Understanding Community Interpreting Services: Diversity and Access in Australia and Beyond [1 ed.] 9783030558604, 9783030558611

Table of contents :
Foreword
References
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
Abbreviations and Acronyms
List of Tables
1 Introduction
1.1 The Context of Community Interpreting
1.2 Pursuing a Career as a Community Interpreter
References
2 Outline of the Study: Research Approach
2.1 Rationale for the Study
2.2 Possible Research Approaches in Community Interpreting
2.3 Purpose Statement
2.4 The Researcher’s Role
2.5 The Setting and the Participants
2.6 Ethical Considerations
2.7 Data Collection and Analysis
2.8 Data Verification
References
3 Community Interpreting as a Service
3.1 The Concept of Services as a Paradigm in Community Interpreting
3.2 Community Interpreting as an Externality
3.3 Community Interpreting at a Glance
3.4 A Backdrop to Community Interpreting Services in the Australian Context
3.5 Major Stakeholders in the Profession of Community Interpreting in Australia
References
4 Challenges Facing the Community Interpreting Industry
4.1 A Diverse Community
4.2 Technology-Related Issues
4.3 Quality in Community Interpreting Services
4.4 Supply and Demand
4.5 Sustainability
4.6 Vicarious Trauma and Emergencies
References
5 Sustainable Strategies to Maintain Community Interpreting Services
5.1 Building the Capacity of Interpreting Services
5.2 Maintaining Relationships with Stakeholders
5.3 Political Commitment to Diversity
References
6 Beyond Australia: Turkey
6.1 Diversity in Turkey
6.2 Challenges in the Main Settings
6.3 Turkey Paves the Way for Professionalization
6.4 The Australian Experience as Road Map
References
7 Conclusion
7.1 Diversity and Governance
7.2 Recommended Strategies for Community Interpreting Services
References
Appendices
Appendix 1: Protocols to Collect Qualitative Data
Community Interpreting Services in Australia
Context
Observational Protocol
Interview and Survey Protocol
Community Interpreting Services in Australia
Demographic Details
Interview Questions Related to the Major Institutions, Challenges and Strategies in the Profession of Community Interpreting
Appendix 2: Diversity in Australia and in the State of Victoria
Appendix 3: Useful Websites
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN TRANSLATING AND INTERPRETING SERIES EDITOR: MARGARET ROGERS

Understanding Community Interpreting Services Diversity and Access in Australia and Beyond Oktay Eser

Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting

Series Editor Margaret Rogers School of Literature and Languages University of Surrey Guildford, UK

This series examines the crucial role which translation and interpreting in their myriad forms play at all levels of communication in today’s world, from the local to the global. Whilst this role is being increasingly recognised in some quarters (for example, through European Union legislation), in others it remains controversial for economic, political and social reasons. The rapidly changing landscape of translation and interpreting practice is accompanied by equally challenging developments in their academic study, often in an interdisciplinary framework and increasingly reflecting commonalities between what were once considered to be separate disciplines. The books in this series address specific issues in both translation and interpreting with the aim not only of charting but also of shaping the discipline with respect to contemporary practice and research.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14574

Oktay Eser

Understanding Community Interpreting Services Diversity and Access in Australia and Beyond

Oktay Eser Department of Translation and Interpreting Amasya University Amasya, Turkey

Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting ISBN 978-3-030-55860-4 ISBN 978-3-030-55861-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Getty Images/Ron Evans This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This research into the community interpreting services in Australia has been funded by the TUBITAK BIDEB 2219 Post-Doctoral Research program, Turkey under the grant number of 1059B191601277.

Dedicated to Dr. Sedat Mulayim (1965-2016)

Discipline Head, Department of Translating and Interpreting, RMIT University, Victoria, Australia

Foreword

This book, Understanding Community Interpreting Services: Diversity and Access in Australia and Beyond by Oktay Eser, Department of Translation and Interpreting, Amasya University, Turkey, is a welcome addition to the field. The author conducted his post-doctoral research on Community Interpreting (CI) at RMIT University in Melbourne, under the supervision of and in collaboration with Dr. Miranda Lai of that University. It was the late Dr. Sedat Mulayim who had initially alerted the author to the field of Community Interpreting, and this book is dedicated to Dr. Mulayim. Australia was one of the first countries to establish credentialing for interpreters and translators at various levels by establishing the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters in 1977 (Hlavac 2016, p. 61). In 2012 Professor Sandra Hale and colleagues presented the report of an investigation they had conducted at the request of NAATI (Hale et al. 2012). The report recommended that NAATI testing only be available to candidates who had undertaken training From 2018 onwards, NAATI accreditation is only valid for three years. All certified translators and interpreters must keep a log of assignments undertaken as evidence that they are maintaining their skills. The author describes the situation in Australia from what I refer to as ‘an outsider-insider’ perspective. He is enough of an outsider to be able to have a broad perspective on Community Interpreting services in

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Australia. This outsider gaze is helped by the fact that he looks at Community Interpreting from two different perspectives: interpreting studies and management studies. The outsider perspective is also helped by the fact that he looks at the situation in Australia as a whole, and the state of Victoria in particular as a visiting scholar. Eser received support from scholars at RMIT University in Melbourne which allowed him to connect with important stakeholders, such as the CEO of NAATI, Mark Painting, Niki Baras, Organiser of the Translators and Interpreters branch of Professionals Australia, Frans Moens, Head of strategic projects with Victorian Interpreting and Translating Services (VITS) LanguageLoop and many others. At the same time, his status as an insider/scholar in the area of interpreting studies allows him to ask the right questions of the stakeholders he interviews. This insider status also allows him to ‘ask the right questions’ of policy and other documents he consults and facilitates his ability to work with the NVivo qualitative analysis tool. After all, it is only an insider who could make sense of the ‘nodes’ or recurrent themes, while it requires both an insider and an outsider gaze to make sense of these nodes, by looking at them with the broad yet insightful gaze required. Eser uses the management services lens to discuss supply and demand, quality of services, casualization and so on. At the same time, the author is able to zoom in on important details, facilitated by interviews with stakeholders Community Interpreting has also been referred to as Liaison Interpreting (Gentile, Ozolins and Vasilakakos 1996) and is often referred to as Public Service Interpreting (PSI) (e.g. Enriquez Raido, Crezee and Ridgeway 2020). The author refers to seminal work on Community Interpreting by impactful scholars such as Hale (2007) and Corsellis (2008). Personally, I quite like the term ‘Community Interpreting’ because of the connection this creates with the concept of community translation, as defined by Taibi and Ozolins (2016): like community translation, community interpreting facilitates community access to important public service information. It also provides members of migrant and refugee communities with a voice. In the opening chapter, the author states his intention to discuss the challenges facing the community interpreting service industry in Australia in detail, as a way to underpin recommendations for stakeholders in that country and beyond. He describes community interpreting as being truly

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interdisciplinary in that it takes place within the context of other professional settings, and touches on the implications this has for the ethical guidelines community interpreters are guided by. Eser cites Mulayim, Lai and Norma (2014) when describing the important role interpreting and translation play in maintaining global security, and the challenges which may face interpreters and translators working in this area. The author then discusses the challenges of working in medical and legal settings, resulting from the use of professionals not understanding the role of the interpreter, or from the use of interpreters who are not qualified to provide a quality service. He touches on the consequences this may have for vulnerable clients, unhappy clients, on a loss of respect for the profession, attrition among qualified interpreters and an ‘unsustainable interpreting industry’, all of which are discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters of the book. The author describes the major differences between the legal and medical interpreting settings. The former often work in public settings (such as the courtroom), though not necessarily so, while the latter usually work in private and more informal settings. There is no doubt in my mind that both the development of standards for legal interpreters by the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity (JCCD), and the fact that the judiciary in Australia are very aware of requirements for quality legal interpreting are due in no small way to the tireless efforts of Professor Sandra Hale over many years. In Chapter 2, Eser explains his qualitative approach to mapping the field of community interpreting services and the profession of community interpreting in Australia. He refers to previous studies and methodological approaches used before listing his research questions as: Who are the stakeholders that play a major role in community interpreting services as a profession in Australia? What are the major challenges faced? What are the underlying reasons behind these? And what are the strategies employed in order to overcome these challenges? These research questions form the ‘red thread’ which runs through every subsequent chapter. Eser explains that he has explored documents (statistics on overseas-born population over the years, demand for certain languages, policy documents) and interviewed major stakeholders for insightful comments which put his findings in context. He used QSR NVivo v.11 data analysis software to identify recurrent themes in his data. Chapter 3 provides a brief overview of community interpreting as a service, as an externality, before moving on to provide the background to community interpreting services in the Australian context. The chapter

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finishes by listing the major stakeholders in the Community Interpreting profession in Australia, and this sets up the reader for Chapter 4, which analyses community interpreting services in Australia from a management studies perspective. Having set the scene in Chapter 3, Eser explores the various challenges facing the provision of community interpreting services in Australia in Chapter 4, with a particular focus on provision in the very culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) state of Victoria. Eser examines many aspects of quality community interpreting services provision from a management studies perspective, with challenges including technology, quality, supply and demand, and challenges impacting on these. This paves the way for a discussion of sustainability and work-related issues. Many of the issues discussed by Eser in this chapter also apply to neighbouring New Zealand, where the government is currently working on a Language Access Services programme, which very much focuses on quality of service and credentialing. New Zealand has modelled its own practice on what has been happening in Australia for many years, particularly in terms of ethical guidelines, training and assessment (Enriquez Raido, Crezee and Ridgeway 2020). I have no doubt that the issues discussed by Eser here apply to the situation in many other countries. Eser attempts to explore the challenges standing in the way of community interpreting services in Australia, particularly taking into account the needs of various language communities, namely those with what Eser calls rare and emerging languages, established languages and indigenous languages. The challenges facing these language communities differ: in terms of established languages, demand may have been waning for years, but increasing when older speakers revert to their first language. Demand for rare and emerging languages may include demands for a number of distinct dialects, and a lack of qualified interpreters in a particular language. The utilization of insufficiently qualified interpreters may result in other issues including casualization and attrition. Again, these are important discussions as increased movement of people around the world has seen similar issues appear in a large number of recipient societies. Having examined the many different challenges facing the provision of community interpreting services in the previous chapter, Eser explores and assesses the strategies employed to overcome these challenges in Chapter 5. He distinguishes three categories of strategies, to wit: building the capacity of interpreting services, relationships with stakeholders and political commitment to diversity, for instance through

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legislation and policies relating to a diverse, multicultural society. The first category, capacity building, includes building a pool of interpreters, setting up language services units, and investing in technology, particularly with regard to the various remote interpreting modes. The second category, maintaining relationships with stakeholders, involves firstly, improving working conditions and remuneration, and Eser also discusses this in relation to the different levels of NAATI credentialing. This category also involves professionalization and recognition from clients, and lobbying, which Eser discusses in some detail. Other strategies discussed by Eser include government policies, legislation government guidelines, procurements, Code of Ethics, government grants and programmes. In Chapter 6, Eser looks at the community interpreting context in Turkey, a country which has seen a huge influx of refugees over the past decade, exploring issues including training and credentialing. I enjoyed reading this chapter, as I feel there has been a dearth of information on the challenges facing community interpreter provision in countries such as Turkey, where interpreting services are emerging in terms of training, credentialing, professionalization and service provision. These countries have a lot to offer in terms of sharing their approaches to common issues, and Eser’s book has offered a roadmap for exploring such challenges. The final chapter offers a very fitting conclusion to the book. Eser pulls together all the findings and concludes that offering sustainable community interpreting services requires a sustained and concerted, yet flexible effort from all stakeholders. This starts at the point at which a country prepares to take in migrants and refugees: policies need to be in place and all stakeholders need to be ‘on board’ in order to establish a sustainable quality community interpreting service. Eser then sets out a number of recommendations to achieve this purpose, which include having another look at existing policies and legislation, developing a code of ethics and national standards. He also explains the need for effective lobbying to address any issues that may become apparent. One of the points of attraction of the book to me as a reader lies in the very fact that it focuses on the management aspect of the interpreting industry, touching on facets I had been somewhat aware of through talking to interpreting service providers in New Zealand, but had never looked at through a management studies lens. Eser has managed to explore and link the many different challenges and issues involved in offering quality and sustainable community interpreting services.

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I would like to finish this foreword by summarizing what I see as the main take-home message from this book: Despite all the major challenges, it is incumbent upon the government departments and agencies to grapple with these challenges and draw up strategies that will make sure culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people can access public services.

June 2020

Ineke H. M. Crezee ONZM, Professor of Translation and Interpreting Auckland University of Technology Auckland, New Zealand

References Corsellis, A. (2008). Public Service Interpreting: The First Steps. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Enriquez Raido, V., Crezee, I. H. M., & Ridgeway, Q. (2020). Professional, Ethical, and Policy Dimensions of Public Service Interpreting and Translation in New Zealand. Translation and Interpreting Studies, online first. https:// doi.org/10.1075/tis.20007.enr. Gentile, A., Ozolins, U., & Vasilakakos, M. (1996). Liaison Interpreting: A Handbook. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Hale, S. (2007). Community Interpreting. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hale, S., Garcia, I., Hlavac, J., Kim, M., Lai, M., Turner, B., & Slatyer, H. (2012). Improvements to NAATI Testing: Development of a Conceptual Overview for a New Model for NAATI Standards, Testing and Assessment. Sydney: UNSW. Hlavac, J. (2016). Interpreter Credentialing, Testing and Training in Australia: Past, Contemporary and Future Directions. FITISPos International Journal, 3, 59–81. Mulayim, S., Lai, M., & Norma, C. (2014). Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting: Context, Challenges, and Strategies. Boca Raton, London, and New York: CRC Press. Taibi, M. (2016). Curriculum Innovation in the Arab World: Community Interpreting and Translation as an Example. In New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting (pp. 22–46). Bristol, Buffolo, and Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Available from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com. Accessed 2 Feb 2018.

Acknowledgments

This book is not my work only. Many people have supported me in many ways. I wish to thank these people and the organizations they work for. Sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Sedat Mulayim from RMIT University for turning me on to community interpreting services and believing that we could do good things about it. It is an honour to dedicate the book to his loving memory. I would like to thank Dr. Miranda Lai from RMIT University for helping me conduct my post-doctoral research into community interpreting services in Australia and providing outstanding collaboration, support and feedback as a post-doctoral supervisor. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the academics at RMIT University who generously helped me have access to the resources of the university and made me feel at home. I would also like to thank Prof. Metin Orbay, Vice Chancellor of Amasya University for believing in international research and collaboration. Many thanks go to Assoc. Prof. Kenan Dikilita¸s who works at the University of Stavanger, Norway for his constant support and guidance on getting the research published. I also wish to thank Dr. Saban ¸ Çobano˘glu who has always been there standing by me. Special thanks go to the following professionals and organizations: Among those interviewed in Australia are Ismail Akinci, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of All Graduates Interpreting and Translating; Ibrahim Ayzit, Coordinator with the Victoria Language Services at the Department of Human Services (DHS); Frans Moens, Head of xv

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the strategic projects of Victorian Interpreting and Translating Services (VITS) LanguageLoop; Mark Painting, Chief Executive Officer of the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) Ltd.; Niki Baras, Organizer at the Translators and Interpreters Branch of Professionals Australia, and in Turkey, Prof. Turgay Kurultay, faculty member (Ret.) at the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Istanbul University and former head of the Translation and Interpreting Association of Turkey. I would also like to thank the following organizations: Amasya University, Turkey Royal Melbourne Institute of Technolgy (RMIT) University, Australia ˙ The Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK), Turkey National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) Ltd., Australia Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), Australia Department of Human Services, Australia Multicultural Affairs and Social Cohesion Division (MASC), Australia Translators and Interpreters Australia, Professionals Australia, Australia All Graduates Interpreting and Translating, Australia Victorian Interpreting and Translating Services (VITS) LanguageLoop, Australia The Royal Women’s Hospital, Victoria, Australia Translation and Interpreting Association, Turkey I also owe a great deal to the people at Palgrave Macmillan who helped develop this book: Commissioning Editor, Cathy Scott and Associate Editor, Alice Green provided suggestions, continuous support and feedback and the Series Editor of Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, Margaret Rogers, who reviewed the book and provided support to achieve coherence throughout the book. I would like to express my special thanks to Prof. Ay¸se Nihal Akbulut who first inspired me to venture into the field of Translation Studies and acted as a supervisor during the course of my M.A. and Ph.D. studies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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The work would never have seen the light of day without family support: I would like to say a big thank-you to my wife Hatice, my parents Nurdane and Halil, my sister Oya and my brother Bahtiyar for their eyes glittering with love and hope. Big hugs for my nieces, Ezgi and Özge and my nephews, Semih and Kaan Berk.

Contents

1

Introduction 1.1 The Context of Community Interpreting 1.2 Pursuing a Career as a Community Interpreter References

2

Outline of the Study: Research Approach 2.1 Rationale for the Study 2.2 Possible Research Approaches in Community Interpreting 2.3 Purpose Statement 2.4 The Researcher’s Role 2.5 The Setting and the Participants 2.6 Ethical Considerations 2.7 Data Collection and Analysis 2.8 Data Verification References

3

Community Interpreting as a Service 3.1 The Concept of Services as a Paradigm in Community Interpreting 3.2 Community Interpreting as an Externality 3.3 Community Interpreting at a Glance

1 3 6 8 11 12 13 15 15 16 19 19 21 22 23 24 27 28

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CONTENTS

3.4

A Backdrop to Community Interpreting Services in the Australian Context 3.5 Major Stakeholders in the Profession of Community Interpreting in Australia References

33 40

Challenges Facing the Community Interpreting Industry 4.1 A Diverse Community 4.2 Technology-Related Issues 4.3 Quality in Community Interpreting Services 4.4 Supply and Demand 4.5 Sustainability 4.6 Vicarious Trauma and Emergencies References

43 44 47 50 58 65 73 75

Sustainable Strategies to Maintain Community Interpreting Services 5.1 Building the Capacity of Interpreting Services 5.2 Maintaining Relationships with Stakeholders 5.3 Political Commitment to Diversity References

79 81 86 100 113

6

Beyond Australia: Turkey 6.1 Diversity in Turkey 6.2 Challenges in the Main Settings 6.3 Turkey Paves the Way for Professionalization 6.4 The Australian Experience as Road Map References

117 118 120 124 128 132

7

Conclusion 7.1 Diversity and Governance 7.2 Recommended Strategies for Community Interpreting Services References

135 137

4

5

31

139 141

CONTENTS

xxi

Appendices

143

Index

151

About the Author

Dr. Oktay Eser is an associate professor at the Department of Translation and Interpreting, Amasya University, Turkey. His post-graduate studies in translation and interpreting were undertaken at Istanbul University, Turkey. He also holds an M.A. in Business Administration from Istanbul Kültür University. He did his postdoctoral research into community interpreting services as a profession in the State of Victoria, Australia in 2018. A translator between Turkish and English, he is a member of Çeviri Derne˘gi (Translation Association of Turkey), and the International Federation of Translators (FIT). His research interests include translation and interpreting pedagogy, community interpreting, translation and interpreting services, professional ethics, and virtual reality. He has published research papers and books in translation studies. His recent books are titled Çeviribilimde Edinç Ara¸stırmaları (Competence Studies in Translation), and Translation and Interpreting as Sustainable Services.

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Abbreviations and Acronyms

ABS ACIC ACTU AGSVA AHPA AIIC AIMA AMAC APS AQF ARÇ ASLIA AUSIT AUSLAN CALD CAT CBP CDPs CHIS CI CPI CSHIs CSLIs DCALB DET

Australian Bureau of Statistics Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission Australian Council of Trade Unions Australian Government Security Vetting Agency Allied Health Professionals International Association of Conference Interpreters Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs Australian Multicultural Advisory Council Australian Public Service Australian Qualifications Framework Afette Rehber Çevirmenlik (Disaster and Emergency Interpreting Initiative) Australian Sign Language Interpreters Association Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators Australian Sign Language Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Computer-Assisted Translation Capacity Building and Participation Departmental Cultural Diversity Plans Central Health Interpreting Service Community Interpreting Consumer Price Index Certified Specialist Health Interpreters Certified Specialist Legal Interpreters Diverse Cultural and Linguistic Backgrounds Department of Education and Training xxv

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ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

DHS DPC EQF INT JCCD LOTE LSP MASC MFE MSO MVA MYK NAATI NATO NESB NGO NMAC OECD OMA OVMC PD PSIT PTSD RMIT RSC SIGTIPS SL SRO STS T&I TAFE TIA TIS National TL TUIK UN UNHCR VI VITS VMC VRI VT WA WAITI

Department of Human Services Department of Premier and Cabinet European Qualifications Framework Improvements to NAATI Testing Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity Language Other than English Language Service Providers Multicultural Affairs and Social Cohesion Multicultural Festivals and Events Multicultural Service Officers Multicultural Victoria Act Mesleki Yeterlilik Kurumu (Professional Qualifications Authority) National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters North Atlantic Treaty Organization Non-English Speaking Background Non-Governmental Organization National Multicultural Advisory Council Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Office of Multicultural Affairs Office of the Victorian Multicultural Commission Professional Development Public Service Interpreting and Translation Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Regional Service Charge Special Interest Group on Translation and Interpreting for Public Services Source Language State Revenue Office Secondary Traumatic Stress Translation and Interpreting Technical and Further Training Translators and Interpreters Australia Translating and Interpreting Service Target Language ˙ Türkiye Istatistik Kurumu (Turkish Institute for Statistics) United Nations United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Video Interpreting. Victorian Interpreting and Translating Services Victorian Multicultural Commission Video Remote Interpreting Vicarious Trauma Western Australia Western Australian Institute of Translators and Interpreters

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2

Table A2.1 Table A2.2 Table A2.3 Table A2.4 Table A2.5

Research approaches, designs and methods Participants of the study Australia: Top 10 countries of birth for the overseas-born population 2001 and 2016 Victorian Government regional service charge (RSC)–minimum rates for interpreters from 1 July 2018 Summary of expenditure on I & T services by departments, 2016–2017 Turkey: types of diversity in 2018 Number of universities offering undergraduate and vocational programmes in 2019 (no figures available for postgraduate programmes) Australia: usual residence census count by state and territory, 2016 Victoria: population diversity and change: 2011, 2016 Victoria: top 10 countries of birth and change, 2011, 2016 Victoria: top 15 languages other than English and change, 2011, 2016 Victoria: top 10 religions and change, 2011, 2016

14 17 45 87 110 119

124 146 146 147 148 149

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract This chapter looks at the reports from the United Nations on international mobility. The number of migrants worldwide has continued to grow rapidly in recent years reaching over 250 million people and Turkey has the largest refugee population in the world with an intake of about 4 million persons of concern in 2019. It also points out that Australia is a diverse country and is dependent on skilled migration for sustainability. In order to better understand the context of community interpreting services as a profession in Australian, it provides a specific setting in which intelligence is collected and produced through translation and interpreting services for frontline officers to protect the community from serious and organized crime that costs Australia billions of dollars a year and then moves on to other settings such as healthcare and law. Furthermore, it provides insights into the recruitment of inhouse community interpreters and translators in terms of eligibility and suitability of personnel for government departments and agencies in the Australian Public Service (APS). It focuses on the pre-employment screening processes and standardized vetting practices to be undertaken when employing community interpreters. Keywords Community translators and interpreters · Migration · Refugees · UN · Diversity · Turkey · Australia · Recruitment policy · Vetting · Eligibility © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1_1

1

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O. ESER

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and we can witness communities with a diversity of languages and cultures brought about by migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, overseas patients or international students. The United Nations states (2017, p. 1), International migration has become a reality that touches nearly all corners of the globe. Modern transportation has made it easier, cheaper and faster for people to move in search of jobs, opportunity, education and quality of life. At the same time conflict, poverty, inequality and a lack of sustainable livelihoods compel people to leave their homes to seek a better future for themselves and their families abroad.

The United Nations International Migration Report shows that the number of migrants worldwide has continued to grow rapidly in recent years reaching 271 million in 2019, up from 173 million in 2000 and the number of internationally mobile students was about 5.3 million in 2017 (UN 2019). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report indicates that there are nearly 24 million refugees including asylum-seekers around the world (UNHCR 2018, p. 61). People starting a life in a new country may face a variety of problems in accessing public services (Corsellis 2008). As a diverse country, Australia had to deal with certain challenges to maintain a socially inclusive society up until the 1970s when it adopted a multicultural policy as a country dependent on skilled migration as a means to overcome the challenges of an ageing population (Eser 2016). Not all countries across the world have well-established systems to satisfy the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) members in their community. However, efforts to establish these services as a profession, while promising, are slow. Australia, Canada and Sweden are a few of the countries investing in community interpreting services in a more sustainable way (Corsellis 2008, p. 1). This book aims to provide a detailed discussion of the challenges and the strategies in the industry of community interpreting services in Australia and to use this as a basis for establishing implications for the future as a way of helping stakeholders navigate their way in and beyond Australia. This introductory chapter looks at two aspects of community interpreting services: the context of the profession and the possible career paths of a community interpreter.

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1.1

INTRODUCTION

3

The Context of Community Interpreting

Mulayim et al. (2014) clearly state that professional interpreting is one of the few professions conducted wholly within another professional activity like hospitals and courts. Therefore, community interpreting is, by nature, interdisciplinary, and community interpreters are bound by the code of ethics of the institution they work with as well as the code of ethics of their own profession such as the AUSIT or ASLIA code of Ethics. Mulayim, Lai and Norma also add that interpreting is increasingly required on security grounds, a further area of professional activity: Since September 11, 2001, security has become a global issue beyond national or regional borders, and this has resulted in an increase in the employment of qualified and trained interpreters by law enforcement agencies in the investigation and intelligence gathering stages of their operations. (2014, p. XXVIII)

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) is one of the five operational agencies and bodies within the Home Affairs Portfolio established in 2016. The Portfolio brings together Australia’s federal law enforcement, national and transport security, criminal justice, emergency management, multicultural affairs and immigration and border-related functions and agencies. ACIC creates a national intelligence picture of crime, targets serious and organized crime, delivers information capability and services to frontline policing and law enforcement, and supports crime and justice research to address crime in Australia. It responds to organized crime such as illicit drugs, fraud, financial crimes, money laundering, public sector corruption, cybercrime and violence.1 ACIC estimates that serious and organized crime cost Australia between AU$23.8 billion and AU$47.4 billion during 2016–17 (ACIC 2017). When transnational syndicates based offshore and the multicultural diversity in Australia are taken into account, the need for community interpreting and translation services stands out in sharp relief. ACIC officers may attempt to gather information from a variety of sources to produce intelligence. The raw intelligence may contain inaccuracies and inconsistencies and require further analysis to confirm a fact or a set of facts. Intelligence consists of a process through which it is collected, analysed, produced 1 For further information, visit, https://www.acic.gov.au/.

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O. ESER

and disseminated. This is what frontline officers may need to fight organized crime. Therefore, interpreting and translation services for intelligence purposes may extend beyond interlingual activities to include cross-cultural consulting. Examples of such activities include: • translating a variety of documents such as passports, diaries, Interpol requests, corporate documents and media releases in foreign languages, and preparing forensic transcripts and statements for court. • providing interpreting services to witnesses in interviews and attending to calls in foreign languages. This can also cover sight translations of documents. • advising on the sociocultural aspects of operations. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have to grapple with certain challenges. To begin with, communication is not primarily intended for interpreting and translation. Communication events can feature the use of multiple languages and non-standard grammar. For example, the language used can be awash in criminal jargon, coded words and veiled statements. Furthermore, officers need to be careful with their choice of words and language use because their material can be used as evidence in court, and they may, in turn, be called on to appear in court as a knowledgeable person. In addition, translators and interpreters who work in these settings often need to work on-site, not from home. They must exhibit physical and psychological resilience due to the necessity of processing abhorrent material or engaging in situations such as child abuse. All things considered, staffing i.e. finding qualified interpreters, is a permanent issue. There are other settings like healthcare, law, education and social services that involve community interpreting and translation services for the CALD members of a community who are in need of access to public services (Hale 2007; Corsellis 2008; Pöchhacker 2016). In her seminal book Community Interpreting, Hale (2007) focuses mainly on two settings: medical and legal. Community interpreters do not work in a vacuum. They have to work in the context of other professions like medicine and law and also have a set of competencies peculiar to community interpreting. These settings represent environments where professionals from two distinct disciplines have to work together. As a matter

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5

of fact, they need each other to do so. Clients will be affected directly if this collaboration leads to some challenges like ethical considerations and role boundaries. In their book titled Ethics for Police Translators and Interpreters, Mulayim and Lai (2016) contend that professionals in community interpreting services must develop an understanding of the duty of care in the professional sense. For their part, community interpreters have to cope with a highly specialized use of language in these settings and it takes them time to be able to develop the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience including an understanding of the codes of ethics in these specific areas. Mulayim et al. (2014) claim that the use of plain language by professionals who communicate through an interpreter will facilitate understanding. On the other hand, the complexity also arises from professionals like doctors and judges who work with community interpreters. There are instances that indicate these professionals lack an understanding of what it is like to work with interpreters and what challenges can exacerbate the performance of an interpreter (See also Hale 2007; Corsellis 2008). There are often times when medical professionals, for instance, begin to feel that community interpreting can be relegated to a bilingual competence without recognizing the other professional skills involved and as a consequence, they recommend that family and friends can be used as interpreters to save on financial resources (as reported by Hale 2007, pp. 35–36). Then, the use of a non-qualified interpreter may put the patient’s treatment at risk, result in some sort of misunderstanding in a healthcare setting or poor evidence in a legal setting. Quality that hinges on interpreting accuracy and professional conduct is hard to achieve even when qualified community interpreters perform an interpreting event in doctor–patient or lawyer–client interactions. Similar examples are too many to count. All this may, in turn, result in dissatisfied patients/clients and qualified interpreter attrition due to insufficient income. Consequently, this creates a chain reaction in the industry and the country is then faced with an unsustainable interpreting industry, which I will discuss in detail in the rest of the book. As for the main differences between medical and legal interpreting, Hale (2007, p. 41) states that the courts are a setting open to the public and are governed by strict rules while the medical setting is a private and informal setting. The language use in the courts is adversarial, but it is not so in the medical setting. Another distinction lies in the status and recognition from the clients and the agencies in the community. Legal interpreters have made more progress as a profession over the years

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compared to medical interpreters. For example, the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity (JCCD) has developed the Australian National Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals to establish recommended standards and optimal practices for Australia. The Standards state that effective communication in courts is a responsibility shared between judicial officers, court staff, interpreters and members of the legal profession and define qualified interpreters for courts as professionals who have (Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity 2017, pp. 4–6): • a tertiary (VET or university) qualification in interpreting; • accreditation from NAATI; • membership with a professional body such as AUSIT and ASLIA; and • experience interpreting in court. In the standards, interpreters are officers of the court; however, using interpreters in courts is still seen as a matter at the discretion of the court. Medical interpreting is still far from such standards regulating the relationships between medical professionals and interpreters. There are a variety of domains in these settings (Hale 2007; Mulayim et al. 2014). The legal setting includes police interviews and investigations, legal conferences, lawyer–client interactions, tribunal hearings, court hearings and court trials, the last two of which are formal and adversarial, whereas the medical setting includes doctor–patient interactions, hospital settings, and consultations with other healthcare professionals.

1.2 Pursuing a Career as a Community Interpreter There are several career paths that community interpreters in Australia can pursue in the industry. They can work in-house for government departments and agencies or these services are tendered out to private agencies where they can work in-house or freelance. One of the challenges that these government departments and agencies may experience is staffing. As this is closely related to having access to government resources, each entity must ensure the eligibility and suitability of its personnel. So, community interpreters and translators in the Australian public services (APS) have

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INTRODUCTION

7

to go through some sort of compulsory security vetting—also known as security clearance—whose level changes depending on the position in question. Inherently, this makes it hard for these bodies or ‘entities’ to find an interpreter/translator in a specific language at a given time. To go into more detail, one needs to understand the Protective Security Policy Framework in Australia. It requires entities to use the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency (AGSVA) to conduct vetting (Protective Security 2018, pp. 1–3). The policy details the preemployment screening processes and standardized vetting practices to be undertaken when employing personnel. Pre-employment screening is the primary activity used to mitigate an entity’s personnel security risks. Entities may use security clearances where they need additional assurance of the suitability and integrity of personnel. This could be necessary for access to security classified information, or to provide greater assurance for designated positions. Security clearance is carried out at four levels: baseline vetting, negative vetting 1, negative vetting 2 and positive vetting. Each level has successively stricter checks. For example, a background check of five years is required at the level of baseline vetting while it is 10 years for negative vetting; in addition, psychological assessment is required for positive vetting clearance subjects. For instance, in a job advertisement on its website, the Australian Signals Directorate seeks foreign language analysts who will work as part of diverse teams across a range of missions; • to directly support counter-terrorism efforts and Australian Defence Force operations, • to ensure the security of Australian Government networks, and • to inform the decision-making of the Agency’s intelligence assessment and policy customers. As noted, for a positive vetting clearance, applicants are also required to undergo a psychological assessment. They will need to account for their personal background for their whole life and to demonstrate their suitability to work in a high security intelligence environment (APSJobs 2019). Apart from Australia, there are many other countries and organizations where security clearance is required for positions held by interpreters and translators. One of these organizations is NATO. Similarly, the

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recruitment of interpreters at NATO include (1) undergoing an interpretation test, and (2) obtaining a security clearance, (3) an interview with management (AIIC 2002; see also NATO 2015). This chapter has focused on diversity as a contemporary issue and the context in which community interpreters work in Australia. The book will go on to investigate community interpreting services as a market offering that satisfies the needs of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) members of the Australian community, with an additional chapter on the Turkish context. It brings together the two disciplines of interpreting studies and management. A variety of challenges which still arise in various fields of interpreting are analysed and possible solutions are suggested about the future directions for other global contexts where changing demographics mean that community interpreting is increasingly relevant. After presenting the research design in Chapter 2, the following chapter (Chapter 3) will explore the profession of community interpreting as services and externalities.

References ACIC. (2017). Connect Discover Understand Report: 2016–17 Annual Report. https://acic.govcms.gov.au/sites/g/files/net1491/f/acic_2016-17_ annual_report.pdf?v=1508387578. Accessed 22 Mar 2018. AIIC. (2002, July 2). Recruitment of interpreters at NATO. http://aiic.net/ p/291. Accessed 25 Oct 2019. APSJobs. (2019). Foreign Language Analyst Within the Australian Signals Directorate, Vacancy N.N. 10761103. https://www.apsjobs.gov.au/SearchedN oticesView.aspx?Notices=10761103%3A1&mn=JobSearch. Accessed 28 Oct 2019. Corsellis, A. (2008). Public Service Interpreting: The First Steps. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Eser, O. (2016). Translation and Interpreting as Sustainable Services: The Australian Experience. Ankara: Anı Yayıncılık. Hale, S. (2007). Community Interpreting. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity. (2017). Recommended National standards for Working with the Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals. Canberra. http://jccd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/JCCD-Interp reter-Standards.pdf. Accessed 16 May 2018. Mulayim, S., & Lai, M. (2016). Ethics for Police Translators and Interpreters. Portland, US: CRC Press Taylor and Francis Inc.

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Mulayim, S., Lai, M., & Norma, C. (2014). Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting: Context, Challenges, and Strategies. Boca Raton, London, and New York: CRC Press. NATO. (2015). Employment at NATO Headquarters: The NATO Interpretation Service. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/86888.htm. Accessed 25 Oct 2019. Pöchhacker, F. (2016). Introducing Interpreting Studies (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge. Protective Security. (2018). Protective Security Policy Framework: Eligibility and Suitability of Personnel. https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/personnel/ eligibility-and-suitability-of-personnel/Pages/default.aspx. Accessed 25 Oct 2019. UNHCR. (2018). UNHCR Global Report 2018. http://reporting.unhcr.org/ sites/default/files/gr2018/pdf/GR2018_English_Full_lowres.pdf. Accessed 28 Dec 2018. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2017). International Migration Report 2017: Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/404). http://www.unmigration.org. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2019). International Migration Stock 2019. http://www.unmigration.org. Accessed 27 Jan 2020.

CHAPTER 2

Outline of the Study: Research Approach

Abstract This chapter presents the details of the qualitative research conducted to explore the Australian experience of community interpreting services as a profession through the accounts of the major stakeholders in the industry such as NAATI, DHS, Professionals Australia and some private agencies. The data were collected through qualitative documents and interviews and analysed through QSR NVivo v.11 data analysis software. Participant responses have made it possible to conceptualize the context and the profession of community interpreting services in Australia. The findings offer a thorough insight into a culturally and linguistically diverse society in which community interpreting is considered a human right and a basic need for members of the community who do not speak the common language. Despite all the major challenges, it is incumbent upon the government departments and agencies to grapple with these challenges and draw up strategies that will ensure CALD people can access public services. Keywords Qualitative research · NAATI · DHS · Professionals Australia · Private agencies · Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1_2

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This chapter looks closely at the research approach undertaken in the book. It aims to help the reader, including those relatively new to possible research approaches and processes, understand how the research has been designed and sets out the research questions. Bearing in mind the relative newness of research in the area of community interpreting, it is crucial that research is based on a sound and appropriate use of research methods. Recently the need for a better understanding of research methods has been more visible in works such as Hale and Napier’s Research Methods in Interpreting: A Practical Resource (2013). Following a consideration of research need (the research rationale), the chapter outlines a range of possible approaches to conducting research in community interpreting. The specific elements of the present study are then explained in a concise manner, starting with the statement of purpose and the role of the researcher before moving on to the setting (the research site) and the participants, ethical considerations and finally, data collection, analysis and verification (see also Patton 2015).

2.1

Rationale for the Study

This book is an example of research resulting from a clear social need which remains unmet in many countries as they do not regard or provide community interpreting services as a profession. With the world becoming more and more diverse, government departments and agencies in certain countries lack in preparedness towards meeting the needs of those who need to communicate through the services of a professional community interpreter in order to access public services. While these government departments and agencies must act together to overcome the challenges of providing interpreting services, they may fail to manage and satisfy this human need effectively and efficiently. However, the progress towards meeting this need made in other countries such as Australia can provide a kind of roadmap. The origin of the present project lies in a research problem in community interpreting identified in Turkey which has experienced a massive intake of about 4 million persons of concern predominantly from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran over the last decade (see also UNHCR Turkey and Chapter 6). This unprecedented influx of refugees has happened

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in a relatively short period of time. The diversity that this movement has brought about has caught Turkey by surprise in some respects and many of the government departments and agencies have found themselves struggling to cope. Diversity is, by its very nature, a multifaceted challenge despite its opportunities; overall plans must therefore be made such as the vital task of establishing professional community interpreting services. Currently, the interpreting industry in Turkey lacks many entities that would need to work together in order to start meeting the challenge. The government reports from various departments such as the Department of Home Affairs have been full of accounts of the challenges of becoming more and more diverse. Therefore, I wanted to draw on the Australian experience of developing community interpreting services as a profession that spans more than half a century beginning from the late 1970s when NAATI was founded. On a personal level, it has been a great journey to visit a diverse country like Australia and carry out research to understand professionals with decades of experience in the industry of community interpreting services. The chosen research approach— described below—has made it possible to see community interpreting services through the lived experiences of those participants in Australia.

2.2

Possible Research Approaches in Community Interpreting

To study a research problem, the key terms are research approaches, research designs and research methods. They are often confused and used interchangeably. Creswell states that there are three main research approaches: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods that are often used to access scholarly knowledge (2014). These approaches can be distinguished in the way they formulate a research problem and research questions, the types of research designs or strategies used, and research methods of how data are collected, analysed and interpreted. Qualitative research is used for exploring and understanding the meaning attributed to a problem. Data are collected in the participant’s natural setting and analysed inductively from codes to themes. So, the research process is emergent. As there are multiple perspectives, the larger picture emerges as the research progresses. There are five research designs often used in social sciences: narrative, phenomenology, ethnography, grounded theory and case study. Research methods for data collection can be interviews, observation, documents and focus groups. Quantitative research

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is used for testing theories deductively by examining the relationship between variables. There are often two main quantitative research designs: survey and experimental. Data are collected on instruments and are analysed using statistical measures. In survey designs, data can be collected through questionnaires whereas in experimental designs, groups can be formed as control and experimental. Mixed methods research is relatively new in social research and involves collecting and analysing both qualitative and quantitative data. These two forms of data can be used concurrently or sequentially. There are three research designs: convergent parallel (concurrently), explanatory sequential (first quantitative and then qualitative) and exploratory sequential (first qualitative and then quantitative). That depends on the timing of the data collection, analysis and interpretation (see Table 2.1). Also drawing on literature on research approaches outside the confines of the interpreting field, Hale and Napier (2013) give an overview of what research is and how interpreting research can be conducted. After they summarize the main differences between research approaches, they also provide some illustrative examples of interpreting research. Below are the details of the current study in terms of its research approach, design and methods.

Table 2.1 Research approaches, designs and methods Research approaches

Qualitative research

Quantitative research

Mixed methods research

Research designs

• • • • •

Narrative, Phenomenology, Ethnography, Grounded theory, Case study

• Survey, • Experimental

Research methods

• • • •

Interviews, Observation, Documents, Focus groups

• Questionnaires, • Experiments

• Convergent parallel • Explanatory sequential, • Exploratory sequential Both

Source Adapted from Creswell (2014)

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Purpose Statement

The purpose of the study reported in this book, based on a qualitative research design, is to explore the major stakeholders, the challenges confronted and the strategies sought out in professional community interpreting services for participants consisting of stakeholders such as NAATI, Department of Human Services, representative bodies such as Professionals Australia, and private agencies in Australia with a focus on the State of Victoria. In qualitative research, Hale and Napier (2013, p. 6, citing Maxwell 2013) suggest using a ‘conceptual framework’ (to help the researcher ‘think through what is going on’ in the relevant area) in order to refine research goals, to formulate research questions and select appropriate research approaches and methods if the research does not follow a specific theory based on a detailed literature review. So, the research questions below are based on such a conceptual framework as set out above in the form of a purpose statement. • What stakeholders play a major role in community interpreting services as a profession in Australia? • What are the major challenges faced? What are the underlying reasons behind these? • What are the strategies employed in order to overcome these challenges? Qualitative methods demonstrate a different approach to scholarly inquiry compared to methods of quantitative research as they rely on text and image data and the research process is emergent (Creswell 2014). As noted above, a qualitative study can deploy a range of research methods: the present study follows a case-study method as this inquiry aims to understand processes. The key point is to understand a system through multiple experiences (Moustakas 1994; van Manen 1990).

2.4

The Researcher’s Role

Since qualitative research is interpretive in nature, the inquirer is typically involved in a sustained and intensive experience with participants. Researchers explicitly identify their biases, values, personal backgrounds that shape their interpretations during a study (Creswell 2014). I

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have chosen the Australian context as the research site because it is a culturally and linguistically diverse country where more than 250 different languages including indigenous languages are spoken. I live in Turkey and work at the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Amasya University, where diversity can be attributed to migrants, overseas patients, international students, tourists and persons of concern due to conflicts in neighbouring countries. I believe that the study will be helpful for Turkey as well as other countries that intend to build a rigorous community interpreting industry that runs effectively and efficiently by drawing on the Australian experience of a diverse community and its communicative needs in crucial areas of social interaction. Conducting postdoctoral research1 into professional community interpreting services in Australia, I had the opportunity of observing this context from within and having multiple interviews with the chosen participants.

2.5

The Setting and the Participants

In a qualitative study it is crucial to purposefully select participants or sites that will best help the researcher understand the problem and the research questions (Creswell 2014). For reasons stated above relating to its established modes of practice and professional framework, the chosen research site is Australia with a focus on the State of Victoria. A total of 23.4 million people from more than 2502 different countries live in Australia according to the 2016 census. Victoria is a state of migration that offers government-funded translating and interpreting services to residents who are not proficient in English when accessing public services (Lai 2016, p. 4). As the 2016 census indicates, Victoria has a population of 5,926,620 people, 28.4% of whom represent overseas-born persons with an increase of 2.1% from 2011 to 2016. It has a diversity of people from 247 different countries,3 speaking 234 different languages.4 1 Dr. Miranda Lai acted as the supervisor for the research, helped me gain an entry into the research site and secure permissions to interview the participants. She works as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Translating and Interpreting at RMIT University. 2 There are different estimates of the number of countries in the world, depending on geographical, political and socio-economic issues. 3 See also: Victoria: Overseas Country of Birth, 2016, 2011 Census. 4 See also: Victoria: Languages other than English Spoken at Home, 2016, 2011

Census.

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The participant pool, the details of which can be seen in Table 2.2 below, consists of the following organizations. It is no easy task to engage potential participant organizations (and then particular individuals) in a research study: it can take months to get them on board and to obtain written consent to participate before collecting the data. In the present study, all the identified organizations agreed to participate, having completed the consent forms: 1. Government departments and agencies such as the Department of Human Services, 2. Private agencies such as All Graduates and VITS LanguageLoop, 3. NAATI as the credentialing body, 4. Unions such as Professionals Australia. 5. The Translation and Interpreting Association of Turkey.

Table 2.2 Participants of the study Name

Institution

Position

1

Ismail AKINCI

2

Ibrahim AYZIT

3

Niki BARAS

Private Agency, Founder and Chief Executive Officer Victoria Language Services Coordinator Organizer

4

Frans MOENS

5

Mark PAINTING

6

Turgay KURULTAY

All Graduates Interpreting and Translating, Australia Department of Human Services (DHS), Australia Translators and Interpreters Australia, Professionals Australia Victorian Interpreting and Translating Services (VITS) LanguageLoop, Australia National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) Ltd., Australia Department of Translation and Interpreting, Istanbul University and Former Head of the Translation and Interpreting Association, Turkey

Private Agency, Head of Strategic Projects Chief Executive Officer

Professor (Ret.)

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The personal profiles of the six participants are as follows. Ismail AKINCI, as the founder and CEO of a privately owned agency, holds a Bachelor of Arts in interpreting and a NAATI certification as a Turkish-English interpreter. He has years of experience working with the police, the courts, hospitals, schools and various other sectors within the community interpreting field. Ibrahim AYZIT has been working for the Department of Human Services for over 20 years. Currently serving as the Language Service Coordinator for DHS Victoria, he studied translation and interpreting at Deakin University, Australia and holds a NAATI certification as a Turkish-English interpreter. As an organizer with Translators and Interpreters Australia within Professional Australia, Niki BARAS has been working as an interpreter and translator for over 30 years. Frans MOENS worked in IT technology and in market research before moving into language services in 2010 and becoming Head of Strategic Projects at Victorian Interpreting and Translating Services (VITS) LanguageLoop. He speaks Dutch and English. Mark PAINTING has been the Chief Executive Officer of NAATI since 2015. He has held a number of corporate, commercial and operational roles at senior executive levels in the Australian and NSW Public Sectors before he joined NAATI. He also has experience as a Director on a commercial board and a number of governance and audit committees. He holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Bachelor of Business Degree. A retired senior academic, Turgay KURULTAY, formerly head of the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Istanbul University, Turkey, also served as Director at the Translation and Interpreting Association. He is the founding member of several not-for-profit organizations in the field of translation and interpreting such as the Translation and Interpreting Association, the Disaster and Emergency Interpreting Initiative, and the Literary Translators Society in Turkey. Professor KURULTAY is not cited until Chapter 6 as his expertise relates to Turkey. The other participants were chosen as they could provide insights and properties related to community interpreting services as a profession in Australia. The chosen research method, namely interviews, were conducted in English in Australia during 2018. In selecting the participants in the Australian research site for the interviews, I used the purposeful sampling technique as this is said to best help the researcher understand the research questions in a study using qualitative methods (Creswell 2014). I selected chain sampling as a strategy to locate possible participants.

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In chain sampling, even if the number of possible participants recommended is high at the beginning, they begin to converge as a few names are mentioned more often. In addition, the sample also emerged during fieldwork, which Patton calls inductive theoretical sampling. It can be challenging because the sample gets more visible as the inquiry unfolds (Patton 2015, p. 289).

2.6

Ethical Considerations

Before entering the field, the procedures for recording data were established. To protect the rights of the participants, they were informed of the fact that the research would involve data collection through interviews and documents recommended by the interviewees themselves. The participants were given an interview protocol to explain the procedures.

2.7

Data Collection and Analysis

I collected two principal types of data: interviews, and documents. First of all, I conducted face-to-face interviews with open-ended questions (see Appendix 1). Face-to-face interviews may help the researcher have a more holistic view of the context because the researcher can take comprehensive notes of the setting during the interview, ask the participant further questions where necessary and ensure the quality of any recordings. Patton states that behaviour becomes meaningful and understandable in a context, and without the context, there is little possibility of exploring the meaning of an experience (Patton 2015, p. 9). But Seidman also labels a one-time meeting with a participant as treading on ‘thin contextual ice’ and suggests using a three-interview design—the model adopted in this study—developed by Dolbeare and Schuman in 1982 (Seidman 2005, p. 17): • the first interview establishes the context of the participant’s experience. • the second allows the participants to reconstruct the details of their experience within the context in which it occurs, and • the third encourages the participants to reflect on the meaning their experience holds for them.

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In the 1st phase, in order to put the experience of a participant within the context, I asked questions to find out about their backgrounds such as work experience and education in terms of the topic up to the present day. In the 2nd phase, I focused on the concrete details of the participant‘s experience to find out what they would say about who the major stakeholders of the community interpreting industry in Australia are, and what the main challenges and strategies are/have been. I usually merged Phases 1 and 2, which lasted about 1–2 hours due to the fact that the participants were too busy to have multiple appointments. I asked them to reflect on what they had said and I delayed Phase 3 in order to allow the participants time to reflect. I did the 3rd phase either as a follow-up interview or as a ‘member-checking’ verification by email. Over and above audio-recorded interviews, I also took notes by hand, which allowed me to pay more attention to non-linguistic features such as gestures and body language. Finally, I used authoritative documents sourced by consulting official websites and reports mainly recommended by the interviewees or by following up on other sources that these documents made reference to. In social sciences, there are various approaches to qualitative data analysis. In order to make sense of the data collected, I transcribed the recorded interviews while the data from the other participants were being collected. In tackling the analysis of the data collected, Creswell suggests that researchers follow a 7-step data analysis procedure from the specific to the general involving multiple levels of analysis (2014): (1) Raw data, (2) Organizing and preparing data for analysis, (3) Reading through all data, (4) Coding the data, (5) Themes/descriptions, (6) Interrelating themes/descriptions, and (7) Interpreting the meaning of themes/descriptions (also see Yıldırım and Sim¸ ¸ sek 2014). I used a qualitative data software program to analyse the data from the interviews and the document, having organized and prepared the data (step 2) concurrently as the raw data (step 1) emerged. It is also possible to hand code such data, but this can be time-consuming. Suitable qualitative software analysis programs include MAXqda, Atlas.ti, and QSR NVivo. They help researchers organize, sort, and search for information in running text and image databases (ibid.). In order to identify thematic relationships in the interview data (step 5), I developed a number of codes using QSR NVivo (step 4) based on the emerging information collected from the participants and my reading of the data (step 3) and used these to

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generate detailed descriptions of interrelated themes (step 6) supported with visuals, as a supplement for understanding the data better (step 7).

2.8

Data Verification

Qualitative data validity or reliability is different from that of quantitative research. Qualitative validity is about using certain procedures to see if the findings are ‘accurate’ (Gibbs 2007). The validity strategies used in the current study involved the use of multiple approaches (Creswell 2014). First of all, I spent a prolonged time in the field to develop an in-depth understanding of the research problem and I triangulated the different data sources of information by examining evidence from sources such as official websites, documents and interviews in order to build a coherent justification for the themes which emerged. Also, I used ‘member checking ’ in a number of ways. After I had organized and prepared the raw data for analysis, I shared the codes that began to emerge with the participants so that they could confirm or point out any changes that they thought were necessary. For example, this resulted in some changes in terms of the choice of words, rewording, additions and omissions after their reflections on what had previously been said. When necessary, I conducted a brief follow-up interview with some of the participants as part of the 3rd phase mentioned above. For instance, at the beginning of the year 2020 I wanted to see how the new NAATI certification system worked out after the year 2018 when it was first introduced. These followup interviews were able to help add a dimension of depth to the research. In the end, I took the final consolidated report with the main findings (i.e. the themes) back to all the participants in Australia to explore what they thought of the outcomes. In addition, I used rich descriptions to convey the findings. Finally, through peer debriefing, I had the opportunity to discuss the emerging themes with faculty at RMIT University. As for qualitative reliability or transferability, this concerns consistency across different research studies. I first checked the transcripts for errors and then compared the data with the codes by cross-checking them. This chapter has presented the details of the qualitative research conducted to explore the Australian experience of community interpreting services as a profession through the accounts of major stakeholders in the industry such as NAATI, DHS, Professionals Australia and some private agencies. The next chapter will focus on the following issues, specifically from a management perspective: (1) the context of the

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interpreting industry as explored through two basic concepts, namely, services and externalities, (2) the theoretical framework of community interpreting and (3) the backdrop to these services in the Australian context. Chapters 4 and 5 (challenges and strategies for sustainability respectively) will focus on the findings of the research approach used in this book more explicitly.

References Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA and London: Sage. Gibbs, G. R. (2007). Analyzing Qualitative Data. In U. Flick (Ed.), The Sage Qualitative Research Kit. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hale, S., & Napier, J. (2013). Research Methods in Interpreting: A Practical Resource. London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Lai, M. (2016). Police Cognitive Interviews Conducted Through Interpreters— An Experimental Study of the Inherent Conflicts in Interlingual Operations. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Translating and Interpreting, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, VIC, Australia. Moustakas, C. E. (1994). Phenomenological Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA and London: Sage. Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (4th ed.). Beverly Hills, CA and London, UK: Sage. Seidman, I. (2005). Interviewing as Qualitative Research—A guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences (3rd ed.). New York and London: Teachers College Press. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. New York: State University of New York Press. Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). (2017a). Victoria: Overseas Country of Birth, 2016, 2011 Census. https://www.multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/ 2017/Census_Data_2016/Table1VictoriaCountryofbirth2016Censusandc hange5July17.PDF. Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). (2017b). Victoria: Languages Other Than English Spoken at Home, 2016, 2011 Census. https://www.multic ultural.vic.gov.au/images/2017/Census_Data_2016/Table2VictoriaLanguag es2016Censusandchange5July17.PDF. Yıldırım, A., & Sim¸ ¸ sek, H. (2014). Sosyal Bilimlerde Ara¸stırma Yöntemleri (10. Baskı). Ankara: Seçkin.

CHAPTER 3

Community Interpreting as a Service

Abstract This chapter begins by focusing on the two basic concepts fundamental to better understand the context of the interpreting industry: services and externalities. Community interpreting is defined from the standpoint of services and is explored in relation with the concept of externalities to the community members who are vulnerable as they experience the incidental consequences of the government policies of immigration. The chapter also looks at the theoretical framework of community interpreting and provides a backdrop of these services in the Australian context from the White Australia Policy in 1901 to the multicultural policy as an element of Australia’s nation building. Finally, the chapter concludes by dwelling on the major stakeholders in the profession of community interpreting in Australia such NAATI as the credentialing authority, training institutions, government, and other professional representative bodies. Keywords Australia · Community interpreting · Services · Externalities · Value · White australia policy · Multicultural policy · Stakeholders

This chapter explores the management aspect of the interpreting industry and aims to help the reader understand community interpreting from the perspective of delivering and accessing a service. After considering © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1_3

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community interpreting as an ‘externality’ impacting on the members of the community with no or limited English-language proficiency, i.e. in the dominant language of the host society, it moves on to present a brief overview of historical and distinguishing aspects of this type of interpreting, before looking more closely at the development of these services in Australia and its major stakeholders.

3.1 The Concept of Services as a Paradigm in Community Interpreting Laypeople may think that community interpreting hinges mainly on linguistic aspects of communication. In fact, bilingual skills are only part of the competence of community interpreters. There are other subcompetences that they need to develop before they become professionals such as interpreting skills, expertise in areas like healthcare and law, and professional ethics. From the standpoint of management studies, community interpreting is a market offering to fulfil the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse members in a community. In order to secure the quality of the offering, quality standards were adopted in the industry at the beginning of the millennium: EN-15038:2006 and ISO 17100:2015. If we acknowledge the idea of community interpreting as a servicebased profession, we can begin to see community interpreting as a product in the market. Kotler, Armstrong and Opresnik (2018, p. 244) define a product as ‘[…] anything that can be offered to a market for attention, use, or consumption that may satisfy a need’. There are many types of products. They include goods, services, events, places, ideas, experiences or a mixture of these. Goods are tangible and we can hold them in our hands, while services are intangible products that do not have physical features that people can see, hear, smell, taste or touch prior to purchase (Kurtz 2012). As Kotler et al. point out, goods are first produced, then stored and finally sold and consumed, but services are first sold, then produced and consumed simultaneously. Services have four characteristics (2018, pp. 258–9): Service intangibility means that services cannot be seen or felt before being consumed. Rather, they are perceived, sensed or experienced. Service variability means the quality of services depends on the context in which they are produced. Some conclusions can be drawn about quality from certain signals like the place, people, price and the way things are communicated. These signals make the service more

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tangible. Service inseparability means that services cannot be separated from their providers. This provider–customer interaction also affects the service outcome. The final feature of services is service perishability. They cannot be stored for later use. Wirtz and Lovelock focus on the lack of transfer of ownership in their definition of services (Wirtz and Lovelock 2018, pp. 12–14). They use the term rent to describe payment made for services, as customers can obtain benefits for a defined period. They identify five categories within the non-ownership framework of services: 1. Labor, skills and expertise rentals: other people are hired to perform work that customers either cannot or choose not to do themselves. This category can also include interpreting and translation services. 2. Rented goods services: these services allow customers to obtain the exclusive right to use a physical object that they prefer not to own. Examples are cars, boats and other rented vehicles and equipment. 3. Defined space and facility rentals: customers obtain the use of a certain portion of a larger facility such as a building/area or a seat in an aircraft. 4. Access to shared facilities: customers rent the right to share the use of a facility like toll roads or fitness clubs. 5. Access to and use of networks and systems: customers rent the right to participate in a specified network such as utilities or telecommunications. Services are defined by Wirtz and Lovelock as economic activities that are time-based performances implying an exchange of value between two parties in the marketplace (2018, p. 14). The value obtained from service purchases comes from access to a variety of value-creating elements rather than a transfer of ownership. Value can in turn be seen as a need-satisfying market offering which is made available to customers (Kotler et al. 2018). It is about understanding targeted people by building relationships and delivering value to them. It also involves making continuous improvements. Customers often do not judge values accurately and they act on perceived value: evaluating the difference between all the benefits and all the costs of a market offering. Satisfaction depends on the perceived performance relative to a person’s expectations (ibid., pp. 34–9).

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Creating value and satisfaction can be regarded as the building blocks for sustainability. In the interpreting market, two types of value can be identified: interpreter value and customer value. In the long run, community interpreters may abandon the industry as dissatisfied stakeholders if matters such as working conditions and remuneration fall below their expectations. The industry as a whole may suffer from the effects of unsustainability, to which we return in Chapter 5. In order to have a holistic understanding of community interpreting services, we can take a closer look at the environments in which the needs of the culturally and linguistically diverse members of a community are satisfied. Kotler et al. argue that there are two types of environments impacting a product: microenvironment and macroenvironment. The microenvironment consists of all the stakeholders including customers; there are five types of markets. Consumer markets consist of individuals that buy products for personal consumption. Business markets buy these products for further processing or use in their production processes. Reseller markets buy them to resell at a profit. Global markets consist of buyers in other countries. Governmental markets include government departments and agencies that buy goods and services to deliver public services. The macroenvironment is made up of the societal forces that affect the microenvironment such as demographic, economic, natural, technological, political and cultural features (ibid., pp. 92–112). Community interpreting as a service, i.e. a form of product, operates predominantly in governmental markets. Through the lens of a services paradigm, community interpreting can be defined here as an oral or signed interlingual service as a market offering in the interpreting market to satisfy the needs of the culturally and linguistically diverse members of a community so that government departments and agencies can deliver public services effectively and efficiently. Apart from an emphasis on the needs of clients, this definition also alludes to the fact that it is incumbent upon the government agencies to prepare the ground for CALD members to have equitable access to public services and to be socially inclusive in the community. This point of view can be further explained in relation to externalities through which community interpreting services are regarded as one of the other services that are publicly funded.

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Community Interpreting as an Externality

The concept of externality may shed light on different aspects of community interpreting services. For example, it can offer insights into the following issues in relation to diversity: • • • •

how the need for community interpreting services comes about, how community members become vulnerable, why externalities relate to community interpreting services, and what kind of responsibilities governments may hold.

All activities that produce goods or services may have some sort of economic, social, ethical and environmental impacts on society and all business activities lead to so-called ‘externalities’ which are defined as the external consequences experienced by those who are not directly involved in a particular economic activity (Harrison 2016, p. 203). Hence, externalities are thought of as the unintended by-products of activities to generate private benefits; the generators of an externality ignore the incidental costs or benefits experienced by others (Cornes and Sandler 1996). Therefore, an externality can be positive or negative. Positive externalities often have more public benefits than personal benefits. Consider, for example, a positive externality in which research into new technologies will be disseminated for use by other people. It may be costly at first, but over time society as a whole benefits in terms of the knowledge generated. On the other hand, negative externalities affect society as a whole, too. Private businesses may pursue their own interests, but in the end, all members of the community living in the neighbourhood will suffer from the adverse effects. Harrison (2016), for example, mentions a power company that uses fossil fuels to generate power: the carbon dioxide pollution will be harmful for the entire society. Pigou (1932) gives examples of a contractor building a factory in the middle of a neighbourhood. The factory leads to some external costs such as pollution and congestion for those living nearby. Another example can be the consumption of alcohol that will have external costs to society in terms of increased demand for healthcare or threats to law and order. Externalities require government intervention through regulations and guidelines. Governments can levy a tax on the products causing the negative externalities or use subsidies to encourage a positive externality. Examples include environmental regulations or health-related legislation

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such as the Rio Declaration of the United Nations on Environment and Development that came out in 1992 or the KYOTO Protocol that came into force in 2005 to curb climate change. Community interpreting services can also be viewed in terms of externalities as diversity is an issue that affects all members of a community, not only CALD people. Many countries are pursuing policies of integration or multiculturalism in the world, and, over the course of time, immigration policies or other measures increase the number of culturally and linguistically diverse people in a community. They may end up living in a diverse society where people speak different languages and have different cultures. As a whole, this leads to an externality of a social nature that can be regarded as positive, e.g. any country welcoming migrants will be more sustainable and culturally vibrant, as well as negative, e.g. it may take migrant families generations to settle down. In order to deal with the negative externalities associated with a diverse community, governments can allocate resources to correct the externality just as they do for such services as defence, education and healthcare. Examples can be the public funding of community interpreting services or offering scholarships to train community interpreters for certain languages in line with government policies.

3.3

Community Interpreting at a Glance

Community interpreting is indispensable for people who do not share a common language, but have a need to communicate (Mulayim et al. 2014, p. XXVI). History is a rich tapestry that depicts the emergence of many diverse communities. Examples giving rise to diversity include the geographic explorations by European countries that date back to the fifteenth century or the guest workers arriving in some western European countries in the 1960s. In recent years, refugees from conflict zones such as the Horn of Africa or the Middle East have been in the spotlight. Even though community interpreting has been practised for thousands of years, it is quite striking that it wasn‘t recognized as a profession until the first Critical Link Conference in Canada in 1995, when the name community interpreting was adopted to discuss and study the phenomenon.1 In the European Union, it is referred to together with

1 Also see https://criticallink.org/.

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translation as Public Service Interpreting and Translation (PSIT). The Special Interest Group on Translation and Interpreting for Public Services (SIGTIPS) was set up by the European Language Council in 2010. The terms community interpreting (Hale 2007; Roberts 1997; Mikkelson 1996) and public service interpreting (PSI) (Corsellis 2008) are often used interchangeably in the literature (Pöchhacker 2016, p. 15). Research publications in the interpreting field also use terms such as liaison interpreting (Gentile et al. 1996) and dialogue interpreting (Mason 2001). They all refer to the same professional activity, although these last two can cover business-related interpreting as well. Community interpreting is generally defined by the specific contexts in which it takes place: interactions between public service agencies and citizens who need these services, but are unable to speak the language used in service delivery (Mikkelson 2004). Drawing on Australia as a highly diverse country, Gentile et al. point to ‘an information gap’ between public service providers and community members (1996, pp. 17–18). They refer to it as liaison interpreting and define it as ‘the name given to the genre of interpreting where the interpreting is performed in two language directions by the same person’. Nicholson sees CI as an activity that takes place in everyday and emergency situations which refugees and migrants may encounter in communicating with officials, police, employment counsellors, schools, public assistance and healthcare personnel of all kinds (1994, p. 80). Hale argues that community interpreting can determine the course of a person’s life and people who are in need of professional interpreting services would simply not be able to communicate without the services of an interpreter. She depicts its context (2007, p. 25) as follows: Community interpreting takes the interpreter into the most private spheres of human life. It does not take place at negotiations about major international political decisions or conferences on recent scientific discoveries; it takes place in settings where the most intimate and significant issues of everyday individuals are discussed.

As noted, Corsellis calls the services provided for the public by government ‘public service interpreting and translation (PSIT)’ and states that the term ‘public service’ refers mainly to services such as law, healthcare,

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social services such as housing, and education, commenting that it is ‘carried out in the context of the public services, where service users do not speak the majority language of the country’ (2008, p. 4). In many countries, community interpreting is still in its infancy, not highly acknowledged (D‘Hayer, 2012) or undervalued by service users (Hale 2007). Roberts claims that while conference interpreting achieved professionalization in the 1950s and court interpreting in the 1970s, other community-based interpreting services in healthcare and immigration are still to achieve this status (2002). It seems that there are some common problems of professionalization in the industry around the world: low status of the interpreting profession in the community (Mikkelson 1996, p. 124) and governmental responses towards community interpreting (Ozolins 2000). As for the training opportunities in public service interpreting and translation (PSIT), Corsellis states that the main cause of its paucity is the lack of commitment on the part of authorities. Other issues such as supply and demand, quality and sustainability, are also influential and will be discussed later in the book. In outlining a spectrum of responses to interpreting needs, Ozolins (2000) cites the following in the chronological development of CI services: (1) Neglect, (2) Ad hoc, (3) Generic language services and 4) Comprehensiveness. He also states that different countries have varying attitudes towards community interpreting and translation. At the time of writing, countries like Australia and Sweden were among the few which provided these services in a professional way by offering training programmes at TAFE (Technical and Further Education), undergraduate or postgraduate level, seeking out ways such as setting guidelines to ensure service quality. There are, however, other countries which follow strategies like solving problems as they come along or simply choosing to neglect such problems. In countries where community interpreting services are far from becoming a profession, relatives, friends or unqualified bilinguals replace community interpreters (Pöchhacker and Kadric 1999). These are people with bilingual skills and no professional credentialing or training who Pöchhacker classifies as natural interpreters as opposed to professional interpreters (2016, p. 23). The social inclusion of culturally and linguistically diverse people in the community is generally accepted as a valid goal of government. As Bartels (2011) puts it very clearly, anyone unable to speak English or with insufficient English in Australia is regarded as a vulnerable person in a legal sense as also those who have physical or mental disabilities. This vulnerability

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requires government, legal institutions and support services to ensure that appropriate processes and language services are implemented to facilitate communication (Wakefield et al. 2014, p. 2). In the provision of public services, Alford (2009) highlights two types of approaches: co-creation and co-production. What really matters, he argues, is that citizens and clients should be participating actively in the delivery of public services, and that there must be sustained collaboration between government agencies and clients. Holmes states that citizens should be well informed in order to be able to contribute to reasoned and respectful public dialogue in the society in which they live, also positing that inequalities resulting from social exclusion can discourage many citizens from active participation (2011, p. 20). As a community interpreter with years of experience, Mulayim (2016) observes that there are many people in Australian society who experience difficulties due to a lack of English proficiency and this impedes them from accessing and producing the services necessary for them to be socially inclusive and active members in a society. He also adds that language barriers, which draw little attention, can be seen as a cause of inequalities in the provision of public services (ibid., pp. 20–26). Thompson also regards language barriers experienced by people not proficient in the dominant language in a society as a factor that increases the likelihood of marginalization (1998, p. 82). In fact, as Hermann (2014) puts it, public services are the most critical resources in any society for achieving equality.

3.4

A Backdrop to Community Interpreting Services in the Australian Context

Australia is the world’s sixth-largest country in land area (7,682,300 sq km) and is the only nation to govern an entire continent. Its formal name is the Commonwealth of Australia, which became an independent nation in 1901 and has a federal system of government. There are six states and ten Australian territories outside the borders of the states. The states are New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (VIC), Queensland (QLD), South Australia (SA), Western Australia (WA) and Tasmania (TAS), and the two mainland territories are the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory (NT). In Australia, power is divided between the federal government and the governments of the six states. Specific areas of legislative power are given to the federal government, including taxation, defence, foreign affairs and postal and telecommunications services.

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The states retain legislative power over all other matters that occur within their borders, including police, hospitals, education and public transport. Each state has its own state constitution, which divides the state’s government into the same divisions of legislature, executive, and judiciary as the federal government. The Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory are often treated like states because of their significant population sizes. If the laws of a state ever conflict with the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia, the constitution says that Commonwealth law is to be followed. The six states and the Northern Territory have established one further level of government: Local governments. They are also known as local councils, and handle community needs like waste collection, public recreation facilities and town planning. All these governments have varying degrees of impact on the industry of community translation and interpreting services in Australia (see also https://info. australia.gov.au). Australia is a diverse country as it sees skilled migration as a means to overcome the challenges of an ageing population. Translation and interpreting services in Australia came to life as a result of having to satisfy the needs of a diverse community over time. This inevitably led to a multicultural society (Eser 2016, p. 54). Over and above migration, diversity also results from the indigenous population and refugees (Van Krieken 2012, p. 500). Historically, more people immigrate to, than emigrate from, Australia. We can recall that as of 2016, Australia has a population of about 23.4 million people, 28.5% of whom were born overseas. Only 72.7% of Australian citizens speak English at home. The 2016 census identified more than 300 different ancestries in Australia (ABS 2017). Multiculturalism as a policy in Australia did not happen overnight. Koleth (2010) classifies the Australian government policies concerning the settlement of migrants and other new arrivals after 1945 as follows: assimilation (1940s and 1950s), integration (1960s and 1970s), multiculturalism (1980s and early 1990s) and a return to assimilation and integration since the late 1990s in an increased global security environment. Between the years 1901 and 1973, Australia adopted its White Australia Policy in order to restrict non-European immigration to Australia and aimed to preserve the dominant European ethnocultural identity of the Australian nation. The White Australia Policy was ended in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government and the term ‘multicultural society’ was first used at this time in an official Australian Government policy statement. This multicultural policy

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became an element of Australia’s nation building (Jupp 2007, p. 11). In 1978, the Galbally Review was the first formal recognition of disadvantage faced by sections of the community due to language barriers. In the mid-1980s, the Access and Equity Strategy by the Hawke Government aimed to improve access to government services and programmes by people of non-English speaking backgrounds (Mulayim 2016, p. 34). However, Hale states that the Australian access and equity policy failed for a number of reasons (2004, p. 29): 1) insufficient use of interpreters due to assessment by public servants that the client’s English is adequate; 2) lack of resources or a desire to cut costs by encouraging clients to use family and friends as interpreters; and 3) the unavailability of trained and/or accredited interpreters. Mulayim highlights that there is a need to identify practices and processes that exclude people disadvantaged by language barriers, specifically from public services, and more broadly from participating in and benefiting fully from the society in which they live (Mulayim 2016, p. 41).

3.5 Major Stakeholders in the Profession of Community Interpreting in Australia Stakeholders are defined as entities, groups or individuals who have an interest in or are affected by the performance of an industry and the way it uses its resources (Gomez-Mejia and Balkin 2012, p. 91). The accounts from the interviews conducted for this project as well as the documents identified by the interviewees (see Chapter 2) lead us to a larger picture of the categories of major stakeholders in the industry of community interpreting services in Australia: • credentialing authority – NAATI • educational institutions, – TAFE (technical and further training = vocational training), – undergraduate and – postgraduate

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• government purchasers – – – –

hospitals, courts, schools and social services,

• professional representative bodies: – AUSIT, – ASLIA and – Professionals Australia • agencies as service providers – government agencies TIS National and Department of Human Services via Centrelink offices – private agencies • • • •

community interpreters, customers/clients, the community in general and governments – federal, – state and – local.

Gomez-Mejia and Balkin (2012) state that one of the primary roles played by governments is to make sure that stakeholders comply with regulations and laws. If stakeholders feel that any of these laws and regulations can be detrimental to the macroenvironment of the industry, then they can try to exert influence on legislators through professional committees or lobbyists. Local and national communities expect that entities in an industry contribute to the quality of life. This can be in the form of creating positive externalities in terms of diversity. For example, CI services will create sustainability in the effective delivery of public services. The government departments and agencies will benefit from this positive externality as they will attain their goals and the clients who need the services of community interpreters will be able to live in a socially inclusive community.

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Established in 1977, the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) is a non-government body owned by the Australian regional governments. Its mission is to set and maintain high national standards in translating and interpreting that enable the existence of a pool of translators and interpreters who are responsive to the changing needs and demography of the Australian community. It issues credentials for translators and interpreters in a range of languages that are spoken as well as in AUSLAN for the deaf community. It also aims to give reassurance to people and organizations that engage interpreters or translators through its Certification System that came into effect in 2018. It has been designed to evaluate if a candidate demonstrates the skills needed to practice as a professional interpreter or translator in Australia. Candidates who demonstrate that they meet the standards are awarded NAATI Certification, which places more emphasis on education, training and ongoing professional development than the pre-2018 model of accreditation. NAATI Certification also requires recertification, which is the process by which interpreters and translators with NAATI credentials demonstrate that they remain active in the industry. Translators and interpreters are required to provide evidence of continuing work practice and professional development to recertify their credentials for a further three years. The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) is the national policy for regulated qualifications in Australian education and training (AQF Council 2013). It specifies the standards for educational qualifications in Australia. The national system has two types of tertiary education offering training for translators and interpreters, namely Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and Higher Education (HE). As the Framework is structured around levels, TAFE provides vocational courses and offers programmes at Diploma level (level 5) and Advanced Diploma level (level 6) while HE has programmes at a variety of levels: Bachelor’s Degree (level 7), Graduate Diploma (level 8), Master’s Degree (level 9) and Doctoral Degree (level 10). Training in translation and interpreting is likely to gain momentum from the year 2018 since NAATI Certification was introduced as recertification requires evidence of professional development. Universities can also attract new people into the industry through scholarships that they receive from the government for students who want to become an interpreter or a translator in the community. The interviews conducted with the stakeholders in the Australian community provide insights into a better understanding of the interpreting industry.

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The information gleaned from the interviews conducted with the first five informants who formed the main original source of data (as reported in Chapter 2—see Table 2.2) are of particular interest here when documenting the Australian CI landscape. As the founder and CEO of a private agency, Ismail AKINCI (see Table 2.2 for interviewees)2 states: ‘Training is giving the users confidence that the interpreter [or translator] is a professional, not just someone who claims to be linguistically competent’. Professional representative bodies fall into several subcategories: community interpreters are represented by professional societies such as the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), the Australian Sign Language Interpreters’ Association (ASLIA) and Professionals Australia [the Union]. Founded in 1987, the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT)3 is the national association for the translating and interpreting profession. The members of AUSIT adhere to a code of ethics and follow continuing professional development. It is committed to providing a forum for exchange, fostering the development of professional relationships with fellow translators and interpreters, agencies and language service users, government departments, tertiary institutions and other industry stakeholders. AUSIT provides the translation and interpreting community with a professional organization to promote the profession, improve the profile of translators and interpreters in the community and raise standards through professional development and the AUSIT Code of Ethics. Founded in 1991, the Australian Sign Language Interpreters’ Association (ASLIA)4 is a notfor-profit body and is the national organization representing the interests of Auslan/English Interpreters and Deaf Interpreters in Australia. The Association comprises a national Executive Committee, with representatives from ASLIA associations in most Australian States and Territories. It ensures that best practice protocols are upheld and working conditions of interpreters are represented. Professionals Australia 5 is a union representing a diverse range of professions, including engineering, science, IT, pharmacy, architecture and many others. It was originally founded

2 To distinguish the interveiweee accounts from other sources, the use of UPPER CASE for the surname/family name has been used. 3 https://ausit.org/. 4 https://aslia.com.au/. 5 http://www.professionalsaustralia.org.au/.

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in 1946 and merged with other profession associations in time. It aims to ensure that professionals are recognized and rewarded for the work they do. Translators and Interpreters Australia (TIA) is a division of Professionals Australia. It was founded in 2011 by a group of translators and interpreters who believed that there was a growing demand for language professionals in Australia. It is the only union across Australia that represents translators and interpreters. There are also ethnic communities standing together. Niki BARAS, who works as an organizer in the Translator and Interpreter Division of Professionals Australia states, ‘All ethnic communities, councils and associations, as representatives of the nonEnglish speaking communities dependent on interpreter and translator services, have a role to play in advocating for a stronger profession’. Ibrahim AYZIT, coordinator with the Victoria Language Services at the Department of Human Services (DHS)6 states that ‘I believe that there should be a very effective influential union for the professionals. Their presence can actually influence some decision-makers in the industry’. Another major stakeholder is the purchasers of community interpreting services. There are two types of purchasers in the industry: the public sector and the private sector. All Australian governments and agencies purchase community interpreting services; indeed, their use of these services exceeds that of the private sector. As a language services coordinator in the public service, Ibrahim AYZIT emphasizes the significance of governments in terms of funding the interpreting services (Eser and Lai 2019, p. 121)7 : We have local governments and state governments. They are very important partners of this industry because without them and the funding injection, it is very difficult for the industry in certain sections to actually stand on their feet. So, funding is vital here. I know that the Victorian

6 The Human Services Legislation Amendment Act 2011 integrated Medicare Australia and Centrelink into the Department of Human Services on 1 July 2011. They offer a range of health, social and welfare payments and services through the following programmes: (1) Medicare. It looks after the health of Australians through a variety of programmes, (2) Centrelink. It delivers payments and services and provides services at times of major change for people such as families, students and job seekers and so on. It also includes people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, (3) Child Support. It gives separated parents the financial and emotional support needed for their children’s well-being. 7 This interview was previously published in an abridged version. The unabridged interview has also been used in the current book.

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government has been very effective and influential in providing funding over the years.

The private sector also shows a good understanding of the importance of the public sector as purchasers of CI services: as the CEO of a private language agency, Ismail AKINCI, for example, explains how different levels of government fund interpreting services in Australia and focuses on the role they play: [when] we look at all the stakeholders who make community interpreting happen, going from top down, obviously, you have federal government in Australia who would have the funding, and mirroring that, each state government will also do its own part to provide funding protocols to access interpreters at the state level. Then, mirroring that, in each state we have local government, for instance, a council. Each of these local governments will equally have service delivery to the residents and the users of the municipality services to access any of these services. All of these various governments at the federal, state, and local level will provide funding and services. If we were to break down the state level, each state would have naturally the ministers or the ministerial portfolios. Each will have their own responsibilities on how they’re going to deliver it.

In Australia, community interpreting services are publicly funded by the Australian state governments, which also offer scholarships to supply trained interpreters to satisfy the demand in the community. As someone who is concerned with the representation of community interpreters as professionals, Niki BARAS states that it is governments, state and federal, who are the major purchasers of community interpreting and translating services. They are also the owners of NAATI. It is state governments who set multicultural and language services policies in each state. These policies should reflect all government access and equity policies – principles of social justice – which they have a responsibility to uphold.

Although community interpreting services can be provided by in-house interpreters in some organizations, they are to a large extent outsourced through tenders. There are two types of agencies that provide community interpreting services: government agencies and private agencies. In

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the State of Victoria, the government purchases mainly from private agencies, and also from Auslan Connections, a service providing sign-language interpreting. As coordinator of language services for the Victoria Department of Human Services, Ibrahim AYZIT states that: ‘DHS Language Services provide its own clients only with interpreting [and translation] services. DHS and TIS National [Translation and Interpreting Service] pay interpreters the highest fees’.8 Confirming the important role of TIS, Frans MOENS states that ‘I think that TIS National is instrumental because they provide a lot of free services as a government service provider. They help people settle in Australia’. The other stakeholders in the industry are interpreters and clients. In order to reduce or offset the negative effects of living in a diverse community, these two stakeholders create value for one another, as Kotler et al. (2018) put it. The CEO of NAATI, Mark PAINTING considers this mutual relationship to be the most important as clients rely on the services of interpreters to access public services. This chapter has focused on two basic concepts in relation to a better understanding of the context in which the interpreting industry operates: services and externalities. Community interpreting has been defined from the standpoint of services and the concept of externalities has been related to the community members who are vulnerable as they experience the incidental consequences of the government policies of immigration. A general overview of community interpreting has been provided with a backdrop to these services in the Australian context from the White Australia Policy in 1901 to the multicultural policy as an element of Australia’s nation building. The chapter has also considered the major stakeholders in the profession of community interpreting in Australia such as NAATI as the credentialing authority, training institutions, government and other professional representative bodies as part of the data collected. The views of a number of the interviewees participating in this study have contributed to and amplified this description of the CI landscape in Australia. The next chapter will attempt to explore the challenges standing in the way of community interpreting services in Australia.

8 The Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National) is an interpreting service provided by the Department of Home Affairs for people who do not speak English and for agencies and businesses that need to communicate with their non-English speaking clients. It has access to over 3000 interpreters across Australia in more than 160 languages. It offers services like telephone and on-site interpreting 24 hours a day.

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References Alford, J. (2009). Engaging Public Sector Clients: From Service-delivery to Coproduction. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2017). 2016 Census QuickStats: Australia. https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getpro duct/census/2016/quickstat/036?opendocument#cultural. Accessed 13 Jan 2020. Australian Qualifications Framework Council. (2013). Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), 2nd Edition. South Australia. http://www.aqf.edu.au. Accessed 26 Jan 2020. Bartels, L. (2011). Police Interviews with Vulnerable Adult Suspects. Research in Practice (Report No. 21), Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra, ACT. Cornes, R., & Sandler, T. (1996). The Theory of Ecternalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods (2nd ed.). Cambrige, New York, Melbourne, Madrid: Cambridge University Press. Corsellis, A. (2008). Public Service Interpreting: The First Steps. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. D’Hayer, D. (2012). Public Service Interpreting and Translation: Moving Towards a (Virtual) Community of Practice. Meta, 57 (1), 235–247. https:// doi.org/10.7202/1012751ar. Eser, O. (2016). Translation and Interpreting as Sustainable Services: The Australian Experience. Ankara: Anı Yayıncılık. Eser, O., & Lai, M. (2019). Interview with Ibrahim AYZIT. Istanbul University Journal of Translation Studies, 11, 113–121. Gentile, A., Ozolins, U., & Vasilakakos, M. (1996). Liaison Interpreting—A Handbook. Australia: Melbourne University Press. Gomez-Mejia, L. R., & Balkin, D. B. (2012). Management: People, Performance, and Change. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. Hale, S. (2004). The Discourse of Court Interpreting. Amsterdam, PA: John Benjamins. Hale, S. (2007). Community Interpreting. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Harrison, A. (2016). Business Environment in a Global Context (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hermann, C. (2014). The Role of the Public Sector in Combating Inequality. International Journal of Labour Research, 6(1), 113–128. http://www.aca demia.edu/7467400/The_Role_of_the_Public_Sector_in_Combating_Ine quality Holmes, B. (2011). Citizens’ Engagement in Policy-making and the Design of Public Services (Research paper No. 1, 2011–2012), Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia: Department of Parliamentary Services.

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Jupp, J. (2007). From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. New York: Cambridge University Press. Koleth, E. (2010). Multiculturalism: A Review of Australian Policy Statements and Recent Debates in Australia and Overseas (Research Paper No. 6, 2010– 11), Canberra: Parliament of Australia. http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Par liament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1 011/11rp06#_Toc275248115. Accessed 24 March 2018. Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., & Opresnik, M. O. (2018). Principles of Marketing (17th ed.). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd. Kurtz, D. L. (2012). Contemporary Marketing (15th ed.). Mason, OH: SouthWestern Cengage Learning. Mason, I. (Ed.). (2001). Triadic Exchanges: Studies in Dialogue Interpreting. St. Jerome. Mikkelson, H. (1996). Community Interpreting: An Emerging Profession. Interpreting, 1(1), 125–9. Mikkelson, H. (2004). The Professionalisation of Community Interpreting. http://aiic.ca/issues/228/2004/november-december-2004-29. Accessed 25 March 2018. Mulayim, S. (2016). Lost in Communication: Language and Symbolic Violence in Australia’s Public Services. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Department of Translating and Interpreting, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Vic, Australia. Mulayim, S., Lai, M., & Norma, C. (2014). Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting: Context, Challenges, and Strategies. Boca Raton, London, and New York: CRC. Nicholson, N. S. (1994). Professional Ethics for Court and Community Interpreters. In D. L. Hammond (Ed.), Professional Issues for Translators and Interpreters, Amsterdam. John Benjamins: PA. Ozolins, U. (2000). Communication Needs and Interpreting in Multilingual Settings: The International Spectrum of Response. In R. Roberts, S. E. Carr, D. Abraham, & A. Dufour (Eds.), The Critical Link 2: Interpreters in the Community (pp. 21–33). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pigou, A. C. (1932). The Economics of Welfare (4th ed.). London: Macmillan and Co. Pöchhacker, F. (2016). Introducing Interpreting Studies (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge. Pöchhacker, F., & Kadric, M. (1999). The Hospital Cleaner as Healthcare Interpreter: A Case Study. The Translator, Special Issue: Dialogue Interpreting, 5(2), 161–178. Roberts, R. P. (1997). Community Interpreting Today and Tomorrow. In E. Silvana, Carr, Roda P. Roberts, Aideen Dufour, et al. (Eds.), The Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community, pp. 7–28. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Roberts, R. P. (2002). Community Interpreting: A Profession in Search of Its Identity. In Eva Hung (Ed.), Teaching Translation and Interpreting 4: Building Bridges (pp. 157–175). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Thompson, N. (1998). Promoting Equality: Challenging Discrimination and Oppression in the Human Services. London, UK: Macmillan. Van Krieken, R. (2012). Between Assimilation and Multiculturalism: Models of Integration in Australia, Patterns of Prejudice, 46(5), 500–517. Special Issue: National Models of Integration and the Crisis of Multiculturalism: A Critical Comparative Perspective. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2012. 718167. Wakefield, S. J., Kebbell, M. R., Moston, S., & Westera, N. (2014). Perceptions and Profiles of Interviews with Interpreters: A Police Survey. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 48(1), 53–72. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0004865814524583. Wirtz, J., & Lovelock, C. (2018). Essentials of Services Marketing (3rd ed.). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited.

CHAPTER 4

Challenges Facing the Community Interpreting Industry

Abstract This chapter explores the challenges standing in the way of community interpreting services in Australia. Australia has a population of 23,4 million people from over 250 different countries as of the 2016 Census. It looks at Australia with a focus on the State of Victoria where this diversity is more palpable, and community interpreting services are vital. The challenges are mainly related to the use of technology, quality, supply and demand, sustainability and work-specific issues. For example, the industry needs to take on quality issues like credentialing, the recognition from clients, and training. Supply and demand issues hinge on the diversity of languages as well as the needs of remote communities. These also include not only rare and emerging languages, but also established languages and indigenous languages. Social considerations are a multifaceted factor and play a significant role in settings like hospitals on religious grounds. Sustainability issues are front and centre, and often go beyond issues like attrition and casualization. All these challenges must be handled effectively and efficiently. Keywords Community interpreting · Challenges · Diversity · Supply and demand · Quality · Sustainability

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1_4

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This chapter concentrates mainly on the challenges facing the community interpreting industry. Australia maintains its diversity because immigration is higher than emigration. As a matter of fact, diversity has some significant benefits for the country. For example, the Australian National Sustainability Council states that it is this propulsion of skilled migration that satisfies the needs of an ageing population to be sustainable as a country (2013, p. 53). On the other hand, living together in a diverse country comes at a price and Australia needs to face up to the consequences that this diversity brings about. In fact, these consequences can also be challenging for the migrants themselves as they remain among the most vulnerable members of the community. Indeed, as the present study shows, they may have to work for less pay, for longer hours, and in worse conditions. In order for them to be socially included, Australia has taken steps to help these vulnerable people have more effective access to public services, and this is where community interpreting plays a crucial role (see also Chapter 5). Nevertheless, this growing industry has been beset by challenges, which can be summed up under six themes: • • • • • •

A diverse community The use of technology Quality issues Supply and demand Sustainability, and Work-specific challenges.

4.1

A Diverse Community

Being a diverse community means dealing with a diversity of cultures as well as languages. 26.3% of Australia’s population were born overseas while 15 years earlier in 2001, this percentage had been lower (21.8%) (see Table 4.1). The 2016 figure is the highest overseas-born percentage in the OECD countries. In addition, 21% of the Australia-born population have one or both parents born overseas (Markus 2019, p. 1). Furthermore, if we look at the absolute frequencies in Table 4.1, it is evident that between 2001 and 2016 migration policies took on a new twist and more migrants were taken in from Asian countries in the far east such as Vietnam, China and Malaysia, as well as from India and Sri Lanka, while some European countries were ranked lower in terms of their share

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Table 4.1 Australia: Top 10 countries of birth for the overseas-born population 2001 and 2016 Country

Population

2001 Census 1. The UK 1,036,242 2. New Zealand 355,765 3. Italy 218,718 4. Vietnam 154,830 5. China 142,781 6. Greece 116,430 7. Germany 108,219 8. Philippines 103,942 9. India 95,455 10. Netherlands 83,324 Top ten total 2,415,706 Other 1,648,248 Total overseas 4,105,444 born Total population 18,769,228 % of Australians born overseas

Share (%)

25.5 8.8 5.4 3.8 3.5 2.9 2.7 2.6 2.3 2.1 59.4 40.6 100.0

21.7

Country 2016 Census 1. The UK 2. New Zealand 3. China 4. India 5. Philippines 6. Vietnam 7. Italy 8. South Africa 9. Malaysia 10. Sri Lanka

Population

1,087,756 518,462 509,558 455,385 232,391 219,351 174,042 162,450 138,363 109,850 3,607,608 2,542,443 6,163,667

Share (%)

17.7 8.4 8.3 7.4 3.8 3.6 2.8 2.6 2.2 1.8 58.7 41.3 100.0

23,401,891 26.3

Source Adapted from Australian Parliament House - https://www.aph.gov.au/

of the immigration figures. For example, Italy was relegated from rank three (5.4% in 2001) to seven (2.8% in 2016) and Greece, Germany and the Netherlands had disappeared from the top-10 list by 2016. The UK and New Zealand were represented with comparatively lower percentages in 2016. With its total population rising to over 25 million people as of the end of June 2019, the natural increase (those born in Australia) and Net Overseas Migration (NOM) contributed 37.5% and 62.5% respectively to the total population growth (ABS 2019). In terms of international migrants as a share of the total population, Australia outranks many other major countries: Australia stands at 30%, Canada at 21.3%, Norway 16.1%, Germany 15.7%, the USA 15.4%, the UK 14.1%, France 12.8% and Turkey 7%, according to a United Nations International Migration Report (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2019). This snapshot is indicative of the relatively high diversity of Australia’s population (for tables and figures that further explain diversity in Australia and in the state of Victoria as one of the leading states, see Appendix 2).

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Australia is clearly a very highly diverse and multicultural society, and it continues to attract migrants from all over the world. The fact that diversity is continually increasing gives rise to a number of challenges in the industry of professional community interpreting services across the country. As the coordinator of the Language Services Unit at the Department of Human Services, Ibrahim AYZIT, confirms the diversity of Australian society and its changing nature (see also Eser and Lai 2019, pp. 118–119): Australia is a small world because all the continents are almost represented here. It is a multi-cultural country. Apart from the Indigenous people the original people of Australia - the rest are migrants and refugees in one way or another. When new Australians [migrants and refugees] bring new dialects and languages into Australia, it raises a lot of challenges, as well. There are established languages such as Arabic, Italian, Greek and Turkish as well as emerging languages like Chin Hakka from Myanmar, formerly Burma. Australia has been getting a lot of refugees from different parts of the world, from Africa like Sudan, where they speak Dinka, Nuer and Juba Arabic, as well as from the Far East Asia such as Rohingya people.

AYZIT goes on to say that the Department of Human Services provides interpreting services in more than 220 languages and dialects. As the setting is predominantly multicultural, they have to deal with culturally and linguistically diverse customers, i.e. claimants, most of whom do not have sufficient English competency during the interview stage or application stage. He also glances back to the days when he worked as a professional interpreter, depicting his professional life in community interpreting: ‘When I used to go to courts, the courts only engaged NAATI Professional Level. But some other languages like Dari didn’t have professional level interpreters. So, that’s another dilemma we were facing in Australia’. As the CEO of NAATI, Mark PAINTING touches on the credentialling issues that diversity and migration patterns bring about. He states: Initially, there was very much European influence. Then, Australia went through a stage through the 70s of much more Asian-type languages, and then recently more Middle Eastern type of languages. This is very unique because of the diversity of the languages we cater for. Over its life, NAATI has issued credentials in 200 languages. Now, we have about 60 language

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panels and we are currently testing about almost a hundred languages, which includes approximately over thirty Australian indigenous languages. So, most people don’t realize that before European settlement, Australia actually had a lot of language diversity because indigenous Australians lived in pockets.

4.2

Technology-Related Issues

In an era of technology, it is apparently not beyond the realms of possibility to work out more effective ways of doing things. Technological advances can lead to a variety of new learning environments for interpreters. For example, the Interpreting in Virtual Reality (IVY) project, led by Sabine Braun offers an experience in a 3-D simulated interpreting environment to train interpreters (Braun et al. 2013). And Sandrelli argues that virtual learning environments (VLEs) will move course delivery at universities partially or entirely online (Sandrelli 2015, pp. 117–118). In the early months of 2020, across the globe people were asked to stay at home due to a pandemic. Borders, businesses, schools and universities, were closed temporarily. Work had to be done remotely and remote interpreting came to the fore as the only recourse for many previously face-to-face encounters. For example, video remote interpreting (VRI) was extensively used in international conferences as well as in doctor– patient interactions as patients feared that they could contract the virus in hospitals. The trend towards the deployment of remote interpreting was, however, already underway: Braun (2015) points out that there has been a growing demand for video remote interpreting in courts since the beginning of the new millennium. Clients and professionals including interpreters can interact without being physically present in an office. We can still imagine interpreter-mediated situations in which the interpreter would normally be required to attend in person as stated in the laws or government guidelines, but we began to see the restrictions being relaxed. For example, AUSIT issued recommended protocols for VRI in community settings and AIIC prepared a set of recommendations for distance interpreting including simultaneous/sign-language interpreting. Therefore, as more stakeholders attempt to work on how to effectively use VRI, it will be here to stay. Over the course of time, new technologies will increasingly be built into professional interpreting practice as a means of accessing public

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services or attending conferences. The two main modes used in the provision of interpreting services remain: on-site and remote. • On-site (face-to-face) interpreting: On-site interpreters attend in person and should be engaged when legally binding or lengthy matters need to be discussed. On-site interpreting takes into account non-verbal cues such as body language, and therefore is recommended in complex situations. • remote interpreting (RI): There are two types of remote interpreting in terms of equipment: telephone or video remote interpreting (VRI). Historically, interpreting over the phone is the earliest form of remote interpreting and it goes back to the 1950s (Pöchhacker 2016). • telephone interpreting: This is particularly useful in emergency situations and when immediate assistance is required, as well as in hospitals. It is also useful for shorter, less complex communication. It may be the only option in some cases as in rural and regional areas if there aren’t any interpreters or there is a shortage of certified interpreters in the vicinity. Telephone interpreting is also part of the NAATI Interpreter examinations, and so, as Xu, Hale, and Stern point out, it is in the curricula of the departments of translation and interpreting (2020, p. 19). • video remote interpreting (VRI): This allows remote access to an interpreter or to the client, enabling online face-to-face communication (see also Braun 2015). It shares many of the advantages of telephone interpreting such as being immediate, time-saving and cost-effective and offers some additional advantages given that it allows for non-verbal cues. It also allows a sign language interpreter to facilitate communication between deaf or hard-of-hearing persons and hearing persons. Even though remote interpreting has significant advantages such as being cost-effective and time-saving (Xu et al. 2020, p. 18), some technology-related issues remain from the standpoint of an interpreter. Compared to on-site interpreters, remote interpreters may face potential problems such as poor sound quality and in some cases, lack of visual cues (Pöchhacker 2016). They can experience difficulty managing turn-taking over the telephone (Wadensjö 1999) or perform poorly due to a lack of

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briefing (Rosenberg 2007) as these skills require experience and the ability to work with others. Ko argues that stress and other issues like concentration problems will decrease over time through training (2006). Attention has also been drawn to the need of service providers to work with interpreters as professional colleagues; Xu, Hale, and Stern provide an example of the free or low-cost interviews held at the Legal Aid Commission in New South Wales, Australia, where there is an overwhelming reliance on telephone interpreting as clients who need interpreting services and are financially disadvantaged can simply seek legal advice on matters such as immigration law and family law without making an appointment beforehand (2020, pp. 21–22). They stress that the challenges of telephone interpreting include the following: • Briefing the interpreter insufficiently, • Technical issues such as a poor signal and unsatisfactory sound quality, • Poor working conditions, • Managing the interaction, • Lack of contextual or visual cues and • Breaching the code of ethics. Research also shows that the use of video remote interpreting in the legal setting can place defendants at a disadvantage and that problems occurring in on-site interpreting can exacerbate the mediation in video remote interpreting (Ng and Crezee 2020, p. 3). On the surface, telephone interpreting may look deceptively straightforward to a layperson: a client calls an interpreting agency and they conference in an interpreter. However, there may well be some difficulties in requesting an interpreter from an agency: as the CEO of a private agency, Ismail AKINCI looks more closely at how things play out behind the scenes: There’s all the back-end recording of the initial telephone contact, the time it takes to contact one interpreter and then the interpreter is not available. Then, the time lapse between the next contact, and the next contact until an interpreter is available because telephone interpreting is immediate. While we’re connecting an interpreter, we have to do a lot of filtering, vetting, understanding the circumstances that we are connecting the interpreter [sic] because after we collect that information, we will then

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go to the interpreter. We source an interpreter and brief that interpreter as to where we are actually connecting them to. We just don’t drop them into the line. There is also a demand for new and emerging languages. If we’re dealing with someone who calls in and asks for a very rarely used language, we may only have one or two people. They may not answer their phone immediately.

There are certain challenges to viewing remote interpreting from the standpoint of clients. They have a right to request a particular mode of interpreting in public service settings. Where possible and practicable, the client’s preferred mode should be used in government departments and agencies (DPC n.d.a p. 22). Victorian government guidelines on policy and procedures state that remote interpreting should be considered in the first instance, if appropriate. Also, working in a small community may exacerbate the situation in that clients may refuse an on-site interpreter because there are not many interpreters in the community: they avoid using on-site or video remote interpreting, thinking that the interpreter could be someone they may know. Furthermore, the use of video remote interpreting may not be preferable for an examination of patients in such settings as women‘s hospitals at any time. Union organizer Niki BARAS gives an example concerning elderly people, stating: ‘In languages where there is an aging demographic, the shift over to telephone interpreting is problematic for the elderly who may have difficulty functioning on the telephone due to, for instance, hearing problems’. Another aspect of working with qualified interpreters are the guidelines specific to Australia. For example, while it is possible to engage an interpreter from overseas—be it telephone or video remote interpreting— the Australian guidelines require clients to work with interpreters with NAATI credentials in public service settings.

4.3

Quality in Community Interpreting Services

Service quality can be approached from the user’s perspective as well as from that of ongoing practices. Wirtz and Lovelock define service quality as a high standard of performance that consistently meets or exceeds customer expectations (2018, p. 450). I will discuss the concept of service quality in the interpreting industry with a focus on creating value and satisfaction.

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To Kotler et al., the concept of quality is closely related to value as a need-satisfying market offering and satisfaction as a standard of performance (2018, pp. 34–39). Customers act on the perceived value of the service, which means assessing the difference between all the benefits and the costs of a market offering. As services are co-created by the customer–employee interaction, effective interaction depends on the skills of employees and on the support processes backing them. Despite the fact that service quality relates to customer satisfaction, Hoffman and Bateson (2011) state that they differ in that customer satisfaction is a short-term, transaction-specific measure and service quality is a long-term overall evaluation of performance. They also point out that each encounter further revises or reinforces the service quality perceptions of a customer and over time they add up each measure of satisfaction that then equates to the customer’s service quality perception. So, the organization or the industry must be able to design a system to make sure that it delivers a set of satisfactory experiences for its customers. In service quality, customers evaluate not only the process of the delivery of the service but also its outcome. The difference between customers’ expectations of service and their perceptions of the service is defined as the service gap (pp. 319–322). As Kotler et al. highlight, securing internal service quality is vital to customer satisfaction (2018, pp. 259–260). In the interpreting industry, internal service quality is about the training and credentialing of community interpreters equipped with the knowledge, skills and experience needed to meet the needs of CALD clients and creating a quality working environment where they feel they can pursue a career. To do so, community interpreters can be supported strongly as part of the frontline workforce serving CALD members of the community when they are performing a job. In fact, everything is linked together like a chain. Internal service quality is essential for success in the effective and efficient provision of community interpreting services. This can be called the service-sustainability chain, which will, if properly implemented, result in satisfied community interpreters who will create value, which will, in turn, result in satisfied customers (see also Wirtz and Lovelock 2018 for a more detailed discussion of the marketing concept Service-Profit Chain). Eventually, it can lead to a healthy service provision. The diagram below shows the links involved in providing CALD members of the community with community interpreting services that meet their needs and create

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Internal service quality

Satisfied community interpreters

Value creation

Satisfied CALD members

Sustainable interpreting services

Fig. 4.1 Links in the service-sustainability chain in the profession of community interpreting

customer value and satisfaction, with the aim of attaining sustainability in the interpreting industry (Fig. 4.1). The quality issues in the interpreting industry are varied and farranging. Below some of the challenges that can affect the quality of community interpreting services in the industry are outlined. They are closely related to creating internal service quality, and customer value and satisfaction. Internal service quality impacts on the quality of interpreting services in the form of credentialing, working conditions and support systems. Examples could be that the level of certification of the interpreter assigned to a particular job may not be appropriate, the interpreting job can be in rare and emerging languages, or an interpreter may not be available. a. Assigning interpreters by private agencies In Australia, agencies can tap into a pool of more than 2500 community interpreters across the country. Some questions can then be asked about the internal service quality: Do private agencies send out the appropriately certified interpreters with the highest possible level through all the interpreting assignments? Are community interpreters fully informed of the context of the interpreting job they are engaged to do? Niki BARAS, speaking in her role as union organizer, is of the opinion that: ‘Language services providers have in recent years been reckless in their recruitment of untested bilinguals to perform the interpreting role’. For private agencies, community interpreting is clearly a business, and so they must tender for government contracts, and need to fulfil their commitments to the government if successful. There are times when all the interpreters in a particular language cannot be available even when the languages are very well supplied. Therefore, there can be times when agencies inappropriately assign interpreting jobs to interpreters who are certified at lower levels than required for the job. It is hard to present evidence based on scholarly data to underpin what goes on in the sector;

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however, there is anecdotal data. From his position working in the public services, Ibrahim AYZIT contends that Centrelink offices (which administer social security payments and services) are aware that some agencies use uncredentialed interpreters, and that such actions can easily diminish the real as well as the perceived value attributed to the service, because interpreting is a specialized field. b. Credentialing NAATI‘s spread includes both translating and interpreting, but within interpreting it covers indigenous languages, so-called ‘international languages’, and sign languages. The lack of expertise in assessing candidates in certain languages such as new and emerging or even established languages is a significant challenge in the industry. NAATI CEO Mark PAINTING explains: NAATI has somewhere around 60 examiner panels in 60 languages. For some languages, it is very challenging to find sufficient expertise. We’re lucky we can rely on some institutions like RMIT University that do that for us. Down the track, we may look at getting some other expertise internationally. The change to the new certification system will create some more challenges for us because we think a higher level of conceptual technical language skills and translating /interpreting skills are going to be more important than previously. So, that may mean we are required to look a little further afield for that sort of expertise.

On the rationale behind the transition from accreditation to recertification, he adds: Accreditations were issued without ever expiring right throughout the 80s and 90s and very early 2000s, and this caused a couple of problems in the system. We had to give a level of confidence to clients or consumers that interpreters are actually keeping up-to-date. There was no requirement for ongoing professional development at all. We didn’t know if people weren’t working and keeping current as language changes and new things emerge. In the early 2000s, everyone who attained an accreditation from the year 2007 was awarded a NAATI accreditation on a three-year basis and as part of that, had a requirement to revalidate [their accreditation]. We’ve taken that into the certification system, as well. So, the problem was that we

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had large numbers of people who were pre-2007 and post-2007. That was quite a lot of inequality for those practitioners in the system.

c. Lack of professionalism and recognition from clients Professionalism is a bond keeping together all the stakeholders of community interpreting services. The factors that lead to a lack of professionalism seem to be rather varied: incompetency in the use of languages, poor professional conduct, and lack of training. Bilingual incompetency exhibited by professional interpreters is a real problem and may not often be dealt with satisfactorily. Community interpreters are usually migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. They may not perform well in English and their children who are born in Australia may not be good enough in their parents’ mother tongue to become an interpreter. From his perspective as the CEO of a private agency, Ismail AKINCI states: There is a lack of highly competent interpreters. In some of the other languages as well as in some of the serious settings like medical, legal or police, there would only be a few interpreters who can competently interpret.

Speaking for Professionals Australia, Niki BARAS agrees, contending that there is no consistency in the skills, abilities and qualifications of practitioners and states (see also Eser et al. 2018, p. 76)1 : Some of them aren’t fully bilingual. Some less than fluent practitioners have successfully completed the test, leading to the suggestion that the testing has been flawed. To some extent NAATI has acknowledged this and have changed to the new scheme – i.e. more training /PD. A large part of the problem has been and continues to be the lack of suitable assessors in all languages.

Professional conduct is another issue that mingles with incompetency. Gonzalez (2019) contends that the T&I industry in Australia is a profession consisting of many practitioners who lack professional conduct and 1 This interview was previously published in an abridged version. The unabridged interview has also been used in the current book.

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skills, and that this is creating an image of poor professionalism for clients and other professions. Niki BARAS claims that (see also Eser et al. 2018, p. 76): Professional status is probably the overarching issue because it ties in with all of the issues we face today. We have seen a complete diminishing of a profession that never fully developed as such, for a variety of reasons. We never really achieved professional status and the relative respect. In 2014, Professionals Australia surveyed close to a thousand people and the number one issue that emerged was lack of respect for the profession and no status. This was even more important than remuneration. So, a lack of respect for our profession can be attributed to, among other things, the way people present on the job. We’re all aware that interpreting practice and presentation are not consistent, including unprofessional appearance and behaviours. In addition to low professionalism attributable to lack of skills, training, and poor presentation, the lack of respect can also be related to the fact that many of us are “migrant” workers and women, who are often the usual targets for exploitation.

There is anecdotal data that there are some interpreters who do not represent the profession in a professional manner, and examples of clients complaining about the unprofessional or unethical behaviour by community interpreters who attend an interpreting assignment late or do not even show up. The way interpreters are dressed and address service providers and clients can also show poor judgement; this can be attributed to the lack of competencies that can be acquired through training. Therefore, qualified community interpreting practitioners may begin to feel frustrated by the working life they inhabit. So, on the one hand, there are interpreters in the market who do not attract respect from clients, and on the other hand, there are well-trained and highly qualified interpreters who work in an industry in which they feel frustrated as they do not receive appreciation. The lack of recognition from clients is also a multilayered issue. Pym et al. (2013) argue that the profession lacks key signals of professionalization and hence, exhibits a lack of status. Hale mainly attributes the low status to four interconnected causes (2007, p. 27): • the disorganised and unstructured state of the industry; • the absence of mandatory university education; • the lack of a strong professional identity; and

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• the general unawareness of the complexity of the task. The United Nations Immigration Report also confirms that in most countries, migrants are often the first to lose their jobs in the event of an economic downturn and some migrants work for less pay, for longer hours and in worse conditions than native-born workers (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2017, p. 1). Nevertheless, some community interpreters do show the profession in a bad light by acting unprofessionally. This is aggravated by many clients who seem to be unaware of what community interpreting is and what the role of an interpreter is. Community interpreters often find themselves in situations in which clients are unaware of how to work with them. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence from community interpreters like the following conversation in a healthcare setting (Feb 26, 2018, personal communication, anon.), Professionals like doctors and nurses often do not know how to work with interpreters. The other day, this happened to me when I was interpreting between a doctor and a patient. The doctor asked the patient, ‘Do you have diabetes?’ and I interpreted. The patient asked, ‘What is diabetes?’ and I interpreted what the patient was asking. The doctor said to me, ‘You are a medical interpreter and you don’t know what diabetes is’. That’s what happened. Not everyone knows how to work well with interpreters.

d. Training Up until the end of 2017 in Australia, there were two training pathways in the system. In the first pathway, community interpreters would just need to pass a 75-minute NAATI exam and they could then practise in the community because this was their only requirement. The other pathway was to do courses at universities or TAFE colleges. But there was no compulsory training. The landscape in the pre-2018 period was like this: All that interpreters needed to do was to be able to speak languages like English and Turkish in order to practise as an interpreter. They did not have to go through professional training covering competencies like professional ethics. The landscape has changed since the year 2018 in the

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sense that NAATI will no longer allow candidates to access their exams if they have not undertaken any training. Before the year 2018, training at universities was predominantly generalist because NAATI only catered for a generalist accreditation; it did not cater for any specializations such as medical or legal. As a result, all training programmes that catered for this accreditation system were geared towards training interpreters who were generalist. From the year 2018 on, NAATI has changed the testing system from accreditation to certification and has introduced Specialist Interpreter Certification such as Certified Specialist Health/Legal Interpreters. This has also enabled training institutions to respond to this significant change by starting to offer courses for candidates to be able to specialize in these two areas. This can be expected to result in better professional recognition and status, and better professional conduct from practitioners. The ability to train, continually support, and retain community interpreters can be categorized under ongoing challenges due to new linguistic arrivals. The acquisition of skills and knowledge needed to interpret, and then maintain achieved levels of performance through experience and professional development, is a long and costly process. Speaking as the CEO of NAATI, Mark PAINTING points to the arguably prohibitive cost of training: I think the biggest issue is the sustainability related to remuneration and being able to maintain investment in education because if an industry is already pretty poorly remunerated, it makes it even more difficult for people thinking of going into that sector to think about paying a significant education bill.

Head of the strategic projects at a private agency, Frans MOENS, sets great store by community interpreters keeping up-to-date with skills and technologies, terminology and settings in order to survive in a competitive market where there is a fluctuating demand. Mark PAINTING provides a historical context for the need to insist on formal training: [As NAATI] we’re putting much more emphasis on formal training as a pathway. So, there weren‘t probably any universities and not many other training institutions in translating and interpreting back in the 70 s and 80 s specifically. Back then, there were a very small number of languages. We had a lot of people who just got tested a long time ago and were still accredited. Then, we started having people come through a formal

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training pathway and that started to highlight some vast differences in capability issues, as well. So, there’s definitely much more emphasis on formal training and it is the preferred pathway.

Niki BARAS, directly involved with Professionals Australia, explains how things ended up in the TAFE sector, remaining at diploma and advanced diploma levels, i.e. lower qualification levels than a Bachelor’s degree: I interviewed all the stakeholders in the industry in 1987-88 about what sort of training we needed: is a three-year-degree appropriate or should it be post-graduate study? (At that time an undergraduate degree course was available). The overwhelming response was for post-graduate study and everybody agreed on this based on the European model that interpreters usually have a degree qualification in another discipline and then go into interpreting /translating. This option would also cover those people coming from another country who might have tertiary qualifications whereupon they could complete a post-graduate study to acquire the interpreting /translating skills. That didn’t go anywhere.

4.4

Supply and Demand

Matching supply and demand in the interpreting industry can be a major challenge. In order to manage supply and demand effectively, stakeholders can focus on strategies to maximize what can be acquired from the available capacity. However, supply and demand are hard to balance because one of the traits of services is perishability, as discussed in Chapter 3. a. Supply Issues The supply of qualified community interpreters involves challenges ranging from geographical restrictions and language-specific issues to social considerations. I. Geographical restrictions The supply of interpreters in distant geographic locations is a big challenge. While the majority of the population is settled on the eastern seaboard, predominantly in the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, Australia is a very large landmass, with settlement outside the

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major capital cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in regional areas across the country. Certain language groups are much better serviced, and certain urban areas have better access than regional areas. Interpreters work less in indigenous communities, partly because of the issues specific to these small and remote communities. CEO Ismail AKINCI highlights the issue of unmet demand from the standpoint of a private agency, saying: When these settlements happen, we as a language service provider together with the government need to train interpreters to service the communities in those regional areas. Sometimes we find a community is settling well ahead of any interpreters in a geographic area. So, which interpreters would service a community in that remote area or that regional area? So, there’s a challenge and that challenge is continually increasing today.

II. Language-specific issues Australia is unique because of the diversity of its languages, which can be grouped together into four categories as the findings of the current study suggest. • • • •

rare languages emerging languages established languages indigenous languages.

Some of these languages are not tested by NAATI. Therefore, the supply of qualified and trained community interpreters is at risk for untested languages. Rare and emerging languages: this means that there is a demand for, yet an insufficient supply of interpreters in the new community languages (see also Lai and Mulayim 2010). They pose an ongoing challenge due to the increasing intake of migrants, refugees and humanitarian entrants. Hence, the number of new languages in certain communities increases over time, leading to new demands on the government to service the new community settlements. A decade ago, about 70 languages were serviced on a day-to-day basis across Australia whereas today this figure exceeds a

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total of 100 languages because of the diversity. Ismail AKINCI remembers his first experience with migrants settling in Australia from Myanmar (the former Burma): We only knew of two dialects: Chin and Karen. As we experienced working with that community, then we became aware that they [Chin and Karen] were more than one [single] dialect. We now have 12 dialects of Chin. One community of Chin speakers of Chin Mizo do not speak Chin Hakha and do not speak another form of Chin.

A knowledge of languages and the distinctions between a standard language and its dialects is crucial for private agencies. The nuances between each language also need to be understood. AKINCI adds: Let me give you an example on Kurdish. We understood that there were Kurdish Kurmanji and Kurdish Sorani. Most of the experience that my company had was Kurdish. We only listed out interpreters as Kurdish. No one alerted us that there was more to Kurdish than just Kurdish alone. More recently, we are now experiencing new arrivals as a result of the Iraq /Syria issue. We began experiencing requests for Kurdish Sorani, a second dialect of Kurdish. We started to educate ourselves about Kurdish. Then, we had to go through a reassessment of our Kurdish interpreters. Now that happened probably about 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago. In the last two years now we have a third dialect: Kurdish Feyli. We thought we understood Kurdish now. Obviously, we did not. Now the new community coming in is requesting Kurdish Feyli.

Certification is also a challenge. NAATI Certified Interpreter Level would be a good starting point to service rare and emerging communities, but it is hard to find community interpreters at this level in all languages and dialects. Settings in community interpreting have certain priorities, too. Courts have guidelines that indicate only NAATI Certified Interpreters be engaged. Some rare languages such as Dari did not have Professional Level interpreters in the courts in the 1990s. In regard to training, TAFE is a more affordable training pathway for most languages, but particularly for emerging languages, although there are currently only two TAFE providers: RMIT and the University of South Australia. More accessible pathways for the languages which have many fewer interpreters need to be forged.

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Communities using established languages may also experience an insufficient supply of interpreters. It is common to hear anecdotally from courts and other services that it is not just rare and emerging languages that are suffering from a lack of sufficient, qualified interpreters; there are also shortages in established languages like Greek and Arabic. Although there are people who gained qualifications in the past, many have dropped out of the system. As the CEO of NAATI, Mark PAINTING comments on these unexpected shortages as follows: Ironically, we’ve had a sudden shortage in recent years in some of the various European languages that we thought we had lots of community interpreters in like Italian, Greek, and Turkish, for which there are many people, but what’s happening is people who migrated and, subsequently, learned English need interpreting services in their original language as they’ve reached their old age losing their second language. This is a very new phenomenon in the last couple of years that we’ve suddenly realized.

Ismail AKINCI, as a supplier of interpreting services, draws attention to a lack of specialist interpreters in established languages, saying: We’re not tapping into a hundred interpreters. We’re tapping into about 150 languages covering about 2,500 interpreters. As the number of professional accredited interpreters in some of the other more established languages has eased off, there are more paraprofessional [provisional] level interpreters. There are adequate interpreters to service the community; however, there is a lack of highly competent interpreters in some of the serious medical, legal or police settings. There would only be a few interpreters who can competently interpret.

Indigenous languages, though spoken by the oldest communities in Australia, are similar in terms of supply to those from the new and emerging communities. It is hard to find interpreters for older members of these communities as many of the languages have died out over time, leaving no younger speakers to take on the interpreting role. Mark PAINTING points out that there are approximately 30 such languages currently, saying: Indigenous languages are very hard to try and bring any more back [sic]. We do have records and we work with some bodies to try and bring the

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language back a bit like the new and emerging communities. They are our very oldest communities.

NAATI receives funding directly from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under a programme called the Indigenous Advancement Strategy to run preparation workshops with communities in remote places in the Northern Territory, Darwin and Western Australia to try and get would-be interpreters up to a point where they can attempt the test in the first place. Speaking from a training and testing perspective, Mark PAINTING adds, We do have to do a fair bit of preparatory work. We work with other government departments to find out where there’s a need for a language, and where there’s likely to be some capability. There’s not a high level of education and literacy, as well. We only have certifications for those languages at the lowest level, what we call Provisional Interpreter in our new system. The separate money is to help work with communities to identify those things and try to reconcile. Where you‘ve got the need, you’ve got some capability. We have come to about 30 indigenous languages that we’re developing testing for.

III. Social considerations Social challenges in community interpreting arise from three elements: gender preference, religious/political sensitivities and the size of the community. Gender preference plays an important role in community settings such as the medical and religious arenas. As regional head of special projects for a private agency in Victoria, Frans MOENS highlights the fact that interpreting is a female-dominated industry, and that there is more work available and more requests for female interpreters. For example, the use of languages other than English in a healthcare setting can cause difficulties for maternity hospitals as clients prefer women interpreters. An anecdote about migrant families explains the underlying reasons for the difficulty in finding women interpreters (Feb 26, 2018, personal communication, anon.): When someone migrates to Australia as a family, they are probably knowledgeable. The husband and wife could both work. The husband improves

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his education and finds a job, but the woman [with the potential to become an interpreter] stays at home. That’s why we have difficulty in finding women interpreters. Women’s hospitals are in a particular situation different from other hospitals. They give preference to women interpreters. [. . .] The majority of the languages are emerging languages. Some 20-25% of all patients who come into these hospitals need an interpreter, so it’s a very high percentage.

Apart from language variations, there could be political or religious sensitivities that can also lead to conflict. Frans MOENS emphasizes that: ‘In Australia there are conflicts among certain communities. Due to the conflict, there can be some sensitivities of sending out interpreters who speak the same language as clients who conflict with them’. The social challenges are even greater when clients are part of relatively small communities, which implies prior acquaintance or even that interpreter and client are related. This issue can arise everywhere, but particularly in indigenous communities. In a small community, clients tend to refuse the local interpreter from the small available pool. Instead, they accept telephone interpreting. b. Demand Issues Demand from clients at any given time is unpredictable. Better capacity utilization ensures value creation not only for clients but for interpreters too. As services cannot be stored for later use, the income for interpreters is lost if any time on a specific day remains empty. Therefore, utilizing excess capacity is important for community interpreters. Empty interpreting time is very similar to an empty seat on a particular flight. Then, the revenue is lost for the airline company: the unused capacity cannot be reserved. One strategy to deal with the perishability of interpreting services can be to implement a reservation system unless it is an emergency situation. Reservations can make sure that clients receive the service at a particular time and that interpreters have time to prepare beforehand for the interpreting job and can plan ahead. Lost income or unused capacity can be prevented to a certain degree. This is likely to lead to a higher level of satisfaction from the client’s point of view. Clients and professionals in certain settings where community interpreting services are offered can be educated about how to better make use of these services.

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The demand for interpreting services is closely related to government migration policies. As settlement and migration patterns fluctuate, demand also fluctuates. If the fluctuations in demand are too volatile to tolerate, then it may lead to interpreter attrition in the long run. Demand fluctuations can be mitigated by thorough planning to achieve sustainability. The industry stakeholders should work out strategies, for example, through professional committees, to smooth out these fluctuations such as taking into account remuneration diversification for certain language pairs in line with the immigration policies of the government. Demand can be studied at different levels: increasing demand, insufficient demand and unmet demand. There will be increasing demand as the government needs to service the new groups of migrants and refugees. In Australia, demand seems to be increasing with new migration policies. The Net Overseas Migration (NOM) increased by roughly 8% between the 2011 and 2016 censuses. Examples also include older migrants reverting to their original language, and hence, beginning to request interpreting services. As union organizer Niki BARAS states: ‘You also have to guard against juggling between supply and demand. Immigration continues, and demand goes up. Demand is exceeding supply at a rapid pace’. (see also Eser et al. 2018, p. 78). On the other hand, if insufficient demand sets in, then community interpreters may leave the industry or may have to work only part-time. Frans MOENS explains the situation as follows: There are no full-time job opportunities in some languages and locations, and it is hard for community interpreters to make a living. But that happens in any industry. Thus, after investing in interpreter training, community interpreters may run the risk of insufficient work.

Unmet demand can occur for a variety of reasons, including a lack of qualified interpreters in certain language pairs as a result of new migration patterns. As a private supplier of interpreting services, Ismail AKINCI comments on the difficulty of a constantly changing linguistic landscape: The issue of unmet demand is critical and has always been a challenge; in other words, it is a continuous challenge to be able to find, train, and continually develop the skills of those new emerging languages to be able to service the new arrival linguistic groups.

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Unmet demand can also happen when demand exceeds the supply of services. Then, the level of service cannot be maintained, and clients begin to feel dissatisfied as they cannot receive the quality of service that they are accustomed to or expect.

4.5

Sustainability

The concept of shared value focuses on creating value for society (Kotler et al. 2018, p. 37). Sustainability calls for socially responsible actions that meet the present needs of consumers and businesses while also preserving or enhancing the ability of future generations to meet their needs (Kotler et al. 2018, p. 598). It is incumbent on the stakeholders of community interpreting to act sustainably. What stakeholders can do is to create value for and from community interpreters to enable clients to have equitable access to public services in the country. While private agencies or freelance interpreters can capture value in the form of profits or better income, the interpreting industry can capture value in the form of attracting and retaining qualified and experienced community interpreters, which can, in turn, significantly contribute to a sustainable profession. Kotler et al. emphasize that retention is the best measure of service quality (2018, p. 263). In the context of CI, retention means that experienced and qualified community interpreters stay in the profession. Without a certain level of service quality, any industry would have to deal with higher rates of attrition and casualization. Serious consequences could follow for the community, closely related to the quality of the community interpreting services delivered. a. Attrition In community interpreting services, attrition can be defined as the gradual reduction of the workforce of the interpreting industry by community interpreters leaving or dropping out of the system and not being replaced. Many CI interpreters leave despite the fact that a lot of effort and time has been invested in achieving their qualifications. But it is this very high level of qualification that makes them hard to replace. On top of tertiary education necessary to acquire a set of skills and knowledge, community interpreters accumulate work experience to specialize in a given setting like healthcare and law.

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Many factors can lead to attrition: the context, pre-arrival jobs, the desire to emigrate, old age and vicarious trauma. Working conditions can also force community interpreters to leave and begin to work in a different profession. An Independent Review of Victorian Government Procurement of Language Services was conducted in 2016–17 to inform the Victorian Government’s response to issues affecting the sustainability and quality of language services and to investigate options for procurement models to meet current and future needs (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2018). The review found that a significant proportion of the interpreters did not see themselves being in the interpreting industry in five years’ time, which then places a risk on the actual delivery of community interpreting services. There are increasing service gaps where the demand for interpreters is not being met. Therefore, retaining qualified interpreters in the industry is one of the biggest challenges that the industry is facing. Niki BARAS reports on how attrition emerges using the example of a qualified Dinka interpreter who had to compete with unqualified Dinka interpreters for work: The profession, as it stands, is not attractive enough for people to stay in it. However, most interpreters – regardless of the reason they’ve gone into the job, actually like the job, and many have altruistic reasons for doing it. I know a gentleman who interprets Dinka. He is a smart man and articulate in English. But because he can’t get enough work, he can’t survive. There’s only a small group who needs interpreting in Dinka, and the Dinka interpreters’ highest credential is [NAATI] Paraprofessional [Interpreter]2 , for which the pay is even lower. But there’s a whole bunch of other Dinka interpreters with no credentials, so the work is just spread out amongst a whole lot of people rather than the work being channelled [to the few qualified ones]. This is what the qualified Dinka interpreters complain about. They say that if the work were consolidated and a smaller group of people did all the work, then they could all possibly earn a living. What you’ve got now is all the workers dispersed, and you’ve got a whole range of people qualified and unqualified doing the work. It’s impossible to earn a living wage over time, and there’s no career path or progress, so people inevitably seek other work. Interpreting often becomes an interim job, even though they may like the job. Often interpreters themselves don’t actually see it as a profession either and don’t see the need to even study. The pay wasn’t

2 In the new certification system, NAATI Paraprofessional Interpreter is NAATI Certified Provisional Interpreter.

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too bad when I started in the 1980s. Then in 1986-87, the industry was privatized, and that was the end of it. It all became about price and costcutting. The fees have been declining and it’s been a race to the bottom ever since. As a result, we’ve seen significant attrition. Good people leave. Trained people leave. They cannot earn a living. There’s attrition.” (see also Eser et al. 2018, pp. 76–78)

As a coordinator of language services for the DHS, Ibrahim AYZIT focuses on income as a way of keeping qualified professionals on the job: If financial incentive is not there, unfortunately we lose those experts or subject matter experts to other industries such as taxi industry. It’s more rewarding financially because they have a family to support. Also, these professionals have extended members overseas and they have to send some money to support them.

Another factor that leads to attrition is migrants who choose to become certified interpreters for immigration reasons, but then leave once a position becomes available in their original field of expertise. Most migrants or refugees who can work as community interpreters have a pre-arrival expertise. The people who are most likely to be good at interpreting are likely to be good at something else. NAATI’s Mark PAINTING remarks that ‘[i]f they’ve an existing skill or qualification, they are more likely to transfer into that when the opportunity arises’. In a similar vein, Ismail AKINCI states: We are in a constant flux of new linguistic groups and they introduce a set of circumstances that we need to cater for sourcing, training, then maintaining those interpreters at those locations. One of the difficulties is to retain or maintain interpreters because we also find out that those people who are suitable as interpreters are those within the community who are the highest educated. So, in the first instance, it seems that they come into the profession as an interpreter, but then as soon as they find a job in their pre-arrival professional trade, they tend to move on and we can’t retain.

Old age is also a big factor. Migrants who came to Australia some 30 years ago and became interpreters are at an age of retirement now. Therefore, they are exiting the market and not being replaced. In the recertification process, community interpreters will have to show currency in terms of

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professional practice and development, including upgrading their skills every three years. There is a great deal of resistance from some of the older practitioners. b. Casualization Casualization is the transformation of working practices, here in community interpreting, to a non-permanent basis. For example, certified translators and interpreters may work in other industries, but continue to work in interpreting as a sideline. This has an impact on clients through the quality and delivery of the interpreting services. Mark PAINTING attributes casualization to a shortage of full-time employment opportunities, stating: Casualization is another symptom of the remuneration issues. People will do something else because unfortunately interpreters are not employed full time. So, they make up work by doing jobs all over the place. That means it’s hard to maintain the profession. I think what happens is the fragmentation because the casualized workforce means people do something else and then do a bit of this on the side. That makes it more difficult to keep them engaged in the interpreting profession because it is a secondary thing.

Fragmentation results in the creation of a less coherent and coordinated workforce system (Andreason and Carpenter 2015). One source of fragmentation in the interpreting industry is said to be caregiving responsibilities for children or parents: this situation can compel those affected—often women—to do occasional work as it suits their current lifestyle. Reflecting her concerns with pay and professionalism as a union representative, Niki BARAS calls these people the ‘hobbyists’ who can do work on the side to earn some pocket money. To her, this is disturbing and harms the sector (see also Eser et al. 2018, p. 78): They’re happy to do that. They don’t even charge. That altruism can be really detrimental to those who really want to earn a living and provide a professional service. Those well-meaning people can often do more harm than good. So, it’s how you meet the demand and create a professional supply with integrity and ethics.

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She attributes many of the problems in the industry to a lack of unity and solidarity, believing that with unity and solidarity, the problems might never have occurred, or might have been minimized or even addressed. c. Government policies The challenges that the government is facing are mainly about • the settlement of new arrivals, • their access to culturally responsive services and • responding to the needs of the ageing population. Government departments need to act more collaboratively in solving these challenges. Certain segments of the community experience higher unemployment levels, including groups such as migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, people with disabilities and indigenous people. Certain challenges such as the needs of a diverse community, tendering procedures by the government, and the power of votes may impact on government policies. Questioning the motives that matter to the government, Niki BARAS emphasizes the risks for both workers and communities (see also, Eser et al. 2018, pp. 77–78): Governments care more about risk and votes and less about the workers. What the government does is to patch up the system and put some little modifications in the system. By having an unsustainable language services industry, the government puts communities at risk. Unless the government invests in it, it’s not sustainable. It’s government work and the government has a responsibility. It just needs to take responsibility for that work. The Victorian Government commissioned a review that found that everything we [Professionals Australia] were saying was correct:

• an unsustainable industry; • aging interpreters; and • a decrease in income over the years. d. Remuneration

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As one of the main elements of sustainability, the community recognition of a good service can be in the form of good remuneration. It is highly affected by inflation, additional costs as well as a lack of sustained work. At a press conference held in Melbourne in 2018, Minister for Multicultural Affairs Robin Scott stated that the pay and working conditions of casually employed interpreters must be improved. He focused on interpreters enabling linguistically diverse communities to better access health, education and other critical services, and facilitating better communication between professionals. He also highlighted that interpreter remuneration had not changed for over 15 years and this decrease had, in turn, compelled many experienced interpreters to leave the sector due to concerns about job security, remuneration and working conditions. If inflation over 15 years (2003–2018) is taken into account at an average annual inflation rate of 2.4 per cent, interpreters’ remuneration amounts to a decrease of more than 40% in value (see Reserve Bank of Australia3 ). Also, additional costs are not to be taken into account. Unfortunately, interpreters are only paid for the time they are on-site. When an interpreter gets a job, there are other costs associated with that such as travel and time lost in traffic. Most of the time is spent on the road, and petrol and parking expenses are not covered. Even if they can get three jobs a day for five days a week for 43 weeks of the year, the current levels of remuneration are still somewhere between AU$50,000 and AU$60,000.4 Victorian Government Minimum Rates for Interpreters as from 1 July 2018 is AU$87.12 per job (see also Table 4.1). According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), average weekly earnings in Australia as of May 2019 were AU$1,695. Then, we can assume that interpreters may earn at least 20% below the average salary. All the expenses should also be taken into account. Furthermore, not all interpreters can be said to be able to find sustained work. Commenting on some of the reasons why income remains low, Niki BARAS points out: That’s why you’re only working part-time [in real terms]. You’re away from home for eight hours a day, but you’re completing three separate assignments or so at best – which amounts to income less than a living wage. (see also Eser et al. 2018, p. 77). 3 For futher information, please visit https://www.rba.gov.au. 4 To reach this estimated figure: AU$87.12 per job x 3 jobs a day x 5 days

a week = AU$1,306 per week x 43 weeks = AU$56,192 per annum.

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In the pre-2018 system, one of the biggest frustrations for interpreters was that it did not matter how qualified and experienced an interpreter was: the remuneration received per assignment was exactly the same for all interpreters. Qualified interpreters abandoned the profession while new people who did not have the required competencies entered the profession. Mulayim points out that employment patterns are one of the main problems affecting the community interpreting and translation industry (2016, pp. 124–126). The subcontracted or casual nature of employment for community interpreters means that they are not on full-time employment contracts, earning their incomes from bookings or assignments they receive mostly from private agencies or government-run language services such as the TIS or the DHS. Pay conditions appear as a major concern in the industry. The 2012 APESMA (Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers) report found that approximately 90% of translators and interpreters reported a lack of income security. In Victoria in 2013, this would have meant an income range of AU$400–650 a week if an interpreter only undertook standard bookings. A study by Katan showed that most part-time translators and interpreters (69%) had second jobs while 54% had a third job and 8% had a fourth job (2009, p. 118). Niki BARAS sees low pay as part of an unsustainable industry, while Mark PAINTING also relates the issue to sustainability, pointing to government procurement policy as a force driving down levels of remuneration: The cause of that [low pay] is a combination of things like procurement policy. As the government system is based on purchasing the interpreting services by going out to tender, private agencies drive down the prices and at the end of the day they cut down on fees paid to interpreters.

Poor remuneration also affects the opportunities of community interpreters improving their skills over time. Gonzalez (2019) states that practitioners find it hard to cover the costs of attending Professional Development events due to low income. So it is reasonable to conclude that remuneration is closely related to the quality of T&I services and the upgrading of skills and knowledge for interpreters. e. Union Activity A trade union is an organization that represents the collective interests

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of workers in an industry (Banfield and Kay 2012, p. 131). The members of a union stand together to improve pay, working conditions and job security. Strong unions can promote the rights of workers at the national and international level. In Australia, unions have existed since workers began to form societies to represent their interests in the 1930s. In 1927, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)5 was formed to agitate for fairness and equality in the community. In the interpreting industry, Translators and Interpreters Australia (TIA)6 is the only union that represents translators and interpreters in Australia; it was founded in 2011 as a division of Professionals Australia, which is a union representing a wide range of professions including engineering, pharmacy and many others. TIA states that it is committed to: • providing the highest standard of workplace advice and support to our members; • advocating on behalf of translators and interpreters so that they are heard by government and industry; and • uniting the collective voice of translators and interpreters to negotiate for improved salaries and conditions. Affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Professionals Australia has changed over time as a union. Niki BARAS gives an account of this and of how they have learnt to survive (see also Eser et al. 2018, p. 75): We’re a professional association and a union, a white-collar union if you like. Our group is under the Managers and Professionals Division. So, we also have managers and a lot of our members predominantly work for government directly or indirectly. The unions are not what they used to be. The union movement doesn‘t have the same power [as before]. They’re finding out now that they can’t work the way they’ve always worked. We’ve got Liberal governments trying to shut unions down, so the unions are having to find new ways of operating. For example, we industrially represent community dentists who work in community health centres. They are often migrants and they’re often women. They’re members of the

5 See also https://www.actu.org.au/. 6 See also https://tia.professionalsaustralia.org.au/.

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Dental Association, so we have an agreement with the Dental Association where we act as an agent to provide the industrial union support to their members. Further to that, we represent pharmacists as well, many of whom are community pharmacists and who also work in retail pharmacies. They’re often found working in the chain stores like Chemist Warehouse and the like. They‘re severely underpaid. If you have a look there, a lot of them are also migrants.

ACTU states that unions are confronted with many challenges such as governments trying to shut them down (2003, p. 4). In the long run, the sources cited here indicate that there is always a price to pay if the industry lacks a strong union.

4.6

Vicarious Trauma and Emergencies

Vicarious Trauma (VT) , aka Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS), can be defined as indirect exposure to a traumatic event (also see McCann and Pearlman 1990; Pearlman and Saakvitne 1995). Service providers can be exposed to distressing material during the course of their professional life or the traumatic stories of other people who have experienced trauma, and begin to experience the same feelings. There are many professionals who are at risk of vicarious trauma such as doctors, police officers, judges and lawyers, rescue workers, child abuse investigators and many others. Community interpreters are also among those professionals that experience vicarious trauma because of the context of the work they do, as community interpreting is an emergency service, as Ismail AKINCI points out: We are 24/7 and we never close even during New Year, New Year’s Eve or Christmas simply because interpreters have to cater for police or emergency services. We also do emergency housing in the event that there is a utility problem in the house. We take calls from a client’s call centre for emergency calls. So, we’re another emergency for an emergency call centre. We’re the multilingual arm of that.

We cannot know that all interpreters who are exposed to traumatic content will develop vicarious trauma. However, research suggests that this is within the realms of possibility. For example, Loutan et al. (1999) found that most of the interpreters of the Geneva Red Cross who worked with refugees and asylum seekers reported having been exposed to a

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traumatic event through their narratives like war, torture, detention and violence, and had painful memories and feelings after their interpreting sessions. In another study that was conducted in the State of Victoria, Australia and involved responses from a total of 271 community interpreters, Lai, Heydon and Mulayim contend that community interpreting assignments contain traumatic material such as family violence, serious illness, death and torture that may impact on the well-being of community interpreters and report that more than 60% of the interpreters in Victoria had to confront traumatic material every week (2015, p. 4). In our current study, as head of strategic projects of a private agency, Frans MOENS argues that interpreters may have to interpret for torture and trauma survivors or for terminally ill patients in settings like healthcare and they have to take the burden home with them. The following story is an anecdote from a language services coordinator who worked in a healthcare setting (Feb 26, 2018, personal communication, anon.): The profession is stressful. Interpreters find themselves in difficult situations. In a hospital, you have people dying. I remember a Spanish interpreter from an agency. One day she saw me and said, ‘I have a problem. I have just finished with the patient. I want to commit suicide. You shouldn’t have done that to me. You didn’t tell me it was a baby bereavement. And I wasn’t prepared for it’. She never came back. She told the agency she didn’t want to work here. She was so upset. That interpreter went home with that on her mind. The external interpreters come in and go after one and a half hours. They take the burden home. With the in-house interpreters, it is different because we have established a report system.

This reported incident goes to show that the stages of briefing and debriefing in an interpreting event are of great importance to community interpreters in keeping vicarious trauma at bay. Lai et al. (2015) argue that community interpreters’ emotional and physical well-being should primarily be the concern of the [state and federal] governments (ibid., p. 5) and state that affected interpreters may often choose to forget about their experience or turn to family members, friends or colleagues for emotional support (ibid., p. 15). However, there are a variety of professional strategies that community interpreters can use in seeking assistance.

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First of all, community interpreters can grapple with vicarious trauma by actively participating in or joining organizations such as AUSIT and other professional associations. Also, translation and interpreting agencies have an Employee Assistance Program. If interpreters experience distressing assignments, then they can access counselling through their interpreting agency. Another strategy can be to mitigate the effects of vicarious trauma by spending less time with traumatized people; the best way to do this is to develop competencies on how to cope with vicarious trauma, for example, through professional education offered by stakeholders in the industry such as AUSIT, Professionals Australia and universities. In fact, Atkinson and Crezee (2014) argue that interpreting has a potentially isolating nature. Interpreter education should therefore, they argue, focus not only on technical skills but also on psychological skills so that interpreters can identify their weaknesses and find out which areas to improve thereby preparing for the special challenges like burn-out, stress and vicarious trauma and improving interpreter resilience (ibid.). This chapter has explored the main challenges facing the profession of community interpreting services in Australia. The challenges are mainly related to the use of technology, quality, supply and demand, sustainability and work-specific issues. For example, the industry needs to take on quality issues like credentialing, recognition from clients, and training. Supply and demand issues hinge on the diversity of languages as well as the needs of remote communities. These also include not only rare and emerging languages, but also established languages and indigenous languages. Social considerations are a multifaceted factor and play a significant role in settings like hospitals on religious grounds. Sustainability issues are front and centre, and often go beyond issues like attrition and casualization. The next chapter will look closely at the strategies that Australia has developed over the years since the 1970s in order to grapple with the challenges impinging on the industry.

References Andreason, S., & Carpenter, A. (2015, April 1). Fragmentation in workforce development and efforts to coordinate regional workforce development systems: a case study of challenges in Atlanta and models for regional cooperation from across the country. FRB Atlanta Community and Economic Development Discussion. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2597674. Accessed 8 July 2018.

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Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers (APESMA). (2012). Lost in Translation: Barriers to Building a Sustainable Australian Translating and Interpreting Industry. http://www.professionalsaustralia. org.au/wpcontent/uploads/2014/09/Lost-in-Translation-web-version.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2018. Atkinson, D. P., & Crezee, I. (2014). Improving Psychological Skill in Trainee Interpreters. International Journal of Interpreter Education, 6(1), 74–83. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2019). Australian Demographic Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/3101.0. Accessed 13 Jan 2020. Australian Council of Trade Unions. (2003). Policies of Congress. https://www. actu.org.au. Accessed Jan 26, 2020. Banfield, P., & Kay, R. (2012). Introduction to Human Resource Management (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Braun, S. (2015). Videoconference Interpreting. In F. Pöchhacker (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies (pp. 437–439). New York: Routledge. Braun, S., Slater, C., Gittins, R., Ritsos, P. D., & Roberts, J. C. (2013). Interpreting in Virtual Reality: Designing and Developing a 3D Virtual World to Prepare Interpreters and Their Clients for Professional Practice. In D. Kiraly, S. Hansen-Schirra, & K. Maksymski (Eds.), New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators (pp. 93–120). Tübingen: Narr. Department of Premier and Cabinet. (2018). Victorian Government Report in Multicultural Affairs 2016–17 . The State of Victoria. https://www.multic ultural.vic.gov.au/images/2018/Victorian-Government-Report-in-Multicult ural-Affairs-201617.pdf. Accessed 19 August 2019. Eser, O., & Lai, M. (2019). Interview with Ibrahim AYZIT. Istanbul University Journal of Translation Studies, 11, 113–121. Eser, O., Lai, M., & Baras, N. (2018). Interview with Niki BARAS. International Journal of Interpreter Education, 10(2), 73–78. Gonzalez, E. (2019). Professional Development as a Vehicle on the Road Towards Professionalism: The AUSIT Experience. inTRAlinea online translation journal 21. http://www.intralinea.org/archive/article/2347. Accessed 3 December 2019. Hale, S. (2007). Community Interpreting. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoffman, K. D., & Bateson, E. G. J. (2011). Services Marketing: Concepts, Strategies, and Cases (4th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Katan, D. (2009). Translation Theory and Professional Practice: A Global Survey of the Great Divide. Hermes, Journal of Language and Communication Studies, 42, 111–153.

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Ko, L. (2006). The Need for Long-term Empirical Studies in Remote Interpreting Research: A Case Study of Telephone Interpreting. Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series-Themes in Translation Studies, 5, 325–338. Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., & Opresnik, M. O. (2018). Principles of Marketing, 17th Edition. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd. Lai, M., Heydon, G., & Mulayim, S. (2015). Vicarious Trauma Among Interpreters. International Journal of Interpreter Education, 7 (1), 3–22. Lai, M., & Mulayim, S. (2010). Training Refugees to Become Interpreters for Refugees. Translation and Interpreting, 2(1), 48–60. Loutan, L., Farinelli, T., & Pampallona, S. (1999). Medical Interpreters Have Feelings Too. Sozial Und Präventivmedizin, 44(6), 280–282. Markus, A. (2019). Mapping Social Cohesion: The Scanlon Foundation Surveys 2019. Victoria: Monash University. https://scanlonfoundation.org.au/. Accessed 2 Feb 2020. McCann, L., & Pearlman, L. A. (1990). Vicarious Traumatization: A Framework for Understanding the Psychological Effects of Working with Victims. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 3(1), 131–149. Mulayim, S. (2016). Lost in Communication: Language and Symbolic Violence in Australia’s Public Services. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Department of Translating and Interpreting, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Vic, Australia. National Sustainability Council. (2013). Sustainable Australia Report 2013: Conversations with the Future. Canberra: DSEWPaC. Ng, E., & Crezee, I. (Eds.). (2020). Interpreting in Legal and Healthcare Settings: Perspectives on Research and Training. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Pearlman, L. A., & Saakvitne, K. W. (1995). Trauma and the Therapist: Countertransference and Vicarious Traumatization in Psychotherapy with Incest Survivors. New York: W. W. Norton. Pöchhacker, F. (2016). Introducing Interpreting Studies (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge. Pym, A., Grin, F., Sfreddo, C., & Chan, A. L. J. (2013). The Status of the Translation Profession in the European Union. London, UK: Anthem Press. Rosenberg, B. A. (2007). A Data Driven Analysis of Telephone Interpreting. In C. Wadensjö, B. Englund Dimitorva, & A-L. Nilsson (Eds.), The critical link 4.Professionalism of Interpreting in the Community (pp. 65–76). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sandrelli, A. (2015). Becoming an Interpreter: The Role of Computer Technology. MonTI Special Issue, 2, 111–138. https://doi.org/10.6035/MonTI. 2015.ne2.4. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2017). International Migration Report 2017 : Highlights, (ST/ESA/SER.A/404). http://www.unmigration.org. Accessed 27 January 2020.

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United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2019). International Migration Stock 2019. http://www.unmigration.org. Accessed 27 January 2020. Wadensjö, C. (1999). Telephone Interpreting and the Synchronization of Talk in Social Interaction. The Translator, 5(2), 247–264. Wirtz, J., & Lovelock, C. (2018). Essentials of Services Marketing (3rd ed.). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited. Xu, H., Hale, S., & Stern, L. (2020). Telephone Interpreting in Lawyer-client Interviews: An Observational Study. Translation and Interpreting, 12(1), 18– 36.

CHAPTER 5

Sustainable Strategies to Maintain Community Interpreting Services

Abstract This chapter looks closely at the strategies that Australia has developed over the years since the 1970s in order to grapple with the challenges impinging on the industry. The effective and efficient provision of community interpreting services for the culturally and linguistically diverse members of the community is attained through a variety of strategies that can be categorized under three main headings: building the capacity of interpreting services, maintaining relationships with stakeholders and political commitment to diversity. Agencies can tap into a pool of NAATI-credentialed interpreters across the country in more than 150 different languages through the effective use of technology. The stakeholders in the industry believe in working together in order to get on with a variety of issues such as attrition, remuneration and recognition. Lobbying is also seen as part of these activities as it is an influencing factor on government policies. Australia embraces diversity by adopting multicultural policies and legislative acts. Keywords Diversity · Strategies · Stakeholders · Capacity-Building · Political Commitment · Lobbying · Government Policies · Legislation

Top-level decision-makers such as the executives of stakeholder organizations need to work together if an industry is to be steered in a particular © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1_5

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direction. Gomez-Mejia and Balkin (2012, pp. 197–223) set out a fivestep process for strategic management: these efforts should include (1) an analysis of the internal and external environments, (2) the definition of a mission, (3) the formulation and (4) implementation of strategies and (5) the assessment of strategic outcomes. The strategic outcomes refer to the end result of an entire process, which consists of intended and unintended results. After assessing whether or not the outcomes meet original expectations, the resulting analysis is used to see if the strategies have been successful (ibid., pp. 222–223). When setting goals, stakeholders can take a long-term perspective by reviewing the sustainability issues (also see Chapter 4) and the negative and positive externalities (see also Chapter 3) to which these strategies may lead. The top stakeholders may choose to cater for their own desires and goals; however, other stakeholders (see also Chapter 3) such as community interpreters and CALD clients should not be neglected. Whether they are satisfied with the goals which have been set may have an impact on a service provision that is sustainable and socially responsible. For example, NAATI’s transition from accreditation to certification at the beginning of 2018 is the end result of strategic management based on the accumulation of decades of experience of providing community interpreting services in the Australian context. Strategic management requires designing strategies that help build the right relationships with customers including community interpreters who can be seen as internal customers. Kotler, Armstrong and Opresnik argue that a customer value-driven strategy begins with selecting which customers to serve and determining a value proposition that best serves the targeted customers. It is argued that stakeholders can become more efficient and effective by focusing on the segments that they can satisfy best (2018, pp. 212–227). For instance, socially responsible objectives may involve the targeting of languages with relatively less demand or vulnerable / disadvantaged consumers. This chapter looks at a variety of strategies to deal with these challenges (see also Chapter 4), to create value and satisfaction for CALD members of the community and to create a more sustainable industry. These strategies can be grouped together under three headings: • Building the capacity of interpreting services, • Maintaining relationships with stakeholders and • Political commitment to migration.

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5.1 Building the Capacity of Interpreting Services Capacity building is a term often used in social, economic and environmental spheres. It empowers communities to be able to solve the challenges that they face. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines capacity (2009, p. 53) as ‘the ability of individuals, institutions and societies to perform functions, solve problems, and set and achieve objectives in a sustainable manner’. Here, one can understand that successful capacity building involves levels of participation in the process from individuals up to the broader society by using skills, knowledge and experience to attain a shared goal. Stakeholders need be in constant interaction with each other. In order to act sustainably, the United Nations Development Programme sees capacity development as a perpetually evolving process of growth and positive change and uses a five-step cycle to organize work (2009, pp. 21– 22): (1) Engage stakeholders in capacity development; (2) Assess capacity assets and needs; (3) Formulate a capacity-development response; (4) Implement a capacity-development response; and (5) Evaluate capacity development. In order to build capacity for interpreting services in Australia, stakeholders have been making continuous assessments in relation to government policies. They have developed strategies that include creating a pool of community interpreters across the country, setting up language services units in a variety of settings such as government departments and agencies, and investing in technology. a. Creating a pool of interpreters Agencies that provide translation and interpreting services for CALD members of the community can tap into a pool of about 2500 NAATIcredentialed community interpreters registered for telephone interpreting in over 150 languages across Australia. The dominant mode of delivery (telephone or face-to-face) may change from setting to setting, as Ismail AKINCI reports: There will be some clients whose services are delivered predominantly onsite and some services will be delivered predominantly over the telephone.

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For instance, in a hospital situation in Australia, it is common to have interpreters face-to-face although it is beginning to change now. The pendulum is swinging towards telephone for various reasons. In a police interview, the police standing orders in Victoria do not allow for a formal interview with a suspect for the purpose of charging them over the telephone. So, you cannot do that. The interpreter must be face-to-face. Then, in a law court setting, they will allow telephone interviews only as a last resort because the judge, the magistrate and the other players within the courtroom have become familiar with face-to-face interpreters. In the event of a rare situation where a local interpreter is not available, a telephone interpreter has been known to be accessed.

b. Setting up language services units Language Services Units operate in a variety of settings like healthcare and Centrelink offices at the Department of Humans Services (DHS). Ibrahim AYZIT explains the origin of these support services (see also Eser and Lai 2019, p. 115): We deal with culturally and linguistically diverse customers or claimants. Most of them don’t have the English competency during the interview or application stage. Therefore, the Department set up the Language Services Unit in the late 80s.

He also describes the process of keeping in-house interpreters in a DHS Office (see also Eser and Lai 2019, pp. 116–117): DHS has a language service coordinator in each state. I manage language services in the state of Victoria for the Department of Human Services. I train DHS staff on working with interpreters. I procure interpreters on a contractual basis for our panel in more than 220 languages and dialects. There are established languages such as Arabic, Italian, Greek and Turkish as well as emerging languages like Chin Hakka from Myanmar, formerly Burma, and Dinka, Nuer and Juba Arabic from Sudan in Africa. In the last three or four years, we’ve been getting a lot of refugees from the Middle East, parts of Iraq and Syria. We need a lot of Arabic interpreters. We are lucky in the State of Victoria as we have a lot of NAATI-credentialed Arabic interpreters. So, what I do in the State of Victoria is to find out where these refugees are settling in and whether we have enough interpreters there. I visit more than 42 DHS offices in and around Melbourne. I work very closely and liaise with the specialist officers called Multicultural

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Service Officers (MSO). We identify the potential applicants whether they have qualifications and we register them with the Department of Human Services language services on a contractual basis. Also, I provide reports on the usage of telephone interpreting state-wide and we have sessional interpreters called in-house interpreters in some sites. What I do is to identify how many customers we have in that language. If we have in-house interpreters, then we provide better service for the community members and for the department as well, but in some offices like the Moreland office, we used to have Turkish interpreters Monday to Friday, too. We also had Italian and Greek. When the demand decreased, we stopped having in-house interpreters there.

c. Investing in technology In using new technology, the aim is to increase productivity and help people achieve a higher level of quality. Using the right technologies, equipment and support processes is important for enhanced performance. Community interpreters backed by an effective support system are more likely to provide a better service to their customers. If the industry fails to keep up with new technology, financial consequences may follow. In Australia, investing in technology has gained momentum over the last two decades and apparently, there will be a lot of changes in the years to come. For example, remote interpreting may be used more effectively due to the advantages it may offer. Telephone interpreting is being extensively used at the moment. In the not-too-distant future, video remote interpreting may be one of the preferred modes of providing community interpreting services. So, technology can be used for a variety of purposes in the community interpreting services industry: training, needs analysis of CALD clients and practice. Training can come in two forms: courses at university and professional development events. Online delivery of courses through the use of technology in translating and interpreting training has certain advantages: • To be able to teach more interpreters from a distance, and • To use virtual reality and augmented reality to create practice materials and to foster distance learning and assessment in interpreting. In the foreseeable future, interpreters or translators will not be replaced by technology, but those who do not use the technology of the day can

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be replaced. AUSIT offers courses and organizes annual national conferences through webinars. It aims to attract translators and interpreters in remote areas or those who cannot attend face-to-face professional development events due to reasons like family commitments. Further to that, in order to solve the complexities of remote interpreting and for an effective communication to take place, AUSIT has, for example, issued recommended telephone interpreting protocols to assist clients and organizations working with interpreters which can be accessed at the official website of AUSIT. To help improve telephone interpreting practice, AUSIT provides guidelines on the responsibilities of organizers and interpreters before and during the telephone interview. Technology is also used for conducting a needs analysis, and interpreting services can be statistically reported in order to plan ahead. For example, in accordance with the Multicultural Language Services Guidelines for Australian Government Agencies, the DHS’s Centrelink system records a customer’s language preference(s) as part of the initial information-gathering process. This provides a base line for management information and helps determine what languages are in demand and where, and what languages are hard to service and require further interpreter procurement action. DHS also reports annually on the details of the number of limited English-language proficiency speaking contacts and other services (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2013, p. 20). The importance of having access to up-to-date data when planning the delivery of interpreting services is attested by Ibrahim AYZIT (see also Eser and Lai 2019, p. 118): The customer data is updated on a quarterly basis. As the coordinator, I know which office has how many customers, and what languages they speak and if they need language assistance through the data. For example, in the Moreland office, I can just make up [figure out] how many customers need language assistance via the data. The Department of Human Services provides services for up to 15 million people. How many of the 15,000 customers speak Arabic or Turkish? - Let’s say 560, or 320 respectively. And then we see how many of them require interpreter or language assistance. Not all Arabic speakers require interpreting or language assistance. Maybe 200 of Arabic speakers and 250 Turkish speakers need interpreting or language assistance. If the figures are greater, we end up getting in-house interpreters. If not, we utilize telephone interpreting services. The work is pretty intense as it is a whole big state. We are up-to-date with the information in the industry and the contacts, as well.

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The use of technology shapes the way we work. The CI profession has changed since the early 2000s, when there was a paper-based book that community interpreters had to carry with them to record that they had finished an assignment in order to claim their fee from the interpreting agency. Nowadays, completed assignments are recorded online. The use of technology is one of the most efficient strategies to deal with the challenges of today and the future, especially when interpreting services have to be delivered to remote locations in a wide variety of languages, many of which are rare or emerging. Of the two types of remote interpreting—Telephone interpreting and Video Remote Interpreting [VRI]—telephone interpreting is more common in Australia. Frans MOENS confirms its importance for a country as large as Australia: As it is a very big country, telephone interpreting is really a necessity to have here and is well-established. For example, if it is hard to find an interpreter in Melbourne, agencies are connected with all the other States of Australia and they can provide the client with an interpreter via the telephone interpreting.

Ibrahim AYZIT explains the telephone interpreting infrastructure used in Victoria for the DHS and its underlying rationale: Our telephone or on-site interpreting and translation service is specifically for the DHS customers. We don’t provide this interpreting and translation service for external purposes. If we need an interpreter and can’t get interpreters physically to come to the offices, then we use the telephone interpreting system. We have a very sophisticated telephone interpreting system at DHS offices. It’s called Interactive Voice Recognition or OnDemand Telephone Interpreting. We have codes for languages, and the system dials interpreters automatically all around Australia when we put the code in. An interpreter has to be active on the system. If they accept the call, then this call is connected to the site. I was very fortunate as this system was first trialled at the Moreland office in 2005. This is applicable to all the DHS offices all around Australia and in Tasmania. Given that we have a lot of people including migrants and refugees who receive some sort of benefit from the department of Human Services, it is a very efficient service.

Video Remote Interpreting [VRI] seems to be in its infancy in Australia as well as in many other parts of the world. However, it holds

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great potential for saving time and money in interpreting services. It may be the next step in the best practice of the profession. It could even increase financial gain to the professionals, according to Ibrahim AYZIT; as a result, he argues that it will contribute to the retention of qualified interpreters in the industry. With advanced technologies, he goes on, it will become accepted and reliable, as well. Despite the fact that this form of remote interpreting is on the rise, Frans MOENS, who, we can recall, has a background in IT, doesn‘t think that in the foreseeable future it will replace on-site i.e. face-to-face interpreting, which adds value in many respects. In settings like healthcare, he adds, privacy holds sway and video remote interpreting is not the preferred technology.

5.2

Maintaining Relationships with Stakeholders

Stakeholders need to act together and collaboratively in order to meet the challenges in the industry. They can struggle together to stand up to the difficulties that they encounter in the industry to increase sustainability. To begin with, stakeholders such as government departments, private agencies, universities and the relevant trade union could improve the working conditions of community interpreters in terms of remuneration, professional status and recognition. Community interpreters can also contribute to lobbying through representative bodies for better pay and rights. This can be done by investing in future generations, engaging with communities or unions so that their voice be better heard and the government can act accordingly. Another way to maintain relationships among stakeholders could be to set policies together in identifying needs, making and initiating plans and measuring the progress to provide feed forward, concurrent information and feedback. a. Improving working conditions I. Improving remuneration The certification system that NAATI is implementing, and the requirements associated with that are already a big reform, bringing about a tiered remuneration. The higher the level of professional certification, the more community interpreters will be able to earn (see Table 5.1). The Independent Review conducted of the Victorian Government Procurement of Language Services in 2016–2017 found that the level of interpreter remuneration, work conditions and job insecurity are having

Base Regional rates service AU$ charge AU$ Total payment

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(continued)

222.45

261.36

101.12

111.23

130.68

Victorian Government regional service charge (RSC)–minimum rates for interpreters from 1 July 2018

100–199 km return trip for 90–minute service—total maximum time of 4 hrs—50% loading on base rate Certified 87.12 43.56 Interpreter (Level 3)—or higher Certified 74.15 37.08 Provisional Interpreter (Level 2) Recognised 67.41 33.71 Practicing Interpreter (Level 1) > 200 km return trip for 90-minute service—total maximum time of 8 hrs—200% loading on base rate Certified 87.12 174.24 Interpreter (Level 3)—or higher Certified 74.15 148.30 Provisional Interpreter (Level 2)

NAATI level

Table 5.1

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Base Regional rates service AU$ charge AU$

NAATI level

Source Adapted from Victorian Multicultural Commission 2018c

Recognised 67.41 134.82 Practicing Interpreter (Level 1)

(continued)

Table 5.1 Total payment

202.23

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a significant negative impact on industry sustainability. In response to the review, the 2017–2018 State Budget provided AU$21.8 million over four years, with an ongoing annual commitment of AU$8.4 million to improve language services to meet the needs of multicultural communities (VMC 2018a, p. 45). The funding was aimed at supporting Victoria’s interpreting services by: • increasing remuneration rates for contractor interpreters, • introducing a standard payment to interpreters to compensate for travel to regional locations, and • upskilling the interpreter workforce, including through professional development and training opportunities. The Regional Service Charge (RSC) compensates interpreters for on-site service provision in regional/rural locations and for lost opportunities in taking on regional work by providing a loading on their base remuneration rate (see Table 5.1). According to the Victorian Government, this boost in remuneration was the largest single increase for interpreter services in Victoria‘s history. The government acknowledges that interpreter remuneration was static for over 15 years, and the relative decrease in income saw many qualified interpreters leave the sector. Therefore, the Victorian government reformed its procurement of languages services. The changes were made to ensure better rates are paid to interpreters, and that the right incentives are in place to retain interpreters in their crucial role in delivering government services. The Ministry for Multicultural Affairs emphasized that the reforms were the result of an extensive consultation with industry stakeholders including interpreters. The reforms also included establishing a new Victorian Language Services Quality Committee to advise the Government on industry sustainability and quality issues into the future. The Minister for Multicultural Affairs Robin Scott stated that1 : ‘With Victoria‘s increasing cultural diversity, interpreters have never been more important. It is essential that we ensure a professional, high-quality language services industry to meet the needs of Victorians’.

1 Also see https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/funding-boost-for-interpreters-helps-diversecommunities.

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As a good example of stakeholders working collaboratively in the industry, the Victorian Government points out that the new remuneration rates are tied to the new NAATI certification system, thus, encouraging community interpreters to transition. The Victorian Government has affirmed this link,2 The new minimum rates only apply to interpreters who have transitioned to the new NAATI certification system. Interpreters who have not transitioned will remain on their current rates and conditions to ensure that no interpreter is disadvantaged with respect to their existing conditions.

In keeping with her role as a union organizer, Niki BARAS advocates the significance of lobbying to agitate for higher income for interpreters: NAATI certification will not bring more income for interpreters on its own. The only way that certification can be profitable for interpreters is if they join the union and we leverage that requirement to improve remuneration and working conditions.

There is no doubt that there are some concerns about sustainability in the interpreting community. One answer lies in better education, better professionalization, and better recognition, in order to introduce better remuneration. II. Professionalization and recognition from clients Most clients are likely to be unaware of the skills and knowledge that interpreters need to develop. A regulatory body like NAATI, professional associations like AUSIT and ASLIA, and trade unions like Professionals Australia, are all different in terms of organizational goals, but are all important, again for different reasons. Cooperation between these organizations could lead to more effective representation at government levels. And collaboration among stakeholders is a determining factor in receiving recognition from clients and attaining professionalization. Consistent with his position as NAATI CEO, Mark PAINTING sets great store

2 Also see https://multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/2018/Victorian-Government-Min imum-Rates-for-Interpreters---1-July-2018.pdf.

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by training and professional development as a way of achieving better recognition, stating: Ever since the creation of NAATI, the profession has moved into the industrial era. To try and get it recognised as a profession, the greater emphasis on the formal training pathway and the need to recertify starts to put it in a profession. I don’t think we’ll have an immediate benefit, but I do think at least it puts the sector or the profession in a much better position to argue that it is a profession. Better investment in training and development will help because all of that is geared toward the professionalization journey and a tool the profession starts to be perceived as a profession. We can’t expect the outside world to perceive us as a profession unless we perceive ourselves, look, act and think like professionals. So, we could try and push that.

Similarly, Gonzalez (2019) argues that as the interpreting industry perceives and acknowledges the value and quality of the job performed by T&I professionals, other professional groups will acknowledge the value of their high-quality work. She believes that the interpreting profession will benefit from this in many respects such as professional status and better remuneration. In order to gain recognition from clients, a number of initiatives have been pursued. These include encouraging interpreters to upskill and working actively with professionals. On the one hand, the institutions in the industry such as AUSIT and TIS already use their funds to actively seek out collaboration with training institutions or organizations. For instance, AUSIT provides interpreters with professional development and TIS has a generous scheme for interpreters to participate in professional development events. Community interpreters can attend a conference and then apply to TIS so that they can be reimbursed. These opportunities encourage interpreters to engage more actively with academia and in acquiring new knowledge. On the other hand, the Judicial Council on Diversity3 commissions research and undertakes public consultation processes on issues relating to cultural and linguistic diversity in Australia’s judicial system, including interpreting and translating services. By ensuring an interpreter is available to court users of no or 3 An advisory body formed to assist Australian courts, judicial officers and administrators to positively respond to the diverse needs of the community, including the particular issues that arise in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

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limited English proficiency, the Council seeks to guarantee that proceedings are conducted fairly and in accordance with the applicable principles of procedural fairness. To this end, the Council prepared a document in collaboration with NAATI: Recommended National Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals”.4 This set of standards is, in Mark PAINTING’s view an important step towards improving the status of interpreters in the courtroom: The working group was chaired by people in the judiciary and one of the most significant outcomes of that is that the interpreter will be recognized as an officer of the court in the court proceedings which significantly elevates their status within the court. That project took two years’ worth of work and those are the types of things that need to happen.

These standards serve a variety of purposes. Implementation of these Standards aims to: 1. promote a better working relationship between courts, the legal profession, and the interpreting profession, 2. assist in ensuring that the interpreting profession in Australia can develop and thrive to the benefit of the administration of justice generally, 3. encourage other courts which do not provide interpreters to follow the example of those that do, particularly where dealing with particularly vulnerable or disadvantaged litigants, and 4. support a sustainable and highly skilled interpreting profession in Australia and contribute to system-wide improvements in interpreting. In the section ‘Recommended Standards for Courts’, Standard 11.3 is about engaging a qualified interpreter. When engaging an interpreter, whether a Qualified Interpreter or otherwise, it is stated that the court should also take into account (2017, p. 10): • the extent and level to which the person has pursued formal education and interpreter training, especially legal interpreting training; 4 Also see http://jccd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/JCCD-Interpreter-Standa rds.pdf.

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• the level of her or his NAATI certification; • whether or not the person is a current member of AUSIT, ASLIA or other recognised State or Territory based association requiring adherence to a code of ethics and/or standards; and • any experience interpreting in court, including the nature of that work. The Standards also include training that judicial officers should undertake on assessing the need for interpreters and working with interpreters (ibid., p. 12). During court proceedings, judicial officers are encouraged to use plain English. In terms of fees for interpreters, as a general guide the Court adopts as reasonable minima the rates published from time to time by Professionals Australia for the purpose of any taxation or assessment (2017, p. 16). These recommended Standards bring together the key stakeholders in the interpreting profession and the legal profession and provide a good example of maintaining relationships to make the industry more sustainable. They prepare the ground for the professionalization of community interpreting services by putting an emphasis on formal education, NAATI, and professional memberships like AUSIT and ASLIA and by referring to the union in terms of setting the fees. This step has been bolstered by the buy-in from the judiciary chairs in Sydney. NAATI’s CEO, Mark PAINTING expresses a hope that other states and territories will follow suit: AUSIT has been offering to go around [and to get the buy-in] and the judges have been willing to go around and help. The group has written to the Chief Justice in every jurisdiction. So, I think it’ll gradually pick up.

This initiative could be adopted by other clients beyond the legal profession so that ways of working effectively with interpreters can be disseminated across other settings. For instance, healthcare practitioners can also work out how they can devise guidelines for working with interpreters in hospitals. b. Lobbying through representative bodies As the translation and interpreting industry in Australia has its own challenges varying from quality issues to sustainability, lobbying can be a

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compelling tool in attaining goals such as improving working conditions and remuneration, and, to an extent, preventing attrition. Transparency, integrity and fairness in the policymaking process are crucial to safeguarding the public interest in modern democracies (OECD 2009, p. 3). The interests of the community are at risk when negotiations are carried out behind closed doors. The OECD states that lobbying (OECD 2013) • is a democratic right that can inform government with valuable insights and data, • allows citizens and interest groups to present their views on public decisions. The OECD defines lobbying as (OECD 2012a, p. 23) An effort to influence different levels of government (local, national, regional or transnational) or different branches of government (judicial, legislative or executive).

Lobbying can take two forms: direct lobbying, and grassroots lobbying. In direct lobbying, lobbyists contact government officials directly, whereas indirect appeals to the general public to influence governmental decisions are known as grassroots lobbying. OECD records indicate that only 14 out of 36 member countries have established rules on lobbying as of 2018. The United States was the first country to introduce regulations on lobbying in 1940. In February 2010, the OECD Council approved the OECD Recommendation on Principles for Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying. This is the first international policy instrument to provide guidance for policymakers on how to promote good governance principles in lobbying (OECD 2012b). Another initiative launched in 2011 and updated in 2015 is the Transparency Register by the European Parliament and the European Commission for any organization or self-employed individual engaged in influencing EU policymaking and implementation. The Australian Government has been an OECD member since 1971 and has a Lobbying Code of Conduct and a Register of Lobbyists. The Code underpins the Register and sets out the requirements for contact between third-party lobbyists and Government representatives. It also indicates what will be publicly available on the Register and outlines the conditions for the

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successful registration of lobbyists. The Code defines lobbyists, clients, government representatives and lobbying activities for the purposes of the Register (Department of The Prime Minister and Cabinet 2013). In the Lobbying Code of Conduct, The Australian Government (2019) defines a lobbyist as ‘any person, company or organisation who conducts lobbying activities on behalf of a third-party client or whose employees conduct lobbying activities on behalf of a third-party client’. The Code also defines lobbying activities as ‘communications with a government representative in an effort to influence Government decisionmaking, including the making or amendment of legislation, the development or amendment of a government policy or programme, the awarding of a government contract or grant or the allocation of funding’. Recently, lobbying has been actively used in the industry of community interpreting services in Australia. One example is the formation of Translators and Interpreters Australia (TIA) that came into being in 2014.5 In a lobbying activity, the CEO of Professionals Australia, Chris Walton acknowledged support for better remuneration from ASLIA, AUSIT and the Translators and Interpreters committee and in consultation with the key industry stakeholders, the Victorian Government (after 15 years of stasis) reformed the procurement process for language services in 2018 to deliver better interpreting services to the Victorian community. The broad reforms as introduced by the Victorian Minister for Multicultural Affairs include the following measures (Minister for Multicultural Affairs 2018; Gonzalez 2019): • Guaranteed minimum rates for remuneration for contracted and casually employed interpreters providing services to the Victorian Government. • Average increases of 30%. • Improved travel allowances. Community engagement is also an effective way of lobbying, according to union organizer Niki BARAS:

5 Translators and Interpreters Australia is a division of Professionals Australia, established in 2014. For further information, see: http://tia.professionalsaustralia.org.au.

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We are investing in change when we lobby for better remuneration and working conditions. Language group associations are a positive way in which interpreters can unite – especially when these groups show leadership and interest in industrial activity and how it can benefit Professionals Australia. The communities need advocates to speak up for them. In order to lobby more effectively, we should invest in students as newer groups shaping the future. (see also Eser et al. 2018, pp. 76–78)

Niki BARAS admits that the unions need to engage and work more with the representatives of ethnic communities such as the Chinese community and the Greek community, and advises that these communities need their representatives to lobby for them and educate them in doing that, claiming that: There needs to be more engagement with the community for them to speak up. Those communities need to be supported so that they’re confident to speak up. It’s about the communities or their representatives engaging with us, and their representatives should activate them.

c. Setting policies Setting policies by maintaining relationships with stakeholders includes identifying challenges and needs, supplying community interpreters and providing feedback. I. Identifying challenges and needs It is important that the key stakeholders continue to work together to identify challenges and work together to solve them. According to Ibrahim AYZIT, the DHS works very closely with educational institutions and the state government in identifying the challenges and needs of the community as well as of the interpreting profession. He explains that: The state government provides funding to universities. Before they provide funding, the external advisory committee and the state government ministries like the Multicultural Commission actually have meetings with the department representatives and agency representatives in addition to correspondences and emails. We identify which languages or dialects are in demand and for which we don’t have qualified accredited or recognized

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language assistance in the industry. Then, it comes to the Department of Human Services. Working in partnership with them has tackled a lot of issues over the years.

II. Supplying interpreters Supplying community interpreters is related to credentialing, and training and professional development. The Australian Governments, whether federal or state, are seeking to increase the supply of community interpreters. One such example is the Interpreters Scholarship Program funded by the Victorian Government. The funding assists Government to secure the right volume and quality of professional interpreters to meet the current and future needs of Victoria‘s linguistically diverse communities. The programme targets languages where there are shortages. It is important for the Victorian Government to offer scholarships to students or potential students within those regional areas to undertake interpreter training. A. Credentialing As already noted, NAATI changed the credentialing system in the year 2018 and transitioned from accreditation to certification. Transition was the process by which practitioners holding current accreditation or recognition could opt to gain comparable credentials under the new certification system. The transition to certification ended at the end of December 2019. Certification is an acknowledgement that an individual has demonstrated the ability to meet the professional standards required by the translation and interpreting industry in Australia. Niki BARAS comments on the link between the transition process and remuneration: Practitioners transitioned to certification in large numbers despite the initial reluctance from some groups. One reason for this is that the Victorian Government tied the [new] fees [minimum rates for remuneration] to certification. This was a deal that we had to agree to get the increase.

NAATI’s certification system consists of the following two categories: Certified and Recognised (NAATI 2018):

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• Certified includes Certified Provisional Interpreter, Certified Interpreter, Certified Specialist Interpreter (available settings: Health and Legal) and Certified Conference Interpreter. These certifications are typically available between English and a LOTE (Language Other Than English) for which NAATI assesses all significant competencies directly and objectively. • Recognised Practising Interpreter is available between English and a LOTE for which NAATI currently does not offer certification testing, e.g. for emerging or low demand languages. • NAATI directly assesses Language Competency (English or Auslan), Intercultural Competency and Ethical Competency, but is only able to indirectly confirm other competencies through evidence of work experience. In the absence of interpreters with certification for a language, Recognised Practising Interpreters may be asked to interpret in the same domains, situations and interpreting modes as certified interpreters. The only way to get certified in the new system—after the transition period ended—is the test from NAATI, whose CEO Mark PAINTING reports that: Before, anyone could take the test, have a certain level of doing a course or we might recognize overseas qualifications. Now those other pathways will get people access to a test, not the certification itself. So, endorsing qualifications such as what’s done at universities will make people eligible to sit for a certain number of tests depending on the course they’ve done. There is a complete separation of the delivery of the education from the actual certification itself. NAATI will do the test independently of the institution that runs the course.

Starting from January 2018, before the expiry date of their certification practitioners are required to provide evidence of continuing work practice and professional development to recertify the credential for a further three years. Recertification is the process by which translators and interpreters with NAATI credentials demonstrate that they remain active and committed to the translation and interpreting industry at regular intervals. As not all interpreters who’ve been certified actually practise, NAATI aims to distinguish between community interpreters who do practise and those who do not. Commenting on the need to establish true professional

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standards, Niki BARAS points to the positive change that NAATI has made: NAATI has issued something like 40,000 accreditations or more, but how many of those people actually practise or work? So, that’s why NAATI is now changing their system to a new certification model. We really need to make this a profession and get the respect that we need. We need to get professional people working.

Following the closure of transition applications at the end of December 2019, at the time of writing (31 January 2020) 13,429 individual practitioners had received 18,844 credentials in 172 languages (NAATI 2020). Mark PAINTING looks at the certification process as a career path and reports that the benefit of the recertification requirement is that NAATI keeps engaging interpreters, If they don’t recertify, they’ll expire and fall out of the system and we will keep a reliable data source on the workforce profile. The other really significant change of the new system is we’re putting much more emphasis on formal training as a pathway. I don’t think we’ll have an immediate benefit, but I do think at least it puts the sector or the profession in a much better position to argue that it is a profession. Some recent things are going to help with that. I think our change [into certification] won’t fix everything, but it’s one thing to help.

The new certification system has the support of the translators and interpreters’ representative bodies, including AUSIT, ASLIA and Translators and Interpreters Australia (a division of Professionals Australia) (Department of Social Services, n.d.). As the CEO of a private company employing interpreters, Ismail AKINCI states that they would not engage graduates if they were to apply for work just with a diploma. He adds: They must have the NAATI credential because it’s a higher one to start with. Secondly, it is a contractual requirement from us because my contract, for instance, with the Department of Health says when we book an interpreter from you, we want to make sure that the interpreters are NAATI-accredited; therefore, I can’t engage someone who has just a 50 or 55% pass rate.

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In relation to testing outside Australia, NAATI CEO Mark PAINTING confirms that at the moment, no testing is carried out overseas. What NAATI prefers to do is stimulate interest from institutions who want to endorse qualifications, which will create a demand automatically. B. Training and professional development As part of the NAATI recertification system that came into effect on January 1, 2018, interpreters have to undergo training at universities, to attend a minimum level of professional development provided through institutions like AUSIT, and to prove that they are current in their work. After the introduction of the certification system, AUSIT shared the results of a survey conducted to find out about the professional development needs of the T&I practitioners across Australia (Gonzalez 2019). The survey suggests that interpreters and translators began to show more interest in the professional development events after the transition. Professional development events are an opportunity for anyone who is qualified, but lacks formal T&I training received at the university or TAFE level and wants to update their competence. The government plays an active part in identifying language needs in the community and then provides financial support in the form of scholarships to people in those languages who want to be trained and become interpreters. For example, in 2002, the Victorian Government launched an ongoing initiative which is of a bipartisan nature. The state government investigates which languages the community needs, and gives students a scholarship in the language cohort to cover their tuition fees. However, this is only in the TAFE sector. Those who go on to work in new and emerging languages mostly prefer the TAFE pathway. There are some underlying reasons for that such as tuition.

5.3

Political Commitment to Diversity

Diversity has a number of benefits but also some challenges. The main benefit is that it drives international engagement. The challenges on the other hand focus on the settlement of new arrivals, and their access to public services for which government agencies aim to be culturally responsive. Moreover, there can be underlying prejudices towards diversity and it may take time to overcome these as a result of political or religious conflicts among various nationals.

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Australia uses various methods to understand how diversity plays out. One such measure is the Scanlan Social Cohesion Survey that explores Australians’ attitudes to social cohesion issues, including discrimination, trust in government and sense of belonging; this survey has been published annually since 2007 (Markus 2019, p. 1). Over 80% of the respondents in the years 2013–2019 agree that multiculturalism has been good for Australia. It can be attributed to (ibid., p. 4): 1. Strong bipartisan support, 2. Geographic distribution of migrants and refugees, and 3. Targeted grants and programmes of the government: capacity building, festivals and events, community infrastructure funding and providing harmony. In order to maximize the advantages and minimize the challenges of diversity, huge efforts are being made. Examples include government policies, legislation and guidelines. The focus in what follows will be on Australia in general and the State of Victoria on a state level. a. Government policies Government policies and the associated legislative framework are crucial to the success and sustainability of service delivery, including community interpreting services. Many government policies have been introduced since the Minister for Immigration in the Labor Whitlam government Al(bert) Grassby specifically referred to multiculturalism in a 1973 speech entitled A Multicultural Society for the Future. After the Review of Post-arrival Programs and Services for Migrants in 1978, the Galbally report identified multiculturalism as a key term for government immigration policy stating that all migrants must have equal access to programmes and services. The Hawk Government adopted the Access and Equity Strategy in 1985 for implementation throughout the Australian Public Service to help people unable to speak English have access to government services and programmes, and also establishing the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in 1987 to coordinate multicultural policy. In addition to the OMA, the National Multicultural Advisory Council (NMAC) was established in 1994 to advise on

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multiculturalism. In 1999 NMAC released a report Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness to ensure that cultural diversity is a unifying force for Australia and as a framework for the next decade. In 2003, Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity was issued as the strategic directions for the years 2003–2006 in response to the issues related to the threats of terrorism. In 2008, the Rudd Government created the Australian Multicultural Advisory Council (AMAC) to provide advice to the government on promoting social cohesion and overcoming racism and intolerance. In 2010 AMAC launched a statement titled The People of Australia with recommendations on equitable access to services and the need to tackle discrimination. In 2011, the Gillard Government launched The People of Australia—Australia’s Multicultural Policy stressing the multicultural character which gives Australia a competitive advantage in an increasingly globalized world. In 2017, the Turnbull Government released Multicultural Australia—United, Strong, Successful. It was a statement embracing diversity while emphasizing a unique national identity. It also placed a priority on the security of Australia, investing in counter-terrorism and encouraging the economic and social participation of new arrivals. The states acted in line with government policies. For example, Victoria issued the Valuing Cultural Diversity Policy 2002 that provides a framework for Victoria’s multicultural policies and programmes. It outlines four core principles for the government’s whole-of-government approach to cultural diversity: valuing diversity; reducing inequality; encouraging participation; and promoting the social, cultural and economic benefits of cultural diversity to all Victorians. It was subsequently updated to the All of Us Policy 2009 to advance equality by supporting the human rights of people in Victoria. It shifted the debate to a more positive narrative around shared values and aimed to drive concrete improvements across the government to ensure that every Victorian should belong, contribute, achieve and succeed. Victorian. Proud of It Policy 2017 focuses on core values to facilitate social inclusion and equality of opportunity, economic participation and acceptance and belonging. It has universal values such as (VMC 2017a, pp. 20–21): • • • •

One law for all; Freedom to be yourself; Discrimination is never acceptable; A fair-go for all; and

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• It is up to all of us to contribute to a Victoria we can be proud of. The growing government commitment to a multicultural society in which access to services is open on an equitable basis to all clearly improves the chances of a sustainable CI industry and profession. b. Legislation On top of these government policies, legislation is also an important factor affecting multicultural issues, and hence, the demand for and supply of interpreting services. There are a number of relevant legislative acts in Victoria (VMC 2018b, p. 6): • Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001: The Act is designed to protect all Victorians against serious racial and religious vilification. It provides a community standard of responsibilities towards each other in a multicultural society. It seeks to ensure that people are treated with dignity and respect regardless of their race or religion, and that they do not become targets of vilifying behaviour. • Multicultural Victoria Act 2004 amended in 2011: The Act includes a preamble and a set of principles that accord respect for one of the state’s greatest assets—its cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. Two core principles are enshrined in the Act: – Valuing cultural, religious and linguistic diversity; – Ensuring the freedom and opportunity for all Victorians to preserve and express their cultural heritage. The Act also requires government departments to report annually to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Parliament on their achievements in multicultural affairs over the past financial year. • Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006: The Charter came into effect on 1 January 2007. Victoria was the second Australian jurisdiction to enact human rights legislation. The Charter establishes a framework for promoting and protecting human rights. It contains 20 rights that reflect four basic principles of freedom, respect, equality and dignity. Consideration of human rights is now

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a public sector value following an amendment to the Public Administration Act 2004. This means that all public sector staff must respect and promote the rights set out in the Charter by making decisions and providing advice consistent with human rights. The Victorian Government introduced a Whole-of-Government approach6 which is an annual report detailing Victorian Government activities and programmes that support diversity in Victoria and ensuring that the needs of Victoria’s culturally and linguistically diverse communities could be conveyed to the relevant bodies and that Government could be kept abreast of community concerns as required through the Multicultural Victoria Act 20117 under which the Victorian Multicultural Commission (VCM)8 was constituted. VMC acts as a link between the Victorian communities and government and provides independent advice to the Victorian Government to inform the development of legislative and policy frameworks, as well as the delivery of services to its diverse society. The Multicultural Affairs and Social Cohesion (MASC) division provides policy and programme support to drive the Victorian Government’s multicultural vision and priorities (VMC 2017b, p. 6). The Victorian Government departments report annually to the Minister of Multicultural Affairs on their achievements and initiatives in Multicultural Affairs. c. Guidelines

6 See roach.

also

https://www.multicultural.vic.gov.au/about-us/whole-of-government-app

7 The Multicultural Victoria Act 2011 provides the framework for a Whole-ofGovernment approach to multicultural affairs, which recognizes and values the cultural, religious, racial and linguistic diversity of the people of Victoria. The Act establishes the VMC as a statutory authority to provide independent advice to the Victorian Government on multicultural affairs and citizenship matters. Reporting requirements under the Act, including the development of Departmental Cultural Diversity Plans (CDPs), facilitate more targeted departmental responsiveness to the communities when delivering services and programmes. See also https://content.legislation.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/202004/11-14aa002%20authorised.pdf. 8 Operating under the Multicultural Victoria Act 2011 the VMC consists of 12 commissioners: a Chairperson, Deputy Chairperson, a Youth Commissioner, a representative of a community organization and eight other members. Also see https://www.multicultural. vic.gov.au/about-us/victorian-multicultural-comission.

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The government provides interpreting and translation services free of charge to non-English speaking Australian citizens and permanent residents when communicating with service providers. All citizens, regardless of their cultural, linguistic or religious backgrounds, should have equitable and easy access to government and community services to participate fully in society. The provision of community interpreting services can be understood as a kind of investment. Government guidelines and the two Codes of Ethics (AUSIT and ASLIA) govern the profession of community interpreting and translation in Australia. I. Government guidelines The interpreting services are one of those building blocks that supports access and equity. In most cases, stakeholders like policymakers or agencies acknowledge the challenges of using a family member as an interpreter or not having an interpreter. In that regard, there are government guidelines that govern departments in terms of what they need to do and how they need to do it. For example, the Language Services Policy of the Department of Health and Human Services governs the use of language services funded by the department, ensuring people who need assistance with translating or interpreting are able to get the help they need to effectively access the department’s services, or the Department of Justice and Regulation maintains a ‘Language Services Policy’ outlining expectations and procedures in the provision of interpreting and translating services. This includes a Language Allowance Policy to acknowledge staff with language skills other than English to improve communication with culturally diverse communities (VMC 2018a, p. 10). The Victorian Government Policy and Procedures set out the obligations of government departments and funded agencies to provide language services and give advice on the practical aspects of planning, arranging and working with interpreters and translators. These departments and agencies need to ensure that, whenever required, interpreting services are provided and used effectively. Cultural competency training is provided for staff to develop understanding and skills on when and how to use interpreting and translation services. The Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) is responsible for the totality of the language guidelines produced by the Victorian government. These guidelines, which are grounded in a number of Acts, are relevant for spoken and written

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language as well as for Australian Sign Language (Auslan). The Multicultural Victoria Act 2011 states that ‘all individuals in Victoria are equally entitled to access opportunities and participate in and contribute to the social, cultural, economic and political life of the state’. Interpreting and translation services are crucial to ensuring this is achieved. The Act also requires all Victorian Government departments to report annually on the use of interpreting and translation services. The Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 outline rights and obligations relevant to providing access to language services. Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act 2010 includes a ‘positive duty obligation’ which means that departments and agencies need to take proactive and reasonable steps to address causes of discrimination, regardless of whether a complaint has been made or not. The guidelines also state that the failure to identify the need for, or to promote the availability of, language services may create a risk of inadequate procedural fairness. This may result in decisions being reviewed and overturned, incurring additional costs and avoidable delays. In relation to language services, the government and its funded agencies have a duty to ensure that members of the public understand the information that is being provided to them, and should provide appropriately trained and NAATI-credentialed interpreters when required (DPC, n.d.a, pp. 5–9). There are three government guidelines in the state of Victoria: Using Interpreting Services, Effective Translations, and Multilingual Information Online (DPC, n.d.b, p. 5). All three guidelines assist departments and funded agencies to improve access to information in other languages (VMC 2018a, p. 45). The Multilingual Information Online guidelines have been developed to help departments improve navigation to translated information on their websites and ensure that the content is in an accessible format. The specific obligations to provide free access to interpreting services for those in need of linguistic support in English when engaging with government departments are noted by Ismail AKINCI, as a private supplier of such services: Through the access and equity policy, anyone who needs to communicate with a government department will have access to a free interpreter and the interpreter through the guidelines must be credentialed. In Australia, it is the NAATI credentialing system that we follow. If you have a look at each of the state governments, they will have the definition of access and

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equity. Each of their government departments will have the responsibility to provide interpreter services to members of the public accessing their service. And through the access and equity, a government department is somewhat compelled to provide free services.

II. Code of Ethics As a condition of their ongoing certification, NAATI interpreters and translators are required to act in accordance with the AUSIT Code of Ethics, and Auslan interpreters are required to abide by the ASLIA Code of Ethics. The first AUSIT Code of Ethics, which defines the values and principles guiding the profession, was launched in 1996 and then revised in 2012. The related Code of Conduct issues, which are specific to translators and interpreters, provide a framework for interpreting and translating professionals to use when exercising judgement in their practice (AUSIT 2012, p.4). Interpreters and translators who commit to practise in accordance with the Code of Ethics accept that they will be accountable for their conduct under AUSIT’s processes for non-compliance. Among the general principles of the Code are professional conduct, confidentiality, competence, impartiality, accuracy, clarity of role boundaries, maintaining professional relationships, professional development and professional solidarity. The ASLIA Code of Ethics was developed in 2007. Members of ASLIA are required to abide by the Code and to follow the Guidelines for Professional Conduct as a condition of membership. The Code defines ethical principles, values and standards of conduct to guide all practitioners (ASLIA 2007, p. 1). Ismail AKINCI sees the Codes of Ethics as a form of quality assurance: A level of quality assurance is a form of code of ethics coupled with a code of conduct. AUSIT is the only professional association with a code of ethics for spoken languages. In the absence of legislation, we have guidelines, but the guidelines also assist the government departments on how to draw up a commercial contract [. . .]. We have contractual principles that we must adhere to; in other words, do not engage an unqualified interpreter, ensure that the interpreter is competent at this skill, ensure that the interpreter understands and confirms and consents that they will follow the AUSIT code of ethics. These guiding principles must be established as part of the overall establishing and delivering of services to the community.

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The fact that a profession is also defined by its allegiance to a code of ethics, in addition to the proven interpreting competency of its members, is reiterated by Niki BARAS: it is one of the features that makes these services a profession (see also Eser et al. 2018, p. 78). III. Procurement Another guideline that governs the procurement of community interpreting services is titled Multicultural language services guidelines for Australian Government agencies. This guideline defines the preferred methods of procuring language services based on demand patterns. The main purchasing methods as indicated by the DIC (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2013, pp. 16–17)9 are: • Contracts with language service providers: Where there is significant expenditure on language services, Australian Government agencies should assess the benefits of establishing a formal contract with an approved language service provider. Such contracts should specify the same standards required of the provider that the agency would apply to itself; for example, contracts should specify that interpreters accredited or recognized by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters Ltd (‘NAATI-credentialed’) should be engaged wherever possible. Ismail AKINCI sums up how procurement works for private agencies: Based on the work that we have been doing for the last 30 years, government work would represent well into the 95% of all community interpreting whether it’s a department providing interpreting services in-house or procuring it externally from an agency, it’s still governmentfunded. So, that’s why it’s very high government funds involved. So, there’s various levels. The direct procurement from an agency is still government-funded. For instance, even if a hospital is paying, it will be funded by the government to pay for the services that they contract with

9 For the sake of accuracy, the wording used to describe the purchasing methods in this section is taken largely verbatim from the original 2013 document, Multicultural Language Services Guidelines For Australian Government Agencies.

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us. The interpreter services that are within the hospital, that is, the inhouse interpreters are still government-funded. It is not privately funded. The hospital is getting its funding from the Department of Health to service its patients, and interpreting is seen as an allied health [sic] [Allied Health Professions Australia=AHPA], a support mechanism for the delivery of health services.

• Ad hoc buying: Where demand and expenditure are low or unpredictable, Australian Government agencies may wish to procure language services on an as needed basis from freelance interpreters/translators, or a language services provider (while ensuring that these purchasing processes are in line with Government Procurement Rules), or drawn from a panel of interpreters/translators already established. • Direct employment: Some Australian Government agencies directly employ full-time or part-time interpreters / translators or bilingual workers where there is stable and significant demand in a given language, and / or where interpreters using particular languages are often needed in emergency situations such as in hospitals. This approach is not suited to Australian Government agencies with low levels of demand, or where there are changing levels of demand in different languages. Similarly, in the State of Victoria, departments set their language services policies in line with the policies and guidelines set out by the Department of Premier and Cabinet. For instance, the Department of Health and Human Services states in its Language Services Policy that organizations will need to determine the most cost-effective way of sourcing language services consistent with the funding arrangements attached to particular programmes (DHHS 2017, p. 12). Table 5.2 shows that the total expenditure for I & T services in 2016–2017 including expenditure through funded agencies was AU$46,222,612 increasing by AU$2,123,975 (or 4.82%) from the 2015–2016 expenditure of AU$44,098,637 (VMC 2018a, pp. 3–4). d. Government grants and programmes

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Table 5.2 Summary of expenditure on I & T services by departments, 2016– 2017 AU$ Department of and Resources Department of Department of Department of Department of Department of Department of Court Services Total

% of Total

Economic Development, Jobs, Transport

2,236,437

4.8

Education and Training Environment, Land, Water and Planning Health and Human Services Justice and Regulation Premier and Cabinet Treasury and Finance Victoria

3,924,850 9391 33,652,230 3,371,957 11,756 66,439 2,949,552 46,222,612

8.5 0.0 72.8 7.3 0.0 0.1 6.4 100%

Source Adapted from Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC) (2018b). Victorian Government Report in Multicultural Affairs 2016–2017. Melbourne, VI: Victorian Multicultural Commission

The Victorian Programs and Grants include Employment Programs, Refugee and Education Support Program, Refugee Health Program, Skilled Migration Program and the like. For example, there are a series of strategies and initiatives under the Employment Programs10 that aim to increase employment opportunities and assist Victorians facing barriers to employment. One of these initiatives is Social Inclusion Partnerships. This programme aims to address some of the systemic barriers that skilled people from culturally diverse backgrounds face in gaining entry to the Australian workforce. There is also a Recruit Smarter Initiative, which aims to develop inclusive recruitment practices and address unconscious bias in recruitment. The Victorian government runs Recruit Smarter by building it around three priorities: trialling new approaches, designing best practice and sharing knowledge (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2018). The Minister of Multicultural Affairs Robin Scott has stressed the importance of diversity and the state’s responsibility to ensure inclusiveness (ibid.): We have a responsibility to future generations of Victorians to create a workforce that supports and values diversity and inclusion. Recruit Smarter is a building block for that community, and for the workplace, workforce

10 See also https://djpr.vic.gov.au/what-we-do/employment-programs.

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and economy in which we want to live and work as a diverse and inclusive state.

Recruit Smarter involves CV de-identification by removing names and some other details when applications are received. Research found that overseas born applicants were 8% more likely to be shortlisted for a job after ‘de-identification’ and that if an applicant acknowledged an African background, they might have been subject to a harder interview than someone with the same experience and qualifications (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2018, p. 11). So, Recruit Smarter arose as an opportunity for workplace diversity and inclusion in Victoria. Grants are widely used to achieve government policy objectives. The Federal government, state or territory governments as well as agencies provide grants to a wide number of stakeholders for the benefit of all Australians. The types of grants may include research grants, grants that provide for the delivery of services, grants that help fund infrastructure or grants that help build capacity; entities must comply with the wholeof-government policy (Department of Finance 2017, p. 6). As part of the efforts in Victoria to ensure that every Victorian can contribute and belong, there are a variety of community grants. Examples include the Community harmony program to support activities that foster understanding, appreciation and respect for cultural diversity and equality; the Multicultural Festivals and Events Program to encourage Victorians to participate in festivals and events and embrace the state’s cultural diversity; the Multicultural Community Infrastructure Fund directed at multicultural communities across Victoria to support upgrades to community facilities; and the Capacity building and participation Program to build the knowledge and skills of multicultural communities across Victoria. Another programme is the Interpreter Scholarship Program aimed at increasing the supply and quality of interpreters in Victoria (see also https://www.vic.gov.au/grants). The Victorian Government has been offering scholarships to promote diversity and inclusion and support students taking the Diploma or Advanced Diploma of Interpreting since 2003 (see also https://multicultural.vic.gov.au). Departments recognize that the provision of information and resources in languages other than English is important for the effective delivery of government services to culturally diverse communities with low English proficiency. These resources raise awareness of, and improve access to services, as well as increasing participation in programmes to promote

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well-being and social cohesion across the population. A variety of translated information and dissemination strategies have been reported by departments. Multilingual information and resources are provided through a range of platforms and communication channels, including interpreting and translating services for individuals, advertising campaigns in press and radio, and publications in languages other than English (VMC 2018a, pp. 18–19). Government agencies provide translated resources and materials to people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to improve access to services and programmes. Examples include interpreting services provided by the Victorian Small Business Commissioner in the delivery of business dispute resolution services; meetings with businesses and residents impacted by the Metro Tunnel Project delivered by the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority; and information sessions conducted by the Level Crossing Removal Authority. Environmental Protection Victoria redesigned its website to include a multilingual section. Parks Victoria provides a ‘Welcome to your Parks’ information brochure in 20 languages in specific locations that attract many culturally diverse visitors. The Department of Education and Training Victoria (DET) funded Children’s Services to support children and families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds attending state-funded kindergarten programmes to best engage with the activities. Other activities include cultural capacity building with educators, English as an additional language training, access to a bilingual worker and access to language resources. This chapter has looked closely at the strategies that Australia has developed over the years since the 1970s in order to ensure that people who are unable to speak English can have fair access to public services. The provision of community interpreting services for the culturally and linguistically diverse members of the community is effective and efficient and this is attained through a variety of strategies that can be categorized under three main headings: building the capacity of interpreting services, maintaining relationships with stakeholders and political commitment to diversity. For example, in line with the government policies, the needs and challenges of CI services in the State of Victoria are identified through a variety of committees such as the external advisory committee and Language Services Quality Committee. These meetings are joined by the government ministries and key stakeholders in the industry so that effective plans can be made, efficient use of the resources can be ensured and supply and demand can be managed sustainably. Consequences are

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monitored and measured constantly and necessary steps are taken to revise or fine-tune the previously made plans. The next chapter will look beyond Australia and concentrate on Turkey as a country with the largest refugee population in the world.

References ASLIA. (2007). ASLIA Code of Ethics. https://aslia.com.au/wp-content/upl oads/ASLIA-Code-of-Ethics.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2018. Attorney General’s Department. (2019). Lobbying Code of Conduct. Accesed from https://www.ag.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/lobbying-code-ofconduct_1.pdf. AUSIT. (2012). AUSIT Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct. https://ausit.org/ AUSIT/Documents/Code_Of_Ethics_Full.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2018. Department of Finance. (2017). Commonwealth Grants Rules and Guidelines. Commonwealth of Australia: Australian Government. Department of Health and Human Services. (2017). Language Services Policy. Melbourne, VI: Victorian Government. https://dhhs.vic.gov.au/file/1821/ download?token=YR1Ciaxx. Accessed 17 July 2018. Department of Immigration and Citizenship. (2013). Multicultural Language Services Guidelines for Australian Government Agencies. ACT: Commonwealth of Australia. https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/foi_dis closure_log/12-12-13/multicultural-lang-services-guidelines.docx. Accessed 20 Feb 2020. Department of Premier and Cabinet. (n.d.a). Using Interpreting Services— Victorian Government Guidelines on Policy and Procedures. Melbourne, VI: Victorian Government. https://www.multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/2017/ UsingInterpretingServicesVictorianGovernmentGuidelines.pdf. Accessed 17 July 2018. Department of Premier and Cabinet. (n.d.b). Multilingual Infirmation Online— Victorian Government Guidelines on Policy and Procedures. Melbourne, VI: Victorian Government. https://www.multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/2017/ UsingInterpretingServicesVictorianGovernmentGuidelines.pdf. Accessed 17 July 2018. Department of Premier and Cabinet. (2018). Recruit Smarter: Report of Findings. https://www.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-01/Recruit-Sma rter-Report-of-Findings.pdf. Accessed 6 Feb 2020. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. (2013). Lobbying Code of Conduct. https://lobbyists.pmc.gov.au/conduct_code.cfm. Accessed 11 July 2018. Department of Social Services. (n.d). Statement of Endorsement of NAATI´s Certification System. https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/settlement-servicessubsite/files/statement-of-endorsment-of-naatis-certification-system.pdf. Accessed 3 Dec 2019.

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Eser, O., & Lai, M. (2019). Interview with Ibrahim AYZIT. Istanbul University Journal of Translation Studies, 11, 113–121. Eser, O., Lai, M., & Baras, N. (2018). Interview with Niki BARAS. International Journal of Interpreter Education, 10(2), 73–78. Gomez-Mejia, L. R., & Balkin, D. B. (2012). Management: People, Performance, and Change. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. Gonzalez, E. (2019). Professional Development as a Vehicle on the Road Towards Professionalism: The AUSIT Experience. inTRAlinea Online Translation Journal, 21. http://www.intralinea.org/archive/article/2347. Accessed 3 Dec 2019. Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity. (2017). Recommended National standards for Working with the Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals. Canberra, ACT: Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity. http://jccd.org.au/wp-content/upl oads/2018/02/JCCD-Interpreter-Standards.pdf. Accessed 16 May 2018. Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., & Opresnik, M. O. (2018). Principles of Marketing (17th ed.). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd. Markus, A. (2019). Mapping Social Cohesion: The Scanlon Foundation Surveys 2019. Melbourne, VI: Monash University. https://scanlonfoundation. org.au/. Accessed 2 Feb 2020. Minister for Multicultural Affairs. (2018). Funding Boost for Interpreters Helps Diverse Communities. https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/funding-boost-for-int erpreters-helps-diverse-communities/. Accessed 25 June 2018. NAATI. (2018). Descriptors for Interpreter Certifications, Version 1.1. https:// www.naati.com.au/media/1917/descriptors-i-draft-v1155-february-2018pdf. pdf. Accessed 11 July 2018. NAATI. (2020, February). NAATI News February 2020. https://mailchi.mp/ naati/naati-news-february-022020. Accessed 26 Feb 2020. OECD. (2009). Lobbyists, Governments and Public Trust: Increasing Transparency through Legislation (Vol. 1). Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10. 1787/9789264073371-en. Accessed 11 July 2018. OECD. (2012a). Lobbyists, Governments and Public Trust: Promoting Integrity through Self-regulation (Vol. 2). Paris: OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1787/9789264084940-en. Accessed 11 July 2018. OECD. (2012b). Lobbying: Influencing Decision Making with Transparency and Integrity. Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD. (2013). Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying. Paris: OECD Publishing. http://www.oecd.org/corruption/ethics/Lobbying-Brochure. pdf. Accessed 11 July 2018. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2009). Capacity Development: A UNDP Primer. New York, NY: Bureau for Development Policy.

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Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). (2017a). Victorian. Proud of It 2017—Victoria’s Multicultural Policy Statement. Melbourne, VI: Victorian Multicultural Commission. Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). (2017b). Victorian Multicultural Commission Annual Report 2016–2017 . Melbourne, VI: Victorian Multicultural Commission. Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). (2018a). Victorian Government Report in Multicultural Affairs 2016–2017 . Melbourne, VI: Victorian Multicultural Commission. Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). (2018b). Victorian Government Achievements in Multicultural Affairs—2006-2007 . Melbourne, VI: Victorian Multicultural Commission. Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). (2018c). Victorian Government— Minimum Rates for Interpreters. https://multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/ 2018/Victorian-Government-Minimum-Rates-for-Interpreters—1-July-2018. pdf.

CHAPTER 6

Beyond Australia: Turkey

Abstract This chapter looks beyond Australia and concentrates on Turkey as a country with the largest refugee population in the world according to the UNHCR reports. Community interpreting services are not a fully fledged profession, but promising steps are being taken in that direction. Firstly, it focuses on the underlying reasons that lead to diversity in Turkey. After that, it explores the challenges in the main settings of community interpreting. It also looks at the stakeholders to see how Turkey is building up capacity to deliver community interpreting services. Examples are universities offering postgraduate, undergraduate and vocational programmes in a variety of language pairs, and government departments and agencies such as the Department of Home Affairs Directorate General for Migration Management to help culturally and linguistically diverse members of the community become socially inclusive. Keywords Community interpreting · Turkey · Professionalization · Refugees · Government departments · Social inclusion

This chapter explores the landscape of community interpreting services in Turkey. The main reason for this is that Turkey is the country with the highest intake of refugees in the world, according to UN reports. Turkey © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1_6

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has, therefore, had to grapple with the challenges of an unprecedented influx of people who have fled their homes because of the conflicts in neighbouring countries such as Syria and Iraq and have no or limited command of the Turkish language. Firstly, this chapter sets the scene on diversity in the Turkish context before providing insights into the challenges in the main settings. It also looks at its journey to the professionalization of these services over the course of time. At the end of the chapter, I look at the issue of how CI services, such as those currently in operation in Turkey, can be further developed for professionalization and sustainability purposes. In so doing, I draw heavily on the Australian experience as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.

6.1

Diversity in Turkey

Translation and interpreting become a social need when languages and cultures interact with each other. A glance at the historical context of any societal development would, as Ulken puts it, convince us that the great awakenings (büyük uyanı¸slar) of history that appear to have led to separate civilizations, are, in fact, interconnected by constantly widening thought which is driven by translation (2009, p. VII). He argues strongly, for example, that all the civilizations in and around the Mediterranean basin have interfaced with one another as the continuation of a long-standing tradition (ibid.). Therefore, against a backdrop of many civilizations including the Ottoman State and Byzantium, a diversity of cultures and languages has existed all along in Turkey. The Ottoman State, ruling over three continents, was home to over 30 languages including many European languages as well as the languages spoken in the neighbouring countries such as Arabic, Persian and Russian (Eruz 2010, p. 58). Therefore, diversity in Turkey was already palpable, before the current influx of refugees from conflict zones. With an annual growth rate of nearly 1.4%, Turkey has a population of 83.2 million people with 1.5 million being from other countries. The projected population is expected to be about 105 million in 2050, according to the Turkish Institute for Statistics (TUIK 2019). TUIK reports that the official figures for the foreign population cover individuals who hold a valid residence/work permit and individuals who have a valid address declaration. Foreign nationals under temporary protection are not included in that figure, but may still require translation and interpreting services. As of the year 2018, Turkey has the largest refugee

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population in the world with an intake of about 4 million persons of concern—not included in the official population figures—predominantly from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran (see also UNHCR Turkey). Today diversity in Turkey happens mainly for the following reasons. First of all, there are members of the community who speak little or no Turkish. They live in the east or south-east of Turkey and mainly speak Kurdish. Furthermore, as already noted, refugees have fled to Turkey from conflict zones for temporary protection or permanent migration, and lastly, international patients visiting Turkey for healthcare services like dental care and hair transplantation also need to be considered (Özsöz 2019, p. 26). The number of those who live in Turkey with residence permits i.e. are not Turkish citizens, is also not to be underestimated. These people also create diversity as they fall into a variety of categories ˙ like short term, family, work and international students (Göç Idaresi 2017a). According to the reports by the Directorate General for Migration Management of Turkey, nationals of other countries who live in Turkey can be classified as in Table 6.1. Of the over 850,000 foreign nationals who held a residence permit in 2018 (the latest figures currently available), the majority held short-term permits (563,093). The other permits were family (75,122), international students (79,225), work (85,840) and others (53,190). Of the 268,003 so-called irregular migrants, most came from Afghanistan (100,841), Pakistan (50,438), Syria (34,053), Iraq (17,629) and Palestine (10,545). Irregular migrants can be grouped ˙ into two categories (Do˘gan 2017, pp. 56–57 as cited in Içduygu and Aksel 2012): transit and circular. Transit migrants pass through Turkey to go to another country such as the European countries where they feel they can start a better life economically. Circular migration, also known Table 6.1 Turkey: types of diversity in 2018

Residence permits Irregular migrants International protection Temporary protection Total

856,470 268,003 114,537 3,623,192 4,862,202

Source Adapted from the Data by Directorate General for Migration Management—en.goc.gov.tr

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as repeat migration, is the mobility of people for the purpose of employment. They often enter Turkey with a valid visa but when the visa expires, they become unlawful by overstaying. With a total of 114,537 international protection applications, Turkey ranks third after Germany (184,180) and France (119,190). As of early 2020, Syrian refugees accounted for the great majority of those under temporary protection: 3,609,884 people.1 These refugees fall into two categories: sheltered and unsheltered. The sheltered refugees live in seven shelter centres in five provinces such as Adana, Kilis, Kahramanmaras, Hatay and Osmaniye. The unsheltered refugees are placed all over Turkey with the main provinces being Istanbul, Gaziantep, Hatay, Sanlıurfa, ¸ Mersin, Izmir and Kilis. All in all, foreign nationals represent about 6% of the total population figures. In addition to the categories in Table 6.1, nationals from other countries visit Turkey for recreational purposes such as tourism. The ˙ Directorate General (Göç Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü) (2019) states that about 39.5 million people visited Turkey in 2018 and this amounts to a significant jump of 90% from 20.3 million people in 2005: the top ten source countries are Russia (5,986,184), Germany (4,489,071), Bulgaria (2,412,045), Great Britain (2,235,983), Georgia (2,101,232), Iran (2,024,658), Ukraine (1,378,426), Iraq (1,179,836), Holland (1,008,777) and Azerbaijan (867,998).

6.2

Challenges in the Main Settings

The main settings for community interpreting are healthcare, law, education and social welfare. A variety of government departments and agencies such as the Department of Home Affairs Directorate General for Migra˙ sleri Bakanlı˘gı Göç Idaresi ˙ tion Management (Içi¸ Genel Müdürlü˘gü) deal with the various challenges that diversity brings to the delivery of these services. The Directorate General aims to: • implement policies and strategies related to migration; • ensure coordination between the related agencies and organizations in these matters;

1 The number of Syrians under temporary protection as of August 2020. See also en. goc.gov.tr for up-to-date information.

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• carry out the tasks and procedures related to foreigners’ entry into, stay in, exit and removal from Turkey, international protection, temporary protection and protection of victims of human trafficking. It states in its strategic plan for 2017–2018—the latest available at the time of writing—that it has very close relations with 21 other departments including the Department of Home Affairs, the Department of Education, the Department of Healthcare Services, the Department of Justice and the Directorate General of Police Force, where linguistically and culturally diverse people need to have access to public services including interpreting. It also states that diversity poses certain challenges in setting polices in areas like healthcare, education, security and justice, and adds that it is hard to ensure that foreign people are treated in a socially inclusive way due to their linguistic and cultural diversity (2017b, pp. 44–57). Examples include the number of Syrians who had access to healthcare services under temporary protection in Turkey. As of the end of 2016, a grand total of 20,956,267 patients from Syria had visited local healthcare centres, 918,694 of whom were referred to hospitals. In addition, the number of Syrian students in state schools in 2017 amounted to 166,482 ˙ with another 293,039 in temporary learning centres (Göç Idaresi 2017a, pp. 81–82). Turkey has also been a hub for international patients over the last decade. Duman contends that these visitors began to come to Turkey for healthcare services predominantly after the year 2010 (2018, p. 21). It was only when this high demand became clear, she claims, that a service vacuum in the healthcare setting was acknowledged and steps were taken to address the high demand. For example, the Department of Healthcare Services (Sa˘glık Bakanlı˘gı) issued a guideline for international health tourism and tourist health which is intended to regulate the minimum standards for delivering international healthcare services. The guideline stipulates that at whichever healthcare facility offers such services, a unit for international health tourism needs to be set up to implement services like international patient admission, treatment and discharge (Resmi Gazete 2017). Interpreting is one of the tasks carried out by the staff in this unit but eligible staff are required to have documented bilingual skills only. As Turgay KURULTAY, in his capacity as the former head of the Translation and Interpreting Association of Turkey (Çeviri Derne˘gi) noted, translation and interpreting will never become a

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profession if it is believed that anyone who has a good command of a foreign language can translate. In general, this matter and many others go to show that the industry of community interpreting services in Turkey seems to be rife with a variety of challenges that lead on to other problems, complicating things further. These challenges range from quality issues like assigning interpreters, credentialing and training to sustainability issues such as attrition and remuneration. Compared to Ozolins’s (2000) spectrum of responses to multilingual interpreting needs, Turkey is far from Phase 4, Comprehensiveness (see Section 3.3 for more detail on Ozolin’s phases). Adopting ad hoc strategies and attempting to solve challenges as they arise results in quality and sustainability issues that are persistent. Furthermore, the industry lacks a trade union that agitates for better working conditions and pay for community interpreters. Turgay KURULTAY sums up the efforts made to protect the rights of translators and interpreters through the establishment of professional associations rather than a union: In general, the profession doesn’t seem to be clearly defined and wellregulated in the world. However, there are some regulations in many countries. This has to do with translators and interpreters getting organized. In Turkey, there was only the Conference Interpreters Association2 for years until the Translation and Interpreting Association [Çeviri Derne˘gi] of which I was the founding member was established in 1999 as an entity open to all players in all aspects of translation. In 2006, the Literary Translators Society [Çevirmenler Meslek Birli˘gi] started its life to protect the copyrights of translators in the translation of books. This is the closest entity to a union as the copyright holder is bound by law. There has been a plethora of associations and federations in recent years. Unfortunately, this has led to a fragmented structure, weakening the expected effects of being organized. There is a great deal of confusion about which one to be active in [and in] which areas. We need a shared ground on the basis of certain NGO principles. Also, there is no professional chamber [that regulates memberships] for translators and interpreters, which, in turn, creates a vacuum. The main reason for this is that translation and interpreting is still not a profession defined and bound by regulations in Turkey.

2 The Conference Interpreters Association of Turkey (Çeviri Derne˘gi) was established in 1969 to bring together professional conference interpreters and to promote conference interpreting as a profession in Turkey and establish professional principles and rules in line with international practice. For more details, visit www.tktd.org.

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However, according to Diriker, community interpreting is virtually non-existent as a profession in such settings as healthcare and education and is minimally present in legal settings like courts and police investigative interviews; for example, the use of community interpreters in courts is at the discretion of the judges (2015, pp. 95–97). She also argues that community interpreting can only take root if the state is committed to supporting diversity for members of the community in such a way to ensure communication in languages other than Turkish. In support of the challenges that the Directorate General for Migration Management has outlined, there are some inconsistencies in training, credentialing and supply and demand. The challenge is that the migrants in Turkey predominantly speak Arabic, Dari or Pashto (Afghan languages), or Persian. There is a huge demand from speakers of these languages, but the supply of professional interpreters is totally insufficient (Güven 2014). Do˘gan (2017) asserts that most of the ‘irregular migrants’ can speak Turkish and those unable to speak Turkish speak other languages such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Russian and Kurdish, and those who come from African countries can communicate in languages like English, French and Greek in such settings as healthcare, accommodation, education, employment and social work (pp. 244–246). One possible solution would be for university programmes in translation and interpreting in Turkey to be more consistent and coherent with the needs of the migrants, refugees or victims in emergency situations as far as the community interpreting settings are concerned. The number of training programmes for community interpreting at universities across Turkey is very limited although there are a variety of elective courses in the training of community interpreters predominantly at the undergraduate level (Tahir Gürça˘glar and Diriker 2004; Güven 2014). Turgay KURULTAY contends that the courses/programmes offered by Turkish universities are not quality assured with respect to professional standards. Among those who act as community interpreters in Turkey are sworn interpreters (Yeminli Tercüman) who are accredited by a notary, bilingual social workers, or ‘knowledgeable persons (bilirki¸siler = professionals with expertise in a given area consulted by a court of law)’. Turgay KURULTAY points out the obvious weaknesses here: Translations approved by a notary stand out in sharp relief as an example of a disorganized industry. Translators are appointed by notaries who are, in fact, not qualified enough to assess the competencies of a translator. To top

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it all off, there are no specific provisions under the notary law, which just stipulates that those who wish to work as translators must be able to have a knowledge of a foreign language and the notary must think positively of them judging by the documents they have provided such as a diploma. The same is true of job advertisements in the Turkish Public Service such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the police force. Even if a graduate diploma in languages and/or translation and interpreting is compulsory, translators and interpreters are employed under the category ‘General Administrative Services’, which defines employment outside a profession. Therefore, the rights of a translator / interpreter stay under the level of their qualifications and there is no career path for them within the institution.

6.3

Turkey Paves the Way for Professionalization

Despite the fact that community interpreting is still in a state of infancy in Turkey in terms of moving on to the professionalization stage, tertiary education in the field of translation and interpreting dates back to the early 80s in Turkey. Akbulut states that researchers in adjacent fields like literary studies, linguistics and language teaching began to take the first steps and laid the foundations of the discipline of translation studies in Turkey in the 80s (2016, p. 7). She also adds that the departments of translation and interpreting at tertiary level were first established at state universities such as Hacettepe University (1982), Bo˘gaziçi University (1983), Yıldız Technical University (1992) and Istanbul University (1993). Table 6.2 shows that since the first department of translation and interpreting started its life, the number has grown to 69 universities with 115 programmes at the undergraduate and vocational levels in nine languages such as Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, English, French, Table 6.2 Number of universities offering undergraduate and vocational programmes in 2019 (no figures available for postgraduate programmes) Universities

Undergraduate Vocational Total

Number of state universities/programmes

Number of private universities/programmes

27/48 10/17 37/65

21/29 11/21 32/50

Source Adapted from Council of Higher Education—https://yokatlas.yok.gov.tr/

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German, Persian, Russian and Spanish (Yüksekö˘gretim Kurulu 2019). The language pairs in most of these programmes include Turkish and one of the EU languages like English, German and French. Some of these universities have postgraduate studies, too. The ongoing commitment to education is a significant asset in responding to the needs of the industry and the community, although as pointed out earlier, there appears to be a dearth of programmes for language pairs to cater for CALD people who speak languages other than the EU languages. Further steps have been taken by other stakeholders in the industry over the course of time to meet various interpreting needs. What happened back in the late 90s is a good example of how the industry is making progress. It is widely known that Turkey is a country where major earthquakes can happen. When a big earthquake measuring about 7.5 on the Richter Scale claimed many lives in 1999, the foundations of a not-forprofit organization called Disaster and Emergency Interpreting Initiative3 (Afette Rehber Çevirmenlik [ARÇ]) were laid to offer interpreting services voluntarily to the search and rescue teams that came from overseas to help those in need (see also Bulut and Kurultay 2001; Kahraman 2003, 2010; Do˘gan 2016; Do˘gan and Kahraman 2011; Kurultay and Bulut 2012; Duman 2018). Since then, volunteer interpreters have been trained to gain insights into earthquakes and develop competencies in interpreting in disasters and emergency situations. As the founding member of this not-for-profit organization, Turgay KURULTAY stresses the crucial importance of interpreting services in such situations: Disaster and Emergency Interpreting Initiative (Afette Rehber Çevirmenlik = ARÇ) lends voluntary support at the stage of initial intervention and contributes to the delivery of quality interpreting services in disasters and emergency situations. As part of the disaster intervention, work has to be done together with government departments and agencies. International humanitarian aid can be delayed or hampered unless there is appropriate and sufficient interpreting support. Therefore, in gearing up for disasters, it is of utmost importance to work with interpreters who are agile enough to be able to see through such situations and act quickly. Disaster and Emergency Interpreting Initiative not only encourages interpreters to take part individually, but also aims to organize the right assignments at the right time and provide interpreters with the necessary information and

3 See also http://www.ceviridernegi.org/arc.html.

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logistics in the field. To this end, training was given to interpreters who worked with refugees in 2019. It also drew up a model for how to keep current a pool of interpreters in emergency situations.

Also, a guideline on building up and managing centres for temporary shelter for refugees was issued in 2015 by the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (Afet ve Acil Durum Yönetimi Ba¸skanlı˘gı 2015). As a further initiative showing signs of development in the provision of interpreting services, the Directorate General for Migration Management and the Department of Healthcare Services now provide immediate telephone services 24 hours a day every day of the year to connect with foreign nationals in six languages. International patients can also have access to telephone interpreting services. In addition to this, in 2012 the Professional Qualifications Authority (Mesleki Yeterlilik Kurumu) issued a national standard for the profession of translation and interpreting level 6 (MYK 2012). The standard was completed following reviews from stakeholders in the industry and an endorsement by the Board of the Professional Qualifications Authority. It is intended to achieve prominence and recognition for the profession in Turkey and defines the working conditions, competencies and the professional conduct of translators and interpreters. A variety of committees are working on the professionalization of translation and interpreting services in different ways. One such initiative consists of five universities with Istanbul University adopting the coordinating role, and five not-for-profit organizations such as the Translation and Interpreting Association, and the Turkish Association ˙ sletmeleri Derne˘gi). A total of six of Translation Companies (Çeviri I¸ National Qualifications for Translators and Interpreters are being developed by a task force under the coordination of the Department of Translation Studies at Istanbul University and under the auspices of the Professional Qualifications Authority.4 Community interpreting is one of these six National Qualifications. The other qualifications include localization, specialized translation, sign-language interpreting, conference interpreting and liaison interpreting. These initiatives comply with the

4 Also see https://www.myk.gov.tr/index.php/tr/haberler/34-meslek-standartlar-dai resi-bakanl/3466-cevirmenlikalanna-ait-6-adet-taslak-yeterlilik-goeruee-ckt.

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European Qualifications Framework (EQF)5 at the first cycle that also requires training at tertiary level and have been active since August 2017; the reports were shared with the stakeholders in 2019 by the members of the committee responsible for the National Qualifications for Community Interpreters so that the reviews could make contributions to the professionalization of the community translation and interpreting services (Duman 2018). In the not-too-distant future, more support will also be provided for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or partially sighted to have access to media content: National Qualifications for audio description and subtitling are expected. Turgay KURULTAY comments on this changing situation, The practicalities of these qualifications are two-fold. Firstly, they can help the players in the industry find their way. For example, an employer can ask a candidate for a certification as evidence of their qualifications. Secondly, they can be more binding if government departments and agencies have guidelines that build the idea of a certification for translators and interpreters into the eligibility criteria of employment. Then, it will be a prerequisite for job applicants to be certified translators/interpreters. This will also require an amendment to the status of sworn translators and interpreters who are accredited by a notary as it will allow practitioners to translate documents and then sign them independently of a notary.

The transition to certification has aroused resistance from translators and interpreters who have been active in the industry for years. Some steps have been taken in order to get over this challenge. The standards are not mandatory in the private sector but can be used as a kind of quality assurance with clients. In the public services, those who have already been employed may not undergo a mandatory transition except for new applicants. Over the course of time, guidelines and regulations could be developed to incorporate more amendments as to the professional rights of translators and interpreters.

5 The EQF is a common European reference framework whose purpose is to make

qualifications more readable and understandable across different countries and systems. It provides a comprehensive overview over qualifications in the European countries involved in its implementation. The core of the EQF is its eight reference levels defined in terms of learning outcomes i.e. knowledge, skills and autonomy/responsibility. Countries develop national qualifications frameworks. See also https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/.

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Research into the phenomenon of community interpreting services in the Turkish context has been on the rise for the last two decades but is still limited. Postgraduate studies including Master’s and Doctoral dissertations with a focus predominantly on immigration, and healthcare issues, mostly written in Turkish, have also begun to appear, resulting in limited international dissemination and awareness concerning the Turkish context of community interpreting services. On the other hand, a variety of articles and funded research studies that deal with community interpreting have emerged. For example, Ross (2019) looks at non-professional community interpreting in the context of healthcare interpreting in Eastern and South-eastern Anatolia. His findings indicate that about half of the doctors and chemists are only able to communicate with the local community through the services of an interpreter due to the fact that about a third of Kurdish-speaking people, mostly illiterate women, cannot speak Turkish and also that there are camps for Arabicspeaking refugees from Syria in the region. Another example is a study conducted on the Disaster and Emergency Interpreting Initiative (ARÇ): Do˘gan (2012) looks closely at the historical development of the Initiative that was established after the 1999 earthquake in a survey designed to find out the level of preparedness for an imminent disaster a decade later. The study also provides an insight into the demographics of the members of the Initiative between the years 2000–10, the competencies that the members developed over time, and their pathways to membership.

6.4

The Australian Experience as Road Map

The landscape of community interpreting services in Turkey has been mapped out along the way in this chapter. While Turkey has its own challenges and strengths, the Australian experience can be used as a road map on the journey towards professionalization and sustainability. It can provide guidance for Turkey as well as other locales looking to expand and improve their services. The main difference between Turkey and Australia is that diversity in Turkey doesn’t happen in the form of skilled migration as it is one of the main preferred routes needed for the sustainability of services in Australia. It usually attracts migrants and refugees predominantly from the neighbouring countries that suffer from conflicts or from low-income countries. This creates a big need for professional community interpreting services as these people may not have a good command of Turkish to access public

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services such as healthcare, law and education. The Australian experience of community interpreting services can show the way by unpacking how a variety of stakeholders function to satisfy the needs of CALD people in a socially inclusive way. This challenge deeply affects the frontline practitioners i.e. community interpreters, and their clients i.e. refugees or overseas patients, but the interpreting industry in Turkey seems to be lacking some of the other core stakeholders identified in the Australian study, either totally or at least in some respects. There are also continuing problems with those stakeholders which do already exist in Turkey, such as Higher Education (HE) and government departments and agencies. In the first place, even though educational institutions are a great asset in Turkey as they provide TAFE, undergraduate and postgraduate training in translation and interpreting, there can be said to be a plethora of T & I programmes at universities across Turkey, which has created a vacuum needing to be filled by qualified academic staff. As a makeshift solution, some vacant positions have been filled by academics with expertise in some adjacent areas such as literary studies and linguistics. Further to that, the courses taught in these programmes are offered mainly in the EU languages; however, most of the demand comes predominantly from speakers of languages such as Arabic, Persian, Dari, or the languages spoken in Africa, as pointed out earlier in this chapter. So, the supply of community interpreters from Turkish HE does not seem to be in a position to meet the needs of the CALD people, even though English or some EU languages can on occasion be used as an intermediary language to facilitate communication. To achieve service quality and sustainability, however, supply and demand have to be managed more effectively. As in Australia, a variety of industry-wide committees including government policymakers and universities can be formed to be vigilant on the needs of the interpreting industry in order to advise on the necessary steps to reform the training system. Another existing group of stakeholders—government departments and agencies—are the purchasers of community interpreting services. In Australia, interpreting and translation services are seen as a kind of investment in the well-being of the community, as well as a legal obligation. The government’s job is to set out a language services policy outlining the procedures in the provision of community interpreting services; then in line with that policy, the government departments and agencies provide guidelines that govern the practical aspects of working with interpreters. Where necessary, these guidelines are also grounded in a variety of acts

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(see also Multicultural Victoria Act 2011) and policies (see also equity and access policy). For example, the guidelines in the State of Victoria govern policy on interpreting and translation services and assist departments and agencies to improve access to public services. Guidelines such as these have the potential to be helpful in overhauling CI services in Turkey. As noted, in Australia, in addition to private agencies, there are also government agencies that provide CI services such as TIS National and Centrelink offices at the Department of Human Services. CI services are provided by staff interpreters or according to need, from a pool of interpreters across Australia in the languages that are in high demand. In Turkey, government agencies could be set up to offer services like remote interpreting and on-site interpreting. This may require a nationwide infrastructure to operate well. In order to meet demand, the capacity of the CI services in Turkey has to be strengthened by establishing a pool of certified community interpreters, by setting up language services units such as Centrelinks, and by investing in remote interpreting technologies. In addition to the suggested steps forward in advanced training and in government infrastructure, a much-needed step to be taken in Turkey would be to address gaps in the interpreting industry i.e. establishing the missing stakeholders and maintaining the relationships among them. A key feature that stands out in the Australian study is the credentialing of community interpreters, managed through NAATI, which was founded more than 50 years ago. Clients, including organizations, can be assured of certain levels of performance through this system in so far as NAATI certification is normally a condition of employment. As there is no credentialing body in Turkey such as NAATI that certifies interpreters and translators for the sector in order to set and promote high standards, the skills and competencies of community interpreters and translators are often not recognized, or in some cases, may be inadequate to the task. As we have seen in Australia, it is hard for interpreters to get community interpreting work without NAATI certification because government departments and agencies purchase CI services through their guidelines and procurement procedures which stipulate NAATI Certification as a requirement. One of the two Certified Specialist Interpreter Tests that NAATI offers is a Certified Specialist Legal Interpreter Test (CSLI) with two parts: a knowledge test and an interpreting test, focusing on legal knowledge and interpreting skills and competencies. To be able to sit this specialist test, candidates must hold a bachelor’s degree or higher in a NAATI-endorsed interpreting qualification with specialised units in legal

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interpreting and provide evidence of two years’ interpreting work experience in the given language combination (see also NAATI’s website for other possible pathways). Certified Specialist Legal Interpreters are therefore highly qualified to interpret complex and specialized communication in legal settings. The same goes for Certified Specialist Health Interpreters (CSHI). Ng and Crezee warn that the stakes of working as a community interpreter in healthcare and legal settings are so high that interpreting mistakes can become literally a matter of life and death or result in a miscarriage of justice (2020, p. 1). As for Turkey, the eligibility criteria for community interpreters in legal settings are set out by the Department of Justice, but when compared to Australia, it is striking that the skills and competencies expected of a legal interpreter include only a primary school diploma and a certificate or a document indicating proficiency in the relevant languages (Resmi Gazete 2013). Turkey has no hard and fast rules about the other settings of the community interpreting profession such as healthcare. Apart from a credentialing authority, there is also a strong need for professional representative bodies in Turkey. For example, an organization such as a trade union similar to Translators and Interpreters Australia (TIA), a division of Professionals Australia, would be able to represent interpreters and translators and negotiate for better rights and working conditions. Another type of representative body such as the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators can promote the profession in the community through PD events and its code of ethics. The Translation and Interpreting Association is AUSIT’s counterpart in Turkey, where a code of ethics and a code of conduct by which interpreters and translators must as members abide seem to be missing. This is one of the main pillars of what makes CI services a profession. Without these representative bodies, Community Interpreting is likely to remain an undervalued profession. Consequently, the issue of ‘deficiency’ in the interpreting industry in terms of stakeholders—both existing and absent—results in unhappy community interpreters and vulnerable clients. If community interpreters are dissatisfied for any one of a number of reasons including remuneration, poor working conditions or lack of recognition from the community, the interpreting industry will have to deal with sustainability issues like attrition and casualization, with serious potential consequences for levels of service quality. Community interpreters are frontline professionals who create value for clients. The interpreting industry can be sustainable and deliver quality CI services if

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qualified (certified and experienced) community interpreters can pursue a career and do not leave the profession for reasons attributable to policymaking that turns a blind eye to their professional, social and personal needs. This chapter has focused on Turkey as a country with the largest refugee population in the world according to UNHCR reports. Community interpreting services are not a fully fledged profession, but promising steps are being taken in that direction. Following a consideration of the underlying reasons that led to diversity in Turkey, the chapter explored the challenges in the main settings of community interpreting and looked at the stakeholders to see how Turkey is building capacity to deliver community interpreting services. Finally, it drew on the Australian experience to understand how CI services can be further developed so that progress in Turkey could provide a good model for other contexts around the world. The final chapter will conclude the book by exploring how the negatives externalities of diversity can be governed at a national as well as international level and by proposing a set of recommended strategies to set up sustainable community interpreting services such as vetting the existing policies and legislation, developing a code of ethics and national standards and encouraging lobbying to address the relevant issues effectively.

References Afet ve Acil Durum Yönetimi Ba¸skanlı˘gı. (2015). Geçici Barınma Merkezlerinin ˙ sletilmesi Hakkında Yönerge. https://www.afad.gov. Kurulması, Yönetimi ve I¸ tr/upload/Node/2310/files/Gecici_Barinma_Merkezlerinin_Kurulmasi_Yon etimi_Isletilmesi_Yonerge+1.pdf. Accessed 13 Dec 2019. ˙ Adımların Yol Arkada¸slı˘gı. Akbulut, A. N. (2016). Türkiye’de Çeviribilim: Ilk Istanbul: Sözcükler. Bulut, A., & Kurultay, T. (2001). Interpreters-in-Aid at Disasters. The Translator, 7 (2), 249–263. Diriker, E. (2015). On the Evolution of the Interpreting Profession in Turkey: From the Dragomans to the 21st Century. In Sehnaz ¸ Tahir Gürçaglar, Saliha Paker, and John Milton (Eds.), Tradition Tension and Translation in Turkey (pp. 89–106). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Do˘gan, A. (2012). A Study on the Volunteers of Emergency and Disaster Interpreter Initiative (ARC) in Turkey. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 29(2), 45–58. Do˘gan, A. (2016). Anybody Down There? Emergency and Disaster Interpreting in Turkey. In Federico M. Federici (Ed.), Mediating Emergencies

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and Conflicts: Frontline Translating and Interpreting (pp. 59–83). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Do˘gan, A., & Kahraman, R. (2011). Emergency and Disaster Interpreting in Turkey: Ten Years of a Unique Endeavour. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 28(2), 61–77. Do˘gan, Ç. (2017). Edirne Özelinde Düzensiz Göçmenlerin Tercümanlık Boyutundan Sorunları ve Çözümünde Toplum Çevirmenlerinin Rolü. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Sakarya University, Turkey. Duman, D. (2018). Toplum Çevirmenli˘gine Yorumbilgisel Yakla¸sım: Sa˘glık Çevirmeni ve Öznellik. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Yıldız Technical University, Turkey. Eruz, S. (2010). Çok Kültürlülük ve Çeviri: Osmanlı Devleti’nde Çeviri Etkinli˘gi ve Çevirmenler. Istanbul: Multilingual. ˙ Göç Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü. (2017a). 2016 Türkiye Göç Raporu. Yayın No: ˙ 40, Ankara: Göç Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü Yayınları. ˙ Göç Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü. (2017b). Stratejik Plan 2017–2021. Ankara: Göç ˙ Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü Yayınları. ˙ Göç Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü. (2019). Yıllara Göre Türkiye’ye Giri¸s-Çıkı¸s . Accessed from https://www.goc.gov.tr/giris-cikis. Güven, M. (2014). Distance Learning as an Effective Tool for Medical Interpreting Training in Turkey. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 29(2), 116–130. Kahraman, R. (2003). Afette Rehber Çevirmenlik. Unpublished M.A. Thesis, Istanbul University, Turkey. ˙ Kahraman, R. (2010). Göç ve Çeviri: Iltica Ba¸svurularında Sözlü Çeviri Uygulamaları ve Toplum Çevirmeninin Rolü. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Istanbul University, Turkey. Kurultay, T., & Bulut, A. (2012). Toplum Çevirmenli˘gine Yeniden Bakı¸sta Afette Rehber Çevirmenlik. Istanbul University Journal of Translation Studies, 6, 75– 102. Mesleki Yeterlik Kurumu. (2012). Ulusal Meslek Standardı: Çevirmen Seviye 6. https://www.myk.gov.tr/images/articles/editor/2013/300113/ CEVIRMEN_Seviye_6_UMS.pdf. Accessed 12 Dec 2019. Ng, E., & Crezee, I. (Eds.). (2020). Interpreting in Legal and Healthcare Settings: Perspectives on Research and Training. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Ozolins, U. (2000). Communication Needs and Interpreting in Multilingual Settings: The International Spectrum of Response. In R. Roberts, S. E. Carr, D. Abraham, & A. Dufour (Eds.), The Critical Link 2: Interpreters in the Community (pp. 21–33). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Özsöz, B. (2019). Toplum Çevirmenli˘gi Ba˘glamında Sa˘glık Turizmindeki Diyalog Çevirilerine Dilbilimsel ve Çeviribilimsel Yakla¸sım. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Sakarya University, Turkey. Resmi Gazete. (2013, March 5). Ceza Muhakemesi Kanununa Göre tercüman Listelerinin Düzenlenmesi Hakkında Yönetmelik. Sayı:28578. https:// www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2013/03/20130305-6.htm. Accessed 9 Dec 2019. Resmi Gazete. (2017, July 13). Uluslararası Sa˘glık Turizmi ve Turistin Sa˘glı˘gı Hakkında Yönetmelik. No: 30123, http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/ 2017/07/20170713-3.htm. Accessed 14 Dec 2019. Ross, J. M. (2019). Do˘gu ve Guneydo˘gu Anadolu’daki Doktorların Gözüyle Gönüllü-Amatör Çevirmenlik. Istanbul University Journal of Translation Studies, 11, 55–82. Tahir Gürça˘glar, S., ¸ & Diriker, E. (2004). Community Interpreting in Turkey. Çeviribilim Ve Uygulamaları Dergisi, 14, 73–92. ˙ Türkiye Istatistik Kurumu (TUIK). 2019. Adrese Dayalı Nüfus Kayıt Sistemi (ADNKS) Sonuçları. http://www.tuik.gov.tr. Accessed 7 Feb 2020 Ulken, H. Z. (2009). Uyanı¸s Devirlerinde Tercümenin Rolü (4th ed.). Istanbul: ˙ s Bankası Kültür Yayınları. Türkiye I¸ Yüksekö˘gretim Kurulu. (2019). YÖK Atlası. https://yokatlas.yok.gov.tr/. Accessed 2 Mar 2020.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Abstract This chapter focuses on diversity as an externality. In order to alleviate negative externalities, a system of governance is presented at different levels: transnational, national and organizational. It emphasizes the importance of pre-emptive measures at a transnational level. Diversity governance often falls to the states to a large extent as they are affected by huge influxes of refugees in many respects. At a national level, any country that plans to take in migrants as part of its overall strategies of sustainability must take the necessary steps to be responsive to the needs of people unable to speak the common language to ensure equity and access. A rigorous industry can be set up in the field of community interpreting services through the concerted action of all the stakeholders including government departments and agencies. At an organizational level, policies that can be flexible, comprehensive and coordinated with other units can be developed in order to be better prepared for the effective and efficient delivery of interpreting services. The chapter concludes by setting forth a set of recommended strategies to set up sustainable community interpreting services such as vetting the existing policies and legislation, developing a code of ethics and national standards and encouraging lobbying to address the issues effectively. Keywords Community interpreting · Professionalization · Government departments · Social inclusion · Recommended strategies © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1_7

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This final chapter looks at how diversity can be governed at different levels and sets out a number of recommended strategies for designing an effective industry to deliver sustainable community interpreting services. Today, it is hard to think of a country without diversity due to a range of reasons related to work, family, healthcare and study or conflicts and disaster, as previously discussed throughout this book. The UN World Migration Report (2019) shows that one in every 30 people is a migrant. The report also states that migrants often gravitate towards high-income countries like Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and come from low-income countries or conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Syria and Ukraine. Diversity can be seen as one of the greatest opportunities or biggest challenges. In the modern age, in which communications and the movement of peoples have become globalized, diversity is likely to be a continuing feature of many societies, linguistically and culturally, and an increasingly prominent feature of others. On one end of the spectrum, there are countries like Australia and Canada that seek to incorporate the idea of migration—at least, skilled migration—into diversity. In these countries, migration is seen as an opportunity in terms of government policies and is defined in terms of social inclusion and cohesion. This positive perspective has many advantages. However, on the other end of the spectrum, many countries are grappling with negative externalities resulting from a massive influx of refugees or irregular migrants. In this respect, there is a mound of problems that are hard to overcome. Turkey is one of those countries that is taking important steps forward in order for culturally and linguistically diverse people to have better access to public services, including through community interpreting and translation. The stakeholders are getting organized and working together to overhaul the industry, as we have seen in Chapter 6. However, ˙ the Turkish Directorate General of Migration Management (Göç Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü) reports that the number of people under temporary protection—the scheme set up in 2011 to accommodate refugees from Syria—rose dramatically in a relatively short period of six years from 14,237 in 2012 to 3,623,192 in 2018. These figures are beyond comparison and pose a very significant challenge. The Australian case goes to show that it would normally take decades for such figures to be reached through the migration of skilled workers. If the present conflicts persist, predominantly in Africa, the Middle East, the Far East and Central

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America, there will be more massive influxes of refugees fleeing the wartorn areas on an unprecedented scale, if not to Turkey, then to other countries. It is reasonable to assume that most countries would not be in a position to cope with the communicative challenges of diversity unless they already had in place a developed interpreting industry. And even then, interpreting services might well begin to sag under the weight of an uncontrolled workload and might feel forced to accept lower levels of quality due to a failure of supply to meet increased demand.

7.1

Diversity and Governance

The negative effects of diversity can be attenuated through a more responsive system of governance at different levels: transnational, national and organizational. History provides many examples of international efforts to aid refugees. Examples include the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees1 that outline the rights of the displaced and the legal obligations of states to protect them. Between the years 1967–2018, 147 states acceded to the protocol. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights2 was another significant effort in recognizing the dignity and equal rights of all human beings in 1966. More recently, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants was adopted in 2016 and 193 UN member states were supportive of upholding the rights of refugees and migrants (UN 2019, pp. 291–292). If the challenges seem to be persisting despite such global collaboration, then this can be attributed to the fact that the provisions in the covenants are not able to be implemented effectively or that some countries might be exploiting the plight of these people predominantly for political reasons. Such developments put the effectiveness of these intergovernmental efforts at risk. The circumstances under which refugees have to live are likely to be a crucial factor in influencing further developments. While host countries groan under the weight of the undue burden that they have to bear as a result of the economic and social impact of ongoing conflicts, certain pre-emptive measures at a transnational level need to be taken, and responsibilities shared by all countries to ensure

1 See https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html. 2 See https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx.

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better communication based on the ability to act together in order to assuage uncertainties. Diversity governance has historically fallen to the host countries to a large extent as they are most affected by any influx of refugees in many respects. As we have seen, Australia developed and implemented plans to take in migrants as part of its overall strategies of sustainability, for which the seedcorn was the 1978 Galbally Review (see Section 3.4), taking the necessary steps to be responsive to the needs of people unable to speak the common language to ensure equity and access. The stakeholders in the interpreting industry took concerted action together, going to great lengths to be able to turn diversity into a positive externality (see Section 3.2). As Ozolins rightly points out, any government must understand that community interpreting services are not only significant for culturally and linguistically diverse members of the community, but also for government departments and agencies to be able to function properly (2010, p. 211). At a national level, efforts to set up a sustainable industry in the field of community interpreting services, such as in the Australian case—be it for refugees or migrants—are likely to have some sort of benefits for a host country, including for countries such as Turkey with low preparedness to deliver community interpreting services. First of all, legislation and guidelines that govern the interpreting industry need to be established to ensure quality and sustainability. Also, the government should build a capacity which can, in turn, be used to attenuate the negative externalities that stem from living in a diverse community. Furthermore, resources to deliver interpreting services need to be used more effectively and efficiently so that overall objectives can be attained through strategies set up and implemented by stakeholders that seek out ways to deal with challenges collectively. At an organizational level, any of the stakeholders—private and public—in the industry should be in step with the national legislation and guidelines. To this end, each can develop its own policies that can be flexible, comprehensive and coordinated with other units and entities to be better prepared for the effective and efficient delivery of interpreting services. Gomez-Mejia and Balkin (2012) point out that the organizational context governs the relations and actions of individuals responsible for implementing the policies and these actions must be interrelated and ethical. Directors in each entity must consider other stakeholders when designing overall strategies to balance the common interests and see how they will be affected.

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7.2 Recommended Strategies for Community Interpreting Services Australia has been investing in the translation and interpreting industry since the 1970s when a multicultural policy was adopted. It also places a great emphasis on the regular overhaul of the system. The move to certification that took place in the year 2018 was an important step in making amendments to the system. The Australian experience can offer some insights into the strengths and weaknesses of an interpreting industry in any country. The following recommendations can be considered by those countries such as Turkey that plan to set up community interpreting services in a sustainable and professional way: 1. Existing legislation, government policies and guidelines must be vetted and then steps taken to address the issues effectively. The government is the biggest stakeholder funding free interpreting services to linguistically and culturally diverse members of the community. Any stakeholder entity must provide independent advice to the government on the development of legislative and policy frameworks as well as the delivery of services. 2. Binding guidelines on interpreting and translation services for government departments and agencies should be prepared so that they can act in accordance with these guidelines in preparing their own policies. 3. A strong union and lobbying activities through professional associations must be encouraged to safeguard the public interest with transparency, integrity and fairness. A union is one of the pillars of the industry and needs to be supported by the stakeholders. A lobbying code of conduct and a register of lobbyists can be set up. 4. National standards for working with interpreters in certain settings like courts and hospitals can be developed in collaboration with government departments and agencies, where community interpreters are also regarded as professional members. 5. A code of ethics and a code of conduct for community interpreters and translators must be developed in such a way as to address best practice issues. 6. University training for community interpreters should be mandatory as it will help practitioners develop the competencies needed

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to act professionally and responsibly. It will also earn recognition from clients. 7. Remuneration can be tiered in accordance with the level of training that community interpreters have undertaken in such a way as to encourage them to further their education in order to ensure better quality. 8. A pool of community interpreters can be created and kept current through revalidation by the credentialing body. 9. Investing in technology such as remote interpreting will result in many benefits. CI services will be delivered at lower costs and where necessary, interpreters in rare and emerging as well as established languages will be accessed more easily and swiftly. 10. A variety of committees can be established as pre-emptive action to create value for community interpreters so that they can satisfy the needs of the CALD members of the community and capture respect and recognition from the community. Relevant committees can include: one for the credentialing body, one for the government and one for sustainability and quality issues in the industry. 11. The interpreting industry should be streamlined to enhance the customer’s service experience. The consistency of the interpreting services provided should be valued as customer and service provider interaction is highly important. These recommendations should be bolstered by creating and supporting a community interpreting service culture in which community interpreters can perform their jobs well and maintain the core values and beliefs that drive the interpreting profession. Credentialing the right translators and interpreters is the key to maintaining and growing the culture. Having the necessary skills, knowledge and experience is important, but beyond this, it is more important for community interpreters to fit in with a professional culture, which means providing reliable, responsive and competent interpreting services to the customer. Despite the great challenges in the interpreting industry (as outlined in Chapter 4), Australia has been active in overhauling its system to be more responsive to the needs of CALD members of the community by designing

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customer-focused strategies and restructuring around the customer experience (see Chapter 5). An interpreting service culture that focuses on the clients as well as on the community interpreters as professionals who serve them is critical as it can foster customer satisfaction and help to ensure better service quality and sustainability.

References Gomez-Mejia, L. R., & Balkin, D. B. (2012). Management: People, Performance, and Change. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. Ozolins, U. (2010). Factors That Determine the Provision of Public Service Interpreting: Comparative Perspectives on Government Motivation and Language Service Implementation. Journal of Specialised Translation (14). http://www.jostrans.org/issue14/art_ozolins.php. Accessed 24 Mar 2018. United Nations Migration. (2019). UN World Migration Report 2020. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Protocols to Collect Qualitative Data Community Interpreting Services in Australia Context In a multilingual society such as Australia, the provision of interpreting services plays an important role in enabling social inclusion for people faced with language barriers when accessing public services in areas such as law, healthcare, education and social services. The questions in this qualitative research are of utmost importance to understand the major institutions, and the challenges faced with and the strategies employed in the delivery of community interpreting services. The data will be collected for research purposes. I need you to give me permission for two protocols in order to participate in the research. Observational Protocol This research includes data collection through observations. Audio/video-recordings may be made before, during and after the interview. Interview and Survey Protocol This research also involves data collection from participants through questionnaires and/or interviews. They will be informed of the stage of the research beforehand. The survey may consist of demographic details and a

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1

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questionnaire related to community interpreting services while interviews may be conducted through individual and focus group discussions. Thanking you in advance. Dr. Oktay Eser, Postdoctoral Researcher at RMIT University Email:[email protected] Participant’s Name: Signature: Place: Date: Community Interpreting Services in Australia The interview form consists of two sections: Demographic details and your experience of the provision of community interpreting services in Australia. After an analysis of the data collected, a further interview may be required to discuss the main themes that may have emerged. Demographic Details

APPENDICES

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Interview Questions Related to the Major Institutions, Challenges and Strategies in the Profession of Community Interpreting 1. Can you please tell me about your professional background? 2. Who do you work for? a. What are the overall responsibilities that you oversee? b. What are its main activities? c. What are some facts and figures? 3. Do you think that the process of accessing community interpreting services in Australia is effective today? Why/Why not? 4. Is the profession of community interpreting in Australia prestigious? 5. Is it a sustainable industry? 6. Who are the key players in community interpreting services as a profession in Australia? How? 7. What are the challenges faced? 8. What are the strategies employed in order to overcome these challenges? 9. Are there any ongoing changes? 10. What else should be done in order to enhance community interpreting services in your institution and in Australia? 11. Who else do you suggest that I interview? Appendix 2: Diversity in Australia and in the State of Victoria The majority of Australians continue to live in the eastern mainland States. Table A2.1 shows that almost 80% of them live in Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Queensland. Of all the states and the territories in Australia, Victoria is as one of the pioneering states with a population of 5.926 million people. It is becoming more multicultural mainly due to changing migration trends, as the 2016 Census shows: the State of Victoria is very diverse in terms of countries of birth, languages spoken and religions. There are people who come from a total of 247 countries and speak 234 languages in Victoria and only 64.9% of people were born in Australia (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2017):

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Table A2.1 Australia: usual residence census count by state and territory, 2016

States

Number of persons (000)

ca %

23,401 7480

100 31.9

5926 4703 2474 1,676 509 397

25.3 20.0 10.5 7.1 2.1 1.6

228

0.9

Australia New South Wales (NSW) Victoria (VIC) Queensland (QLD) Western Australia (WA) South Australia (SA) Tasmania (TAS) Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Northern Territory (NT)

Source Adapted from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS): Census of Population and Housing 2016

As shown in Table A2.2, the total population increased by 11% between 2011 and 2016, whereas the overseas-born population increased considerably more, by nearly 20%. The 2016 census further records that in 2016, 20.6% of Australia-born citizens had at least one parent born overseas. In total, those born overseas or born in Australia with at least one parent born overseas made up 49.1% of the population, an increase from 46.6% in 2011. Table A2.2 Victoria: population diversity and change: 2011, 2016 Key facts

Total population Australia-born Overseas-born Birthplace not stated

2011

2016

2011–2016

Persons

As % of Pop

Persons

As % of Pop

Persons

% Change

5,354,042

100.0

5,926,620

100.0

572,578

11.0

3,670,935 1,405,335 277,772

68.6 26.2 5.2

3,845,493 1,680,271 400,856

64.9 28.4 6.7

174,558 274,936 123,084

4.7 19.5 44.3

Source Adapted from Department of Premier and Cabinet (2017). Victoria’s diverse population: 2016 Census. The State of Victoria

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Table A2.3 Victoria: top 10 countries of birth and change, 2011, 2016 Rank Country of 2016 Birth

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2011 Persons

2016 Persons

The UK 172,068 171,443 India 111,787 169,802 China 93,896 160,652 New 80,234 93,253 Zealand Vietnam 68,297 80,787 Italy 76,909 70,527 Sri Lanka 43,991 55,830 Philippines 38,002 51,290 Malaysia 39,790 50,049 Greece 49,991 47,240

2011−2016

% of Overseas-born

% of Total Pop

Persons

% Change

10.2 10.1 9.6 5.5

2.9 2.9 2.7 1.6

−625 58,015 66,756 13,019

−0.4 51.9 71.1 16.2

4.8 4.2 3.3 3.1 3.0 2.8

1.4 1.2 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.8

12,490 −6382 11,839 13,288 10,259 −2751

18.3 −8.3 26.9 35.0 25.8 −5.5

Source Adapted from Department of Premier and Cabinet (2017). Victoria’s diverse population: 2016 Census. The State of Victoria

The most common countries of birth for those born overseas were the UK and India, both accounting for 2.9% of the total population in Victoria (see Table A2.3): The 2016 census also shows that of Victoria’s total population, a total of 49.1% were born overseas or born in Australia with at least one parent born overseas. As for the languages spoken in Victoria, 67.9% of people only spoke English at home. Other languages spoken at home include languages of the Far East, Arabic and some European languages, with Mandarin being the most frequent after English. The percentage of Victorians speaking a Language other than English (LOTE) at home was 26.0% (1,538,839) in 2016, compared to 23.1% (1,235,433) in 2011 and 20.4% in 2006 (see Table A2.4). Languages with the largest increase in the number of speakers (over 10,000) were Urdu, Mandarin, Punjabi, Hindi, Vietnamese and Arabic. Languages with a decrease in the number of speakers include Italian, Greek, Macedonian and Turkish. In total, Victorians spoke 234 languages and dialects according to the 2016 Census. Victoria’s population diversity is also evidenced by the diversity of religions. The census reports more than 130 different faiths, although the

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Table A2.4 Victoria: top 15 languages other than English and change, 2011, 2016 Language spoken at home

English Mandarin Italian Greek Vietnamese Arabic Cantonese Punjabi Hindi Sinhalese Spanish Turkish Macedonian Tamil Urdu Tagalog

2011

2016

Persons

Persons

3,874,862 103,742 124,856 116,802 86,592 68,438 72,902 31,068 32,704 28,163 29,014 32,899 30,946 17,452 11,062 16,535

4,026,811 191,793 112,272 110,707 103,430 79,589 78,079 56,171 51,241 37,423 35,494 31,832 29,487 25,662 23,205 23,054

2011–2016

As % of Total LOTE

As % of Total Pop

12.5 7.3 7.2 6.7 5.2 5.1 3.7 3.3 2.4 2.3 2.1 1.9 1.7 1.5 1.5

3.2 1.9 1.9 1.7 1.3 1.3 0.9 0.9 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.4

Persons

% Change

151,949 88,051 −12,584 −6095 16,838 11,151 5177 25,103 18,537 9260 6480 −1067 −1459 8210 12,143 6519

3.9 84.9 −10.1 −5.2 19.4 16.3 7.1 80.8 56.7 32.9 22.3 −3.2 −4.7 47.0 109.8 39.4

Source Adapted from Department of Premier and Cabinet (2017). Victoria’s diverse population: 2016 Census. The State of Victoria

number of Victorians with a declared religion decreased by 3.3%, from 3,614,939 in 2011 to 3,493,950 in 2016 (see Table A2.5 for figures on specific religions). Those with no declared religion (not shown in Table A2.5) increased by 49.4% from 1,256,143 in 2011 to 1,876,738 in 2016. Table A2.5 shows that the largest three religions, Western Catholic, Anglican Church and Uniting Church maintained their rankings although they experienced a fairly significant decrease in number of followers. The other top ranking religions have experienced significant percentage increases, e.g. Hinduism (62.3%), Islam (29.0%) and Buddhism (7.9%).

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Table A2.5 Victoria: top 10 religions and change, 2011, 2016 Rank 2016

1 2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10

Religion

Western Catholic Anglican Church of Australia Uniting Church Islam Buddhism Greek Orthodox Christian, not further defined Hinduism Presbyterian Baptist

2011

2016

2011–2016

Persons

Persons

As % of Total Pop

Persons

% Change

1,421,742

1,366,058

23.0

−55,684

−3.9

656,532

530,676

9.0

−125,856

−19.2

250,939

204,105

3.4

−46,834

−18.7

152,779 168,637 167,757

197,030 181,938 162,943

3.3 3.1 2.7

44,251 13,301 −4814

29.0 7.9 −2.9

99,518

146,441

2.5

46,923

47.2

83,137 139,283 77,854

134,939 114,441 77,469

2.3 1.9 1.3

51,802 −24,842 −385

62.3 −17.8 −0.5

Source Adapted from Department of Premier and Cabinet (2017). Victoria’s diverse population: 2016 Census. The State of Victoria

Appendix 3: Useful Websites There are many websites that can be used as a source of further information. Some recommended websites are: Afet ve Acil Durum Yönetimi Ba¸skanlı˘gı (Disaster and Emergency Management): https://www.afad.gov.tr Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS): https://www.abs.gov.au Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship: https://www.dss.gov.au Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT): https:// ausit.org Australian Qualifications Framework Council: http://www.aqf.edu.au Australian Sign Language Interpreters Association (ASLIA): https:// aslia.com.au ˙ Göç Idaresi Genel Müdürlü˘gü (Directorate General of Migration Management): https://www.goc.gov.tr

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International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC): https:// aiic.net Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity: https://cdjn.org.au Mesleki Yeterlik Kurumu (MYK) (Professional Qualifications Authority): https://www.myk.gov.tr National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI): https://www.naati.com.au North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): https://www.nato.int Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): http://www.oecd.org Parliament of Australia: http://www.aph.gov.au Professionals Australia: http://www.professionalsaustralia.org.au ˙ Türkiye Istatistik Kurumu (TUIK) (Turkish Institute for Statistics): http://www.tuik.gov.tr United Nations (UN): https://www.un.org United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): https:// www.unhcr.org Victorian Government: https://www.vic.gov.au Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC): https://www.multicult ural.vic.gov.au Yüksekö˘gretim Kurulu (YÖK) (Turkish Council of Higher Education): https://www.yok.gov.tr

Index

A Agencies government, 26, 31, 34, 38, 84, 100, 108, 109, 112, 130 private, 6, 15, 17, 21, 34, 36, 38, 39, 49, 52, 54, 57, 59, 60, 62, 65, 71, 74, 86, 108, 130 Attrition, 5, 64–67, 75, 94, 122, 131

C Casualization, 65, 68, 75, 131 Code of ethics, 3, 36, 49, 93, 107, 108, 131, 132, 139 Credentialing, 17, 30, 33, 39, 51–53, 75, 97, 106, 122, 123, 130, 131, 140

D Diversity, 2, 3, 8, 13, 16, 27, 28, 32, 34, 44–47, 59, 60, 75, 89, 91, 100–104, 110–112, 118–121, 123, 128, 132, 136–138, 145–147

E Externality, 24, 27, 28, 34, 138

F Fragmentation, 68

G Governance, 18, 94, 137, 138 Governmental agencies, 26, 31, 34, 38, 84, 100, 108, 109, 112, 130 Guidelines, 27, 30, 47, 50, 60, 84, 93, 101, 105–107, 109, 127, 129, 130, 138, 139

I Interpreting community, 2–5, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20–24, 26–30, 33, 37–39, 44, 46, 51, 52, 54–56, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 71, 73–75, 80, 83, 93, 95, 101, 105, 108, 112, 117, 120, 122–124,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 O. Eser, Understanding Community Interpreting Services, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55861-1

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126, 128–132, 136, 138–140, 143–145 non-professional, 128 on-site, 49, 85, 130 professional, 3, 29, 47 remote market, 8, 24, 26, 55 services, 47–50, 83–86, 130, 140 technology, 47, 48, 75, 81, 83–85, 140 theory, 15 training, 57, 64, 92, 97

L Languages emerging, 46, 50, 52, 59–61, 63, 64, 75, 82, 100 established, 46, 53, 59, 61, 75, 82, 140 indigenous, 16, 47, 53, 59, 61, 62, 75 rare, 59, 60 Legislation, 27, 95, 101, 103, 107, 132, 138, 139 Lobbying, 90, 93–95, 132, 139

P Procurement, 66, 71, 84, 89, 95, 108, 130 Professionalism, 54, 55, 68

R Recognition, 5, 33, 54, 55, 57, 70, 75, 85, 86, 90, 91, 97, 126, 131, 140 Remote interpreting telephone, 48–50, 63, 81, 83–85, 126

video, 47–50, 83, 85, 86 Remuneration, 26, 55, 57, 64, 68, 70, 71, 86, 89, 90, 94–97, 122, 131, 140 Representative bodies, 15, 34, 36, 39, 93, 99, 131

S Services interpreting, 4, 12, 16, 28, 30, 32, 37, 38, 46, 48–50, 52, 61, 63–65, 68, 71, 80, 81, 83–86, 89, 95, 103, 105, 106, 108, 112, 118, 125–127, 137–140, 143 public, 2, 4, 12, 16, 26, 30, 31, 33, 34, 39, 44, 48, 53, 65, 100, 112, 121, 127, 129, 130, 136, 143 Stakeholders, 2, 15, 20, 21, 24, 26, 33–39, 47, 54, 58, 64, 65, 75, 79–81, 86, 89, 90, 93, 95, 96, 105, 111, 112, 125–127, 129–132, 136, 138, 139 Supply and demand, 30, 44, 58, 64, 75, 112, 123, 129 Sustainability, 26, 30, 34, 44, 52, 57, 64–66, 70, 71, 75, 80, 86, 89, 90, 93, 101, 118, 122, 128, 129, 131, 138, 140, 141

U Union, 17, 36, 37, 52, 64, 68, 71–73, 86, 90, 93, 96, 122, 131, 139

V Value, 15, 25, 26, 50–53, 65, 91, 102, 107, 110, 140 Vicarious trauma, 66, 73–75

INDEX

Vulnerability, 27, 30, 39, 44, 80, 92, 131

153

W Working conditions, 26, 36, 49, 52, 66, 70, 72, 86, 90, 94, 96, 122, 126, 131