Borders and Boundaries: Eritrean Graduates Reflect on Their Medical Interpreting Training

This article examines the professional boundaries and obstacles encountered by Eritrean graduates of a medical interpreter course in Israel. Through a series of personal interviews held about a year after their graduation, we identified professional and personal boundaries as a recurring theme. Drawing on the inspiring work of Erving Goffman, we discuss the tension between their “normative roles” and “typical roles.” By deploying two heuristic two-way typologies—in reference to the service provider or the patient, and in reference to formal or informal interpreting settings—we propose that the tension between the normative and the typical manifests most clearly within formal interpreting settings and vis-à-vis the service providers, and is least present outside formal settings and vis-à-vis the patients. Recognizing that the role of the interpreter tends to extend well beyond its formal setting, we conclude by reflecting on how the circumstances of marginalization and lack of support—incurred by the Israeli government’s intention to frustrate asylum seekers and thwart their struggle for recognition as refugees—compels the graduates to extend their services and serve as brokers, counsellors and guides in trying to help their compatriots navigate the ostensibly inhospitable system they confront.