In my opinion, interpreting agencies need to start being held accountable for their ethics and standards. We don’t ignore subpar practices by interpreters and so it shouldn’t be any less with agencies that dispatch the interpreters.

Business is business with the business of making money. I get that. And yes, if a business doesn’t meet the needs of the consumers then the consumer goes elsewhere. That’s a fact. However, in this scenario this is not a restaurant manager looking for the cheapest wholesale price on rice. In part, the consumer of the business is requesting a specific product: the interpreter. Not just ANY INTERPRETER but a SPECIFIC interpreter who, per the email from the interpreting agency, fits the criteria of the agency. So why not just send the interpreter for the “coveted” job? Well, we’ve all hashed this out so here I digress.

In the scenario it reads there is a contract between the interlreting agency and the Fortune 500 company. Given the ultimate outcome of the scenario it appears the agency was in its right not to hire the interpreter without reprisal from the Fortune 500 company during the current contract. However, I wonder if this would all be worth it to the agency if the Fortune 500 company went elsewhere for services when the contract comes up for renewal? In the end it doesn’t matter and again I digress.

Here’s what matters: just as we can not accept interpreters with subpar standards we can not accept agencies with subpar standards. Trudy Suggs mentions in her recent article on deaf disempowerment, “when people make money off deaf people, deaf culture, and ASL, this can easily lead to disempowerment and have ripple effects.”

The author of this article poses the following questions:
1) Do you believe this is a rare occurrence, or does our profession still deal with individuals and agencies conducting themselves in this manner?

2) How can we, as a profession and as individuals within the profession, move toward preventing this from happening in the future?

My response: Sadly, more and more I observe or hear of these ripple effects. I see and hear of interpreting agencies being strictly out for money and without concern for the actual purpose – equal access to communication. I witness “interpreters” (notice the quotes) that have no business interpreting certain assignments yet they’ve been deployed by interpreting agencies making bank off of the assignment because of not having to pay the “interpreter” the going rate. (Yes, the interpreter has a responsibility to decline the assignment…not point)

What can we do? As allies we need to partner with the Deaf community and partner with ourselves. Over the years, I’ve read in various articles and heard the dialogue at national & regional conferences on the thought of a certain criteria being set for interpreting agencies to become RID members at the organization level. It seems from the posts I’ve read by agency owners/managers this is already in practice.

This makes me slightly calmer.

Then we, along with RID, support those agencies that comply with expected ethics and standards to send the message: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Otherwise the agencies answer to no one, “coveted” events remain coveted and the ripple effect continues.

1. As a manager of an interpreting agency I am required to agree to adhere to the CPC on behalf of the agency every year when I renew our organizational membership. I take this seriously and believe it is the CPC for the agency as well as for myself as a working interpreter. Still, I would like to see something codified for agencies. Then the problem remains that most agencies, in this area at least, are not members of RID. Even a CPC for agencies can’t be forced on non-member agencies. RID has seen a decrease in organizational membership since they stopped giving them away to CMP sponsors and testing sites.

2. It amazes me that any agency would refuse to send an interpreter that is requested for an assignment. I think those are the easiest assignments there are to fill. If the individual requested doesn’t already contract with our agency, I reach out to them. I have two new contractors on board now thanks to the request of one deaf individual and an interpreter who requested another interpreter as her team. I don’t understand why anyone would intentionally create a situation where your customers are not satisfied. They will take their business elsewhere.

3. I too was replaced by an agency owner on an interpreting assignment. It was an in patient mental health setting so I don’t think she took me out of the assignment because of the visibility she would gain by replacing me. In essence she had recently gotten the husband of a friend to switch the hospital’s interpreting services to her agency from a competitor. Since I had been performing services through the other agency she didn’t want me there through her agency even though I did contract with her agency at that time.

I heard nothing more about the situation and considered the assignment to have ended. I knew of the contract change, but didn’t learn the rest of the story until much later.

Eventually the hospital got fed up with her inability to understand the deaf patient and his inability to understand her. They called the agency, not realizing she was the owner, and asked that I replace her at the hospital. Apparently they were told I had moved out of town, which was news to me.

Ultimately, the hospital so upset with the quality of services they were receiving and the behaviors of the deaf person that they went back to the original agency. The first day I was back at the hospital for an assignment I was greeted with, “Oh wonderful! When did you move back to Rochester?” Not being aware of what had transpired I innocently said, “I never left. Who told you that?”

Now you might think that is the end of the story, but it is not. The other agency owner went back to her friend’s husband to complain that she had been replaced at the hospital. The friend’s husband went to the unit director and told him that they would use the agency he told them to use. He forced them to terminate services again with their preferred agency.

The story goes on, but I think you get the point. This practice happens with unethical agencies, that fact that the original post was about a high profile situation was almost moot in my mind as I was reading.

I agree with those of you who posted that the only recourse we have is to not work with the type of agency mentioned in the original post. Will that change the agencies’ behavior? Probably not, but at the end of each day I have to go home with myself. I want to be happy with my own actions during each day. I cannot control other people, I can’t change other people. I often times can’t control much more than my own attitude. And karma does suck.

As several have mentioned in above comments, interpreters do influence the reputation of an agency. Do not work for agencies that do not use best practices, or that place unqualified interpreters. If they have no interpreters to place, or their reputation gets bad enough, they may eventually go out of business altogether. Work for and promote agencies that are striving to do what’s right.

The work of interpreting and coordinating such services is, in my opinion, always about what is best for the client and consumer. And while agencies are businesses and need to operate as such, operating out of self interest of the business or the owner is never a viable model. Be assured that not all agencies operate as described in this scenario. Certifying agencies, while something I totally agree with, will not completely eliminate these types of practices.

It is unfortunate that greed and ego get in the way of doing good work.

Most large buyers (universities, states, the Federal government, hospital systems, etc) use procurement contracts that involve a competitive bidding process. It would take a little education and maybe a little stakeholder pressure to induce these buyers to add a condition that the agency must be accredited (and maintain their accreditation) by the RID.

That accreditation process would include a code of professional conduct.

CODATERP22: you just write whatever article you want on a word doc (prevents any major typos and allows you to edit) to Brandon Arthur from StreetLeverage. He will work with you to edit, etc. I’m glad I did it. Although there are answers to some of the questions being posed, I have promised to honor confidentiality on some of them, so I can’t clarify everything. It would explain LOTS here. The main point: agency accountability, and that came through, based on what I’ve read.

Have a great day.

Thank you for posting.