ProfessionalizationofCommunityIntepreting
ProfessionalizationofCommunityIntepreting
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Holly Mikkelson
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Holly Mikkelson
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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Abstract: Community interpreting, which includes court and medical interpreting, is
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following the typical pattern of a profession in its infancy. In the beginning it is
characterized by a lack of standards for training and practice, disorganization and disunity
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among practitioners, a lack of recognition of the profession among clients and the public,
and poor working conditions. These circumstances improve as practitioners unite and
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form professional associations to impose discipline and standardization and to achieve
recognition through education, legislation and public relations. This paper will define the
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terms “community interpreting” and “profession,” present a comparative analysis of
community interpreting and other professions, and recommend a course of action to
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1. DEFINITION OF TERMS
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Community interpreting has been defined in a variety of ways, ranging from the kind of
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interpreting that takes place informally in neighborhoods and community agencies, and is
performed by amateurs or ad hoc interpreters (Ref. 1, p. 29), to a more formal occupation
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involving practitioners with some training in medical, legal, or social service interpreting
(Ref. 2). Roda Roberts (Ref. 3) provides a more detailed discussion of these definitions.
This paper employs the definition found in the announcement of the First International
Conference on Interpreting in Legal, Health and Social Service Settings:
Community Interpreting enables people who are not fluent speakers of the official
language(s) of the country to communicate with the providers of public services so
as to facilitate full and equal access to legal, health, education, government, and
social services (Ref. 4).
Other terms have been used to describe this activity. In the United Kingdom, for example,
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“public service interpreting” is the preferred term; while in Canada, “cultural interpreting”
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is often used. Other designations include “dialogue interpreting” and “ad hoc
interpreting.” “Community interpreting” seems to be the term most widely accepted in the
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literature, however (Ref. 3).
1.2 Profession I C
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The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines the term “profession”
as “1) an occupation or vocation requiring training in the liberal arts or the sciences and
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advanced study in a specialized field; 2) the body of qualified persons of one specific
occupation or field.” The term has been used in a variety of contexts throughout history,
beginning with the religious connotation of taking vows or expressing a belief. The sense
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of an occupation or calling came along later. In modern times, medicine, law, and the
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ministry have been considered the original “learned professions” (jokes about the “first
profession” notwithstanding), and are regarded as models for others to emulate (Ref. 5, p.
13). This is especially true of medicine, which has reached the pinnacle of prestige and
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power in the United States. Sociologists, in particular, have studied the process whereby
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an occupation becomes a profession and thus enhances the social status of its practitioners.
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This discussion of professionalization centers on the work of Joseph Tseng (Ref. 5), who
has written a comprehensive review of the literature on professionalism and developed his
own model based on conference interpreting in Taiwan. After presenting Tseng’s findings
and conclusions, I will apply his model to community interpreting in the United States.
2. PROFESSIONALIZATION
Tseng reviews the writings of a number of scholars who have examined the process
whereby an occupation becomes a profession. He identifies two schools of thought, those
who accept the “trait theory” of professionalization and those who uphold the “theory of
control.”
2.1 Trait Theory
The trait theory states that an occupation becomes a profession by attaining certain
characteristics, including adherence to a code of ethics, a body of theoretical knowledge,
licensure or registration, and loyalty to colleagues. Proponents of the trait theory have
devised checklists of attributes that can be ticked off to determine how far a given
occupation has progressed toward the goal of professionalization (Ref. 6).
The theory of control, on the other hand, goes beyond internal characteristics and looks at
how the occupation relates to other components of the labor market and institutions in
society. According to this view, the more control practitioners of an occupation are able to
exert over the substance of their work and the market in which they operate, the more
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professionalized the occupation. Tseng notes that the theory of control views professions
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in terms of the amount of power they wield, and that professionalization is a collective
effort rather than an individual one: “Powerful professions are characterized by powerful
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associations”(Ref. 5, p. 20). An occupational group can exert both internal control (over
the body of knowledge and training required for entry into the field and the behavior or
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ethics of the practitioners) and external control (working conditions and relations with
clients). The legal profession, for example, defines not only the curriculum of law schools
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and the content of bar exams, but also the standards for training and testing in related
occupations (paralegals, court reporters, court clerks). As a result, these related
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occupations have comparatively little autonomy and are less likely to attain the degree of
professionalization that lawyers and judges enjoy.
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One element of prestigious professions that has often been remarked upon is the
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succeeds in mystifying its expertise is able to control the market by prohibiting interlopers
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A corollary to the mystification principle is the notion that professions gain power by
defining the needs of their clients rather than allowing the clients to set the agenda (Ref. 8).
Thus, until recently it was virtually impossible to obtain a divorce without retaining an
attorney, because it was impossible for a layperson to know what he needed to do to
achieve the goal of legally severing marital bonds. It was not until a few reformers wrested
that power away from attorneys by writing self-help books, complete with sample forms
and detailed checklists, that it finally became possible to accomplish an uncontested
divorce without retained counsel. (If any property or children are involved in the divorce,
which is usually the case, it is still impossible to proceed without a lawyer.) If a client is
able to come to a practitioner and say, “I know what I want, just help me with the
technicalities,” as in the case of an interior decorator or a hairdresser, the occupation does
not have a great deal of autonomy or power. If the client is able to understand what the
practitioner is doing to help him accomplish his goal, he maintains a certain amount of
control over the transaction. On the other hand, if he consults a physician who performs a
strange test on a mysterious machine, for example, he has no means of challenging or
questioning the physician’s judgment.
The theory of control also posits that powerful professions establish alliances with the
state. If they are perceived as performing a service that benefits the public, the state will
grant them special privileges and independence. They are more likely to be self-regulated
than other occupations (consider the Bar Association’s role in writing bar exam and
disciplining its members, for example), and this autonomy, in turn, enhances the public’s
trust in the profession (Ref. 9).
Tseng concludes that the theory of control is more useful than the trait theory for
understanding how an occupation becomes a profession, but it fails to provide guidelines
for an occupation that aspires to achieve that objective. Consequently, he provides his
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own model of professionalization, which draws upon elements of trait and control theory
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and adds components based on his experience with conference interpreting.
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2.3 Tseng Model
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According to Tseng, the first phase in the process of professionalization is market disorder.
This period is characterized by fierce competition among the practitioners of an
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occupation:
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Practitioners in the market cannot keep outsiders from entering practice. They
themselves may have started practice as outsiders or quacks. Recipients of the
service either have very little understanding of what practitioners do or very little
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confidence in the services they receive. It is very likely that the public simply does
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not care about the quality of the services. Hence, distrust and misunderstanding
permeate the market. What matters more to clients, in the absence of quality
control, is usually price. Whoever demands the lowest fees gets the job. .... When
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the clients need services, they simply call upon anyone who is around and asking a
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reasonable fee. Clients who demand quality services are usually troubled by the
fact that they do not know where to get qualified practitioners for services (Ref. 5,
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pp. 44-45).
Unlike doctors or lawyers, who are able to mystify their occupations, interpreters deal with
clients who think they know what interpreters do (and think it is very simple), but in fact
do not. Furthermore, in many cases (especially in community interpreting settings) the
professionals who work with interpreters do not value the interpreting service nearly as
much as a patient values his health or a legal client his freedom. The upshot is that
interpreting is not mystified by the client’s ignorance, but merely devalued.
Eventually, though, training institutions do have a positive impact, because the most
highly-trained practitioners become dissatisfied with the status quo. The graduates of the
most prestigious schools
are likely to nurture and cultivate the same vision for the market, so that when the
number of such graduates reaches a certain proportion of the practitioners in the
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market, the consensus that the occupation should be organized to protect clients
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from malpractice and themselves from outsiders comes naturally among such
practitioners (Ref. 5, p. 48).
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Thus begins Phase II, the consolidation of the profession and the development of a
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consensus about practitioners’ aspirations. Training institutions must adapt to an increased
demand for quality services. They also support the emergence of professional associations
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as a means of enhancing the prestige of their graduates. Tseng views the professional
association as a critical factor in professionalization. In this third stage,
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professionals can really work collectively with their colleagues to exert their
influence over their job description and the behavior of their collegauges, control
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admission into their circle and appeal to clients and the public for recognition of
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the profession. The power and achievements of the association strengthen the
commitment of members to the course they are pursuing (Ref. 5, pp. 48-49).
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The next step is for the professional association(s) to formulate ethical standards. “The
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enforcement of the code of ethics is crucial,” Tseng points out, “because it functions
externally as one of the bargaining chips to earn public trust and internally as an
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indispensable tool for internal control” (Ref. 5, p. 49). He also emphasizes the
interdependence of the code of ethics and the professional association: As professional
associations become more influential, their codes of ethics become more sophisticated and
are more strictly enforced; but if enforcement is weak, the associations cannot be powerful
or function properly.
As professional associations gain strength, they are able to exert more influence on the
public through publicity campaigns. “With publicity measures,” says Tseng, “the
association tries to convince the clientele and the public to accept its definition of the
professional content of work and working conditions. In other words, the purpose is to
achieve market control” (Ref. 5, p. 51). If the public relations campaign is successful, the
professional association can then try to influence political and legal authorities through
lobbying campaigns with a view to achieving legislative recognition and licensure. This
marks the final phase of Tseng’s model, at which point the profession has managed to
ensure its own protection and autonomy.
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The transition from Phase I to Phase IV is not a smooth or quick progression, Tseng warns.
“It is not a peaceful evolution, but rather a process involving conflicts and a power struggle
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at each stage.” In particular, evolving from Phase I to Phase III
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depends on the resilience of the practitioners aspiring for professionalization in
holding out against unqualified competitors and market encroachers. The
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consensus and commitment reached at the second stage are fragile, because
practitioners may change their occupation if better job alternatives are available or
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making a living becomes too demoralizing, thus shrinking the population and
reducing the force of the professional aspirants (Ref. 5, p. 53).
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Tseng makes it clear that the professional association is a sine qua non for
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professionalization, but that even with an association in place, dissent among the members
can weaken its effectiveness. A key factor is enforcement of the code of ethics:
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of the profession to the public and legal authorities rests upon the extent to which it
can control and develop the expertise and enforce the code of ethics. It is
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Tseng stresses that professionalization is a circular process, with each phase providing
feedback and reinforcement to the previous phase. It is also important to look at the social
context in which an emerging profession exists, he notes. If other, more powerful
professions oppose the recognition of the occupation in question as a profession, it will
have a more difficult time emerging. For example, Ruth Morris (Ref. 10) has shown that
the legal profession feels threatened by autonomy or independent thinking on the part of a
court interpreter, fearing that the judge’s role of interpreting the law and the attorney’s role
of presenting evidence will be usurped by the interpreter. The legal profession has tight
control of the body of knowledge required for practicing law, and it will not easily
relinquish that control to an allied profession. In her research, she has found
negative judicial views of the interpreting process and of those who perform it, in
the traduttore traditore tradition, spanning the gamut from annoyance to venom,
with almost no understanding of the linguistic issues and dilemmas involved.
Legal practitioners, whose own performance, like that of translators and
interpreters, relies on the effective use and manipulation of language, were found to
deny interpreters the same latitude in understanding and expressing concepts that
they themselves enjoy. Thus they firmly state that, when rendering meaning from
one language to another, court interpreters are not to interpret--this being an
activity which ony lawyers are to perform, but to translate--a term which is
defined, sometimes expressly and sometimes by implication, as rendering the
speaker’s words verbatim.
The law continues to proscribe precisely those aspects of the interpreting process
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which enable it to be performed with greater accuracy because they have two
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undesirable side effects from the legal point of view: one is to highlight the
interpreter’s presence and contribution, the other is to challenge and potentially
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undermine the performance of the judicial participants in forensic activities (Ref.
10, p. 26).
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Another factor identified by Tseng in his review of the literature on professionalization is
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public perception that the occupation is
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important and connected to the well-being of the people. ... When a particular
service of a rising profession is not in demand, the public is not likely to recognize
its importance and relevance to their lives. As a result, actions taken to persuade
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Once again, the court interpreting profession provides a pertinent example of the role of
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languages are not viewed favorably in courts of law (Ref. 11), and because of the anti-
immigrant, anti-criminal-defendant sentiment prevailing in many societies today, anyone
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The law’s denigratory attitude to foreigners, and its related distaste at having to
deal with problems which arise from their presence in the host country, exclude its
making proper interpreting arrangements for its dealings with them. In this way, its
dire fears about defective communication become self-fulfilling (Ref. 10, pp. 28-
29).
The same can be said of other areas of community interpreting, in which the interpreter is
often seen as a crutch that enables an immigrant who ought to have learned English to
draw public benefits of some sort.
After presenting his model of professionalization, Tseng discusses numerous obstacles to
professionalization. The first one is “confusion of the professional title” (Ref. 5, p. 63). It
is well known to translators and interpreters that the lay public does not understand the
difference between translating and interpreting, and often misuses the terms. Furthermore,
Morris (Ref. 12) has written extensively on the legal profession’s attitudes toward court
interpreters, and she emphasizes the need to distinguish between interpreting as an
“intralingual” process that is performed by judges and that involves “determining the ‘true’
meaning of a written document,” and the “interlingual” process involving the transfer of
messages from one language to another (Ref. 10, p. 25).
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rudimentary, of a foreign language thinks he can interpret and translate. Thus, knowledge
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of languages, the basic foundation of the profession’s body of knowledge (and the only
aspect visible to the lay public) is not exclusively held by its practitioners. Tseng points
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out that little serious research has been conducted on interpreting, and there is still no
consensus about whether interpreting is an art or a science (Ref. 5, p. 68). A corollary to
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this obstacle, then, is public misconceptions about the profession. Tseng notes that clients
do not know how to recruit qualified interpreters, thereby enabling unqualified interpreters
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to survive in the market, provided they can maintain good relations with the clients (Ref. 5,
p. 70). Paradoxically, he also points out that because of the common misconception that
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interpreting “is an effortless activity that can be done by any bilinguals” and that
interpreters are “machines that do code-switching automatically from one language to
another,” clients think that it is easy to evaluate the quality of the interpreting services they
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are receiving. He concludes that “only when clients have no clue on which to base their
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evaluation of the interpretation can interpretation evoke any sense of awe among clients.
This is detrimental to professionalization” (Ref. 5, pp. 70-74).
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Roda Roberts (Ref. 3, pp. 133-136) presents guidelines for the professionalization of
community interpreting that are remarkably similar to Tseng’s prescriptions, and thus lend
further support to his arguments. She advocates 1) clarification of terminology (i.e.,
settling on a clear definition and a universally recognized name for the occupation); 2)
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clarification of the role(s) of the community interpreter; 3) provision of training for
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community interpreters; 4) provision of training for trainers of community interpreters (a
very important issue that Tseng does not address); 5) provision of training for professionals
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working with interpreters (a more formalized version of what Tseng terms “client
education”); and 6) accreditation of community interpreters.
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Tseng does not emphasize accreditation in his discussion of the conference interpreting
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profession in Taiwan, but he does indicate that a certification program lent more power to
the interpreting profession in Australia (Ref. 5, p. 86). Roberts is a stronger advocate of
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accreditation:
p. 136).
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Morris cautions, however, that certification or accreditation alone does not guarantee
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Roberts asserts that community interpreting, though “the oldest form of interpreting in the
world, has been the most neglected both by practising interpreters and by scholars” (Ref. 3,
p. 127). Her description of community interpreting in general is an accurate depiction of
the current situation in the United States. Whereas court interpreting is just beginning to
emerge as a recognized profession in this country, albeit with obvious growing pains, other
types of community interpreting are far behind. Two states, California and Washington,
have attempted to implement certification programs governing certain aspects of medical
interpreting, and fledgling medical interpreter associations have been founded in
California, Washington, and Massachusetts.
In other institutions, such as social service agencies and school districts, Roberts’
categorization of community interpreters, ranging from individuals engaged in interpreting
as a full-time occupation to unpaid volunteers (Ref. 3, pp. 130-132), is apropos. In these
settings, interpreting is rarely recognized as a separate occupation and is likely to be
performed by employees as an adjunct to their normal duties, or in the case of languages of
lesser diffusion (LLDs), by relatives of the non-English-speaking party, including children.
These ad hoc interpreters receive no training whatsoever, and are not members of any
relevant professional associations. As a result, they feel no sense of commitment to
interpreting as a profession.
Thus we see a vicious circle similar to that described by Tseng: Practitioners receive little
recognition and low pay, and therefore have no incentive to obtain specialized training;
consequently, training programs are rare and not well-funded; the low prestige and limited
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earning potential makes community interpreting unattractive as a career option for talented,
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well-educated individuals with bilingual skills. As noted above, prevailing anti-immigrant
attitudes in the United States contribute to the low prestige of community interpreting.
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Unlike conference interpreters, whose clients are powerful leaders of the business and
political worlds, community interpreters serve powerless members of society.
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An added difficulty is that in many languages, there are few opportunities to work full-time
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as interpreters, and practitioners must engage in other occupations, such as tax preparation
or real estate sales, which give them the flexibility to take occasional interpreting
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assignments. Because they do not specialize in interpreting, these practitioners do not have
an opportunity to perfect their skills.
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The market disorder described by Tseng also characterized community interpreting in the
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United States. Clients have no way of knowing which interpreters are competent, since
there is no certification program in most areas and in most languages. Thus, they tend to
accept the lowest bidder, which intensifies the competition among rival interpreters. The
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result is often unprofessional behavior, which further lowers the public’s opinion of the
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occupation.
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4. RECOMMENDATIONS
5. REFERENCES
1. Gonzalez, Roseann, Victoria Vazquez, and Holly Mikkelson. Fundamentals of Court Interpreting:
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Theory, Policy, and Practice. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1991.
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2. Unattributed article, “Community interpreting: Affirmation of a new discipline” in Language
International 7.4 (1995), pp. 14-15.
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3. Roberts, Roda. “Community Interpreting Today and Tomorrow,” in Peter Krawutschke, ed.
Service Settings, Geneva Park, Canada, June 1-4, 1995. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing, forthcoming.
6. Carter, M.J. and others. “Occupation to Profession Continuum--Status and Future of AAHPERD,”
Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 61(3), 106-09, cited in Tseng, op. cit.
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7. Mellinkoff, David. The Language of the Law. Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown & Co. 1963.
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9. Wilding, P. Professional Power and Social Welfare, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1982, cited in
Tseng, op. cit.
10. Morris, Ruth, “The Moral Dilemmas of Court Interpreting.” The Translator, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1995,
pp. 25-46.
11. Morris, Ruth, “Pragmatism, Precept and Passions: The Attitudes of English-Language Legal
Systems to Non-English Speakers” in Marshall Morris, ed. Translation and the Law. Amsterdam,
Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 1995, pp. 263-79.
12. Morris, Ruth. Images of the Interpreter: A Study of Language-Switching in the Legal Process.
Ph.D. thesis, Lancaster University: Department of Law, 1993.
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