improving the quality of mental health interpreting in victoria

mental health interpreter or a clinician who is bilingual (p. 3). A mentor also could provide
a means of quality control, if she or he sometimes accompanies the trainee mental health
interpreter on assignments.
An important component of a mental health training curriculum would be to raise
interpreters’ awareness and understanding of the purpose and need for debriefing.
Debriefing is important if for no other reason than that trauma may interfere with optimal
role performance. The well-being of the person who is the interpreter is of course the
primary concern.
ii. The Interpreter as ‘Cultural Consultant’
In mental health settings, interpreters are often used as cultural brokers or cultural
consultants. The issue of whether an interpreter should or can provide such service is
somewhat contested. On the one hand, the clinician requires a language interpretation of
what the client is saying but also needs to understand what the client is saying in the
context of the clients’ cultural and societal norms. Indeed, an important aspect of training
health professionals in knowledge and skills in working sensitively and effectively with
people from CALD backgrounds, requires an emphasis on understanding the important
cultural components in illness presentation, communication, treatment, etc.
It is very important for the mental health staff to recognise the different cultural issues
associated with mental illnesses in refugees or immigrants to Australia. Therefore
communication and briefing of the professional with the interpreter before the
interview may help clear some issues and facilitate easier communication.
Interpreter practitioner.
Clinicians are also making clinical attributions in regard to the clients’ behaviour, body
language, clothing and appearance, beliefs, values, lifestyle, etc. Turner (2003) states that
in clinical situations it is not possible to be working alongside an interpreter and a cultural
broker (where these exist) – in fact the dynamics of having four people interacting is just
not possible. Turner notes that interpreters, if appropriate, are often used as cultural
brokers. However, there exist differences in debatable issues such as the possibility of any
individual being able to act as a broker of a given culture, given there are so many cultural
identities such as community ethnic identities, in addition to social identities such as
gender, status, economic divisions, rural and urban differences, and so forth. An individual
cannot always reflect the cultural meanings of an identity dynamic adequately; indeed the
role parameters an interpreter is trained to work within are not clear in relation to the skills
and tasks that may belong to a ‘cultural broker’ role.
If interpreters are to be used as ‘cultural consultants’, clinicians should make it clear when
requesting an interpreter that they wish to utilise that interpreter in the role of cultural
broker. This would require not only a skilled use in the language of the client but also an
accurate knowledge of the identified culture of the client, as well as the previously
mentioned awareness of intra-cultural differences (Turner, 2003).
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