More on the Identity of Medical Interpreters – When the Professional Identity is New

In my previous employment, my duties included training bilingual individuals who wanted to be used by our company as interpreters. This responsibility was particularly important for individuals whose native tongues are referred to, in the United States, as languages of lesser diffusion.  In the case of these languages, there were no formal education opportunities for professional interpretation in our neck of the woods.  When the language services company I worked for received a request for a Jarai or Lingala interpreter, for example, our only options were to prepare either individuals who had resided in the United States for several years, or adult offspring of first generation immigrants of that particular ethnicity.  [The linguistic challenges of individuals who were heritage speakers and not native speakers like their parents will be discussed in later blogs.]  Whether it was new residents of the United States or offspring of first generation immigrants, they were always very eager to serve and learn, making it a pleasure to train them.  They had, however, never received formal training on the role of a professional interpreter, or the code of ethics that they would be expected to follow. 

Orientations were often initiated by asking each individual attendee why he or she had chosen to learn how to be an interpreter.  The answer, in almost 100% of the cases, was “in order to help my people.”  These were individuals who had either personally experienced the typical difficulties of those catapulted by life’s circumstances into an alien culture , or had witnessed their parents’ and grandparents’ struggles as they attempted to adapt to life in the United States.  Despite feeling deep admiration for those who choose a profession motivated by a desire to serve others, years of experience had taught me this was not enough; a lack of professional training and a misunderstanding of the role of interpreters could generate potentially detrimental situations in interpreted encounters, even when the interpreter has the best of intentions.  Therefore, in each orientation, after the first brave attendee identified his motive as a desire to
“help his people,” the next question habitually was: “your desire is to help your people in what way?”  Answers were rarely forthcoming; usually the individual had not had any reason to probe deeper into his motive for wanting to interpret.  Attendees were then guided to determine if this profession would be for them: “If you want to make sure your people are adequately represented in the court of law, you should obtain a law degree and you would be one of the few bilingual attorneys of your language pair.  If you want to make sure your people have access to all the social services and community resources they are entitled to or are available to them, you should become a bilingual social worker.  If, on the other hand, you want to make sure that “your people” are able to communicate with their healthcare providers, social workers, and employees of government agencies providing social services, you are in the correct orientation session.” 

Why was it important to make distinctions such as the ones used as examples above? 

The language services company I was employed by, regularly scheduled observations of interpreters as a way to ensure the highest quality of interpretation for our customers, as well as a means to assist interpreters improve and grow professionally.  When we first began observing newly oriented interpreters at their first assignments, we noticed that the interpreter would answer for the individual of limited English proficiency.  The newly oriented interpreters would also inadvertently slide into giving advice or making personal comments.  This might be in the form of pressuring the non-English speaker to comply with a healthcare provider’s recommended treatment plan or, on the contrary, to trivialize the recommendations of a provider because it came from a “Western” medicine provider. At times the interpreter would divulge information obtained from previous encounters with the same patient or because he/she knew the patient outside of his/her work.   These acts of professional indiscretion were committed without the slightest ill-will or awareness of how they affected the relationship between the patient and the provider.  Certainly, in most cases, there was no realization of the damage being done.  Interestingly, while observing interpreters we found that even experienced interpreters succumb to the temptation of inserting their personal opinions or advice while on assignment.  I can say without hesitation, that not a single day goes by in my current role as staff interpreter when the resolve not to comment, editorialize, or give advice does not get tested.  The only difference (hopefully) is that extensive training and years of experience can provide an interpreter with tools to help combat that natural, human tendency and avoid succumbing to the temptation. Thus, it was deemed extremely important to help the bilingual individuals who were being groomed for professional interpretation to think about what their role and function was, and for our training sessions to begin providing them with necessary tools as well.