Working conditions of community interpreters in Sweden (original) (raw)
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Working conditions of community interpreters in Sweden: Opportunities and shortcomings
2012
The aim of this article is to describe and analyse the working conditions of interpreters and interpreting services in Sweden. An understanding of interpreters' working conditions is a key to such factors as the management of resources, the reading and implementation of legislation, the organisation of interpreting services and the performance of interpreters in different situations. An understanding of interpreters' working conditions is also important in understanding how multiculturalism and multilingualism are viewed on a national scale in Sweden. This review of the working conditions of interpreters is based on material from two joint research projects, which appear to indicate that interpreters as a group have much to say and often reflect on their work and working conditions. The interpreters participating in this study often demonstrated a strong commitment to professionalism. At the same time, however, many of the reflections recorded for this study were about things that undermine professionalism: bad working conditions, low pay, the feeling of being "as replaceable as potatoes", and the feeling that the social status of interpreters is low. In analysing the consequences of working conditions we have found a tension between professionalism and deprofessionalisation. This tension has consequences for the rule of law and integration.
Interpreters in Sweden : A tool for Equal Rights?
Gramma Journal of Theory and Criticism, 2011
This paper deals with professional community interpreting as a tool for guaranteeing equal rights. The main focus is on the interpreter with special focus on children in interpreted meetings. Equal access to legal, social and medical rights is a prerequisite for a democratic welfare state. These rights depend to a large extent on verbal communication between an individual and a public servant such as a lawyer, a social worker, a teacher or a doctor. Non-Swedish speakers need interpretation in order to be able to come into contact with these services and enjoy their full rights. Professional interpretation, therefore, is a necessary tool to enable the public servant to do his/her job; more importantly, it is a tool to obtain maximum legal, social and medical security for the immigrant. The paper deals with the actors involved, and with issues of responsibility and synergy. The empirical material has been collected from two research projects on community interpreting (2008-2011). A conclusion is that in community interpreting the interpreter and the public servant have responsibilities. Therefore, professionalism together with mutual respect and teamwork are important tools to avoid misunderstandings and to guarantee full access to equal rights. Interpreters in Sweden-A Tool for Equal Rights? 61 3 The Community Interpreter-a Cultural Broker is financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (www.rj.se). Behind Closed Doors-The significance of community interpreting for guaranteeing legal, medical and social rights and integration, with a special focus on the reception of separated children and the processing of their asylum cases is cofinanced by the European Refugee Fund III. The project has been ethics tested in accordance with the Ethical Review Act (2003: 460). All places and names are fictitious. 4 The numbers in parenthetical references refer to which interpreter we are quoting and whether it is the first, second or third interview.
Translating Machine or Creator? On Finnish-Swedish Community Interpreting in Sweden
HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017
The paper relates the objectives and preliminary results from a project on Finnish/Swedish community interpreting in Sweden, the so called FIKON-project at the Department of Finnish, Stockholm University (Swed. Finsk-svensk kontakttolkning i Sverige). A point of departure for the investigation are the ethical recommendations to interpreters formulated by the Swedish National Board of Trade, according to which the interpreter has to act neutrally and objectively. The data, deriving from 32 tape recordings in four different communicative settings (social insurance office, doctor/patient-conversation, consultation of diabetes nurse and courtroom proceedings), show a considerable deviation in the acting of the interpreters relative to the recommendations. A theoretical framework for an analysis of the data is the skopos theory.
The interpreter – a cultural broker?
Benjamins Translation Library, 2013
Since 1980 the role of the community interpreter in Sweden is defined in a document called Good Interpreting Practice. It was compiled by The Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency as a means of regulating the role of the interpreter and its professional ethics aspects (most recently revised in 2010). 2 The rules in Good Interpreting Practice are general and apply to all interpreters and all interpreting situations. The interpreter 1) should interpret everything that is said, 2) should be impartial and neutral, 3) is bound by secrecy, and 4) should interpret in the first person. In a three year long research project The Interpreter-a cultural broker at Lund University, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, we have investigated and analysed the role of the interpreter that takes shape in practice. The project is based on the assumption that interpreters work behind closed doors and that they become witnesses to how the exercise of authority and communication is carried out in multicultural Sweden. Over time interpreters collect experience about interpreted meetings and different kinds of power relations, loyalties and responsibilities. They also have to deal with a wide range of ethical issues and dilemmas. The purpose of this article is to explore the role of the interpreter in a changing landscape, and especially explore what it means to serve as a cultural broker from the point of view of the interpreter. The aim is also to analyse the term "cultural broker" from a broader perspective. What is the meaning of culture and cultural competence
When interpreter users in the public sector, such as doctors, judges, lawyers, teachers and child welfare officers lack a common language with users of their services, they need the help of an interpreter in order to carry out their duties. Such institutional dialogues are often fraught with communication difficulties. It seems that the mere presence of an immigrant moves the attention unduly away from general communication problems to cultural differences or poor interpretation, often overshadowing the public service employee's role. The Directorate of Integration and Diversity (IMDi), responsible for interpreting in the public sector in Norway, conducted five surveys on how public servants in Norway communicate via interpreters. One of the main findings from the surveys, that public servants need to learn more about how to communicate via interpreters, led to an allocation of funds to a development project called 'Communication via interpreter for public service employees' (2011-2012). The aim was to develop an introductory course for all public servants in Norway on how to communicate via an interpreter. In this article I briefly described the background and content of this development project paying particular attention to the contributions by the course participants who actively participated in developing the course. I also started a discussion about the phases identified in the participants' self-awareness process: 1. Understanding the imbalance of power in institutional dialogues 2. Understanding the intersection between interpreters' and public servants' areas of expertise and 3. Taking back the responsibility for communication in institutional dialogues. Based on real-life examples from the Norwegian public sector, this article showed the importance of delineating clearer boundaries between the interpreter's and the interpreter user's areas of responsibility/expertise in order to facilitate communication in institutional dialogues.
Role(s) of a community interpreter versus professional standards and ethics
Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Warsaw, 2010
The aim of the present thesis is to outline the community interpreter's roles in a variety of settings, particularly in asylum and refugee hearings. It is also intended to juxtapose the interpreter's actual performance with the provisions of professional standards and codes of ethics addressed to community interpreters. It is commonly believed by users of community interpreting that the interpreter should remain „invisible“ and should not excessively engage in interpreted communication between representatives of diverse cultures and social groups speaking different languages. His/her role is usually defined in terms of a „faithful“ translation of a source language utterance into the target language, i.e. „just translating“. At the same time, he/she is typically required to stay impartial and neutral by distancing himself from the contents of interpreted verbal exchanges and the primary interlocutors' behaviour. It also frequently happens that, when defining their own role, interpreters themselves refer to misconceptions which depict them as emotionally detached „translating machines“. This image of the community interpreter is further reinforced by the existing professional standards and codes of ethics aimed at practitioners of interpreting. This thesis accentuates the complexity of the community interpreter's role and underlines the non-feasibility of describing him/her as an „invisible“, „transparent“ or a „neutral“ person. In addition, it discards the myth according to which he/she is capable of interpreting faithfully each and every utterance, without introducing any changes to its form. In face of the great number of contexts in which community interpreters operate, developing uniform codes of conduct remains unrealistic and the existing role prescriptions, on the other hand, can hardly find application in real-life communicative encounters. As a result, community interpreters face ethical dilemmas since the normative role prescriptions they know strictly prohibit acting as a cultural mediator or one of the primary interlocutors' assistant, roles which they are frequently found to perform. In this situation it is also impossible to properly delimit the interpreter's role even in cases his/her involvement in interpreted interaction is objectively too extensive. The present thesis discusses in more detail all of the abovementioned issues relating to the community interpreter‟s role and presents potential solutions to the problems identified. The first chapter chronologically presents accounts of the community interpreter's performance developed within various disciplines, i.e. linguistics, medical sciences, social sciences and interpreting studies, and emphasizes his/her active and multi-faceted role in intercultural communication. At the same time, theoretical models and approaches employed to describe the interpreter's role and his/her performance, stemming chiefly from the field of sociology, linguistics and sociolinguistics, are enumerated. Some room is also given to the origin of the invisibility/neutrality myth which is perceived by the author to hamper understanding of the nature of community interpreting as well as the community interpreter's role. The accounts of the interpreter's actions referred to in the first chapter clearly prove that presenting him/her as a “translating machine” is highly unjustified. The second chapter juxtaposes the provisions of professional standards and codes of ethics with the interpreter's actual performance in the refugee and asylum context. This juxtaposition is intended to reveal the deficiencies of the interpreter's normative role prescriptions and draw the reader's attention to the fact that they reinforce certain misconceptions and myths concerning community interpreters on the part of individuals and institutions using interpreting services. These misconceptions and myths, in turn, hinder smooth cooperation between interpreters and representatives of other professions. Considering the deficiencies of the existing codes of conduct, chapter two postulates altering their provisions and suggests implementing professional development courses for interpreters and public institutions' employees as a means of facilitating their joint performance. The third chapter presents an analysis of the interpreter‟s performance in refugee hearings held in the Office for Foreigners in Warsaw. The analysis is based on the accounts of the interpreter‟s actions provided by the Office‟s employees. Its main aim is to verify whether interpreters in the Office ignore the principle of “invisibility” and faithfulness of interpretation in order to facilitate communication between participants of refugee hearings. In addition, the research is designed to identify any potential factors that could prevent interpreters from complying with such specified interpreting principles. Moreover, it was the author‟s intention to establish the extent to which the perceptions of the interpreter's role on the part of the officers are conditioned by stereotypes concerning community interpreting and to juxtapose the immigration officers' understanding of the interpreter's role with their expectations of him/her. The empirical part of the present thesis enabled the author to draw conclusions concerning the interpreter‟s profile and his/her role in refugee hearings held in the Officer for Foreigners. Lastly, recommendations for optimizing cooperation between immigration officers and interpreters are made and the need to improve interpreting quality during refugee hearings is signalled."
Training the Trainers: Nordic Seminar on Intepreter Education//Utbildningen av utbildare: Nordiskt möte om tolkutbildning. Cecilia Wadensjö (ed.), pp. 67-81. Tolk- och översättarinstitutet: Stockholms universitet, 2013
This paper reports on participants' experiences with a university-level course for teachers of interpreting, given three times at Stockholm University, Sweden. An important purpose of the course was to provide a collaborative learning environment and to support and promote a feeling of common ground between educators working within various branches of interpreting.
On Common Ground? The Swedish Experience with University Education of Interpreter Teachers
2013
This paper reports on participants’ experiences with a university-level course for teachers of interpreting, given three times at Stockholm University, Sweden. An important purpose of the course was to provide a collaborative learning environment and to support and promote a feeling of common ground between educators working within various branches of interpreting. Drawing primarily upon a focus group interview and on students’ written evaluations, we have indications that the course did promote a sense of similarity between students across traditional borders. Also, an interesting difference between spoken-language interpreting educators and sign-language interpreting educators emerged. Educators with experiences from the first category of courses seemed to be much oriented towards preparing the students for a final exam, similar to the national certification test (basically, a teacher assessed proficiency test), whereas those working in sign-language- interpreting courses seemed t...