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ISSUES IN INTERPRETING STUDIESinterpreting with the aid of (more or less systematic) note taking; simultaneousinterpreting in the booth, for which various preliminary exercises have beensuggested (see Seleskovitch and Lederer 1989); and a variable dose ofsight translation, either as a simultaneous mode of its own or in the booth(‘simultaneous with text’).No such ‘training paradigm’ has been established for (spoken-language)interpreting in community-based settings. Rather, community interpreters inmany countries are still striving for professionalization, often in the absenceof sustained institutional demand and in the face of widespread ad hoc interpretingby untrained volunteers. Where training in public service interpreting(legal, healthcare and social-service settings) does exist, it is usually offered atundergraduate level, if as a degree course at all. This also applies to the trainingof signed-language interpreters in many countries, even in the USA, whereinterpreting in this modality attained an impressive degree of professionalization,not least thanks to the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID),but where the statutory demand for interpreters in educational settings farexceeds the supply of highly qualified professionals.In either modality, the education of community interpreters is oftensignificantly different from that of international conference interpreters.Rather than text-processing skills, the focus is on managing the dynamicsof interpersonal interaction, including issues of culture and unequal status,and the interpreter’s fraught position ‘in-between’.8.3.4 ETHICS AND ROLEOne of the hallmarks of a profession, as a community of practitioners witha special body of expertise and a commitment to serve society at large, is aset of rules stipulating what is deemed professional behavior. AIIC adopted aCode of Professional Ethics for conference interpreters as early as 1957, witha ‘Code of Honor’ consisting of five articles, chief among them the principleof professional secrecy. The RID Code of Ethics, dating back to 1965, wentconsiderably further by addressing such principles as impartiality and faithfulness,which intersect with the much-discussed issue of the interpreter’s role.American signed-language interpreters have indeed been at the vanguard ofshaping the concept of role, moving from the view of the interpreter as anuninvolved (‘neutral’) ‘conduit’ to that of a more visible ‘communication facilitator’and of a ‘bilingual, bicultural specialist’ (see Roy 1993), more recentlycalling into question the ‘myth of neutrality’.Among spoken-language community interpreters, particularly in healthcaresettings, a widely known conceptualization of the interpreter’s role isthe pyramid model, according to which an interpreter’s baseline functionis that of ‘message converter’, complemented when necessary by the incrementallymore ‘visible’ roles of ‘message clarifier’, ‘cultural broker’ and even‘advocate’.137