The spread of English as the first global lingua franca is a determining factor of the 21st century with enormous repercussions for multilingualism and multilingual societies. Preliminary research at the interface of interpreting, translation and English as a lingua franca (ELF) suggests that the increasing number of ELF speakers impacts on professional interpreters’ capacity management and the time and effort that translators spend on processing source texts written by non-native speakers. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the interdisciplinary Sinergia project CLINT addresses the cognitive demands, physiological correlates, processing problems and strategies as well as effects of expertise that may be involved.

Providing comprehensive coverage of both current research and practice in conference interpreting, The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting covers core areas and cutting-edge developments, which have sprung up due to the spread of modern technologies and global English.
Bringing together over 70 researchers in the field from all over the world and consisting of 40 chapters divided into seven parts—Fundamentals, Settings, Regions, Professional issues, Training and education, Research perspectives and Recent developments—the Handbook focuses on the key areas of conference interpreting. This volume is unique in its approach to the field of conference interpreting as it covers not only research and teaching practice but also practical issues of the profession on all continents.

As invited speaker in the Translation Seminar Series of the Centre for Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University, Michaela Albl-Mikasa explored the nature of ELF and the potential pitfalls it harbours for interpreters. She presented insights from research looking into ELF in relation to interpreting and translation (ITELF) and discussed preliminary results from the CLINT (Cognitive Load in Interpreting and Translation) project that uses multiple methods to answer questions relating to whether or not ELF input actually impacts interpreters’ processing and performance. The talk, entitled "The Imaginary Invalid. Interpreters in Times of English as a Lingua Franca", is available on Youtube.

Globalization, migration and asylum seeking have seen the introduction of several languages into multilingual Switzerland, bringing with them a new array of language barriers. As a result, equal access to social, legal and medical services can be achieved only through the use of community interpreters. Research Area 9 focusses on medical interpreting, laying the cognitive foundations of community interpreting by specifying the actual knowledge components and discourse patterns relevant for these institutional settings and developing materials for the training of community interpreters in CPD courses as well as research-based good practice guidelines for wider distribution (including service packages for community interpreting in Asian countries).