Interpreters’ choice of style in interpreted lawyer-client interviews: An ethnographic approach

Purpose Professional interpreters can improve healthcare quality and outcomes when there is language discordance between patients and health care providers. Multidisciplinary rehabilitation relies on nuanced communication; however, the use of interpreters in rehabilitation is underexplored. This study aimed to examine patterns of health care interpreter use in an inpatient rehabilitation setting. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted including patients admitted for subacute rehabilitation during 2019–2020 identified as having limited English proficiency. Patterns of interpreter use (professional and “ad hoc”) and rehabilitation outcomes were evaluated via medical record review. Results Eighty-five participants were included. During inpatient rehabilitation (median 17 [12–28] days), most clinical interactions (95%) occurred without an interpreter present. Patterns of interpreter use were variable; with greater use of ad hoc versus professional interpreters (received by 60% versus 49% of the cohort, respectively). Those who interacted with a professional interpreter had a longer length-of-stay, larger Functional Independence Measure (FIM) gain, and lower rate of hospital readmission six months post-discharge. The number of professional interpreter sessions correlated positively with FIM gain. Conclusions Access to professional interpreters in inpatient rehabilitation was variable, with some patients having no or minimal access. These findings provide preliminary evidence that professional interpreter use may be associated with clinical rehabilitation outcomes. Implications for rehabilitation Professional health care interpreters can be used to overcome language barriers in rehabilitation. In an inpatient rehabilitation setting, professional interpreters appeared to be underutilized, with many patients having no or minimal access to interpreters. Use of ad hoc, untrained interpreters and informal communication strategies was common during rehabilitation. Use of professional interpreters appeared to be associated with favorable rehabilitation outcomes.

The aim of the study reported on in this article was to explore South African translators’ responses to various kinds of ethically contentious material at the textual level, in the context of particular text types and hypothetical translation situations. The study made use of a survey design based primarily on closed-ended questions, administered to an availability sample of 31 South African translators drawn from the membership of the South African Translators’ Institute (SATI). The survey was, in the first instance, designed to solicit respondents’ opinions regarding which translation strategies they would most likely select to deal with particular kinds of ethical challenges. In order to better understand the factors affecting the selection of translation strategies, the impact of two translator factors (experience and age) and two text factors (text type and type of ethical problem) was investigated. In the second instance, the survey aimed to investigate why respondents selected particular strategies, and indirectly how they view their ethical responsibility. To this end, possible reasons for the selection of specific translation strategies were formulated and categorised as primarily influenced by either personal or professional ethics. In addition to this overall analysis, the study analysed differences in the role of personal and professional ethics depending on the type of ethical problem, the type of text, respondents’ age, and different levels of translation experience. The findings of the study suggest an overwhelming preference for faithful translation, but also reveal an interplay between personal and professional ethics as the motivation for this choice, with some differences across text type and kind of ethical problem. It appears that experience leads to a greater preference for both faithful translation strategies and a stronger influence of professional ethics. However, the data also suggest that age and/or generational differences may play a role in the selection of translation strategies, as well as in the effect of personal and professional ethics, with the oldest and youngest respondents in the sample more likely to opt for strategies other than faithful translation, motivated more frequently by personal rather than professional ethics.

To the Editor:—The article “Patterns of Communication through Interpreters: A Detailed Sociolinguistic Analysis”1 offers many valuable insights into the problems that language barriers may pose for the medical interview. The use of discourse analysis grounded in sociolinguistic theory provides an exciting view of what happens in medical encounters involving language barriers. For example, Elderkin-Thompson et al.2 used qualitative discourse analysis to describe problems arising when untrained bilingual, bicultural nurses were used as interpreters. More recently, Garces has used institutional discourse analysis to study differences between medical encounters involving language concordant providers and encounters using trained [professional] and untrained [ad hoc] interpreters.3 Unfortunately, this study repeats a common methodologic error by not differentiating between untrained and trained “interpreters” http://www.ncihc.org/NCIHC_PDF/TheTerminologyofHealthCareInterpreting.pdf.4 Consequently, the article appears to be about the pitfalls of medical interpretation when it is really about problems that arise when using untrained interpreters. The errors that the untrained interpreters in this study make are the very ones that training aims to prevent: summarizing, altering meaning, and interfering with the relationship between the patient and physician. Studies involving trained, qualified interpreters have demonstrated that they outperform untrained interpreters and offer a means to reduce language-based disparities in health care in as varied realms as satisfaction, access, quality, time, and cost.5–10 Unfortunately, the article, as currently titled, may serve to perpetuate the belief that there is no difference between trained and untrained interpreters. It would have been more appropriate for this article to have been titled: “Patterns of Miscommunication through Untrained Interpreters,” in order to more accurately convey what the research is about. We encourage the authors to continue this important work, but to study the performance of professional interpreters. Many hypotheses come to mind: Might the “coldness” in the interview abate as professionals facilitate “small talk?” Do trained medical interpreters adequately transmit the “meaning” of messages while conserving valuable time in the interview? As the field of medical interpretation matures, our research community should partner prospectively with these fellow professionals to design studies that clearly study the performance of trained, professional interpreters. Finally, all research involving medical interpreting should explicitly address the qualifications of the interpreters as well as how LEP patients are identified. Only then can we be assured that we are measuring the true impact of medical interpreters. Respectfully, Policy and Research Committee, National Council on Interpreting in Health Care

Until recently, the method of professional ethics has been largely principle-based. But the failure of this approach to take into sufficient account the character of professionals has led to a revival of virtue ethics. The kind of professional virtue ethics that I am concerned with in this paper is teleological in that it relates the virtues of a profession to the ends of this profession. My aim is to show how empirical research can (in addition to philosophical inquiry) be used to develop virtue-based accounts of professional ethics, and that such empirically well-informed approaches are more convincing than traditional kinds of professional virtue ethics. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I outline the structure of a teleological approach to virtue ethics. In Section 2, I show that empirical research can play an essential role in professional ethics by emphasizing the difference between conceptual and empirical matters. Section 3 demonstrates the relevance of virtues in professional life; and the last section is concerned with some meta-ethical issues that are raised by a teleological account of professional virtues.

The Role of Professional Ethics in Individual and Organizational Outcomes

Objective: This study investigates the mediating role of professional ethics in explaining the relationships between career resilience, emotional schemas, and organizational performance in bank employees. Methods and Materials: A descriptive-correlational research design with structural equation modeling was employed. The study's population consisted of 430 employees from bank branches in Western Tehran in 2023, selected through convenience sampling. Data were collected using Ander de Waal et al.'s organizational performance questionnaires (2017), Morgan Lyon's career path resilience (2001), Leahy's emotional schemas (2002) and Kaduzier's professional ethics (2002). Data analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling by SPSS.26 and AMOS.26. Findings: Structural equation modeling analysis revealed that professional ethics negatively mediates the relationship between emotional schemas and organizational performance, while positively mediating the relationship between career resilience and organizational performance. The total variance explained (R²) for organizational performance was 0.55, indicating that emotional schemas, career resilience, and professional ethics together account for 55% of the variance in organizational performance. Conclusion: The findings underscore the critical role of professional ethics in influencing organizational performance. Professional ethics serves as both a negative mediator between emotional schemas and organizational performance and a positive mediator between career resilience and organizational performance. These results suggest that promoting professional ethics can enhance organizational performance by improving employees' emotional resilience and better handling emotional challenges in the workplace.

Background and Aim: Spiritual leadership positively and significantly effects on spiritual well-being and organizational-personnel performance variables, through drawing faith in a vision and culture of excellence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of spiritual leadership and professional ethics in the organizational commitment of health care workers. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive-correlational study, the statistical population consisted of all health care workers who work in health facilities of the Urmia, Iran, in 2017. The sample size was estimated 240 people by Morgan table. Stratified random sampling method, and Fry’s Spiritual Leadership, Ghasemzadeh’s professional ethics and organizational Allen and Meyer ’ s commitment Questionnaire were used to collect data. SPSS 22 and Amos statistical soft wares were used to analyze the data. Findings: The direct effect of the spiritual leadership on professional ethics (0.37) and organizational commitment of the health care workers was significant (p=0.01). The direct effect of the spiritual leadership on organizational commitment of health care workers (0.69) also was significant (p=0.01). The indirect effect of the spiritual leadership on organizational commitment of health care workers also was significant (p=0.01). The fitting of the predictive model of the research variables was relatively good (62%) and suggests the alignment of the fitted model with the theoretical community of research. Conclusion: Based on the findings, it can be concluded that spiritual leadership influences on the organizational commitment of health care workers with the mediation role of professional ethics. Please cite this article as: Zahed Babelan A, Khaleg Khah A, Kazemi S, Gharibzadeh R. The Role of Spiritual Leadership and Professional Ethics in Organizational Commitment of Health Care Workers. Bioethics Journal 2017; 7(26): 23-30.

To the Editor:—“Patterns of Communication through Interpreters: A Detailed Sociolinguistic Analysis,”1 seemingly addresses the important issue of interpreters and their impact on provider-patient communication. The authors state, “many of the structural difficulties exist regardless of who is interpreting for whom, based more in the nature of interpreter discourse itself and the time constraints of a medical interaction than through the specifics of the interpreter.” This is an alarming, and false, conclusion based on the data. This study only documents the negative impact of untrained interpreters on health communication. Immigrant patient advocates and the health care system are working hard to ensure that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act2 is enforced to decrease immigrant health disparities. Published data, used to help inform such service delivery, need to be scientifically rigorous. This study, with its sweeping conclusions based on untrained interpreters, could be potentially misleading. There are marked differences between trained, professional interpreters and the ad hoc interpreters they studied. Because of this, the Department of Justice “Guidance to Federal Financial Assistance Recipients Regarding Title VI Prohibition against National Origin Discrimination Affecting Limited English Proficient Persons”3 strongly discourages the use of untrained interpreters. The Center for Immigrant Health has conducted a randomized controlled study of outcomes by various interpreting modalities, as well as in same language encounters. In fact, our audiotape analyses of 214 encounters reveal that in visits using a trained remote simultaneous interpreter, physicians give an equal number of instructions per visit as they do in Spanish language concordant encounters (mean # per encounter 14.29, SD 6.9; 14.33, SD 6.33). Usual and customary interpreting, however, results in significantly fewer instructions (mean # per encounter 11.9, SD 6.17). Trained, professional medical interpreters are key to the elimination of health care disparities.

Over the past ten years, the European Federation of Psychologists Association (EFPA) has strengthened psychology educational training, professional qualifications, professional ethics and regulations, and legal standards, in collaboration with the European Union (EU), to develop quasi-legislation at the European level. The two organizations help coordinate specific qualifications in the academe system for entry level psychologists which were accepted by EFPA in 2005. The EuroPsy system, even given the tensions based on the level of qualification and the contexts of professional practice, functions to provide a means of credentialing for individual psychologists upon completion of academic and training curriculum (six years), has exhibited professional competence under supervised practice, and is endorsed by European ethical standards for psychologists. Europe has strong regional mechanisms for psychologist accountability, which provide surpassing challenges for university qualifications and professional licensing, ethics and ethical integrity, and EuroPsy requirements.

The term “ethics” comes from the Greek word 'ethos/ethikos', which means 'tradition, custom or habit". On the other hand, the science that addresses the requirements/duty to act ethically is called Deontology. In exercising the legal profession, Deontology is found as a discipline incorporating a set of principles and rules which must be acknowledged and adhered to by an exercising lawyer in his/her profession. The conduct of lawyers must be exemplary both in exercising profession and outside, in accordance with the dignity inherent to the profession. In recognizing principles and rules of the Code of Professional Conduct and deontology, lawyers must also adhere in their own professional conduct. In exercising their functions, all lawyers are under oath and must live to the commitment of strict adherence and full willingness to an Ethical Code of the profession. The Code of ethics determines the rules of behaviour, which must be adhered to by all lawyers in exercising their profession and rendering their services, to maintain and uphold the dignity and reputation of the Bar Profession. Failure to know the code of ethics does not justify any breach that a lawyer may commit. The idea of addressing this topic stems from the fact that often, lawyers as legal professionals come to confront with their Code of Professional Ethics. Therefore, considering the role and relevance of ethics in the bar profession, in this paper, I have elaborated on the legal grounds of KCA foundation, the regional coverage of the KCA, with a special emphasis on the professional legal ethics and the disciplinary system established by the Chamber of Advocates of Kosovo, a constitutionally established institution, disciplinary proceedings and measures imposed on the lawyers in case of breaches of their own Professional Ethics, concluding with basic principles of conduct and service provision by lawyers.

This study explores English-dominant speakers’ and English learners’ knowledge of (in)formal stylistic variants, their choice of (in)formal styles in relation to social context, their preferences in the use of select (in)formal stylistic variants, and their beliefs about the influence of their other languages. Ten English-dominant undergraduates in Canada, 10 international English-as-a-second-language undergraduates in Canada, and 11 English-as-a-foreign-language undergraduates in Slovakia completed a questionnaire and composed 6 short e-mail messages, each embedded in a unique social context defined by the intended reader (ranging from completely unfamiliar to extremely familiar) and the communication purpose (ranging from completely transactional to completely interactional). Differences were found among the groups in their knowledge of (in)formal stylistic variants, their choice of style, their use of some (in)formal variants, and reported effects of their other languages. This study concludes that primarily classroom-instructed English learners who wish to learn how English-dominant speakers approach expression of formality would benefit from explicit instruction. It further concludes that more research is necessary to identify factors driving individual knowledge of (in)formal variants and preferences in their use, particularly in relation to overall communicative competence and the context of language acquisition and use.

The article’s purpose is to describe some results of the research of students’ representations about the professional ethics of University teachers. The sample includes full-time and part-time students of psychological and pedagogical education. The diagnostic instrument was questionnaire “Customer Perceptions of professional ethics of the specialist”. It was revealed that students mainly note the orientation of the teachers’ professional ethics standards to their own professional interests, note the compliance of teachers’ personal characteristics with ethical requirements, and consider the job instructions to be the basis for the content of ethical standards in the teacher’s activity. Differences in the views of full-time and part-time students were found. Full-time students pay more attention to teachers’ personal characteristics as proof of compliance with ethical standards. Part-time students give a higher evaluation of teachers’ orientation to the professional community interests and needs of other ethic application objects (not only professional and client), as well as give a higher evaluation of law and universal values and culture as origins of teachers’ professional ethics.

This study aims to examine the effect of auditor independence on audit quality at the Gorontalo City Inspectorate, with professional ethics acting as a mediator or moderator variable. The method used in this study is a quantitative method, with primary data collection. This study uses a saturated sample or census, where the entire population is sampled, totalling 54 respondents consisting of 35 auditors and 19 P2UPD (Supervisors of the Implementation of Regional Government Affairs) in 2023. The data used is primary data collected through a questionnaire. The statistical analysis used is a non-parametric method with Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS Version 4 software. The results of the study indicate a positive and significant influence between internal auditor independence on audit quality through the role of professional ethics. In addition, it was found that the independence of internal auditors also has a positive and significant influence on audit quality at the Gorontalo City Inspectorate, as well as a positive and significant influence on the role of professional audit ethics, which in turn has an impact on the audit quality of the Gorontalo City Inspectorate.

The importance of trained interpreters for ensuring adequate communication with limited English proficiency patients is well-established. However, in many contexts, health professionals continue to rely on ad hoc interpreters, such as bilingual employees or patients' relatives to provide linguistic assistance. This is worrisome because these strategies have been shown to be associated with poor quality health care. Examine attitudes and practices related to healthcare interpreting. Mailed, self-administered questionnaire. Convenience sample of medical and nursing department and service heads at the Geneva University Hospitals. Adequacy of attitudes and practices related to interpreter use. Ninety-nine questionnaires were completed and returned (66% response rate). Between 43% and 86% of respondents relied mainly on patients' relatives and bilingual employees for linguistic assistance, depending on the language in question. Professional interpreter use varied according to language (from 5% to 39%) and seems to reflect the availability of bilingual staff members for the different languages. Professional interpreters appear to be used only in the absence of other available options, due to cost concerns and scheduling difficulties. This practice is further reinforced by the belief that ad hoc interpreters are "good enough" even while recognizing the quality differential between trained and untrained interpreters (91.2% of respondents rated bilingual staff as satisfactory or good, and 79.5% rated family/friends as satisfactory or good). Simply making professional interpreter services available to healthcare professionals does not appear to guarantee their use for limited French proficiency (LFP) patients. Future efforts should focus on developing procedures for systematically identifying patients needing linguistic assistance, linguistic assistance strategies that are responsive to provider and institutional contexts and constraints, and institutional directives to ensure use of qualified interpreters for all medically important communication with LFP patients.

The scientific article is devoted to guarantees of compliance with professional ethics by judges, prosecutors and lawyers. The purpose of the article is the scientific development of the problems of guarantees of compliance with the professional ethics of the judge, prosecutor and lawyer by defining the concept of guarantees of compliance with professional ethics, defining the main varieties of these guarantees, as well as providing their general characteristics. The scientific article formulates the concept of guarantees of compliance with professional ethics as special legal means aimed at ensuring compliance of professional activity and out-of-service behavior of representatives of relevant legal professions with ethical requirements, prevention of violations of professional ethics and elimination of their negative consequences. The main types of guarantees of compliance with professional ethics by judges, prosecutors and lawyers, namely: ethical selection; making an oath; development and approval of codes of ethics; study of ethics; activities of the relevant authorized bodies; responsibility for ethics violations. It is concluded that these guarantees are typical for representatives of various legal professions, due to the unified legal nature of the rules of professional ethics for lawyers. In view of this, the further development of such guarantees is seen in their unification and improvement of the regulatory regulation of the professional ethics of judges, prosecutors and lawyers, as well as the practice of its application. It is proved that these guarantees constitute an orderly system, that in unity and interconnection allows to establish certain ethical rules and norms, to bring them to the attention of interested persons, to determine the state of their observance and to ensure the most complete implementation in professional activity. Based on the analysis of the current legislation of Ukraine on the judiciary and the status of judges, the prosecutor’s office and the bar examined in detail the content of each of these guarantees. Their influence on the observance of professional ethics of judges, prosecutors and lawyers is determined.