Taking Account of Accountability

Taking Account of Accountability: In promoting professionalism, the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) expects to, and has worked collaboratively and in partnership with, many other bodies – from public sector organisations, to privately owned companies acting as engagement agents, and associations, institutes and higher education providers. In working with others in the language services ecosystem, NRPSI aims to ensure the recruitment, education, training and continuing professional development of self-employed spoken word interpreting professionals is fit for purpose: that the right people, with the right skills, experience and competencies are being engaged by public services. This is vital given NRPSI’s unique role in upholding spoken word public service interpreting standards in the interests of the public.

 Of note have been the continued positive dialogues with the management teams at London’s Metropolitan Police Service and those with the national lead for police language services based in Leicestershire, who are developing the Police Approved Interpreters and Translators (PAIT) scheme.

 In delivering its mandate, NRPSI will not be silenced, no matter the pressures to do so, when it comes to demanding the highest possible standards in public service interpreting.

 To be clear, NRPSI’s mandate includes:

• Ensuring public service interpreting professional standards are publicly available
• Defining valid levels of qualification to become a registered and regulated professional
• Defining valid levels of experience to become a registered and regulated professional
• Validating the identity of interpreters and their entitlement to work in the UK for the public sector as a freelance professional
• Recognising and ratifying registration processes approving, and permitting the operation of, a service offered by a qualified and experienced Registrant through a validation process naming the individual professional
• Managing the public Register of those who have been validated (open source so anybody can review at any time and check the annually issued identity card – with an up to date image - matches the online entry on the Register)
• Promoting best practice and highlighting those who deliver best practice
• Offering protection for Registrants
• Managing a professional standards process ensuring compliance, including the reporting and management of non-compliance with these standards
• Where there is an alleged breach of the Code of Professional Conduct, coordinating professional conduct and disciplinary activity outside of political or commercial pressures through an independent complaints process
• Ensuring a fair delicensing process through which a Registrant, if judged to be operating unsafely, is ordered to stop or suffer a penalty
• Minimising asymmetry by lobbying on behalf of Registrants with government, public sector organisations and privately owned firms in the ecosystem
• Advocating the benefits of independent and voluntary registration and regulation of highly professional practitioners until protection of title is achieved for Registered Public Service Interpreters (RPSI)
• Protecting registration and regulation, and denying ‘regulatory capture’, where either government, the public sector or other organisations gain control of the registration or regulation processes for the benefit of the ‘bad actor’, who wishes to improve their position to the detriment of all other stakeholders

 NRPSI will continue to lobby the UK Government for it to be mandatory for public sector organisations to only engage with independently registered and regulated public service interpreting professionals (RPSIs). While it is the Government’s current policy to devolve much responsibility for the running of public services (including its language requirements) to private companies, often without transparent or effective accountability, there is all the more reason for NRPSI, which is free from commercial and political influence, to represent the public’s interests and highlight poor language services practices and processes.

 As long as public sector organisations continue to operate without NRPSI’s involvement in protecting, maintaining and developing standards, NRPSI will continue to attempt reflective and constructive dialogue with those in authority with the aim of achieving best possible practice in spoken word public service interpreting for one reason only: to protect the public, giving voice to the voiceless, no matter what their mother tongue.

 All practitioners and managers in public service organisations should demand that the spoken word interpreters engaged by them are registered with, and regulated by, NRPSI – the independent Regulator for spoken word public service interpreting in the UK. Where would you put your trust: in a commercially-driven agency that recruits, supplies and disciplines those on their lists as per their commercial contracts with public sector organisations? Or an independent, not-for-profit regulator concerned with protecting the public?

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