A Voice for the Voiceless Unofficial Transcript

Show title: A Voice for the Voiceless

Producer: BBC Radio 4

Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000z0k5

(Note: First names are used for this transcript. In some cases the full names could not be found, or the individual did not want to be named. Any mistakes are my own.)

HOST: Interpreters work on the front line of society, where every word matters. With the police, in the courts, in health care, and within the immigration and asylum process.

ISAAC: The level of concentration and skill, also the responsibility required to be an interpreter in a high-pressure setting is immense. ???????

HOST: These are settings where an interpreting mistake could cost someone their freedom, the chance of starting a new life in a safe country, or their mental and physical health.

ISAAC: Some of the stories, when you hear, they’re so tragic. And as a human, I can connect with that. But at the same time, I have to step back. It is not my story. It is their story, and I’m there only to bridge that gap.

HOST: Bound by strict confidentiality rules, interpreters are very rarely heard from in the media. But there are growing concerns that standards are falling, with more interpreters without the right training, a drop in pay and the challenges of outsourcing interpreting contracts. This is bad for the public purse and the UK justice system, for the well-trained interpreters who are working for less and especially for those who rely on this vital service.

ISAAC: I have come across some times where interpreters who may not be trained have appeared in the court. I think this is where the interpreting profession is stuck at the moment.

HOST: In this programme, we’ll hear from many interpreters. But it’s Isaac that has let us take a glimpse into his world. He’s been an Urdu and Punjabi public service interpreter for six years. He came over to the UK in 1990 from Pakistan and has settled in Glasgow.

ISAAC: I’m Isaac Umeed, I’m a qualified interpreter. Today we’re going to catch a train from Glasgow Central to go to Kilmarnock Sheriff Court.

ISAAC: I used to get nervous, but now I get excited. I could be in an operation theatre one hour, and the next hour could be in a high court for something else. So that variation is very exciting. That gives a buzz. It keeps me going.

ISAAC: Right, that’s us arrived at the Kilmarnock Sheriff Court and the case is about injury to assault. Sometimes during the interpreting, you come across really sensitive and emotional stuff. I prepare myself mentally and I try to detach myself, I go on autopilot. It comes into my ear and goes out the other. So nothing is retained in my head.

CLERK: Court please stand.

SHERIFF: Yes, good morning. Will you take the oath please?

ISAAC: Will do, my Lord.

SHERIFF: Do you swear faithfully, to perform the duties of an interpreter in these proceedings?

ISAAC: Will do, my Lord.

SHERIFF: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: …ready to proceed to trial [unintelligible]…I would be inviting your Lordship to, for the joint investigative interview to be played.

SHERIFF: Yes, if you can, the interpreter is interpreting.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: My motion would be for the joint investigative interview to be played…

ISAAC: [exhales] I just finished. I can’t tell you more about the case because of the confidentiality. I can tell you, it’s one of the hardest days, where you have to just go non-stop, you have so many witnesses. You’re actually on the ball all the time. Sometimes you get breaks, other times you don’t. This is one of the times when you don’t take a break. [laughs]

ISAAC: I’m going back home to the southside of Glasgow, that’s where I live, with my wife, Margaret. She is an advanced nurse practitioner. Well it’s actually empty nest now. [laughs] It’s just myself and my wife.

ISAAC: Andrew, he is a cricketer, he is playing in Birmingham Premier League. And my daughter Rebecca has just finished her PhD in marine biology. Today it was quite emotional. Especially when there are cases when families are involved, and it was one of those days. And I have a shoulder to lean against and that is Margaret. She will know as soon as I come in, that there is something which has affected me internally.

MARGARET: Hello.

ISAAC: Hi.

MARGARET: Hello, how are you?

ISAAC: All right, all right.

MARGARET: What day did you have?

ISAAC: Well, one of those days. How was your day.

MARGARET: All right, it had its moments. It’s difficult isn’t it, because we both work in professions where we’ve got to respect confidentiality.

ISAAC: Yeah.

MARGARET: Yeah, you can’t tell anybody anything because you’re not supposed to!

ISAAC: Yeah.

MARGARET: So how are you feeling today?

ISAAC: It was hard emotionally. I think everyone around the court was emotional. And I turned around and looked, and the security staff, I could see her, actually tears flowing down.

MARGARET: It’s very difficult, isn’t it because some of your cases that have been quite, traumatic.

ISAAC: Yeah, intense, very, very intense.

MARGARET: Remember that day you went out and you never came back? And you disappeared, remember? Like you were a week? Like all day and all night?

ISAAC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MARGARET: And you didn’t come back the next morning and I was like, where have you been all this time?

ISAAC: That’s right. I think that was probably the most--

MARGARET: Worst.

ISAAC: High profile case. And that’s been published everywhere. There’s a child that was murdered, yes.

MARGARET: Yeah, that was awful.

ISAAC: I think that was the case, I think the first time ever I felt there’s something in my throat, I couldn’t interpret. I felt choked.

MARGARET: I mean you have dealt with some really high-profile cases and some of the stuff that you’ve had to listen to in court and in witness statements and…

ISAAC: Well, when we went to immigration, some of the stories, they’re so tragic, and as a human, you can understand the pain because you come from the country. Come from Pakistan…

MARGRET: You have to remain professional, isn’t it?

ISAAC: Absolutely.

MARGRET: Because that’s your job.

ISAAC: Yeah. From a human point of view, it travels with you, until you have let the steam out.

MARGARET: It’s important I think, for everybody to have somebody that they can let off steam to, isn’t it?

ISAAC: Yeah. Do you sometimes feel that I have overburdened you with my stuff?

MARGRET: No.

ISAAC: No? That’s good.

MARGRET: And obviously, because you’ve been a health professional yourself, so you understand my job. And I do understand your job because I work with interpreters as well in a health setting, so I think that does help. It’s not like, you know, a car salesman or something and I have no idea who you are.

ISAAC: [laughs]

MARGARET: So I think we complement each other that way, isn’t it?

ISAAC: Do we? Yes! We do? [laughs]

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Are you on your phone again?

ISAAC: Well, I’m going to check my email because as you know, I’m on call all the time, so you never know.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It’s like being married to an on-call doctor.

MARGARET: You get called in the middle of the night, and you just never come back.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Do you remember that time we were standing outside IKEA last year. It was the first time since it had opened after lockdown, and we were inching forward towards the door, and just as we got to the door you got a phone call to say you had a job!

ISAAC: Yes. This is how seriously I take my duty, you know? I don’t have to take the jobs and that is one of the flexibilities there which I like. I used to work full time in the NHS as a health improvement programme officer. But Andrew, my son, when he started playing cricket seriously, I made this conscious decision to follow his cricket career, because I wanted to see him play and see people clapping when he’s doing well, so I left a full-time job and became a freelance interpreter and gained the proper qualifications so I can take the job and I can decline it. If it’s Andrew’s match, yes, I’m off.

ISAAC: I’m off to see a few other colleagues. [Unintelligible] is a Punjabi interpreter and Sam is Arabic interpreter. I’m going to just have a chitchat, kind of offloading and venting and sharing and comparing some notes.

SAM: ?Hello.

ISAAC: Hi.

SAM: ?Hi.

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: ?Interpreting in any setting is so important.

ISAAC: It’s a responsibility really.

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: ?It’s a huge responsibility.

SAM: Big responsibility.

ISAAC: When your words have power, your words have weight.

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: It’s only a game of words there anyway.

ISAAC: Absolutely. In the courts, it’s a game of words. So as an interpreter, you have to see in what context and in what expression it has been said so you can convey the message. And this is the level of responsibility you—

SAM: Yes, it’s like how to convey the message and deliver it. Because what they ask you to do is word by word. But if you do it word by word, sometimes it does not—

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: It does not.

SAM: ?The meaning will get lost, in any language.

ISAAC: If you are trained interpreter, you will be aware of all these things.

SAM: Of course.

ISAAC: Most of these things. And if you have sent away an interpreter who is not fully trained, you will come across a problem but you will have…it’s not just that you have misinterpreted some things, but in fact, in a legal setting, you have contributed to the miscarriage of justice.

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: ?Yes.

ISAAC. It’s not, it’s as serious as that.

SAM: What I have an issue with is, you know, there is something, there is a dialect that is called Darija? And this Darija it’s always spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. The other Arabs cannot speak it. But when there is an assignment, you know, on the phone, on the portal, whatever it is, some Middle Eastern interpreters, you know, take the job, even though knowing they cannot--

ISAAC: Speak the dialect.

SAM: Speak it!

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: ?That’s where the professionalism is compromised, I would say.

SAM: Yes, exactly!

KEENAN: Hello, good morning!

KEENAN: My name is Keenan, I am a Syrian refugee. I claimed asylum last year in July. Here is my ID, my first ID ever in this country. And this is the only one I have as a refugee. This is proof I have leave to remain and the work permit. And all this is my file, my Home Office corresponding files. It’s a few big files actually, the biggest one is the substantive interview with the Home Office transcript.

Substantive interview which is the most important interview the asylum seeker will have, where you have a chance to say your story, your reason why you are seeking asylum, and why you have the right, in your opinion to have the refugee status, and why they don’t have to send you back to your home country. And the Home Office officer, they tend to ask you questions to find the opposite. Why they have not to accept your asylum claims, why they can send you back to your home country.

My own solicitor advised me to use an Arabic interpreter. She said that it will give me a chance to understand the questions and say it in my own language, and that will help me, she thought. So when we start, I speak in my own dialect. I noticed that the interpreter struggled to understand that. He’s from Morocco or Algeria, so they have very strong different dialect than mine, and many times I struggle to express myself in my dialect, the way he will understand it, so I had to say it in English. The interpreter was asking me “Do not speak in English” and the Home Office interviewer will ask me to speak only in my own language. I told her there is a difficulty with the interpreter. She asked if I needed to change the interpreter. I said no, I’m waiting for this opportunity for a long time, I don’t want to lose my chance with the interview and reschedule after months to have a different interpreter.

Being in that substantive interview, I found that exhausting and really one of the difficult moments in my life. You have to tell your story and you feel that you are losing your chance, you know, by not telling everything. They have to understand that the difference in dialects and accents, so try to choose the interpreter from the same region at least if not from the same country.

ISAAC: I don’t know about anyone else, but I think I have come across some bad practices. I have come across some times where interpreters who may not be trained, DPSI trained, and have appeared in the courts. How much public money is wasted because that interpreter is incompetent? We all know, going into court settings, how much it costs per day. And it is in thousands. So somebody has contributed to the loss of that money. Simply because they either didn’t train the people properly or they didn’t take the responsibility that they should send a trained, experienced interpreter to certain settings. So who lost? It’s the public.

SAM: It’s not fair on the service users or on the clients.

ISAAC: Where does the responsibility lie? That’s the question. Should the agencies invest and spend their money to monitor, or does it lie in personal responsibility? Who should be doing it? I think this is where the interpreting profession is stuck at the moment.

MIKE: Hello, welcome to the National Register. I’m Mike Orlov, I am the executive director and registrar of the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI). The mandate for the National Register is to protect the public, to ensure that there is no hindrance for those who do not speak English to access public sector organizations and their services. To give voice to the voiceless, that is the purpose of the National Register.

MIKE: Money is a major issue in the world of public service interpreting. The government is constantly looking to save money. And one of the prime tools for this is public-private partnerships. Somebody who is bilingual who signs up for a two to four-week course called the Foundations in Public Service Interpreting, which is a GCSE pass level course, a Level 1 course, and they don’t even have to get it, they’ve just got to show that they’re enrolled, can act as an interpreter in a bail hearing. If a private company is given a contract where they are allowed by the nature of that contract to deliver people who have enrolled for a Level 1 course in Public Service Interpreting, then that’s what they will do! There is no ethical demand on them to do other than that. And this is where supply and cost comes in to drive down the fees that interpreters can earn. There are interpreter roles in the public sector where people will be offered ￡15, ￡14.50 an hour. Where prior to 2012, that could have been ￡30, ￡28. But for public service interpreters who have at least one degree, sometimes three degrees, and to turn around and suggest to them, for their skills, for their experience, for the qualifications that they’ve earned, they’ve invested in, that they should be earning, let’s say less than ￡20, is nonsense. Of course, the agency needs to make money. But not at the expense of the public sector and not at the expense of the interpreter.

JOAO: I am 100% in favour of outsourcing. My name is Jo?o, Jo?o Madeira, I’m originally from Portugal. I am a linguist, I do interpreting and translation and I’m also a trainer of public service interpreters and translators. I used to work as a senior manager for an interpreting and translation agency in Scotland for about 12 years. I don’t really see any other model that would represent better value for money for the taxpayer’s purse. The big difficulty I have with outsourcing is that so far, it hasn’t really been done in a very good manner. If you don’t have trained interpreters, you don’t have standards. You know, if you’re talking about interpretation for the NHS, for example, you know they could lose their lives because of bad interpretation. In criminal settings, you get people that could go to prison because of misinterpretation. In my previous job as a senior manager I saw many of these cases. I saw many of these cases. And it almost, almost in every single situation, was due to lack of training. So it’s just really a question of standards, you know we’re dealing with people’s lives and people’s futures so, you know so it is very important to be aware of what’s expected from us and how to do it properly. But in theory, I mean I am in favour of outsourcing. If the standards are done properly, if there’s provisions for training, if there’s monitoring—this is another problem—who’s checking the quality control measures? It’s all carried out in private. Nobody’s going to know that that interpreter is maybe a little bit rubbish or is not doing things properly or hasn’t been trained. You know?

JERRY: I think there’s been a race to bottom in the interpreting industry for a few years, where rates have grown ever tighter and part of the reason for that is because public sector organizations themselves have been operating on tighter and tighter budgets, particularly since 2010. If prices are forced down, clearly something has to give.

JERRY: My name is Jerry Froggett, I’m the chief executive officer of Cintra Language Services Group based in Cambridge. We’re predominately a public service interpreting provider, and we commenced in the mid-nineties. To go back to our early roots we were very much a social enterprise. We still operate on a social enterprise ethic, so our bottom-line profit margin is very, very low. And the profit that we do make, we reinvest that in our business, we invest in things such as training, support, continuing professional development. When it comes to monitoring standards, it’s simple, we introduced a couple of years ago a dip-sampling process. So once an interpreter in a justice setting has undertaken an interpreting assignment, and is then writing the witness statement, we work with our police force users for them to provide us a redacted sample. We will then cross reference and rework that sample with another interpreter to actually make sure the standard is maintained. We also do the same for telephone interpreting and if we find issues that’s how we set our training programme accordingly.

I think it’s very worrying that a number of agencies don’t invest the time and effort into training development and support. I’m not necessarily sure if a basic human right such as interpreting should be profitized or commercialized to such an extent whereby the commercial requirement to make a profit comes before the delivery of an effective service.

ISAAC: The other thing I think we maybe undervalue the importance of whenever we get together as interpreters.

SAM: I miss that! That’s one of the things I personally miss during the COVID-19 because imagine you are in a room with 30 interpreters and talking about different issues. I think we do need that kind of interaction between us.

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: There are certain cases, it’s, they, you cannot leave behind. They come with you.

SAM: Yeah, because we’re just human beings. You know?

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: The ones [that] come with me, personally, are with the young children.

ISAAC: I think the only one incident I can remember I physically felt choked. I just couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. And that will stay with me because that was the one-off incident which I can never forget. And it’s like a flashback whenever I think about it. It’s just a flashback. You learn to cope with it, but it just goes with it.

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: But it’s sitting in one compartment of your brain, isn’t it?

SAM: Exactly. Yeah for me, um, you know, couple of incidents. [exhales] Sorry, just whenever I remember them, kind of remember the whole thing. So once I had to tell a lady that her husband was dying and while I was telling her the news he passed away. That was very painful.

ISAAC: How do you cope with that? How do you? I find difficult.

SAM: I could not sleep for a week. I could not sleep for a week.

ISAAC: Yeah.

SAM: You know, I—

ISAAC: Who would you speak to and just, really, OK you’re a professional and you want to tell yourself, but, you’re human. After that job, where would you go and actually express your feeling and say well this is an occupational hazard and as a human being, I do need counselling.

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: Counselling, yeah.

ISAAC: Where do you go?

PUNJABI INTERPRETER: Maybe there should be, there is a need for counselling.

ISAAC: That’s the big question.

SAM: Yes, you’re right.

JERRY FROGGETT: Cintra has always had a support network for its interpreters. One of our clients, a police client, recently had the unfortunate duty of investigating a fairly horrific murder and we used the same interpreter throughout for this process. And it left him traumatized. We actually arranged counselling at Cintra’s expense for the interpreter. We gave him some paid time off afterwards, simply because he needed to clear his head. He needed head space, he needed support to enable him to do that. And we find it pretty amazing when we hear, anecdotally, stories in the industry of people who have been through really traumatic interpreting activities and haven’t received that support because they need it. It’s a difficult profession.

I think it’s behold on agencies to make sure they have support systems in place to make sure people are looked after.

ISAAC: I’m here in Bellahouston Park, this is one of the spots where myself and my wife Margaret would let off the steam I suppose.

MARGARET: So, what do you think the future holds for interpreting?

ISAAC: I could see some positivity, just for example, the recognition by the professionals. That a minimum qualification is required. Some people would just underestimate the responsibility. It’s my words, which are going to be written down, and also recorded and when it comes to the judgment or assessment of the evidence, those words will have power because those words carry the weight.

MARGARET: You’re their voice, really, isn’t it? You have to make it accurate, because if you’re not interpreting properly then it’s going to get the wrong outcome.

ISAAC: The level of the responsibility is immense.

ISAAC: I’m just wondering which way I hit, because I’m going to hit it straight at you. Good catch. Cricket is one of the activities which helps me unwind. Perhaps go to the park and hit a couple of balls and ask Margaret or somebody else to have a, thrash a ball about, and just unwind. This is all, let the steam out. Bash a few balls. Yeah.

ISAAC: How’s that?

Michelle Deeter (DPSI Law) is a Chinese-English interpreter based in Manchester. She is a registered public service interpreter with NRPSI. She has over 400 hours of experience interpreting for medical and legal assignments. If you have questions about translation, interpreting or taking the DPSI, you can contact her at www.michelledeeter.com