Origins of Italian-English Interpreting Services in the United States: Issues of Power Related to Language

At the time of mass migration to the U. S. , millions of Italians moved overseas. The movement of such a mass quantity of people caused numerous problems that immigrants had to face in their daily lives. The difficult economic and social situations dealt with were also heightened by having to communicate in a new language. For the most part, immigrants were guaranteed the right to speak their own language in legal settings. But, at the time, professional interpreters of this language combination were nowhere to be found, which is conceivable, given the high number of interpreter-mediated contexts that emerged during that period. This is a phenomenon that cyclically occurs when there is a mass displacement of people crossing boundaries, inevitably leading to skewed power relations in a critical socio-political backdrop. This paper discusses the origins of Italian-English interpreting services in the United States and highlights issues of power in relation to language.