ABSTRACT
Department of Health. Yet, despite areas of overlap at an occupational level, conflating the two services is unhelpful in public service interpreting research because the division between clinical and social aspects of practice in these fields has implications for understanding the nature of the interpreter’s role, and, more specifically, the relationship between interpreter, service provider and service user. To date, research into the use of interpreters in the healthcare professions has dominated interpreting studies under the umbrella of the ‘caring professions’; however, drives to improve the take-up of social service provision for service users of limited or no proficiency in English and increased efforts to improve and monitor the effectiveness and quality of service delivery to minority groups2 in all public service domains means that there is considerable justification for examining interpreting practice in the social service field as a discrete object of study. It also constitutes one of the ‘emergent themes’ identified in qualitative research in the health and social care professions (e.g. Popay and Williams 1998), namely, the analysis of taken-for-granted practices in social work and organizational culture and management, since the use of interpreters in the delivery of services has become a reality for increasing numbers of social work practitioners in Britain. The concept of trust, which forms the focus of this paper, has long proved difficult to define and measure (Misztal 1996). In the discussion that follows I adopt a descriptive approach to the concept based on a re-examination of the service provider-interpreter relationship in social work encounters and an emphasis on the socio-cultural norms that underpin the communicative relationship between the two. The discussion does not assume that the so-called problematics of trust constitute a more complex phenomenon in the social work field compared to other fields of interpreting in the public services, but the socio-cultural norms identified here are considered to impact on the interpreter-mediated interaction and levels of trust created therein. As a result, if service provision is to be improved, these socio-cultural norms merit particular attention by the academy. The discussion also considers the extent to which these socio-cultural norms are shaped by social work policy and practice as well as by the ‘server-served’ relationship between the social worker and interpreter in the wider context of the triadic exchange; the latter is explored by recasting the server-served relationship as one that is fluid rather than fixed, as is often assumed. Stakeholders who are external to the communicative process and the potential impact they exert on the interaction are also examined in the context of this relationship.
