Analyzing Ethics in Community Interpreting L2: Case Study Task 2A

This assignment focuses on the ethical considerations of impartiality and confidentiality in community interpreting, using two case studies to illustrate potential dilemmas. The first case involves a client seeking financial advice, highlighting the interpreter's need to remain unbiased and protect the client's privacy regarding her family's financial struggles. The second case presents a situation where a client discloses a past abortion to her doctor without her partner's knowledge, emphasizing the interpreter's responsibility to maintain confidentiality and avoid personal bias. The assignment underscores the importance of ethical conduct in maintaining professionalism and client trust, while also acknowledging the limits of impartiality and confidentiality in situations where client safety or well-being may be at risk. The document concludes with a summary of the importance of these ethical principles and examples of when they may need to be breached. Desklib offers a range of study tools and resources, including solved assignments and past papers, to support students in their academic endeavors.

Name:
Unit 1 Understanding Community Interpreting L2 TASK 2A
Learning Outcome:
(2) Understand the ethical context for community interpreting.
Assessment Criteria:
2.1 Assess, in a community interpreting situation, the importance of impartiality
and confidentiality and its limits
Assessment - Written task
Read the two case studies and describe the issues in each of them,
explaining why impartiality and confidentiality are important in this context.
Case study 1:
The client begs the interpreter for benefits advice and some practical help. She
says she is desperate to get some money as she has three children and her
husband has just lost his job.
Case study 2:
You are interpreting for a pregnant woman, who has just disclosed to the GP that
she had two abortions before she met her current partner. Her partner does not
know about this.
Unit 1 Understanding Community Interpreting L2 TASK 2A
Task Submission
You can type your answers into the boxes. Remember to write in full sentences
and check your spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Introduction:
Define the 2 terms impartiality and confidentiality and briefly explain why
they are
important in a community interpreting setting.
Impartiality- Basically the term impartiality means that not being partial or biased
to anybody. The person who is impartial would carry a neutral view on any topic by
not favouring any of the parties. They treat each and every person equally. The

qualities which an unbiased person posses are, fairness, transparency, neutrality
and receptive. In order to maintain the professionalism, the interpreter will not
allow their feelings or emotions to intervene while performing any tasks, specially
in professional area of conduct. It is important in community interpreting because
in terms of following the professional ethics, the interpreter cannot connect with the
client personally as this would hamper the sanctity of its professionalism. Being an
unbiased interpreter will maintain the reputation of the person and will help in
meeting the requirement of the client(Ventouris and Loupaki, 2020) .
Confidentiality- Confidentiality is maintained in order to keep up some one's
privacy by refraining from sharing any kind of personal information regarding the
person who is sharing the private details. This would become more important in
the case when the client has provided the information out of confidence. The client
will going to share the personal information only when it feels secure in order to
disclose the required details. The interpreter must build confidence over the client
in order to build the trust. Neither of the parties who are associated with the client
should not be able to access the information rendered by the client.
Case Study 1:
What are the main issues (threats) surrounding impartiality and
confidentiality in this scenario?
The major issues arise in this case study are as the interpreter has refused to
provide any kind assistance to the client as she required some money in order to
fulfil the needs of her children and husband who lost his job due to some reasons.
She could opt any other irregular way to get the money after getting no help in
terms of advice from the interpreter.
What could happen if impartiality and confidentiality were not maintained ?
If the interpreter could not maintain the impartiality in this case, then he will not
able to provide any sort of advice to the client. In terms of the meaning of this term,
it is stated that the interpreter must be unbiased in order to give any kind of
suggestion or advice to the client(Pokorn and Južnič, 2020). On the other hand, if
confidentiality is not maintained, the information that the husband of the client has
lost his job and she is in need of money to fulfil the needs of her children will be at
great risk of getting disclosed, which can create dispute between the client and her
husband.
What should the Community Interpreter do in order to maintain impartiality
and confidentiality in this particular scenario?
In order to maintain the impartiality and confidentiality in this particular case, the
interpreter is required to provide certain suggestions or advice to the client by
judging the whole scenario with unbiased opinion. The interpreter must not think

that the client is already in need of money and for the same she cannot make the
desired payment to the interpreter. The interpreter could also make her aware
about the free legal aid provided by the government to all those who are unable to
pay the fees. Further, he must not disclose the information which is provided by
the client in terms of her family problems to the community or to any other third
parties including any family member of the client(Lambert, 2018) .
Case Study 2:
What are the main issues (threats) surrounding impartiality and
confidentiality in this scenario?
The main threats arises in this particular case is that the woman has not disclosed
the fact about her earlier abortions to her partner with whom she is living at
present. The major risk behind this is if in case her partner came to know about the
truth of her abortions, he might react in a negative way which can increase the
possibility of conflict between the two.
What could happen if impartiality and confidentiality were not maintained?
If impartiality is not maintained then the interpreter will not be able to give advice or
suggest any other way out of this problem to the client, and if confidentiality is not
maintained, there would be a risk to the information about the abortion of the client
that I could get disclosed to the other people along with her partner (Hale, Goodman-
Delahunty and Martschuk, 2019).
What should the Community Interpreter do in order to maintain impartiality
and confidentiality in this particular scenario?
The interpreter must provide a rightful suggestion to the client by holding the
attitude of being fair and neutral so that he can provide the best advice to the
client. In terms of confidentiality, the interpreter must not disclose any kind of
information regarding his client to any one including her partner, until and unless
the interpreter feels that she would be safe and her partner will understand her
situation if the information regarding her abortion is shared with him.
Conclusion:
Briefly summarise the importance of impartiality and confidentiality and also
mention their limits: i.e. give examples of interpreting situations where
impartiality cannot be maintained and where confidentiality should or must
be broken.

Impartiality and confidentiality are important in terms of community interpreter as it
helps in maintaining the professionalism. It also helps in ensuring good reputation
among the clients. But the interpreters are required to work under a certain limit in
which they need to carry their practices.
There might be situations where the interpreter is unable to maintain the element
of impartiality. Foe example- sometimes there are certain circumstances in which
the interpreter has to cross his boundaries and required to solve the issue by
getting personally involved in the case. In terms of confidentiality, there are
situations in which the interpreter has to break the privacy of the information by
disclosing it to the third party whom he thinks fit for the same. For example- when
there is an element of threat arise which can negatively affect the client. Then the
interpreter is required to share such information with the third party who can help
him to solve the problem effectively.
References
Ventouris, A. and Loupaki, E., 2020. Final Assessment and Testing for Community Interpreter
Trainers: A Theoretical Approach. Teacher Education for Community Interpreting and Intercultural
Mediation: Selected Chapters. Ljubljana University Press.
Pokorn, N.K. and Južnič, T.M., 2020. Community interpreters versus intercultural mediators: Is it
really all about ethics?. Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American
Translation and Interpreting Studies Association, 15(1), pp.80-107.
Lambert, J., 2018. How ethical are codes of ethics? Using illusions of neutrality to sell
translations. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 30, pp.269-290.
Hale, S., Goodman-Delahunty, J. and Martschuk, N., 2019. Interpreter performance in police
interviews. Differences between trained interpreters and untrained bilinguals. The Interpreter and
Translator Trainer, 13(2), pp.107-131.