Tillit og kvalitet
Authors: Saltnes Urdal Gro Hege 
Published: January 2015

Trust and quality: two interdependent concepts

A service is intangible, it is created and consumed in the here and now. Although it may be a challenging task to measure the quality of a service objectively, clearly some services are of good quality, while others are not.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines quality as "the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements (or needs)." In other words, any service that meets users' expectations or needs will be of good quality. However, views will differ as to what constitutes good quality and how to achieve it.

This article is based on a study of deaf people who use interpreters and of hearing Sign Language interpreters. The study examined the parties’ experiences of interaction in interpreting situations where the primary activity was interpretation from Norwegian Sign Language to spoken Norwegian. By considering situations from an interactional perspective, we have focused on how the parties create their social reality. We have also sought to pinpoint the influence of various factors on the experiences of deaf people and interpreters in interpreting situations; and have sought to identify what the parties believe characterizes an interpreting situation of good quality.

We produced our data by establishing two focus groups, one consisting of deaf people and one consisting of hearing Sign Language interpreters. When analysing the resulting data, our focus was on identifying the thoughts and experiences that determined the behaviour of both the deaf person and the hearing interpreter. Based on the thoughts of both parties regarding actions and experiences, we applied analytical tools based on ethnomethodology and concepts of indexicality and reflexivity. Our aim has been to examine the context in which the actions and experiences were described, and to apply different perspectives to identify the nature of the interaction between the different analytical components.

Taking an interactional perspective, the article examines the various challenges that may arise in an interpreting situation. Such challenges may relate to communication; differences between Norwegian Sign Language and spoken Norwegian; and to the interpreting process itself. These challenges affect the interaction between the deaf person and the interpreter, making it more difficult to achieve a good-quality interpreting situation.

When communicating in an interpreting situation, the deaf person and the interpreter employ various control mechanisms when attempting to assess or improve the quality of the situation. Both deaf persons and interpreters mentioned attempting to exert control over the allocation of the interpreter/deaf person that they would be working with as a means of gaining visibility and control over the situation. Two factors that both parties believed could improve the quality of the interpreting situation and enhance their feelings of control were preparation and pre-discussion (a conversation between the deaf person and the interpreter that takes place in advance of a particular interpreting situation). In addition, during the interpreting session, both parties attempt to verify whether the interpreter has perceived an expression correctly. A central assumption in Goffman is that people attempt to control other people’s impressions of them through expressions we give and give off. In an interpreted conversation, however, it will be extremely difficult for a deaf person to verify what the interpreter is saying, and accordingly what impression he or she is making on the deaf person’s behalf. Since the interpreter often is the only party present who is familiar with both languages, this may cause tension between the deaf person and the interpreter.

Sign Language interpreting situations require collaboration between hearing persons, deaf persons, and interpreters. Situations that require collaboration often involve a mix of mutual monitoring and control, and trust. Since trust is a relevant factor, establishing trust isimportant. The deaf people and the interpreters in the focus groups referred to the concept of trust in different ways, and this in itself may say something about how trust is established. Both parties agreed, however, that while trust may be present from the outset, trust could also be built up over time. The process of the parties getting to know each other plays a major role in the building up of mutual trust. While it is sometimes argued that trust arises more from the behaviour of professional practitioners than from their qualifications and the quality of the work they perform, there is evidence that, in interpreting situations, trust and quality are intertwined. The nature of the interrelation between trust and quality is experienced differently, however, by deaf persons and by interpreters. On the one hand, a deaf person will trust the interpreter if she or he is confident that the quality of the interpretation is satisfactory. On the other hand, interpreters have to feel that they are trusted in order to perform in a qualitatively satisfactory manner.