Valero-Garcés, Carmen & Rebecca Tipton (Eds.).

Ideology, ethics
and policy development in public service interpreting and translation.
Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2017. 256 pp.

Reviewed by Uldis Ozolins (University of Western Sydney)

This is a difficult but important book. Ideology is not that common a topic in
discussions of interpreting, but an awareness of the larger forces that can influ-
ence interpreting policy – and particularly the discourses that swirl around cul-
tural diversity and social tensions and their effects – will be crucial for the future
of interpreting.
This book, on the one hand, shows how fragile a project it has been to profes-
sionalise the (community) interpreting field, in circumstances where political or
public policy ideologies dismiss concerns for professionalism and insist on poli-
cies that reduce quality and accountability. The examples of the UK (legal inter-
preting outsourced) and the Netherlands (stunningly, withdrawing support for
hospital interpreters) are reminders of potent forces that can derail professional-
ism, leaving massively under-resourced NGOs to cope.
On the other hand, the book also looks at other processes that do not deny
interpreting services or professionalism per se, but challenge interpreters through
the introduction of other technologies or practices, including:
– the way video interpreting is affecting legal interpreting;
– the continual drama of how interpreters work in conflict zones – very often
they are locally hired, and thus extremely vulnerable;
– interpreters working with minors;
– interpreting in trauma situations;
– changing views and policies in relation to immigration.
Another constant feature of the book is engagement with ethical issues; however,
reflecting much other contemporary literature on the subject, this is done in a way
that is sometimes problematic, as will be shown.
Ingrid Cáceres Würsig’s opening historical essay examines how the loyalty
of interpreters was guaranteed in previous centuries, in situations where the first
interpreters were often foreigners or came from minorities. While the history of
Malinche in Latin America is familiar to many, and there may be some knowledge
of the dragoman tradition, the chapter very economically covers these and Islamic
Spain, Constantinople and early-modern East-West relations, showing the often
[Link]
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© John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Review of Valero-Garcés & Tipton (2017) 325

long-drawn-out game that was played to ensure loyalty. The hereditary position of
interpreters and continuity of service, ensuring familiarity with protocol in diplo-
matic settings and earning them the trust of their masters, were key elements. As
the author summarises,

states have attempted to use intermediaries with the necessary technical compe-
tencies who would also remain loyal to their interests, this second requirement
being even more important than the first. (p. 17)

Today, the breakneck speed and instant needs of war and conflict again raise ques-
tions of loyalty, but in a wicked way – the chief determinant of military trust in
locally recruited interpreters will come down almost entirely to their level of secu-
rity clearance. This links to Maria Brander de la Iglesias’ contribution on modern
conflict and the ‘sea of troubles’ in determining the ethics of interpreting, where
the interpreter will often be a ‘fixer’ who also provides leads on who to interrogate.
Given the abandonment of interpreters by some forces after the withdrawal from
conflict, the greater ethical questions are precisely for those military and politi-
cal forces that do not provide safety for their past interpreters. Documentation on
western forces, such as the USA in Iraq, is revealing, but further research is needed
on how other military and intervening forces – in the Middle East or elsewhere ‒
deal with language needs.

The concept of ideology

Cáceres Würsig provides a standard and adequate definition of ideology as “a

value and belief system used by state powers in order to perpetuate their interests”,
though it can be argued that non-state players and institutions may espouse their
own ideologies. Two articles deal explicitly with state ideologies. Paola Gentile
gives what still reads as a shocking account of trends in the UK and Netherlands.
In the UK, court interpreting has been outsourced in line with neo-liberal ideol-
ogy, resulting in declining standards, unacceptable levels of remuneration and the
flight of professionally certified interpreters from the field, with the Ministry of
Justice nevertheless refusing to change its policies. In the Netherlands, the gov-
ernment has eliminated almost all funding to hospital interpreters, and Gentile
recounts the overarching rationale that newcomers must learn the Dutch lan-
guage, and that providing interpreting undermines integration and (implicitly)
loyalty to the state – an argument also heard in the UK. This signals a significant
shift away from promotion of multiculturalism towards suspicion of newcomers,
or of the “Other”. And in such situations, as Rebecca Tipton’s article on NGOs and
language services shows, the ‘third sector’ is left to pick up the pieces where the
326 Uldis Ozolins

official welfare or settlement services will not provide for the most needy. NGOs
operating in welfare, trauma counseling and related areas must all then face the
invidious question of how to provide language services on shrinking or almost
non-existent budgets. In these examples, there will be no easy solutions in the
face of neglectful state action, requiring the building of coalitions and the long
march through the institutions to restore adequate services, glimpses of which can
already be seen.
Pathological state ideologies are not the only issues interpreters have to face.
Technological and service provision changes, introduced sometimes for perfectly
rational reasons of expediting proceedings, can have unintended consequences
for interpreters, as shown in Jérôme Devaux’s examination of video interpreting
in court proceedings: for example, chuchotage to the minority speaker while other
court proceedings take place – a standard practice in on-site court interpret-
ing – is impossible with video conferencing, where everything must be managed
by consecutive. Carmen Valero-Garcés’ contribution looks one step deeper into
the legal system with an examination of prisons, where the ethics of interpreters
can clash with those of prison officials, who see nothing wrong with using other
inmates to interpret, guided by their code of ensuring the right of prisoners to be
heard and to have their concerns communicated. For prison officials, waiting for
interpreters in often fast-moving and security-conscious environments need not
always be seen as a necessity. European directives here seem very distant. For the
prison officials,

Trust in the interpreter based on his/her experience or mere knowledge of contact

languages is valued above training, without taking into account fidelity or impar-
tiality as long as the basic rights of the inmate are satisfied and conflicts are
avoided. (p. 127)

Role and ethics

Two other contributions deal with perceptions of role: Heidi Salaets and Katalin
Balogh look at participants’ and interpreters’ perceptions of the interpreter’s role
in investigative interviews of minors in Belgium and Italy, providing a useful
comparison of the two, while Małgorzata Tryuk looks at the often abrasive rela-
tions among participants and interpreters in asylum hearings in Warsaw. Inter-
preting for minors is not a common role for interpreters, and it is not a surprise
to see variations in practice and perspective. Interestingly, the survey compiled
by Salaets and Balogh shows a more tightly legalistic view of interpreters’ role in
the Belgian case, perhaps reflecting the extraordinarily highly charged political
 Review of Valero-Garcés & Tipton (2017) 327

atmosphere in Belgium surrounding paedophile/child abuse cases, compared

with the more inclusive attitudes of Italian workers to the interpreter’s role, in
an environment where concepts of mediation and interpreting are often synony-
mous.
Tryuk’s account of Warsaw asylum-seeking interviews to some degree reflects
the negative views of the Other already encountered in studies of the UK and
Netherlands, but in a context where immigration has hitherto been almost non-
existent in Poland, and remains a highly controversial political issue. Again, Tryuk
has usefully interviewed both interpreters and immigration officials, and it is their
views of role she investigates. She finds what she sees as an inconsistency between
interpreters’ codes of ethics and their actual practice in assignments, intervening
in various ways not prescribed in the codes. But, interestingly, she also finds an
inconsistency in immigration officials’ perspectives: on the one hand, they have
a very conduit-focused view of the interpreter needing to be entirely detached,
concerned only with accuracy of rendition; yet, in descriptions of actual practice
they praise interpreters for other activities – ensuring calm, dealing with emo-
tions, relieving tensions.
Tryuk’s argument that there is this double inconsistency reflects much of
the recent literature on interpreting in finding divergences from codes of ethics,
bringing into question the role and ethical understanding of all parties, particu-
larly interpreters. Yet this account of both ethical codes and role is problematic.
Tryuk argues that “research shows that the interpreter rarely acts as a detached or
neutral ‘translating machine’ as prescribed in many codes of ethics” (p. 181), and
sees these codes as prescribing “neutrality and invisibility” (p. 179). In this book
she is not alone: codes of ethics are referred to some 33 times, almost always stress-
ing their limitations and restrictive nature. More theoretical approaches, such as
that of M. Rosario Martín Ruano, in her highly nuanced paper on shifting para-
digms, posit even deeper dangers related to codes of ethics:

Even though codes of ethics may prove helpful to build public trust and to stimu-
late reflection on the standards to be met by practitioners, it is also true that they
might contribute to the fossilisation of the profession if they uncritically reify
restrictive, limiting or obsolete visions of translation and interpreting as a profes-
sion […]. (p. 30)

Some points need to be urgently made about this trend in the literature on codes,
not in this volume alone. First, codes for any profession can only provide a frame-
work for ethical practice, not prescribing behavior in every instance, and codes
rely upon professional judgment by the practitioner. The fact that many who work
as interpreters do not receive the training and professional socialisation required
to be able to fully comprehend their code and their own agency is regrettable, but
328 Uldis Ozolins

is not a fault of the codes. Secondly (and more germanely), there is much inco-
herence in accounts of what are the supposed departures from the code, and what
are the interventions and deviations that we can so analytically claim as inconsis-
tencies. Not all alleged deviations are illegitimate – indeed, many supposed devia-
tions are not deviations at all, but essential for interpreting.
Bancroft, in her chapter on trauma-informed interpreting, gives an illuminat-
ing description of clearly illegitimate interventions, in a highly sensitive field:

Thus, interpreters who get involved, give advice, explain cultural issues or tell sur-
vivors or service providers what to do out of an emotional desire to ‘help out’ are
in fact taking control of that victim’s life at a vulnerable moment. (p. 201)

Yet many of the other supposed departures from codes are no such thing, as
explained in Tebble’s (2012) work, pointing out the difference between ‘interfering’
and ‘interpreting’: many ‘departures’ or ‘interventions’ are attempts at clarification,
understanding and, in some cases, sheer crowd control to ensure that interpreting
can proceed. There is all the difference in the world between clumsily and unnec-
essarily taking over in an interview, and doing everything possible to ensure that
interpreting can take place coherently. Tryuk herself gives an excellent illustration
of this, in an interview with an officer:

When the interviewing [Immigration Officer] urged the interpreter to continue

to translate the hearing in spite of the fact that the lady was crying and was unable
to answer, the interpreter refused to translate and asked the officer to wait for a
while to let her calm down as any further questioning was pointless. (p. 189)

Exactly. And there is nothing there that contravenes any code of ethics.
It is important to say that, beyond the codes, many of the authors in this
collection are attempting new departures in theorising and developing concepts
helpful to our understanding of interpreting and its problems. Martín Ruano,
in a paper that is quite challenging to the reader, gives a Bourdieusan analysis
of the shift in social theory from ‘equality’ and ‘redistribution’ to a heightened
awareness of ‘recognition’, as an underlying paradigm in a context of increasing
social diversity. Failures to fully comprehend cultural difference radically affect
the environment in which interpreters work. The ethical stand of Camayd-Freixas
informs several chapters, bringing a welcome emphasis on interpreter agency, and
Devaux also takes considerations of ethics one step further in an imaginative use
of Chesterman’s well-known categorisation of ethical approaches.
In the final chapter of the book, the ever-productive Marjory Bancroft hones
in on an issue that has increasingly confronted interpreters around the world –
what Bancroft calls:
 Review of Valero-Garcés & Tipton (2017) 329

A young yet vital specialization: trauma-informed interpreting (TII) defined here

as a specialisation of interpreting that integrates research on trauma into the pro-
fessional practice of interpreters. (p. 195)

Bancroft outlines two short programs in the USA which train interpreters for
these areas, Healing Voices: Interpreting for Survivors of Torture, War Trauma and
Sexual Violence, dealing largely with refugee cases; and Breaking Silence: Interpret-
ing for Victim Services, focusing more on victims of serious crime of all kinds. The
programs alert interpreters to the ongoing nature of trauma, the work of trauma
specialists and their communicative needs when working with interpreters, the
dangers of retraumatisation during recounting of experiences, and vicarious trau-
mas for interpreters. For many reasons, this is a growing area of practice for inter-
preters, reflecting greater social awareness of abuse in its various forms.
Yet Bancroft‘s advocacy becomes at one point curiously strident and antag-
onistic to interpreters, when talking of problems of retraumatisation, where she
claims that “most interpreters are not even aware of what retraumatising a sur-
vivor means, far less how to avoid it.” (199) This dismissive attitude is puzzling
and totally unwarranted – of all professionals, interpreters would in many cases be
the most keenly aware of trauma and the effects of trauma, including retraumati-
sation, and indeed the interpreters who established the field were often involved
in trauma interpreting with poorly resourced institutions, long before this field
gained its current salience.
One specific area of trauma is that of contemporary sexual abuse or family
violence. Bancroft’s emphasis, as with much other contemporary literature on the
issue, is on interpreting for survivors, yet in sexual assault cases any interpreter
needs to be aware that they may in some cases be as likely to interpret for a per-
petrator of abuse as for a survivor. Building rapport, dealing with emotions and
getting the chronology right are crucial for those dealing with either survivors
or perpetrators, and the interpreter must be able to deal with these needs and
give precise renderings of the contributions of any participants. This circumstance
brings us back with a jolt to understand just how important are some of the basic
principles of ethics, such as impartiality and accuracy.
This volume is richly rewarding – if demanding – reading, on areas and issues
that are imperative for interpreters to understand, and a call to arms to be more
alert to the wider social and ideological forces impacting on our profession.
330 Uldis Ozolins

Reference

Tebble, Helen (2012) Interpreting or interfering? In C. Baraldi & L. Gavioli (Eds.), Coordinating
participation in dialogue interpreting. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 23–44.
[Link]

Address for correspondence

Uldis Ozolins
University of Western Sydney
76 Alexandra St., Greensborough
Victoria, 3088
Australia
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