Access to Services with Interpreters: User Views

trust is called on when a person is not familiar with another party but is reliant on them for their knowledge and competence. It is based on expectations that a representative or member of a given group will conventionally act according to particular principles, duties and requirements (rather than their own personal interests), which are laid down in codes and training for professional groups. People identified several qualities they expected of people who are professional interpreters that would form a basis for trust, which we again illustrate with some case studies: • adherence to codes of good practice, including confidentiality • skill and expertise, including bilingual competence and exactness, knowledge of systems and jargon • lack of bias (in the sense of holding no hidden personal or institutional agenda). Access to services with interpreters 52 Case 1: Mrs Topolska, a Polish woman Mrs Topolska had been living in Britain for about three years. She had come with her husband and three young children, but her husband had recently moved out of the household and she felt that particular people from the local Polish church and club were supporting her through a difficult time. Mrs Topolska worked with English people in a job found through her Polish networks, but said that her ability to understand and speak English was limited. She had called on Polish friends who spoke good English and who were happy to help her out with interpretation. Nevertheless, perhaps because of her personal situation, Mrs Topolska was very concerned about confidentiality in trusting someone to interpret for her and, in this respect, she said she preferred a professional interpreter who was not a member of her local Polish community. She also felt that the quality of objectivity in a professional interpreter was important: There are people who only interpret so that they can gossip about people, but there are people who want to help . I know what people at the Polish Club are like. I know from day to day who I can ask and who I can’t. I know that. I stay away from those people . I think that on a day-to-day basis it is better that the interpreter should not be someone you know. No one you know, so that they can be objective, so that he can interpret. So, if it was someone I knew, she would interpret everything from my point of view. It is better to use someone you don’t depend on, who is neutral, and that he interprets honestly. So that he did not take sides. I think on a day-to-day basis that the Polish interpreter should start from zero, so that we did not know him . All my friends will always take my side, and it has to be someone objective who sees you for the first time. She would come and interpret and then say goodbye. Mrs Topolska did know a professional interpreter who she had used over several years, and who she trusted, but she believed – somewhat wistfully, it seems – that this familiarity could compromise the interpreter’s professional status in her particular circumstances: The interpreter, who was with us all the time, knew me and my husband very well, even to the extent that we became friendly. So, when I mentioned I had these problems, marriage problems, I mentioned it to her. I don’t think she would want to take sides. I know she likes me. She likes my husband. She does not want to get involved in this. I know she could because she is registered everywhere . She wants to remain neutral and not take sides. She said she was too close to us . I trust her and never came across a situation where I did not. She knew everything. She never said anything she shouldn’t have and she is an honest kind of woman. Trust: personal and abstract qualities in interpreting 53 Case 2: Maroof Khan, a Bangladeshi man Maroof had arrived from Bangladesh about seven years ago to join his wife, but they were now divorced and he lived apart from her and their daughter. As we saw earlier in this chapter, he generally felt that he could establish trust only after he had got to know someone. Maroof used his networks within the local Bangladeshi community to find employment, but felt that he spoke enough English to get by: ‘I can speak but sometimes I struggle’. Maroof said that all his friends spoke English, but he felt that he needed an experienced and knowledgeable interpreter when he was dealing with official systems: Friends don’t have knowledge about interpreting. If I need to go to social security, courts, I can take a family member who will understand English, or maybe I can manage myself, but sometimes I need help. So, I need to look for a person who understands the technical terms in interpreting. A normal person will not understand some technical language or phrase. A professional interpreter who works as an interpreter will know and understand better. An interpreter needed to have the necessary skills, including speaking a matching dialect to the person they were interpreting for, and should adhere to the discipline of their profession, putting their own interests aside: Someone who can take responsibility. Say, for instance, if someone does not understand something, the interpreter should explain so that the other person understands. An interpreter needs to have good listening skills so that he or she is not mistranslating anything said by either person. Therefore, an interpreter needs to have some knowledge and also has to be a competent person who can carry out their responsibility. Say, some people like to see others succeed and want to help them to succeed and will do everything to help. And there are others who are the opposite and don’t like to see others succeed. [An interpreter] should think that this person is in trouble, I should help to the best of my ability. Maroof, however, also felt that he and the interpreter needed to know each other for him to trust that the person concerned would put his interests first: Without knowing [each other], how could he do my interpreting? If I have a problem, he will help to solve the problem. I have trust in him, that he will help me. Access to services with interpreters 54 Case 3: Jie Chun, a Chinese woman Chun had lived in Britain for around 20 years, arriving as a young woman to join her husband, and lived with him and their three adult children. She had spent her childhood years in China, before moving to Hong Kong. Chun spoke very little English, and found employment and access to facilities within the Chinese community. She relied on being able to access Chinese-speaking health service personnel: Someone told me that there is a Chinese doctor in the GP surgery, so I could go and register with him . He speaks Chinese, but he is Malaysian. There are some Chinese, they’re Chinese looking but they can’t speak Chinese. Once I went to a hospital, a Chinese doctor talked to me. I told him ‘no English’, but he couldn’t speak Chinese either! Now there are many Chinese staff in the hospital. Sometimes I ask a nurse to interpret for me, they are all from Malaysia. Failing this, Chun sometimes had to rely on her friends or her daughter to act as interpreters for her. She trusted them personally, but not their skill and expertise, so she preferred a professional interpreter: [My friends and daughter] do not know how to interpret some medical words since they do not study medicine. Because of this, I always ask my family doctor to ask for the interpretation service for me and, when I go to the hospital, the interpreter can do the job for me. The interpreter is more professional. Their language ability is better. I prefer these professional interpreters. The main drawback to professional interpreters, though, was that she was unable to establish a continuous relationship with them, involving depth of knowledge, and this had an impact on her trust: The interpreters are normally very busy and I do not have many chances to chat with them. Normally an interpreter can only work an hour for each appointment. If the time is up, they will rush to the next appointment. I have never had a chat with them. They are normally late for the appointment because they need to take a bus or other transportation . I am telling you one thing. I have been to hospital many times but the interpreter is a different person every time. They do not know my situation, they do not know what disease I have. Even if I met an interpreter who I had met before, they would not remember me. The reason is that they go to different hospitals every day and work for many people, they cannot remember each individual. I’ve been to hospital more than ten times and there is only one interpreter who has worked for me twice. So it is impossible to Trust: personal and abstract qualities in interpreting 55 make them friends . I have to trust the interpreter [when I don’t know them], there is nothing I can do. These case studies concerning abstract trust have illustrated the way that people could draw on expectations that a professional interpreter would act in a trustworthy way, exercising their skill and expertise in a fitting and confidential manner, because of the standards of conduct associated with their role. Yet, we have seen that they also wanted elements of personal trust to be involved, notably familiarity, in order to alleviate their sense of the risk they were taking in relying on a professional interpreter to fulfil their obligations. They could adopt particular strategies for managing any distrust they might feel. Strategies for managing distrust in interpreters As several people pointed out, whatever their preferences about who should act as interpreter for them, they were often faced with no choice but to trust unknown people who were either available to, or provided for, them: As my children live far away, I have to accept whoever is available from outside. (Ravi Gokul, Gujerati man) Turkish people, to me they are Turks and even here I can’t trust them. They don’t like Kurdish people everywhere and they