Rules of Professional Conduct

Abstract

All professional associations of interpreters and many institutions working with interpreters produce deontological documents (codes of ethics, codes of professional ethics, codes of conduct, standards of practice, etc.) containing principles and rules governing the interpreters’ activity. Most of the princi-ples and rules are straightforward and seem to be based on solid common sense. Others appear sound at first sight, but are inherently fuzzy, e.g. those concerning accuracy, or potentially controversial, e.g. those concerning confi-dentiality or impartiality. After briefly considering the concepts of ethics and professional ethics, and presenting the main features characterising deon-tological documents, the chapter discusses professional principles and rules with reference to over 20 documents published by a variety of bodies and in-stitutions (judicial and healthcare institutions, professional associations of spoken language interpreters, sign language interpreters, court interpreters, healthcare interpreters, etc.). The principles and rules taken into consideration are: accuracy, confidentiality, impartiality, competence, professional conduct, role boundaries and professional development. The chapter ends with a pro-posal about how to structure training on this topic and with some suggestions for further reading.