Alan Johnson
Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Spain
The status of asylum seekers in the UK has rarely been more contentious. As a telephone interpreter working with asylum seekers, I will consider the ramifications of their fragile situation for interpreters. I will also reflect on the interplay between concepts such as impartiality, the code of ethics all interpreters are expected to follow, and the interpreter’s personal identity. Drawing on my professional experiences and various foundational texts in interpretation and translation studies, alongside contemporary works on ethics in community interpreting, I will demonstrate how concepts such as pragmatics (Grice) and dynamic equivalence (Nida) can enhance cultural understanding in telephone encounters between asylum seekers and service providers. Building on scholarship by Rudvin, Valero-Garcés, and others, I will argue that strict impartiality—where the interpreter enforces objectivity and takes neither side—is neither possible nor desirable in the current context. Therefore, it may be beneficial to reconfigure the understanding of the interpreter’s role among practitioners, trainers, and service providers. I contend that interpreters are not mere neutral vessels for meaning transmission—a “pane of glass” (Barnes)—but real individuals who bring their personal experiences, values, and presence into interactions between service providers and service users.
Keywords: Interpretation, Asylum Seekers, Impartiality, Ethics
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The 10th International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2025, Ahwaz.
