Your Interpreting Practice:

"Confidently and in Confidence"

Confidently:

First, let me address what it means to speak confidently about your interpreting practice.

As an interpreter, you have likely been advised by those you interpret for such as lawyers, doctors, or judges to “just translate word for word” what is said. 😳

Just think about that – other professionals, who do not know how to do your job, are basically telling you how to do your job!

You have also likely heard from other interpreters or trainers. While they do know how to do your job, they come with strong opinions of how you should be doing your job.

How many times have you heard “but you’re just the interpreter” or “that’s not your role” or “you have to be neutral!” 🙄 

How can someone gain confidence amidst consistent challenges, or criticisms of their interpreting practice? 

I would argue that most interpreters make good, intuition-based decisions in their work. Yet they never learn to translate that intuition into sound ethical reasoning -- the how and the why they made those decisions. Interpreters will claim to be members of the team or cultural mediators in defense of their decisions.

While there might be some truth in those phrases, these are not the most effective tools in making and reasoning through decisions.

Confidence comes from knowing and using the vocabulary of values based decision-making and reasoning.

In publication form, in online lectures and training events, that is what we teach.

In Confidence:

As an interpreter, you are bound by confidentiality. That is not unique to interpreting – most professions have an ethical mandate of confidentiality.

Your doctor does not go around telling everyone private details about you or your medical history. You can thank Hippocrates for that! But doctors do talk about their work – their medical practice and that may well include you and your medical case.

That’s because to talk about your work in confidence does not mean to not talk about your work at all. Most professions require that practitioners talk to their peers or their supervisors about their work – to ensure that they are doing it well and to find ways to do it better. Your doctor may well share the details of your case with another doctor in order to get advice on how best to treat you. It is in your own interest that your doctor engage in this type of dialogue. But, talking about YOUR CASE is not the same thing as talking about YOU. Talking about your case is done in confidence – without identifying information with the aim of serving YOU better.

Interpreters should be doing the same with those they serve! As interpreters, we have a duty to engage in open and honest dialogue with other interpreters about those we serve. Your practice will only improve when you are able to talk about it – confidently and in confidence.

And finally, why do I refer to interpreting work as a practice? You might also notice that I refer to interpreters as practitioners. I use the terms practice and practitioners because, as I have written about with my co-author Bob Pollard, we think community interpreting (such as in medical, mental health, and educational settings) is best understood as a practice profession.

What do we mean by that?

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