Licence to inform: Norwegian sign language interpreters in a bureaucratic organisation

Abstract

This article discusses how Norwegian sign language interpreters reflect on the discrepancy between (a) being defined professionally by their impartiality on behalf of all participants in an interpreted event, while they (b) work for a service organisation that ultimately defines sign language interpreting services as a measure to “enhance functioning” for deaf and hard of hearing people. Interviews with sign language interpreters show that their institutional affiliation to a large bureaucratic organisation influences how they reflect on their potential scope of action as interpreters. The article suggests that without a conscious and continuous discussion about the tension between being educated and defined as impartial language workers while also working for an organisation with a mandate to assist deaf or hard of hearing people, sign language interpreters may be caught in a process where they struggle to define their profession and are thus reverted to a preprofessional status as deaf peoples’ “helpers.”

Keywords

deprofessionalization impartiality interpreting legislation professional identity sign language interpreting services

1. Introduction

In most countries where the provision of sign language interpreting services has been institutionalised and involves legal, financial, and educational resources, the services are regulated as a measure to enhance or provide access to public services, workplaces, and education for deaf and hard of hearing people, often on the basis of disability legislation (Brunson, 2015; De Meulder, 2016; De Meulder & Haualand, 2021; de Wit, 2016). Norwegian sign language interpreting legislation is no exception. In this article, the Norwegian sign language interpreting services are used as a case to explore how sign language interpreters discuss their agency when the legal mandate for the provision of these services is to “enhance functioning” in everyday or work life for individuals with a hearing impairment (Norwegian National Insurance Act, 1997). In addition to being professional language workers defined by their impartiality, sign language interpreters can also be considered street-level bureaucrats in the sense that they “interact with citizens in the course of the job and have discretion in exercising authority” (Lipsky, 2010, xvii). Interpreters’ active participation in the situations they work in is well documented (Diriker, 2011; Downie, 2017, 2020; Metzger, 1999; Pöchhacker, 2012; Roy, 2000; Wadensjö, 1998), but many sign language interpreters are also professionals who work on behalf of institutions or bureaucratic organisations within a system of division of labour (Abbott, 1988; Lipsky, 2010). Sign language interpreters’ mandate as professionals working on behalf of a bureaucratic organisation (the sign language interpreting service provider) is the focus of this article. More specifically, it explores how the legal mandate for the provision of sign language interpreting services influences sign language interpreters’ perception of their professional agency.

2. The organisational context of sign language interpreters’ work

The relationship between organisational and performative aspects of professionalism is a recurring topic in studies of professions in general, and also to some extent in studies on translation and interpreting (Inghilleri, 2004, 2006; Ozolins, 2010; Sela-Sheffy & Shlesinger, 2011; Setton & Dawrant, 2016; Skaaden, 2018, 2019). However, much less attention has been given to the organisational and legal mandate of sign language interpreters, and to whether, and if so how, the organisational and legal contexts of their training and work inform their professional practice. Brunson (2015) and Skaten (2015) are rare exceptions in this respect.

Although interpreting research that follows seminal works by, among others, Metzger (1999), Roy (2000), Angelelli (2004), and Wadensjö (1998) has debunked the idea that interpreters do not make a series of active decisions in an interpreted event, Diriker (2011) and Downie (2017) claim that the idea “that interpreters possess their own agency, separate from that of either speaker, is still hard to find in professional discourse” (Downie, 2017, p. 267). While the observation that legal and organisational aspects contextualise the work of sign language interpreters could seem mundane within the study of professions, the very assertion that interpreters have a legal mandate that more or less ties them to only one (side) of their primary participants¹ could be at odds with their strict impartiality, which also is a core tenet in interpreters’ professional code of ethics worldwide (Kermit, 2004; Pöchhacker, 2016; Skaaden, 2013). What distinguishes interpreters from other professions is the principle of accuracy when they interpret between two languages, and the principle of impartiality vis-à-vis their clients, who always are more than one. These

two principles in concert outline the specific profile of the interpreters’ societal function and [. . .] [a]t the same time, the core principles differentiate the interpreters’ responsibilities from those of the professionals that the interpreters serve in institutional encounters. (Skaaden, 2019, p. 154)

So what we see here is that the profession of sign language interpreting continuously is walking the tight-rope between being defined professionally as impartial language workers, but (mostly) being legally and institutionally affiliated with deaf people (as disabled people as well as a linguistic minority). This tension has rarely been discussed in literature, as also Gile and Napier (2020) have observed. The Norwegian sign language interpreters’ orientation towards deaf people, whether motivated by their legal mandate or not, is not unique to Norway. A pertinent question is therefore how the kind of identification with the service organisation—in this case, the mandate to provide information about the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration’s (NAV) services—that some of the informants expressed in this study relates to the interpreters’ core principle of impartiality. This will be discussed in the last part of the article.

Before I present the research project and methods, I give an outline of the organisation of NAV’s sign language interpreting services, and the context of the research interviews that constitute the main bulk of data in this study. I then present the project and data collection process. The expectation that interpreters should inform primary participants about NAV’s services was a recurring topic in several interviews. As I demonstrate, the interpreters’ positions towards this expectation differed. In the final part of the article, I discuss the current and future professional status of sign language interpreters in Norway.

3. Sign language interpreting services in Norway—Organisation, politics, and ideology

The organisation and provision of sign language interpreting services in Norway stands out from most other countries in the world, particularly in three respects. First, according to legislation, sign language interpreting services are an individual right for people with a hearing loss, where the legal mandate is to “enhance functioning” in everyday or work life for individuals with a hearing impairment (Norwegian National Insurance Act, 1997). When the research project presented in this article was conducted, sign language interpreting services were not generally considered an obligation or duty that public service providers² had to secure access to for everyone (i.e., for deaf and hard of hearing people), which is the case in the United States as stipulated in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The second salient aspect is the relative homogeneity among Norwegian sign language interpreters. Only sign language interpreters with a bachelor’s degree in sign language and interpreting are entitled to take on assignments for NAV. This means there are few, if any, sign language interpreters with a lower level of education than a BA. At the same time, few sign language interpreters have any education in sign language interpreting, beyond their BA, partly because there are no financial incentives³ for them to obtain a higher degree or to prioritise continued professional development activities. Hence, the interpreters interviewed for this article have similar educational backgrounds.

The third distinctive feature in Norway is that almost all sign language interpreting services are provided by one government agency: the NAV. Norwegian sign language interpreters are hired by NAV to provide sign language interpreting services, and hence not only work for those who request their services but also on behalf of NAV, a legal-bureaucratic organisation. The explicit governmental provision of sign language interpreter services stands in contrast to other countries where public interpreter services (among other services) are mostly provided by local or regional public offices, through private companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), charities, foundations, or voluntary associations, and/or paid for by the authorities or businesses with a legal duty to provide such access (Haualand, 2018). The Norwegian organisation of sign language interpreting services can thus serve as a case with which to explore the relationship between sign language interpreters and the bureaucratic organisation that hire them, NAV providing sign language interpreting services to “enhance functioning” as stipulated by section §10-5 in the National Insurance Act (1997).

The organisation of Norwegian sign language interpreting services is an example of Ozolins’ (2010) ascertainment that the Scandinavian countries stand out with regard to interpreting service provision, with their emphasis on “explicit public provision or close public supervision of delegated services” (Ozolins, 2010, p. 198). NAV’s dominant position in the provision of sign language interpreting services is also related to the general significance of NAV in Norway, with its mandate to provide and manage a wide range of welfare services. The organisation’s main objective and responsibility is to implement active labour market policies, which underpin all labour and welfare policies in Norway. This includes the administration of various benefits, including pensions, unemployment, and sickness benefits (NAV, 2016b). NAV’s dominant position means that people in Norway (as in other Scandinavian countries) are more involved with the state than in most other countries, while this involvement is not considered problematic per se. There is a widespread expectation in the Nordic welfare states that the state and its bureaucracy can be used to solve major collective problems, and the general population considers the government’s involvement as freedom-generating for individuals, rather than humiliating (Vike, 2018, pp. 43–44).

The logic that the government is responsible for solving communication problems was also used by the Norwegian Association of the Deaf when working to establish a public sign language interpreting service during the 1970–1980s. The association argued that the government should be responsible for sign language interpreting services as this would assure that the interpreters did not “belong” to anyone, and that sign language interpreting should be considered a service for everyone in the interpreted dialogue (Kermit, 2004). Governmental responsibility for providing and paying for sign language interpreting services would also free deaf people from the burden of requesting interpreting services from public service providers or employers, and thereby also enhance individual autonomy. The current organisation of sign language interpreting services is an example of a welfare policy aimed at “reducing individual dependency, not only in the markets, but also in the family, neighborhood, and other social structures” (Vike, 2018, p. 46). The fact that it is the government (not private companies or individual contractors) that takes responsibility for providing sign language interpreting services has been thought to provide a guarantee of interpreters’ professional impartiality, as has also been argued by the Norwegian Association of the Deaf (Sander, 1993; Woll, 1999).

However, there is no straightforward relationship between the idea that the state is a guarantor for impartiality in interpreting services and the current organisation of sign language interpreting service provision in NAV, where the legal mandate to provide these services is to “enhance functioning” in hearing-impaired individuals. The coordination and provision of sign language interpreting services takes place at NAV’s regional centres for assistive technology and accommodation, where the sign language interpreters also have their formal affiliation, whether as permanent workers or freelance contractors. The centres’ objective is “enabling persons with disabilities to reach and maintain their optimal physical, sensory, intellectual, mental and social functioning” (Sund, 2017, p. 4), and to give advice on “how assistive devices, sign language interpreters and ergonomic assistance can compensate for or alleviate loss of functions” (Sund, 2017, p. 14).

NAV is a typical example of a rational-legal authority that is obliged to provide services in a manner that is most efficient to the organisation. This could lead to less focus on professional particularities and the division of labour between the professions (Freidson, 2001; Weber, 1971). One example of the latter is NAV’s general duty to provide guidance (Public Administration Act, 1970), where all employees are subject to duty to provide information or guidance about NAV’s services in general or refer clients to other divisions or branches of the organisation if necessary. With the mandate to “enhance functioning” and a general duty to provide guidance as an employee in NAV, the sign language interpreting services are considered one of several services or accommodations that NAV may provide to compensate for or alleviate loss of functions. For employed interpreters, the obligation to provide information could be about giving primary participants information not only about NAV’s interpreting services but also about other services the centre for assistive technology can provide, if considered relevant or necessary.

Another example of bureaucratic logics, as opposed to professional logics (Freidson, 2001), is NAV’s assertion that interpreters’ knowledge should become an integrated part of the interdisciplinary services. In documents from the central management unit, NAV also discusses sign language interpreters as a group with unique knowledge about deaf and hearing-impaired peoples’ needs (Hjort, 2011; NAV, 2016a; Skaten, 2015).⁴ The argument that this knowledge should be an integrated part of the interdisciplinary services at the regional centres for the division of assistive technology and accommodation shows little, if any, regards to how taking part in interdisciplinary services affects sign language interpreters’ professional impartiality or their professional discretion. The assertion is rather an example of the non-fixed nature of the division of labour in a bureaucratic organisation, in that the organisation may “reconstitute the tasks composing jobs and the titles attached to them, to eliminate or revise them, and create new ones” (Freidson, 2001, p. 49).

The central management’s description of the sign language interpreters’ knowledge, however, is contested. In response to NAV’s description of sign language interpreters’ work tasks, the Association of Interpreters emphasised a clear division of labour, stating that “the interpreter must continue to be a neutral, impartial language translator and should not be seen as a remedy or an advisor” (Tolkeforbundet, 2017a).⁵ With their close connection to the government, Norwegian sign language interpreters must manoeuvre between two apparently different expectations. Legally, they provide their services for deaf, deaf-blind, and deafened people on behalf of a bureaucratic organisation that ultimately sees interpreting as a service to enhance functioning in hearing-impaired individuals. Yet interpreters are also professionally defined by their impartiality, confidentiality, and non-involvement with regard to all primary participants in an interpreted event. These contradictory expectations of sign language interpreters’ work are also found in individual interpreters’ reasoning over their professional responsibilities, as will be shown below.

4. The research project: Interpreters’ perceptions of their profession

As an educator on a sign language interpreting bachelor’s degree programme in Norway, who works in and for the Norwegian Association of the Deaf, and who cooperates with and frequently works via interpreters, I have observed the contradictory expectations of sign language interpreting services outlined above for years—and not only among the interpreters. On their websites and in meetings, representatives from NAV present sign language interpreting as a service intended to assist deaf people in their participation in work, education, and everyday life. The Norwegian Association of the Deaf emphasises the importance of sign language interpreting services for equal access and participation for all. The sign language interpreter study programmes in Norway and the Norwegian Association of Sign Language Interpreters highlight interpreters’ competencies in providing impartial and equivalent interpreting services. These partially overlapping, yet diverse views on interpreters’ overarching mandates sparked the research project The Interpreter in the Welfare State (2015–2017). One aim of this project was to explore how sign language interpreters view their own profession in a context where they provide a service on behalf of NAV while being defined professionally by a (perceived) impartiality with regard to the primary participants in interpreted dialogue—which is also the topic of this article.

4.1 Data collection

After receiving approval from the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD 47713), I sent a request to the regional offices for sign language interpreting provision and the Association of Sign Language Interpreters to distribute an invitation for participation in the project. About 25 interpreters contacted me either to ask for more information or to express their interest in sharing their experiences with me. In the final selection of informants, I aimed to achieve diversity as regards how long they had worked as interpreters, whether they were freelance or employed interpreters, and which regional office they were affiliated to.⁶

The 10 informants I interviewed worked for or with three different centres for assistive technology in both urban and rural areas, and I also visited these centres as part of the data collection process. Nine of the interviewed interpreters were women, which also reflects the general gender imbalance in the sign language interpreting service profession. Some had also worked as advisors in NAV and as coordinators of sign language interpreting services and brought up issues from these experiences during our conversations. The interviews lasted from about 45 min to more than 2 hr. Excerpts from six of the interviews are included in this article. These were chosen as they were considered to most clearly illuminate the different views and understandings of interpreters’ professional practice and work tasks (see Reime, 2016, for a similar approach to the presentation of data). All translations into English from the Norwegian transcripts (of the interviews) and the written documents (legal documents, reports, and consultative statements) are mine. The interviews were conducted in Norwegian sign language, video recorded, and then erased after they had been transcribed, as requested in the research permit from the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. All names are fictional, and I have consciously omitted which regional office the informants work for as this would pose a risk of identification. In the interviews, we did not discuss the interpreting process or professional discretion over language-related issues but instead talked about how the interpreters prepare for an assignment, their presentation of self (Llewellyn-Jones & Lee, 2014) in interpreted situations, and their choices with regard to informing primary participants about, or facilitating, sign language interpreting services in general.

5. What are sign language interpreters’ responsibilities?

The views on interpreting expressed by NAV and the Association of Sign Language Interpreters contextualised our conversations and the subsequent analysis. The various views on sign language interpreting presented above were quite apparent among the interpreters. The obligation to inform primary participants about NAV’s services (cf. the general duty to give guidance with NAV) was a topic that frequently came up during the interviews. However, the interpreters were not uniform in their attitude to this duty nor how they related to it during assignments.

5.1 Identification with the service organisation

A newly educated freelance interpreter (with less than 3 years’ experience as an interpreter after graduation) described an assignment at a workplace where the frustration level among the participants in the interpreted event was high. The issue of haltering communication was a recurring issue at the workplace, and the deaf employee was reluctant to cooperate during the meeting. The interpreter describes what happened after a time-out at the meeting:

My co-interpreter took charge, and she asked the deaf user if she could say something. The deaf man said yes, and she raised her hand. Then she said that NAV could provide sign language interpreters at no cost for the employer and explained how the sign language interpreting service worked. First, I was surprised that she could say that much during an assignment, but I also realized it actually worked to solve a situation with so many communication barriers. So the interpreter role is not only about language, translation, and culture. It is also about explaining what opportunities NAV can provide. (Adrian)

The Norwegian sign language interpreters’ professional code of ethics contains a paragraph stating that interpreters may inform participants in an interpreted event about how communication via an interpreter can work, if she or he considers it necessary (Tolkeforbundet, 2017b). When Adrian’s colleague provided information about NAV’s interpreting services, she did not violate this paragraph, but Adrian’s reaction reveals that the issue about when to provide information, and about what information to provide, can indeed be a contested issue for interpreters who are expected not to interfere in the interpreted situation.

An interpreter in a permanent position said that she may use information from an interpreted event to support the interpreter coordinators at the regional sign language interpreting services office:

It may be that I, as an interpreter, learn during an assignment that there will be a lawsuit. Then I can tell the coordinator who is responsible for that area a few things they may need to know when they are going to arrange interpreters for that assignment later. (Mette)

In these two cases, the interpreters use their affiliation to NAV and knowledge about specific situations in which they had interpreted to provide information about the interpreting services or facilitate a future interpreting assignment. Another example of how interpreters use their affiliation to NAV as motivation to provide information is when an interpreter observes that the deaf primary participant does not understand what is happening in the situation. One interpreter gave an example from a meeting of how she had used previous discussions with colleagues to support her in her decision to speak out:

At that meeting, we said that we didn’t know the case well, and that it had been difficult to interpret here today, and that we were uncertain of whether he had understood. To do something like that, to speak out about this, is something I have learned from colleagues through discussions and workshops on professional discretion. And then I’ve got some kind of consensus that if we experience such a situation, we cannot simply sit there and watch if someone really doesn’t understand. But then, there is the question of how we should speak out, and in what manner. (Tove)

Tove, who sometimes takes assignments in sheltered workshops where deaf people receive vocational rehabilitation, reveals the potential difficulties of whether, and if so how, they should speak out about a problematic situation, and that it is not a given that they should do so. At the same time, she seems to adhere to the duty to provide information as an NAV employee but stresses that she does not speak out or provide information during an assignment:

In situations where I am an interpreter, there is also quite a bit of counseling, guidance, also about how to use an interpreter. The others may be insecure, and I know I have a lot of knowledge. So, not exactly when I do interpreting, but afterwards, I can tell them about the expertise that is available. (Tove)

In other words, she does not provide information during the conversation but says that she can use the information obtained during the interpreted dialogue to consider whether to inform them about what services NAV can assist them with.

Another informant expressed a similar view, revealing a fairly proactive position towards the duty to provide information about NAV’s services:

I have an obligation to provide information. For example, if an employment adviser meets a deaf job seeker for the first time, for example at a sheltered workshop, has the adviser used an interpreter before? I have to think about this ahead. Like, what does the adviser know about using interpreters? (Aina)

The same interpreter also explains her obligation to provide information to a deaf client if she considers it necessary:

A deaf woman could be struggling to find a new job. Hearing people may be skeptical. Then I might think we have the knowledge; we have information, and we can tell her about the knowledge NAV has about hearing technologies. I don’t have this knowledge, but I’m a representative of the division of assistive technology at NAV. And I have a responsibility as that representative. (Aina)

Both Aina and Tove seem to consider the duty or expectation to provide information or guidance about NAV’s services to be part of their professional conduct. Their position also fits well with the Norwegian legal definition of sign language interpreting: That deaf and deaf-blind people are entitled to interpreting services to enhance functioning in everyday or work life and that sign language interpreting may be one possible measure to achieve this goal (cf. information about the assistive technology service provided by NAV; Hjort, 2011; Sund, 2017). Tove and Aina explain that interpreters may build and possess knowledge about deaf people and that they can use this knowledge to enhance NAV’s capacity to assist deaf people. However, they only to a limited degree problematize their actions with reference to the interpreters’ professional code of ethics and the impartiality principle. So while all four interpreters described above in one way or another talk about how interpreters could provide information, there also seems to be a difference between the content of the information they believe they can disclose. Adrian and Mette talk about information that directly affects the interpreted situation or access to interpreting services, while Aina and Tove also include information about the services NAV can provide in their potential information repertoire.

In sectors where the use of interpreters is subject to legal regulation (often immigration authorities, health care, or legal services), Mason and Ren (2014) also argue that it is not inconceivable that interpreters who work for service institutions eventually also develop an identification with these institutions. In a study of sign language interpreting management, Woll (2016) highlights a difference, in terms of integration and identification with the service organisation, between those interpreters with permanent positions at NAV and those who only take on freelance assignments. Aina and Tove are permanent employees and the quotes indicate quite a strong identification with the expectation that NAV’s employees should provide information about its services. This is also an example of Inghilleri’s (2012) assertion that the different institutions interpreters work for or within play a part in the interpreter’s ethical practice or reasoning, despite the claim of interpreters’ impartiality with regard to the interlocutors. It seems that the permanently employed interpreters who have been interviewed for this project consider themselves to be representatives of NAV and use their affiliation to justify their assessments and the information they sometimes choose to disclose. By providing information about NAV’s services, they implicitly also mediate deaf and hard of hearing citizens’ constitutional relationship to the state. This is an example of an action that consolidates sign language interpreters as street-level bureaucrats who “socialize citizens to expectations of government services and a place in the political community” (Lipsky, 2010, p. 4). NAV is responsible for enhancing the functioning of deaf and hard of hearing citizens, and sign language interpreters are among the professionals who are expected to achieve this through their work.

While some interpreters, in particular those informants who were permanently employed, expressed loyalty to NAV’s mandate and view of sign language interpreters, other informants, in particular those who are freelance interpreters, expressed more concern about NAV’s expectation that they should also provide information about its services. Some of these views will be presented in the next section.

5.2 The impartial interpreter—A language professional

Grete is a freelance sign language interpreter who emphasises her impartiality when referring to the discussion about the interpreter’s work tasks. She directly comments on NAV’s statement about the interpreter’s work competencies:

. . . what is most important is that people know that the interpreter is impartial. We do not get involved in the situation. We are interpreters, that’s all. Then we leave. If we lose that confidence, the interpreting won’t work. Many may consider it quite innocent to provide some information, to reveal what we think might work for you at your workplace. But then, if we do that, we are confessing that, “Yes, I do interpret for you, but I also make an assessment.” (Grete)

Grete is referring to the impartial language professional and sign language interpreters’ professional code of ethics and reveals how this motivates her professional decisions. Anne, another interpreter, explains how she always has to use her professional discretion before and during an assignment:

I think we always use our professional discretion. We start thinking once we get an assignment. How to solve it. Is it a meeting where the participants are used to interpreters? Or are there participants who have never used interpreters before? Then it becomes a bit more uncertain. It could be that you have to talk a bit in advance, but if it’s a meeting where everyone is used to interpreters, you can just enter and then leave, in a way. (Anne)

This is similar to Aina’s comments and concerns above, regarding whether the primary participants need to know (more) about interpreting before an interpreted event, but Anne also expresses more concern over the kind of information she can give or preparations she can make. Uncertainty as to whether the participants are familiar with interpreting does not seem to give her a carte blanche to intervene, but it could be the case that she talked a bit to the participants in advance about interpreting. She appears to make this judgement with reference to the professional code of ethics, and not as an expectation imposed on her by NAV as her employer. Anne mostly interprets at a workplace with several deaf employees, but frequently co-interprets with sign language interpreters who are permanently employed by NAV. Her observations indicate that also other interpreters are aware of the kind of reasoning conveyed by Aina and Tove. Anne talks about differences between her and some of the NAV interpreters she works with:

My feeling is that when I sometimes co-interpret with interpreters from NAV, those interpreters are more connected to the NAV system, they represent NAV. There’s something about NAV and their overriding objective for this and that. This is something the interpreters take with them when they work. That is something different from what we do. (Anne)

In another sequence of the interview, Anne talks about an episode where another interpreter from NAV insisted that the interpreters should speak out about the lack of access for deaf people during an assignment, but she had disagreed:

In such situations, I think you in particular should not do that much in that situation. You can do something in advance. But who should I contact? Should I contact the hearing work manager? And tell them? Or the deaf person? That would almost be like I’m gossiping. Then, it’s better if the deaf person speaks out about what he needs. But as an interpreter, I don’t want to say something about the deaf person. No. It’s about what role we have. And what role we take. (Anne)

When I asked her whether there was a difference between “the role we have and what role we take,” Anne responded,

Yes. The role I have, that is my profession. But then I might, I could take some more responsibility, I could take this “I know this” attitude. I know a lot about communication, but then I’m not there as an interpreter. Then, I’ll be there as a person who knows a lot about communication. It’s important to separate these. (Anne)

Here, Anne contradicts the position that Aina and Tove express, saying her knowledge about communication is not something that she should use for anything other than interpreting. Anne is a senior interpreter with almost 30 years of experience as a sign language interpreter. When I asked her if she thought that the sign language interpreting profession had changed from when she had started to interpret in the late 1980s, she responded,

It has been positive, but at the same time, if you compare it to the interpreting ethics and the updated codes of ethics, there has been like a pendulum that has swung back a bit—to the old helper role. I don’t like it. (Anne).

Grete (who has more than 20 years of experience) is also critical to the development, and during a discussion of how she had experienced being an employee at NAV, and why she had quit her permanent position and become a freelancer, she said,

I feel that one reason was that the interpreting services are under the division of assistive technology, which doesn’t know anything about interpreting. That gives quite a different direction. Their focus is on assistive technology, rehabilitation, and we have language as our field, which is something totally different. (Grete)

Both Anne and Grete emphasise needing to make a series of professional decisions but that these are motivated by the need to stay impartial, and not by reference to their organisational affiliation.

6. Discussion: Who are the interpreters there for?

The interviews reveal that what motivates the sign language interpreters’ decisions differs. For some interpreters, the service organisation’s expectations towards their employees have a fair amount of influence on their professional reasoning and how they perceive the agency they have, whether they adhere to these expectations or explicitly oppose them in their reasoning. If we consider sign language interpreters to be street-level bureaucrats, their management of the mandate assigned to them by NAV is also an example of how sign language interpreters “may be understood to ‘make’ the policies they are otherwise charged with implementing” (Lipsky, 2010, p. xx). This is not unexpected, however, as it is conceivable that professionals (including interpreters) working for or within an organisation will come to be associated with this institution, and these organisations are also likely to influence the professionals’ occupations (Evetts, 2010; Freidson, 2001; Inghilleri, 2012; Mason & Ren, 2014). In any case, the interpreters have agency as street-level bureaucrats or as professionals working on behalf of an institution or organisation to provide sign language interpreting services but the interviews show that the performance of this institutional agency differs.

The informants seem to have one common feature, however, regardless of their identification with (or opposition to) NAV’s ideas about sign language interpreting. Most of them seem to be more aligned with the deaf primary participants, that is, whether the deaf primary participants understand, have sufficient information, and whether their needs are met, and show less emphasis on the needs and positions of the hearing primary participants. To the extent they disclose information to non-deaf people, it is about giving hearing professionals information the interpreter considers she or he needs, so they can provide better services for deaf people. Given the historical, moral, and linguistic bonds between sign language interpreters and deaf people (Cokely, 2005; Gile & Napier, 2020; Haualand, 2018; Lundström, n.d.; Woll, 1999), and that deaf people are often considered vulnerable participants, especially in encounters with service professionals, the interpreters’ focus on the deaf participants is not necessarily controversial. The interviews presented in this article have revealed that interpreters can include the service organisations’ goals in the assessments they make when interpreting, or oppose them, but the legislative and normative systems that often tie interpreting services to the deaf primary participants contextualise their professional reasoning. Gile and Napier (2020) indicate that more attention is given to relationships with deaf people in the field of sign language interpreting, which sometimes leads to neglect of the fact that “signed language interpreters work with both deaf and hearing people” (Gile & Napier, 2020, p. 65). Their comment also implicitly refers to what is considered a distinctive mark for interpreters: the expectation that they will act in a way that maintains an impartial position with regard to all participants in an interpreted event.

The ambiguity or discussions about their agency expressed by the informants confirms Inghilleri’s (2012, p. 71) observation that “despite the claim of interpreters’ neutrality with regard to the institutional contexts in which they perform their role, different institutions and their accompanying role moralities can play a part in the development and management of interpreters’ ethical practice.” To stay impartial, the interpreter must make a series of decisions, and these decisions cannot be indifferent or neutral vis-à-vis the interpreted situation (Metzger, 1999; Wadensjö, 1998; Wilcox & Shaffer, 2005). The interpreters’ reasoning confirms the observations of Inghilleri (2004, p. 73) in that how and in which ways interpreters work are

influenced by the social and political contexts in which both their work and the training that may inform their professional practice occurs. It maintains that interpreters—though not unreflexively—are caught up in larger social configurations of power and control, both internal and external to their professional field of practice.

As a typical example of a legal-bureaucratic organisation (see also Freidson, 2001), NAV expresses the view that sign language interpreters are part of NAV’s work to enhance functioning and that sign language interpreters have competencies that should be used beyond only providing sign language interpreting services (Hjort, 2011). This is an example of how a bureaucratic organisation may revise and reconstitute the jobs and work tasks within the organisation, and by this also blur the distinctions between the professional groups working within the organisation (Freidson, 2001).

Being part of a service organisation like NAV need not be an obstacle to, or alter, the interpreters’ professionalism. However, the networks of power relations that embed the interpreters’ work can certainly influence their relationship to and identification with the institutions or groups of people they continuously relate to. These observations are similar to those put forth by Angelelli (2004), Davidson (2001), Inghilleri (2004, 2006, 2012), and Mason and Ren (2014) with regard to interpreters, and also by Freidson (2001) with regard to professionals working for bureaucratic organisations in general. The excerpts from interviews with Norwegian sign language interpreters reveal that the institutionalised expectation to “enhance functioning” as well as their affiliation with NAV indeed contextualises the interpreters’ reflections on their agency and responsibilities as interpreters.

7. Concluding remarks: A profession in peril?

NAV’s revelations about its vision for sign language interpreting services leads to a matter of concern: Could the impartiality and continued professionalisation of sign language interpreters be threatened? This is also something in particular Anne was concerned about. If interpreters’ professional code of ethics and the principle of impartiality also impose a demarcation on the interpreters’ professionalism, one can reason that interpreters should not express any identification or association with, or representation of, any of the primary participants, or with the organisation that organises the services or provides them with their salary. If, however, the general duty to give guidance puts an expectation on the interpreters to use their knowledge in an interdisciplinary approach to deaf people, and interpreters use their affiliation as a rationale to inform the participants about NAV’s services, it is difficult to see how the sign language interpreters will not be considered representatives of NAV who make assessments of the primary participants (cf. Grete’s concern above), rather than impartial language professionals. If impartiality at the same time is what distinguishes professional interpreting (compared with other professions; Skaaden, 2019), and the sign language interpreters in NAV are deprived of their impartiality when their professional agency is extended through an external mandate or internalised obligation to inform primary participants about NAV’s services, there may be reason to discuss whether, and if so how, sign language interpreting can remain a distinct professional occupation in NAV.

As the ability to pursue (an impression of) impartiality is part and parcel to the legitimacy of interpreters, any demands on interpreters that they should use the knowledge they obtain during assignments to perform actions as a representative of an organisation, or with a goal to enhance functioning, could be considered a process of deprofessionalization. If the institution surrounding sign language interpreters fails to support their professional identity as impartial language workers, sign language interpreters, like other professionals, may experience that “only the most heroic individual can actively concern themselves with the ethical issues raised by their work” (Freidson, 2001, p. 12). NAV’s description of sign language interpreting is not the same as the description put forth in the national association of sign language interpreters’ professional code of ethics. There is currently a lack of explicit discussion and consciousness over how this affiliation affects sign language interpreting as an impartial professional occupation. An exception is Skaten’s (2015) concerns over NAV’s discussion and definition of sign language interpreting services. The interpreters’ reflections on their obligation to provide information and NAV’s common goal to “enhance functioning” indicate that the professional status of Norwegian sign language interpreters as impartial language workers may be in peril.

When writing this article, I have adhered to Abbott’s (1988, p. 81) statement that to “say a profession exists is to make it one,” and I have also followed Freidson (2001) in the assumption that a division of labour and professional logics are crucial to maintain the distinct professionalism of interpreters as impartial language workers. The issues raised in this article, which should be of particular concern to the sign language interpreting profession in Norway, could also be discussed among sign language interpreters in general, as disability legislation typically frames their work, regardless of country or service organisation. Norwegian sign language interpreters, like most sign language interpreters worldwide, are legally associated with deaf people and sign languages, and it is difficult to see how the interpreters’ work can be legitimised without a moral inclination towards the needs and requests of deaf people, or the less powerful individuals for whom they work (Gile & Napier, 2020; Inghilleri, 2012). The case presented in this article, however, has revealed that without a conscious and continuous discussion on the tension between being impartial language workers while also being institutionally and legally affiliated with one side in an interpreted event, interpreters may be caught in a process where they (and deaf people) lose control and possession over the continued professionalisation of sign language interpreting, and the profession is reverted to the role of deaf peoples’ “helpers.”

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Hilde Haualand

Notes

Biography

Hilde Haualand is a professor at the Department of International Studies and Interpreting at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway, where she is a member of the research group Interpreting, Language and Communication. Her publications include articles on sign language interpreters and professionalism; sign language interpreting services and the impact on service provisions; the politics of video interpreting, disability, identity, and marginalisation; deaf people and transnational connections; and sign language ideologies. She is also co-editor of the book Tolking—språkarbeid og profesjonsutøvelse [Interpreting—language work and professional practice] (2018).

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