Linguistic mediation with female gender violence victims in the psychosocial spheretowards specialised assistance

Resumen

Due to its prevalence as also its devastating consequences, gender violence is considered a public health issue. Arange of services need to be put into place to ensure that women who are or have been gender violence victims areprovided comprehensive and effective assistance. While it is already difficult for victims to initiate the process ofempowerment, these circumstances become even more complex when the victims are foreign and do not, in addition,have a good command of the language of the community in which they live. In such situations, gender violencevictims suffer a particular vulnerability and lack of protection due to a range of social factors. On the other hand,the growing interest in and subsequent development of translation/interpreting for public services has highlightedthe importance of aspects like professionalization and training to guarantee quality service. In this article, we presentthe specific needs of the psychosocial sphere in terms of specialisation with respect to interpretation and translationwhen attending to gender violence victims. To this aim, we have used the interviews and surveys conducted withpsychologists, social workers and interpreters within the framework of the SOS-VICS project