This paper is concerned with the Vocational Education and Training provided to Public Service Interpreters in terms of ethics.  Public Service Interpreting (PSI) is a particular type of freelance human service occupation which owes its birth to an ancient global phenomenon: the constant movement of people across linguistic and cultural borders.  In recent years, factors such as looser borders and the growth of multiculturalism have sparked the need for trained professionals to interpret between service providers and service users with limited proficiency in the dominant language in public service settings.  In Australia or Sweden for instance, the occupation has been framed since the 1970s, whereas in Spain or Ireland, it is still in need of a national framework.  Compared to conference and business interpreting, PSI places the interpreter ‘into the most private [and intimate] spheres of human life’ (Hale, 2007: 25).  The paper therefore addresses fundamental concerns relevant to other countries such as the formal and informal learning in relation to this positioning by exploring the situation of PSIs in England.   

    Although professional codes of conduct and government guidance stress the need for interpreters to remain neutral, impartial and accurate, limited guidance is provided on ethical issues encountered in practice. Yet interpreters have to deal with ‘spontaneous and unpredictable ethical emergencies’ (McDade, 2010), sometimes in ways which clash with their personal ethics.   

   What do professional codes prescribe? And how are these inscribed by interpreters in practice? How are ethics interpreted by other parties involved? How do individual interpreters ethically position themselves? 

    A growing number of studies highlight the impact of performativity and austerity on the daily ethical decision-making and practices of educational and other human service professionals (e.g. Colley, 2010; Cribb and Gewirtz, 2006; Hamilton, 2009).  Despite a recent EU directive on the Rights to Interpretation and Translation in Criminal Proceedings, financial cuts in the UK are now hitting PSI, as public services increasingly use cheaper labour from private agencies to replace freelance working.  Tougher immigration policies are also affecting the scale and nature of PSI work.  What are the effects of such changes on the ethical issues interpreters face? What work is involved in addressing them? What learning is entailed?

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