Researching Informed Consent (IC) – a Translational Perspective

Informed consent (IC) is both an act of communication, in which expert knowledge is translated into lay language, and a crucial genre in clinical research and clinical practice. Multicentre clinical trials require participants from different countries, who consent to take part in the studies after having been (properly) informed. Multilingual clinical settings involve consent to medical care – a fundamental ethical practice framed in the fiduciary relationship between patient and health professional – in different languages. Among the aspects that establish the conditions for valid consent in both researcher-participant and doctor-patient relationships is that participants and patients must be made aware of the relevant facts. To achieve a sufficient degree of understanding on their part, the use of the appropriate register is paramount both in the oral interaction and in the written text, a crucial issue for both translators and interpreters. In this talk I will focus on current translational research aimed at understanding the complexities of IC and improving its use in clinical research and clinical practice.

About the Speaker

Dr Vicent Montalt has been research active in Translation Studies with an interdisciplinary background since 1991 and has been a visiting lecturer at UCL since 2008. Current research includes medical and health translation, clinical communication in multilingual and multicultural settings, dramaturgical approaches to the study of patient-doctor interactions, pedagogy of medical translation and communication for health professionals, translational medical humanities, theatre translation, and Shakespeare and medicine. As a member of the research group GENTT (Universitat Jaume I, Spain) Dr Montalt has worked in 12 funded research projects since 2000. He has been principal investigator in two three-year research projects funded by the Spanish Government. Currently he is principal investigator of a joint research project between FISABIO (the official medical research organisation in the Regional Government) and Universitat Jaume I. His most recent publications include: ‘Medical Humanities and Translation’, in Susam-Saraeva, S. and Spišiaková, E. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Health (Routledge, 2021), and ‘Ethical Considerations in the Translation of Health Genres in Crisis Communication’, in  Federici, F. and O’Brien S. (eds) Translating Crisis (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). Dr Montalt is also co-author of the book Patient-Centred Writing and Translation, forthcoming with Routledge.