What can a code of ethics do for you, and how can it help you in your interpreting work?

These were questions that were asked of a panel gathered by Multilingual Corporation, on April 10th, and Julia was asked to be part of that panel!

Julia was the only speaker who was not a representative of an interpreter’s association or an LSP, and spoke as an individual freelance interpreter.

Here is the link to the entire panel discussion; Julia’s portion starts at 1:14:05.

Here is the transcript to what she said:

Thank you for having me!

And it’s a great honor to be a member of this panel. I would have attended this entire event, even without being a panel member, it’s been so interesting! I seem to be one of the only ones here representing myself, and freelancers in general I guess, and those who also came through my hads and KYW as well, because I did turn to my Know Your Worth community to get a few tips on what I might tell you today.

So what I’ll talk about is the very practical side of codes of ethics. And in my view, a code of ethics – especially among freelancers – is what separates the professionals from the amateurs. It shows that you actually take your profession seriously.

For example, for me, of course since I’m a member of AIIC, I abide by the AIIC Code of Ethics, and I use that quite a bit in my work. But I even pointed to it when I wasn’t a member of AIIC, for a couple of reasons:

First of all, I truly believe in what AIIC stood for, and this was a practical way of showing it. And I was pretty much the only one among my colleagues who had ever heard that there was a code of ethics for interpreters.
Having a code of ethics – and recommended working conditions – from a larger association is something you can point to as an individual freelancer. So if your client is trying to ask you to do something that you feel is unethical or that you feel is just completely wrong, you can point to these codes of ethics that belong to these larger associations and say, “Look, it’s not just me. It’s a large group of people that says that this is wrong.”
And really, codes of ethics – as we just heard from Janis – is a good way of familiarizing yourself with a new-to-you area of work. When I first started working as a court interpreter back when I lived in Washington, DC, really we didn’t have a lot of criteria there, and with Russian there wasn’t even a test other than the one I used to get into the State Department. So what I did was look at the codes of ethics for legal interpreting, for court interpreting, and for the various associations, so that I could find out how to behave professionally.

So, in my case, what I have is a personal code of ethics. And I think that that personal code of ethics helps you to stand out among your colleagues. Let me give you an example:

If I commit to doing a one-day job for a client who knows, likes and trusts me, and then another of my clients who also knows, likes and trusts me comes and offers me 5 days, I will stick with that 1-day job because I made that commitment. And to the second client I’ll say, “Look, let’s work around it, if you wish to, or I can recommend somebody to you. But the way that I’m sticking with what I obligated myself to with this first client is exactly what I would do for you if you came along firstand somebody offered me a longer job.” So it’s one way of making sure your clients know, like and trust you.

So I turned to my Know Your Worth community and asked them if they had personal codes of ethics, things that they followed that were not written down by associations that they might belong to. And they broke down into 2 categories:

The first category is the behavior “on the job” or “in the booth.”
- Be on time, or really, early.
- Stick around to help your partner (and don’t zone out)
- Stick around to listen, and to incorporate your partner’s vocabulary, so you are presenting a united front.
- Prepare well so you know what is going on and can help your colleague
- Don’t steal clients
- Don’t head out shopping for an hour or so, and then come back saying “It’s your turn now!”
Whom to work for.
- Many of my colleagues emphasized that they wouldn’t work for people or organizations whose values don’t align with their own.
  - So no working for far right wing parties for example, or for businesses that promote unhealthy behaviors or animal testing.
    - Obviously, this doesn’t mean that if an unannounced speaker from a far right party, for example, ends up taking the floor at a meeting you have agreed to interpret at

Another area where a universal code of ethics would come in handy is in remote interpreting. Since practitioners are so scattered around the world, and are not all members of a single association. Which means that you can find people ready to:

Work overlapping jobs,
Work alone for ages
Working for fees that are not a living wage, just to get the job

But we are all so happy to have work, or so scattered so there is no centralized information available, that we end up taking things online that we would never do in person.

And even if we were to extend a code of ethics, like for example AIIC’s code of ethics, to remote work, the other interpreters won’t necessarily be following it, so you end up with a situation where the person behaving ethically ends up bearing the burden of most of the work because the interpreter who is not behaving ethically, who is taking overlapping jobs or simultaneous jobs, obviously can’t show up on time for either of the jobs…

So remote interpreting seems to be a fertile ground to promote a good code of ethics to!

There are a couple of things on the negative side about having and working to a code of ethics.

You can’t really police them. As Christiane said. And even more so if you are an individual with a personal code. You can only see consequences in how your colleagues and your clients treat you afterwards.
Having a code of ethics can hit your bottom line. You won’t be the one taking overlapping jobs, thus earning more. You won’t work alone, so may lose that job. Etc. etc. etc.

On the other hand, your clients will know you, like you and trust you, rehire you, and refer you. And I can ask for what I consider to be an appropriate fee, so I don’t have to work overlapping jobs.

That’s it for me! Thank you again for having me.

If you are interested in this topic, Julia has been invited to give a webinar on Ethics in Remote Simultaneous Interpreting for the American Translators Association, on 10 May 2023. Keep an eye out for the announcements!

January 10, 2023 by kywseminar

New Edition of the Smart Consecutive Interpreting class

After having started the Smart Consecutive Interpreting class in person in Kyiv a few years ago, we’ve now moved to an online format.

We held our first online class last December, and it was a great success!

So, we’re going to do it again! 😁

Announcing:

Know Your Worth presents Smart Consecutive Interpreting

February 25-26, 2023 online

⭐ Saturday 25 Feb, 10am-12pm ET / 16:00-18:00 CET Module 1 – Thinking

⭐ Saturday 25 Feb, 2pm-4pm ET / 20:00-22:00 CET Module 2 – Memory

⭐ Sunday 26 Feb, 10am-12pm ET / 16:00-18:00 CET Module 3 – Mechanics

⭐ Sunday 26 Feb, 2pm-4pm ET / 20:00-22:00 CET Module 4 – Note Taking

😟 Have you ever worried that your speaker will go on too long?
😟 Have you ever blanked on what your notes mean in the middle of a speech?
😟 Have you ever become confused, and didn’t know how the speech fits together?

This two-day online course will give you all the tools to be able to successfully interpret consecutively for any audience, for any length of time, comfortably and with confidence.

What you will learn:

On the first day, we will start by understanding the thinking and analysis underlying any interpretation, and how it can help you to follow any speech.

On the second day, we will move to all that goes specifically into consecutive interpreting.

By the end of the course, you will be able to interpret increasingly lengthy interventions using memory, analysis, and notes.

Course format:

The course includes lecture, demonstrations and some exercises, small group work, and practice.

Training is in English, and is not language-specific.

Who may come: practicing interpreters who wish to improve their consecutive interpreting skills, as well as graduates from interpreting courses at any university or training center.

Fees: 275.00 euros payable upon registration

Please note that your place is only guaranteed following receipt of payment.

To register, please write here.

September 3, 2022 by kywseminar

Announcing our first seminar of the Autumn!

KYW Community Blog

It’s September, and a chance for us to re-start our year after having recharged our batteries this summer!

With an eye to giving you new tools to understand how to manage your business, we are offering the Know Your Worth Online Seminar on Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters.

At the last edition of our taster, just last month, one interpreter was able to immediately use one of the negotiating tips, and has since changed her pricing policy. She herself says, “Now I am a more confident, more successful and happier interpreter.“

Our next edition will be held September 24-25, with two 2-hour modules per day, timed for Europe and points East (unless you are a supremely early riser!). We are very much looking forward to working with you so you also become a more confident, more successful and happier interpreter!

For more details, please see here. To register, please go here.

September 20, 2021September 20, 2021 by kywseminar

Confinement Chronicles. Chapter 2. Looking back

Lockdown happened so quickly – and in the Fall of 2021 we aren’t fully out of the woods yet!

This photo shows the beginning of 2020. KYW had been to 5 countries (plus our staff were in still other countries for other meetings) all before mid-March, and then boom! 💣

Or should I say Zoom! 🤯

As of March 2020, Know Your Worth seminars pivoted online, targeting what we as freelance interpreters could do to keep earning money when both we AND our clients were scared about the future.

We have run online seminars since April.

Our community started meeting regularly on Zoom, both to keep in touch and to help each other out by exchanging ideas and information. And we’re still going!

We even have a Whatsapp group for the hardy few who want to stay in closer touch!

We’ve all become even more supportive of each other through thick and thin, on multiple platforms. In fact, we can say confidently that we’ve become even better friends with each other since the pandemic began.

So we can’t really say that those crazy lockdown times were all bad!

December 23, 2020 by kywseminar

Season’s Greetings from KYW

Given the kind of year this one has been, you would be hard pressed to find someone not making a comment – or two – about it. Believe us, we tried. Which is why we have decided to break with what has become the typical 2020 modus operandi, and not delve too deeply.

Yes, this has been quite the year, one like no other. It has been hard on many, tragic for some. But we would hate to make our last post of the year all about that pain, and that hardship.

That would be too sad, and not our style.

Yes, it was anything but easy. We have had to learn to live and deal with a completely new reality, and to adapt our lives to it, both on a personal level, and on a professional one too. KYW here being a living example of that very process.

But there have also been good things. Positive changes. New opportunities.

And we would like to focus on that.

Our community has grown, more than we could have imagined, and we have welcomed new members from all corners of the world, including some that we were not yet even planning to visit. It has been an exciting transformation, and you have all contributed to making the Know Your Worth course richer, and more dynamic. We have had to compensate for taking so much of it online, and find new ways of doing many things, but we feel like we rose to the challenge, and – thanks to you – were able to succeed. Needless to say, none of this would have been possible without your help, your trust, and your support, and for that we are eternally grateful.

Thank you for trusting us with your time, and your energy – we all know that traditional laws of physics don’t apply online – and thank you for being with us every step of the way.

We have learned much, and worked hard, and now we have come to the time where we can all enjoy some well-deserved rest.

Raise a glass, have something sweet, and let us all meet again in the new year. And please remember, you have been there for us, and KYW will always be there for you.

Happy holidays,

The KYW Team

December 18, 2020December 15, 2021 by kywseminar

An Unexpected Christmas Gift in an Unprecedented Year!

This year, the Troublesome Terps invited me to be a guest on their podcast (tagline: The podcast about things that keep interpreters up at night) – and what fun we had!

The four Terps themselves come from all walks of life: three freelancers, one staff interpreter for an international organization, two researchers. All speak English, though not all are native speakers. And their podcast talks about all things interpreting.

This year, their episodes discussed starting out as an interpreter; how to deal with bullying; issues of mental health in interpreting; interpreting in conflict zones; new ways of working as interpreters; websites for interpreters; taking care of our voice, body and mind; tech for interpreters; and meeting the American Translators Association – as well as an episode on the Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters seminar by yours truly.

Just to be chosen to be on the podcast is great! You can see from the non-exhaustive selection I just mentioned that the guests broaden our knowledge and topics of conversation. And the ability to get the Know Your Worth conversation out to a wider audience was fantastic.

But this year, they held their first ever Episode of the Year and Guest of the Year contest, based on votes from their listeners – and the Know Your Worth episode won both categories!

I knew the podcast was still being listened to – my interpreting students periodically ask me to explain an expression in English, or to write out the Big Mac jingle… But the episode obviously brought all the interpreter listeners information they could use, and that could help them – especially during this crazy year.

So I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to Troublesome Terps for inviting me, and to the listeners for voting!

If you liked this article, please connect with me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliapoger/ – and we can continue the conversation!

To listen to the KYW episode of the podcast, please go here.

To listen to The Troublesome Terps, please go here.

September 13, 2020 by kywseminar

To post or not to post: a new KYW-endorsed campaign

After browsing through social media, listening to our colleagues working on all sorts of different markets, and taking part in numerous discussions both online and offline – when that was still a possibility, that is, – Julia Poger and KYW have realised that the interpreting world was ready, and, in fact, much in need of, a new campaign: #clientauthorized.

One hashtag along the same lines of treating our posts with more care already exists: #1ntHUSH. The idea behind this one is that we shouldn’t show off our work on social media to the detriment of our clients’ confidentiality.

After all, confidentiality is one of our profession’s most basic and sacred rules.

But what about when we ask the clients for permission to post something about a project or an assignment, and they give it to us?

Or when they themselves ask us to post about their events from our point of view?

Both have happened to countless colleagues of ours, and many more have found themselves in situations when it would seem that posting about our work would be not only pardonable but, mind blowing as it is, quite welcome.

Hence the rather pressing need for a distinction, made even more urgent by the changing times and the fact that everyone seems to be simply beside themselves to be finding their booths and more traditional consoles once again after what has felt like an excruciatingly long break.

So, to differentiate between all those times interpreters just decide on their own to post about their work and those that really have the permission from their client, we have decided to come up with a way that would show the client’s support.

Which is why we are proud to introduce a new hashtag to the world:

#clientauthorized

Do you agree?

This way #1ntHUSH and #clientauthorized could work hand in hand, and this all-important premise of our profession would still be upheld.

Let us know what you think in the comments below, or better still, share your own examples.

Stay healthy, stay in touch, and #uncrownthevirus.

June 26, 2020August 24, 2020 by kywseminar

Getting together with Troublesome Terps

Sometime earlier on in the pandemic, when we were still on lockdown, and our future seemed even more uncertain than it is now, the four wonderful people behind the Troublesome Terps podcast invited our instructor Julia Poger for a cozy fireside chat about marketing, business, and the art of negotiation.

We all know that sometimes some good ol’ shop talk is in order, and this turned out to be an exciting hour and a half that covered everything from pricing models, to negotiation tactics, and everything in between.

To listen, please follow the link, and let us know what you think!

Click here to listen to the podcast!

April 18, 2020August 24, 2020 by kywseminar

Confinement Chronicles. Chapter 1. Keeping busy

Dear all,

Being surrounded by vast volumes of new information when we’re working means that we get used to the feeling, and miss it sorely when it stops. As conference interpreters we are addicted to constant learning, which is why it is hardly surprising that the idea of having a quiet and lazy confinement didn’t stick. We were barely two weeks into our respective lockdowns, when we started discussing which language to add next, and which CPD course to do now that we suddenly have the time.

We here at Know Your Worth have been keeping busy too, and over the past two weeks we’ve had not one, but three highly successful editions of our KYW Lockdown Seminar, talking not only about some of our more evergreen principles, and how we’ve been using them rightly and wrongly, but also about the current situation we’re finding ourselves in.

Some of us were prepared for this crisis, others much less so, which means we can, and should, use this time to make sure we are better prepared both for now and for when this enforced isolation is over.

We looked into ways in which we can help our existing clients, and we talked about weathering this storm, and moving forward into whatever the future holds. We also discussed how to best prepare ourselves for that future, no matter how uncertain it may seem at times, and we enjoyed an incredibly interactive and positive exchange with all of our participants.

I didn’t expect the on-line format would be this informative, insightful and interactive.

Libor Nenutil

True, every group felt very different. Different languages, different concerns, different dynamics. But one thing remained constant: at the end we had all become close, just as close as if we had met in person, and no wanted to hang up.

Thanks again for a wonderful seminar. I have been sending e-mails to relevant clients today, and had one good result already.

Catriona Howard

We saw that with our first group, and we had the exact same feeling when the time came to say goodbye to the next two.

Which is why we would like to thank you all for that, and to officially welcome you into the KYW family.

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We would also like to use this opportunity to announce a new edition of our Lockdown Seminar. Based on your comments and impressions, we would like to tweak the format a little bit, moving from one hour and a half long sessions to two hour long ones. This will give us the possibility to focus even more on some of the pricing and negotiating related aspects of the course that you seemed to be particularly interested in.

We are an evolving course. These are challenging times, and the next several months won’t be easy. But we are determined to help you through this. An important part of our philosophy is that we adapt to offer a programme that would best suit your needs, and best answer the questions you might have, given the current situation on the market.

April 27 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 1. Your Mindset

April 28 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 2. You

April 29 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 3. Your Client

April 30 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 4. Your Money

All times are listed in Brussels time (GMT+1).

We are currently offering the full webinar series at a special #uncrownthevirus rate of EUR 200, and we are looking forward to sharing these coming weeks with you.

To sign up, please e-mail us at kyw.seminar@gmail.com, and we’ll walk you through the next steps.

Please note that the number of participants is limited to 10 people, and we restrict enrollment to those who can make all four parts.

We will be scheduling more webinars, and releasing more content in the coming weeks, because all of us here at KYW are deeply committed to helping you thrive during this slow period, and on into the future.

Stay healthy, stay in touch, and stay tuned for more updates.

Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters

a seminar by Julia Poger

Category / KYW Community Blog

Julia’s Marketing Tips Table of Contents

Codes of Ethics