Nine Questions to Ask When Hiring Interpreters
Hiring qualified interpreters is a challenge at best. Here are nine crucial questions to ask to help you when interviewing interpreters:
- How would you determine the language needs of the consumer you are about to work with?
- Describe a time when a consumer for whom you were interpreting made an unreasonable request of you. What were the circumstances? How did you handle the situation?
- Describe an interpretation experience where you felt you had insight into a matter that no one else seemed to notice. What did you do about it?
- What tools do you bring to an interpreting assignment to make sure you are prepared?
- As an interpreter, do you consider yourself part of a team? As a team member would you provide information to other members of the team that could help them perform their jobs?
- Specifically describe your knowledge of the various culture within the Latino community. (Insert any appropriate group as needed.) Describe your knowledge of deaf culture.
- As an on-staff interpreter, you receive a call from a deaf patient. The patient complains that a company representative was rude to her at a recent appointment. She feels he was abrupt and short, and discriminating against her because she is deaf. How do you respond?
- You are interpreting for an appointment where the company representative is running behind. The client only speaks Spanish. Her bilingual husband is in the room during the meeting. When it comes time for the conversation, the husband answers for the client without giving you time to interpret, and the company representative acts upon those answers. What do you do?
- Suppose you are in a situation and the client says, "I don't want you as my interpreter." What do you do?
-- Excerpted from Customer Relationship Management, "Building an Interpretive Services Area," Yasiri, Jeanan (1998) Vol. 3, #1, p. 13.
