By Milena Calderari-Waldron
How many times has a colleague approached you with, “The other day [fill in the blank] happened to me. What do you think I should have done?”
When confronted with an ethical problem—as opposed to an ethical dilemma which is where one must choose between two conflicting codes, inevitably transgressing one of them—, one approach to answering the question, “How should I behave?” is to emphasize your moral duties by identifying which ethical values you must uphold. Here, interpreters should refer to their code of professional responsibility to figure out what their positive and negative duties are as well as what they can get away with. This may be a code of practice that regulates the profession, a code of ethics that sets out the ethical values that underpin the organization to which they belong or a code of conduct that restricts their behavior. I call this the “Apply RFP” recipe in which interpreters must consider what is ethically Required, Forbidden and Permissible. In other words, what you must do, what you must not do and what you may do.
In a practicing profession such as interpreting, practitioners work in close contact with those who use their professional services, within socially constructed dynamics. In these professions, it is common to find that contextual factors interfere with the practitioner’s ability to adhere to their code of professional responsibility. Ethicist Robyn Dean places contextual factors into four categories: environmental (specific to the setting), interpersonal (specific to the interaction between interpreters and consumers), paralinguistic (specific to the expressive language qualities of consumers) and intrapersonal (specific to the feelings and thoughts of the interpreter).
Problems and pathways
The ethical problem described below demonstrates that there are contextual factors outside of language and culture that impact the interpreter’s ability to adhere to their code of professional responsibility. This is an important point that Dean[1] makes in her presentations on the Demand Control Schema ethical theory. Another important factor in this theory is that interpreters have the power to apply controls (multiple instances for decision-making) that modify the outcome of an ethical problem.
Let’s take a look at a specific ethical problem and determine negative duties, positive duties, controls and ethically permissible solutions.
“I just had a situation at a bench trial via WebEx today.”
- Contextual factor: In remote trials, situations may arise that would not occur in an in-person trial.
- Permissible: You may accept the assignment if you can interpret accurately, hear all participants well, and effectively team up with your remote partner.
- Negative duty: don’t accept assignments that are beyond your skills.
- Control: decline a remote bench trial assignment. By their very nature, trials are challenging assignments, and interpreting a trial remotely is even more challenging.
“Yesterday, the coordinator from State A (not the one I reside in) told me the court had hired a second interpreter for today’s bench trial.”
- Positive duty: you must interpret accurately. Simultaneous interpreting assignments lasting more than one hour require a team of interpreters to preserve accuracy.
- Control: decline an assignment for simultaneous interpreting when there is no second interpreter present. Since a second interpreter has been procured, you can accept the assignment.
Now, we’ll move on to the core of the ethical problem:
“I asked this second interpreter to contact me so we could go over the handover times and whatnot. Well, it turned out that the interpreter is court certified in another language and only qualified by State B for the language needed at the bench trial. I could tell that this interpreter wasn’t fluent in the needed language. The interpreter asked me to take over in case she had difficulty and I said ‘I can’t interpret by myself’.”
- Contextual factor: the quality of court interpreters is not standardized at the national level. Depending on the state, there are certified, registered and court-qualified interpreters: Certified court interpreters have had their transfer skills tested in the simultaneous, consecutive and sight translation mode; registered court interpreters have passed a language proficiency oral exam at ILR level 3 in English and the language other than English but there are some states where the English language hasn’t been tested. The court-qualified interpreter category has few requirements to prove oral language proficiency in either language or transfer skills.
- Negative duty: don’t accept assignments for which you reasonably expect impediments to your performance.
- Control: decline the assignment because the incompetence of your teammate will cause you to work more than your share, thus jeopardizing accuracy.
- Permissible: inform the coordinator that the second interpreter is not fluent in the language needed.
“I reached out the coordinator and reported that my teammate wasn’t fluent in the language needed.”
- Positive duty: report impediments to your performance.
- Control: report the expected impediment to your performance to the hiring entity. The ball is in their court now. It is important for interpreters to document any instance of reporting obstacles to their ability to adhere to their code of professional responsibility.
“The coordinator said she was going to talk to another coordinator. I have emails proving that I reported the impediment to the coordinator. The court didn’t change interpreters, and it was terrible.”
- Positive duty: document and report impediments to your performance and adherence to your code of professional responsibility.
- Control: at the beginning of the trial, state on the record that you have reported to the coordinator that your teammate is not fluent in the language needed, which makes teamwork rather difficult and, in turn, makes it hard for you to interpret accurately. Again, the ball is in their court now.
Welcome to the garden of the forking paths! The court may:
a) decide to postpone the trial until they find a suitable teammate. You’re off the hook!
b) order you to proceed assisting your current teammate and correcting any mistakes. The ball is in your court now. Will you be able to interpret accurately despite your teammate’s incompetence?
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- Positive duty: you must interpret accurately and must report impediments to your performance.
- Control: state on the record that this is too demanding, you can’t guarantee the accuracy of your interpretation and therefore must withdraw from this assignment. The ball is back in their court.
- Permissible: If ordered by the judge to proceed, you must comply, though you may interrupt the proceedings each time there is a substantial error in meaning.
c) order you to proceed by yourself. The ball is in your court now. Will you be able to interpret accurately by yourself for the entire duration of the bench trial?
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- Positive duty: you must interpret accurately and must report impediments to your performance.
- Control: state on the record that simultaneous interpreting requires team interpreting. Without a teammate, you can’t guarantee the accuracy of your interpretation and therefore must withdraw from this assignment. The ball is back in their court.
- Permissible: If ordered by the judge to proceed, then you must comply but you may still state on the record that to preserve the accuracy of your interpretation you will take a 10-minute break every 20 minutes[2].
Finding our power
Ethical problems can be solved by identifying any contextual factors (e.g., interpreter coordinator not doing their job, interpreter not fluent in the language needed) that interfere with our ability to adhere to our code of professional responsibility. Interpreters are not powerless! We can control any problematic situation through our own ethical decision-making.
Speaking of power, here is an advocacy action item: We can ask Professional associations (e.g., ATA, NAJIT) to lobby the National Center for State Courts and the Administrative Office of the Courts in each state to adopt standardized requirements and terminology for the different categories of court interpreters (certified, registered, qualified). And that is interpreters exercising our collective power.
For more resources on ethics, see:
- Would you kill the fat man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us About Right and Wrong. David Edmonds. 2014. Princeton University Press.
- Standards of Practice and Ethics for Washington Judiciary Interpreters. Administrative Office of the Courts. Court Interpreter Program. 2021.
- Ethics for Dummies. Christopher Panza and Adam Potthast. Wiley Publishing Inc. 2010.
- Standards of Practice and Ethics for Washington Judiciary Interpreters. Administrative Office of the Courts. Court Interpreter Program. 2021.
- Dean, R. K., & Pollard, R. Q., Jr. (2005). Consumers and Service Effectiveness in Interpreting Work: A Practice Profession Perspective. In M. Marschark, R. Peterson, & E. A. Winston (Eds.), Sign language interpreting and interpreter education: Directions for research and practice (pp. 259–282). Oxford University Press.
- The Demand Control Schema: Interpreting as a Practice Profession 1st Edition, by Robyn K. Dean, Robert Q Pollard Jr.
- ATA Position Paper on Remote Interpreting. 2021. https://www.atanet.org/advocacy-outreach/ata-position-paper-on-remote-interpreting/
- Errors by Colleagues. Standards of Practice and Ethics for Washington Judiciary Interpreters. Administrative Office of the Courts. Court Interpreter Program. 2021
[1] ATA Interpreters Division Blog, Interview – Robyn Dean on Ethics: Metaphors or Values? https://www.ata-divisions.org/ID/blog/interview-robyn-dean-on-ethics-metaphors-or-values/ October 13, 2016.
[2] Washington State General Rule 11.4(d)(2) “An interpreter working alone must be given a ten-minute (10) break after every twenty (20) minutes of interpretation.”
Milena Calderari-Waldron is a member of the Interpreters Division Leadership Council.
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