Opinion|Reader’s opinion
In crisis situations, a professional interpreter must be used.
Ukraine The war will bring new refugees to Finland, whose interpreters will be needed. However, there is a severe shortage of interpreters in Ukrainian. One should not succumb to thinking that anyone who speaks the language would go to an interpreter to make up for the shortage.
The work of an interpreter is a demanding profession. It is not just language skills, but the technical work and the internalisation of professional ethics are central to the work. The interpreter must master the foreign language, its culture and society, as well as Finnish or Swedish, know how our Finnish society works and know our authority process.
The professional status of in-house interpreters is not recognized by law, and the authorities are not obliged to use registered legal interpreters or other trained professional interpreters. It is easy for the industry to come to test the adequacy of their own language skills, which the Finnish Immigration Service, for example, experienced bitterly during the previous refugee crisis. Thus, authorities can end up working with an incompetent, outright incompetent interpreter.
When interpretation does not work, the services provided by the organizations do not fulfill their function either: the person in charge of the administration does not receive the services properly and the authority cannot perform its task effectively.
Professional interpretation promotes equality of people and access to services, improves legal certainty for all parties, promotes good governance and saves time and financial resources.
Finland now needs better opportunities to use and find professional interpreters at the latest. One way to do this would be to regulate the profession by law. A comprehensive register of interpreters makes professional interpreters available to clients.
Hanna Gorschelnik
Executive Director, Language Experts Association
Jenni Kavén
va. Executive Director, Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters
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