The Uncomfortable Situation When the Client Disrespects Interpreters and Foreign Language Speakers.

Dear Colleagues,

The best part of having a well-established professional practice is that your client portfolio is already developed. After years of collaboration, you come to know your clients and they know you. Tensions, concerns and uncertainties about policy, practices, and the relationship, are no more. My preference is to keep my clients and rarely work with somebody I do not know.

Unfortunately, sometimes a project is so interesting, or the conditions are so attractive that you take a chance and try a new client. As you all freelancers know, sometimes this strategy works, sometimes it does not.

A collaboration on a multi-day assignment that was both, interesting and well remunerated came along; it was with someone I did not know and I moved forward. At the time of the preliminary, planning stages of the event things seem fine, although there were some revealing clues I missed, but things did not get truly uncomfortable until the start of the assignment.

On the first day of the event, this person I had never worked with before, a monolingual individual in a position of power who apparently has traveled little, quickly assessed the foreign language speakers and made an instantaneous judgement call that would affect everybody participating in the event, including the interpreting team.

Before 6 in the morning of the second day of the assignment I received a message on my phone informing me, and the rest of the team, that our interpreting services would be needed no longer because everybody in attendance seemed to have an acceptable level of fluency in English. Shortly after, I received an email with my plane ticket to go back home.

Because of a good contract, our fees were not a problem; there was no financial damage derived from this decision, but the process was unprofessional and the way it was handled was disrespectful.

I find it difficult to believe that an individual with no knowledge of foreign languages can conclude that everyone in the audience is fluent in a language that is not their first, and this can be done after observing about two hours of a conference where the audience is mostly listening, and the few questions asked during such a period of time come from people who are confident enough on their foreign language skills to ask them directly, without interpretation, even if they fumble with the words, apply grammar incorrectly, and use false cognates.

The interpreters learned the decision was made to save money (we got paid because of a good contract, but other expenses as lodging, per diem, transportation, etc. would be saved) but no one was ever consulted. Not the interpreters, who know the working languages in the event, and also know, from experience, that as peer-pressure shrinks, attendees use their native languages, especially to ask questions. The audience was never polled to see if they needed interpretation. The decision was based on a single opinion from a monolingual individual whose only goal was to save (little) money, apparently a priority as it became clear when I analyzed all circumstances surrounding the job. Things that seemed irrelevant at the planning stages now made sense: Booking plane tickets on an airplane grounded for 24 months after 2 fatal accidents in one year, because they were cheap; offering a welcome reception with sub-par food and even worse service at a place no-doubt chosen because of the price.

The contract terms protected the interpreters, and even freed our time to work on other assignments on the cancelled dates, but that we were never approached in person to tell us face to face of this decision to dismiss the team, that there was not even a greeting other than a message early in the morning when you are still in bed, and to leave the attendees without the benefit of interpreting services, without even polling them to discover their needs, is inappropriate, unprofessional, and frankly disrespectful. The lesson learned was that you can try new clients when protected by a good, solid contract, and the benefit from this situation was that I did not have to continue my collaboration with such a difficult, one-track mind individual. I now invite you to share with the rest of us your stories about good contracts that protected you from difficult clients, or bad experiences where you lacked said protection.

Are we protecting our profession? Part 2.

Dear Colleagues:

On the first part of this entry we discussed the role that professional associations should play on the face of antitrust legislation and its adverse effect on our profession.  Today we will explore another crucial aspect of the profession that has been under siege for several years; and if some external forces have their way, it could set the profession back to the Stone Age.  I am referring to the very popular tendency to minimize the importance of interpreter and translator professional licenses, certifications or patents and the acceptance, and in some cases even blessing, of lesser quality paraprofessionals as the preferred providers of services by many government entities and multinational interpreting and translation corporations who make the decision to hire these individuals, who are unfit to practice the profession, based to the extremely low fee that they command.

It took interpreters and translators many decades of constant struggle to get to the point that their accreditations became widely known and accepted as the standard of quality among those providing the service.  Finally, holding an American Translators Association certification, or proof of many years of experience,  gave the real professional translator the needed tool to argue that she should get the job over the individual whose only credentials were the translation of his parents’ birth certificates and a couple of elementary school reports.  The days when a real professional interpreter would lose an assignment to a person whose only linguistic experience was that he had lived in two different countries during his life, became less common when true professionals started to demand top assignments with their interpreter degrees, or their court, or healthcare certifications in hand.  There was a lot to be done, but interpreters and translators were on their way to educate more prospective clients and government officials every day.  People began to notice the difference on the quality of the service rendered by a real certified interpreter or translator.

But, since nothing can come to the interpreting and translation world without drama and tragedy, technological developments such as CAT tools and telephone/VR interpreting came to be. This should have been a welcome development that benefited interpreters and translators; however, this new technology, combined with a global economy where big corporations seek profit by bastardizing a real profession and turning it into an assembly line, and changing its name from profession to “industry”, injected a new player to our eternal drama:  the opportunist, also known as the “new talent scout” whose sole function was to undermine established professions, like ours, and replace quality professionals with cheap novice paraprofessionals who see this individuals as their ticket out of the flipping burgers world.

Compounding the problem in the United States, there was a new administration in the White House, whose attorney general was determined to compel the state-level agencies who were recipients of federal funds, to provide access to their services for everybody, regardless of the language they spoke. This in itself sounds very good and fair, and in fact it was not just the right thing to do by the administration, it was long due as this mandate had been part of the law since the mid-sixties when Title VI of the Civil Rights Act was enacted.  In fact, to an interpreter or translator who did not know the reality of the American system this would look like a pot of gold. All of a sudden millions of people who needed interpreting and translation services were going to get them! Unfortunately, reality and a short-sighted government opted for the easy way out, a path that was doomed from the beginning. Let me explain: This instantaneous demand for many more interpreters and translators exceeded by far the supply of professionals in the United States, and to meet the mandate, the states decided to enable just about any almost-bilingual individual, to provide translation and interpreting services, instead of promoting more college programs and encouraging American citizens and permanent residents to prepare themselves, and become true professional interpreter and translators, who would have access to professionally remunerated work due to the implementation of this legislation.

When the opportunists, also known as the “new talent scouts” realized what was going on, they immediately saw the possibility for huge profits by providing the required services with tons of these paraprofessionals, who they immediately hired at rock bottom fees.  Moreover, they saw the possibility of making their margins even bigger by using machine translation and retaining humans as proofreaders, and by providing interpreting services by telephone, and lately by video remote interpreting or VRI in some cases, while hiring these new “type” of “interpreters” by the minute (or if they are lucky by the hour).

Government officials liked the solution, but they still had one more obstacle that was keeping them from going all the way with these multinational corporations operated by the opportunists, also known as the “new talent scouts”, who by now were active in social media, writing their own blogs, and organizing their own conferences to build themselves up like interpreting and translation “self-proclaimed gurus”. That obstacle was the certification.

The certification, that extremely difficult and elusive project that took real interpreters and translators several generations to create, and then make known and widely respected, was by now a requirement in the law.  It was obvious that the new paraprofessionals would never pass a certification exam, so the government officials and their “associates” had to think fast, and cheap.

The solution they came up with was the creation of a “second class” tier of people who they call “language facilitators”, “justice-system interpreters”, and many other labels, avoiding this way the uncomfortable, and perhaps illegal alternative of referring to them as translators or interpreters, who, in lieu of a real certification, would be “accredited”, “registered” and many similar names.  Now they argue that these individuals can provide the professional service as long as the content is not too difficult or the event is not very important!

Finally, to end the vicious circle, some of our opportunistic “friends”, also known as the “new talent scouts”, realized that with government officials willing to do whatever possible to go around the true mandate of Title VI, which would require them to use certified, experienced, professionally trained interpreters and translators, they could get another piece of the pie by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and creating a mutant creature they would call: “community interpreter certification”.

The principle is very simple: What do you do when you have a group of people who cannot pass the interpreter certification exam? You develop another program with an exam easy enough for anybody to pass, and you propose it to the authorities as a legitimate certification for court cases before administrative judges, for client-attorney interviews, and for simple medical events. Do you see the pattern? Once again we have the not-so serious event and the not-so difficult content rationale to justify the use of mediocre individuals, who have only one advantage over the real professional, experienced, certified interpreters and translators: They will work for peanuts; because whatever they get paid will be better than the money they were making before they got “discovered” by the talent agent.  Never mind the fact that administrative law hearings are as complex as Article Three court hearings as I have indicated on a previous entry to this blog a few months ago.

The situation turned for the worse when the implementation of Title VI at the state-level civil courts in the United States was narrowly interpreted by many of their administrative offices, as meaning that only interpreters supplied through the judiciary could provide services in civil matters. This actually killed the main source of income to many entrepreneurial interpreters who had opted out of the bureaucratic, low-paying criminal court assignments, and had developed their own client-base, charging for their services according to supply and demand. Oftentimes, because of the complexity of civil litigation, and because of their type of clients, these interpreters fared much better than their counterparts who stayed on the criminal court bandwagon.  Title VI guarantees equal access to all government funded services, including the administration of justice, but it does not make it illegal for litigants who want to, and can afford it, to hire private interpreters.  In my opinion, this is a classic example of a situation where professional associations needed to protect their individual members, and the profession, by advocating for the availability of private interpreters to be retained for civil litigation.  Unfortunately, instead of taking action, our biggest professional association in the United States not just sat on the sidelines, but welcomed the new “civil court-provided interpreter system”, and remained silent when some states decided to meet the requirements of Title VI by hiring big “interpreting services” agencies (who view our profession as an industry) to program the interpreters for civil cases.

To summarize the situation, we now have an environment fostered by the government authorities, and exploited by the multinational interpreting and translation corporations, plus some small “local talent” that was able to learn fast how to do this thing, where certifications and education do not matter anymore, where assignments are going to questionable paraprofessionals, many of whom have never been able to pass a certification exam, who are working under terrible conditions, in exchange for a miserable fee.  The first logical reaction of any interpreter or translator should be one of outrage, disgust, frustration. The second reaction should be to talk to its professional association and ask it to represent its members and protect them from these nefarious tendencies, thus saving the integrity of the profession.

Attorney and medical associations are vigilant and protective of their members and profession. They do not allow, under any circumstance that paraprofessionals practice law or medicine. In fact, attorney associations set the standards of practice in their profession. No agency or its equivalent is allowed to set the tone.  They have lobbied for, and achieved legal protection: In the United States it is a crime to practice law without a license, and this applies to all court proceedings, including administrative courts.

Unfortunately, this is not the case with some of the bigger translator and interpreter associations.  They keep silent when the government creates these groups of paraprofessionals to “meet” the requirements of Title VI. They invite those who are turning translators into proof readers to their conferences to recruit more of the young talent before they learn to separate good from evil; Instead of protesting, criticizing and denouncing the birth of that Frankenstein’s monster called “community interpreting certification”, they celebrate the lowering of the bar and open wide their organizations’ doors for these paraprofessionals.

Moreover, they welcome as their members many of these multinational corporations, “self-proclaimed” gurus, and opportunists, also known as the “new talent scouts”. Maybe they do so because they do not know of all these terrible things that are happening to the profession. Maybe they let them in because they share their view of interpreting and translation not as the professions they always were, but as industries where the proofreader (formerly known as translator) and the part-time telephone operator (formerly known as interpreter) will happily hold hands at the assembly line and praise the virtues of the big “language” corporations. The question is, what are professional associations for? I now invite you to share your comments about this reality we are living pretty much around the world, and to offer your solutions to the role that a professional association should play in the world of interpreting and translating.