A to Z of Telephone Interpreting. Part 2

Sometimes, when I share my experiences with colleagues who work as PSIs, I get the impression that I have heard and seen it all.

Other times I feel like I am a total newcomer to the profession, when I learn about how incredibly diverse our work can be.

 As freelancers, we are blessed with having access to a pool of resources in the form of shared experiences. By sharing and talking, we can help one another achieve best outcomes for our service users and ourselves.

This is the purpose of this article – to give you a new and maybe a bit surprising outlook on TI.

J is for joining in. This is where things can get bumpy, before you even get a chance to introduce yourself. Quite often the service users can encounter difficulties in answering calls, inputting connection codes or finding the right link. This can be our opportunity to shine and showcase customer service by offering assistance or advice. Draw the attention of the professional to the fact that the instructions for conference call facilities are in English, which may be a major issue for the service user. Try to find a common solution to that issue. That way, you have given the professional a useful insight that they will be able to use in the future, making it slightly easier for everyone involved.

K is for Kaffeeklatsch or small talk. This is something as intrinsically British as queues, bad weather and vinegar on chips (I am sorry England, I’ll never understand this one). However, it is worth remembering that during an interpreting assignment we fulfil a specific purpose – allowing the communication to take place. It is therefore inadvisable to engage in side chat with either the service user or the professional without interpreting everything to the other party. It is perfectly possible to have a nice, relationship building three-way chat while preserving the overarching requirement to interpret everything as it is being said.

L is for listening. Without listening, there is no interpretation. But listening in interpretation isn’t just paying attention to what is being said but also how it’s being said. Think of unconscious bias – are you just listening and receiving or are you trying to fit your own viewpoint to what is being said? Two people from the same country, using the same language may have a vastly different understanding of certain concepts. Be prepared to be receptive and open to a different interpretation of the facts than the one you may have. Be open to exploring the meaning and sometimes having your beliefs tested.

M is for money. Let’s address the elephant in the room – TI is often treated as a poor cousin of F2F in terms of rates and indeed, some agencies do pay significantly less for this service. But it doesn’t have to be so. As entrepreneurs, we can negotiate our rates and make TI as profitable as FTF, without the added cost of travel. Be ready to negotiate and be clear from the start as to what rates you are expecting and if the agency or client are not forthcoming, simply move on.

N is for note-taking. If I said this once, I said it a million times – there is no PSI (public service interpreting), be it FTF or remote, without a note-taking system. I remember how in secondary school our English teacher made us memorise whole texts from handbooks for us to reel them out at speed for credits. I can still remember some of them until today but that’s not really the point here. Even if your short-term memory is fantastic, it’s not infallible. Without the access to body language, it's very difficult to steer the flow conversation and the parties may talk for a long time before you get a chance to interrupt. Always be ready to take notes and always have means to take them. If you’re looking for alternatives to paper, check out my YT playlist to give you some inspiration: https://bit.ly/paperless_challenge

O is for organisation.  Working for multiple TI clients can be a career in itself but you will require robust organisational skills. Keeping track of payments, ways of invoicing, scheduling, types of session openings, your identification numbers – the list goes on. It can be easy to miss an appointment or to overschedule, so learn to put everything into your physical or digital diary. The better your organisation system, the more reliable you will be.

P is for peak time. This can be a welcome change to filling up the time between calls with something productive – the moment, when the interpreting requests start coming thick and fast. It can get absolutely crazy very quickly and it’s good to know how to handle it. First of all, always have means of hydrating at hand. Water works best for me, as do throat teas and chamomile teas. Secondly, if you know that there might be some time before you will be able to eat something, have a healthy snack at hand, such as some fruit or a cereal bar. Don’t be scared of asking for a break if the call reaches the 45 minutes or 1 hour mark to give yourself some breathing time.

Q is for quality. Just because it’s over the telephone, it doesn't mean we should cut any corners. There is an increasing number of organisations and bodies using TI, including the private sector and due to its portability and accessibility, TI is often the first port of call when someone requires an interpreter. This means that the subject matter of the TI engagements will often be complex and it will require great care and diligence on the part of the interpreter.

What's your take on my A to Z? Do you have your own concepts to add? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you for reading, I’ll be back with the final part of my A to Z on the 7th of February!