“A big round of applause to our translators without whom this meeting would not have been possible”. The world thinks very highly of conference interpreters. How can they possibly listen and speak at the same time, and render in a different language what they just heard, with a delay of only 3 seconds, or even finish the sentence before the key note speaker who is racing through their presentation at breakneck speed.

While I have interpreted hundreds of meetings of this kind and assisted heads of state and government on their various missions abroad, my own admiration and deep respect goes to a different group of ‘translators’: those who facilitate communication with refugees and victims of war in reception centres, who assist the family of a terminally ill patient in a hospice, who communicate bad news to the parents of a new born baby, those who assist busy nurses, stressed front-line staff, prosthetic surgeons, A&E staff trying to manage long lines of patients on trolleys. All in the one day, every day.

I’m speaking of our freelance community interpreters.

Every community interpreter I have met is motivated by humanitarian aspects, by the desire to help, to facilitate communication, to make a meaningful contribution to having patients, clients, refugees, children, vulnerable adults provided with adequate support.

Community interpreters are a typically underpaid, underrated, untrained cohort of linguists without whom, however, equal access to public services would not exist. Their fate is largely determined by public procurement; where working conditions are set by tender competitions, and where service quality is compromised by rates per hour (or even per minute), dictated by a tendering authority.

If we want to create a robust and sustainable job profile for community interpreters who choose this as a career path and develop to become the best professionals they can be, we need to talk about budgets, about ownership and about political will. Training and professionalisation for community interpreters come at a cost. There are some – albeit rudimentary – training courses currently available, and comprehensive training expertise in community interpreting does exist in Ireland.

Where simultaneous conference interpreters (who process the spoken word in real time) and translators (of written text) have university degrees and the prospect of or actual experience of an adequate income, community interpreters struggle to make a living from their service. Despite the key role community interpreters play in making health care, education, local government services etc. accessible for everyone.

15 years ago, the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI) was about to set up a state register of trained and accredited community interpreters, when the banking crisis defeated this project. Waiting for the tide to turn again does not address the current, urgent need for qualified community interpreters of a broad range of languages. At Context, we do what we can to recruit, onboard, support, train and professionalise hundreds of community interpreters to take on the daily challenges. We try to motivate our freelancers and fight for their recognition. Every respectful service user is appreciated. Every positive comment helps.

What is your experience, as an interpreter, service user or observer?