Public Service Interpreting from an Ethical Perspective: professional deontology and its application to the penitentiary setting

Abstract

This doctoral thesis examines the public service interpreting (PSI) profession from an ethical perspective, focusing on the deontological framework that governs practice and its application to a delimited area of specialization, namely penitentiary interpreting. In order to analyze the general normative framework of PSI, seven deontological documents (codes of ethics, codes of conduct and standards of practice from Canada, UK and USA) in force in the field have been studied. The selection criteria followed were: the date and place of publication, visibility, focus on public service interpreting (general or domain-specific), similar degree of guidelines’ specificity. The defining factors of the prison interpreting setting have been drawn through observation of the context, interviews and questionnaires to various agents involved.

As a first formal approximation to the documents, the text genre of the selected deontological documents is described. To deepen the understanding of the texts, a semantic analysis is developed, especially from an ethical perspective (the moral system of the profession), but also from a socio-professional (the structures and procedures that the community has put in place) and a technical one (the strategies of the PSI field that the professional community recommends). These three axes constitute an analytical framework that is appropriate to morally characterize PSI.

Then the PSI prison setting is described according to the semantic structures drawn from the deontological documents. This shows that there is a great deal of shared territory between the general deontological framework and this 'uncharted' area of practice. Nevertheless, categories such as "space" attract slight attention, in spite of being one the contextual elements with a greatest impact on prison interpreting, specifically on the emotional atmosphere, the kind of relation between participants, the interpreter's role and some of the main difficulties faced by interpreters, as pointed out by informants. Prison interpreting is also conditioned by security procedures, which seems to be the main distinctive feature of this setting.