Values-based Ethics for Interpreter delivered by Paul Belmonte - FREE AND NOW OPEN TO NON MSC MEMEBERS 

As professional interpreters, we know we cannot afford to be rigid when applying our ethical frameworks to daily decision making. We have rules that we follow, but when faced with a dilemma, the mantra we often quote is, “It depends!” However, ‘it depends’ does not add clarity or transparency to our decision-making process. Is there a better way to articulate our ethical thinking, while allowing for us to make different decisions in various situations?

The workshop will help us to deconstruct our ethical frameworks and rebuild them on a more robust foundation. It will help us to explain our decisions when our ethical values come into conflict, making those decisions more methodical both to ourselves and to those we work with.

Session one will explore:

• potential problems with our current ethical approaches
• the personal values that we bring to the interpreting arena
• the evolution of the interpreting profession, while identifying and preserving the underlying values underpinning that evolution.

Session two will review the values generated from session one, then further discussion will add the ideals held by the other partners in our work. We will then move into a practical session where these values can be applied to real interpreting situations. We will see how these values can come into conflict and create a more transparent and methodical way of resolving those conflicts as we come to well-judged decisions. We will use the mixing desk model to find ethical solutions that give the best possible outcomes to a range of scenarios.

Through this review of up-to-date ethical frameworks and discussion with our colleagues, we aim to move forward with a system of ethics that is more robust and transparent, as well as being nuanced and flexible as we meet the needs of a modern profession.