context Influences the Experiences of Children and Youth. inTRAlinea, 27. https://www.intralinea.org/specials/article/2695

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Apoderament dels immigrants haitians a Xile a través de la interpretació als serveis públics i la mediació lingüística. Programa pilot de formació i conscienciació.

Summary: This Project aimed (2018-2020) aimed to achieve integration and empowerment of Haitian immigrants in Chile, throughout professional development of linguistic and cultural mediation. Creole is the language of Haitians, therefore the linguistic and cultural barrier is one of the main obstacles that Haitians face when they massively arrive at Chile. The project elaborated a description of they are managing to communicate immigrant Haitian people, training on linguistic and cultural mediation was elaborated and implemented as a group of recommendations. The project contributed on raising awareness —among Chilean public institutions— of the issues that may result from a deficient communication with immigrants. Furthermore, the MIRAS group’s expertise in research and training in interpreting within public services was successfully applied to the development of a training programme for linguistic and cultural mediators.

Entity: Fundació Autònoma Solidària. UAB

Duration: 2018-2020

Derived publications:

  • Arumí, M.; Chaigneau, L.: Dehnhartdt Amengual, Diaz-Galaz, S. 2022. “Creencias y percepciones de los facilitadores lingüísticos entre criollo haitiano y español en Chile. Resultados de una investigación-acción”. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción. 15(2). 252-273.

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Expanding Professional Borders. Public Service Interpreting and the Challenges of the New Millenium

Summary: This project aims to promote and improve the job and studies of professional interpreters en public services in a european context. The main objective is divided in the following three specific objectives: (1) developing open access audiovisual material for instructors and students of public services interpreting (PSI), as well to a general public; (2) raising awareness of the public services interpreters job in the EU space and, the importance of training programmes in PSI: and (3) presenting PSI to the conferences interpreting students as a means to expand thei knolwedge of interpreting modalities, activity fields and communicative contexts.

Entity: European Commission’s Directorate-General for Interpretation

Duration: 2018-2019

Derived publications:

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La calidad de la traducción como factor de garantía del proceso penal: desarrollo de recursos al servicio de los intérpretes judiciales de rumano, árabe, chino, francés e inglés. 

Summary: The TIPp project aimed to analyse the role of judicial translation and interpretation as fundamental guarantees do processal law in a fair criminal procedure. It is based on the european normative framework that acknowledges the right to translation and interpretation as a basic basic processal right. The aim was the empirical study of judicial interpretation in the criminal procedures in Spain. In order to achieve this, the project developed a mixed methodology based on the compilation and analysis of real oral corpus of criminal proceedings with the participation of interpreters. They used several highly-present linguistic combinations in courts: Arabic, Chinese, Romanian, French and English.

Entity: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad

Duration: 2015-2017

Derived publications:

  • Orozco-Jutorán, M. (2019). A mixed-methods approach in corpus-based interpreting studies: Quality of interpreting in criminal proceedings in Spain. In Ł. Biel, J. Engberg, R. Martín Ruano, & V. Sosoni (Ed.), Research Methods in Legal Translation and Interpreting: Crossing Methodological Boundaries (1 ed., Vol. 1, pàg. 148-165). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351031226.
  • Vargas-Urpí, M. (2018). “Judged in a Foreign Language: A Chinese-Spanish Court Interpreting Case Study”. The European Legacy, 23(7-8), 787-803. https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2018.1492814.ç
  • Chi, Huidong (2021). Problemática textual e interaccional de la interpretación judicial entre el español y el chino en asuntos penales: Estudio descriptivo basado en casos reales. Tesis doctoral, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Directoras: Mireia Vargas-Urpí y Carmen Bestué. https://hdl.handle.net/10803/672854.

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Problemes i estratègies de traducció i interpretació als serveis públics en l’àmbit socioeducatiu. Estudi de situacions d’interpretació de xinès, romanès i àrab.

Summary: This project (2012-2014) arose from the need to analyze what actually happens when an interpreter intervenes in a school or in a social context. The study’s objectives were: to identify the specific difficulties that arise in triadic communication; to observe how interpreters resolve these conflicts; and to analyze whether strategies change depending on the language and cultural distance, focusing on three of the most prominent languages in Catalonia: Chinese, Romanian, and Arabic.

The project was notable for its use of simulations, which allowed the research team to demonstrate that the interpreter does not act merely as an invisible channel, but rather takes active decisions to facilitate understanding. It was also identified that the lack of specific training sometimes leads to the loss of relevant information, resulting in the publication of high-impact findings.

Entity: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación

Duration: 2012 – 2014

Derived publications:

  • Arumí, M.; Gil-Bardají, A.; Vargas-Urpí, M. 2013. “Inmigrantes en Cataluña: ¿una comunicación efectiva en los servicios públicos?” Hermeneus. 15. 291-322.
  • Arumí, M.; Vargas-Urpí, M. 2014. “Estrategias de interpretación en los servicios públicos en el ámbito educativo: estudio de caso en la combinación chino-catalán”. Intralinea. On-line Translation Journal. 16.
  • Arumí, M.; Vargas-Urpí, M. 2017. “Public service interpreting strategies in the social and educational contexts: a study of simulations of Chinese-Spanish/Catalan interactions”. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting. 19(1). 118-141.

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SOS-VICS. Speak out for support

Summary:This is a European pilot project (funded by the EU Criminal Justice Programme) that was carried out between 2012 and 2014. It was coordinated by the University of Vigo and involved the participation of nine Spanish universities, including the UAB. The project’s objectives were: 

  • To ensure that women who do not speak the official languages receive quality care in all phases (police, judicial, medical, and psychological). 
  • To create training materials for interpreters so they understand the complexity and sensitivity required when working with victims of gender-based violence. 
  • To raise awareness among public service professionals (police, judges, doctors) about the importance of working with professional interpreters rather than volunteers or family members. 

The project generated the following practical tools: 

  • Online Training Platform: Resources for the specialization of interpreters. 
  • Best Practice Guide: Aimed at judges, police officers, and healthcare staff to provide guidance on how to interact correctly when an interpreter is involved. 

Entity: Unión Europea. Dirección General de Justicia.

Duration: 2011 – 2013

Derived publications:

  • Specific Manuals: Such as the book Interpreting in Gender-Based Violence Contexts, which includes action protocols and glossaries of legal and medical terms. 
  • Del Pozo, Maribel; Toledano, Carmen (2015). El proyecto speak out for support (SOS-VICS), un paso adelante en la comunicación con víctimas de violencia de género a través de intérpretes.  ISBN
     978-84-9045-227-1.

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Traduir i interpretar les llengües de la immigració a Catalunya: cap a la formació i acreditació d´una professió emergent.

Summary: Analysing different systems of training and certification of public services interpreters around the world (mostly pioneers countries in this field, such as Australia, Canada, EUA, Switzerland, Netherlands and UK), with the aim of developing a system for Catalonia proposal.

Entity: Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR) y Dir. Gral. para la Inmigración (Generalitat de Catalunya). Proyecto ARAFI (Ayudas para incentivar la investigación aplicada y la formación universitaria en materia de inmigración en Cataluña)

Duration: 2010 – 2012

Derived publications:

  • Arumí, M.; Gil-Bardají, A.; Vargas-Urpi, M. (2011). “Traducció i immigració. La figura de l’intèrpret als serveis públics de Catalunya”. Quaderns, revista de traducció, 18:199-218.
  • Grupo MIRAS (2012) Comunicar en la diversitat. Intèrprets, traductors i mediadors als serveis públics. Barcelona: Linguamón-Casa de les Llengües. 102 p.

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Traducció i immigració: la formació de traductors i intèrprets per als serveis públics, noves solucions per a noves realitats.

Summary: This is the foundational project of the MIRAS research group, which was carried out during 2010 and 2011.

The project was based on the premise that the migratory reality in Spain had changed and that it was necessary to investigate how the public system was addressing communication needs. The main objective was to study Public Service Interpreting (PSI) in Catalonia, with an emphasis on designing innovative proposals for professional training.

Entity: AGAUR y D. G. para la Inmigración (Generalitat de Catalunya). Proyecto ARAFI

Duration: 2009 – 2010

Derived publications:

  • Arumí, M.; Bestué, C.; García-Beyaert, S.; Gil-Bardají, A; Minett, J.; Olaciregui, M.; Onos, L.; Ruiz de Infante, B.; Ugarte, X.; Vargas-Urpí, M. 2012. “Traducció i immigració. La formació de traductors i intèrprets als serveis públics: noves solucions per a noves realitats”. Recerca i immigració IV. Direcció General per a la Immigració, Departament de Benestar Social i Família. Generalitat de Catalunya. vol IV. Col·lecció Ciutadania i Immigració. 8. 157-183. ISBN: 978-84-3938-888-3.
  • Arumí, M.; Gil-Bardají, A.; Vargas-Urpí, M. 2011. “Traducció i Immigració: La figura de l´intèrpret als serveis públics de Catalunya”. Quaderns. Revista de Traducció. 18. 199-218.
  • Arumí, M.; Bestué, C.; García-Beyaert, S.; Gil-Bardají, A.; Minett-Wilkinson, J.; Onos, L.; Ruiz de Infante, B.; Ugarte, X.; Vargas-Urpí, M. 2011. Comunicar en la diversitat. Traductors, intèrprets i mediadors als Serveis Públics. Linguamón – Casa de les Llengües. ISBN: 978-84-393-888-3.

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