The "Invisible" Profession.

"The mark of a good interpreter is one that doesn't leave a mark at all." - *

You are a machine; a tool used to facilitate communication between linguistically and culturally different parties. You do not have opinions and you do not have emotions that do not reflect the individual you are interpreting. You are invisible and without identity.

This was the mindset I rigidly kept for so long. Ironically, my stubbornness to adhere to this standard was facilitated by all the interpreting books I had read and by the Code of Professional Conduct (formerly the Code of Ethics) of the RID. If only it were that easy to be that interpreter mentioned above. That individual however would exist on another plane in which the issues of ethics and morality were never questioned. Perhaps a sort of utopia where everyone made the right choices and the lines of right and wrong were clearly defined. Then again, in a utopia, is there an existence of a "wrong"? More importantly it would be setup a paradox; under the assumption that everyone in that utopia would understand one another (for how perfect would a world be if groups were linguistically isolated?), there would be no use for an interpreter. A low-hanging sign warning you to duck your head to avoid that very sign comes to mind. Where does the line between the roles of a professional interpreter and the bilingual/bicultural individual lie? The successful interpreter will have that answer.

As human beings we cannot fully turn off the "emotion switch" to suddenly become impartial. Unfortunately we are are not robots, we cannot be indifferent and opinionless to all subjects and cannot be invisible (well at least not sign language interpreters). Moreover, an individual with such traits would not make smart ethical decisions (i.e. A friend and former client collapses at a party to which you are in attendance, do you refuse to divulge any medical history you know to the 911 operator that you learned from interpreting an appointment for him/her because it breaks the tenet of confidentiality? The answer is "Yes".). We sure can come close to becoming "telephones" though; as long as we can recognize the time and place when the roles of an interpreter must be put aside and times in which they must be enforced. The interpreter does not seek to becomes these things. S/he is a professional who can make ethical decisions. If s/he is successful, the result is that "invisibility" that they strive for. Bottomline: the caliber of the interpreter is inversely proportional to their conspicuousness.

So to complete that first paragraph above, one must add "You are human".

P.S. *As for the quote atop this blog, I am uncertain to where I may have heard/read this from. I am almost certain that I have stolen it. So for the moment, let us all assume that it had originated with me.