Ethics

Ethics is where everything becomes personal.

In the first reflection, I unsettled the myth of one-to-one translation. In the second, I explored the cultural and tacit knowledge that replaces that illusion. This third reflection turns to what sits underneath both: ethics. Because once you accept that interpreting is not mechanical transfer but culturally situated judgement, you cannot avoid the ethical dimension. Every decision carries weight.

Ethical Weight, Quietly Carried

Ethical choices rarely announce themselves dramatically. More often, they appear mid-sentence: A shift in tone. A request for clarification that borders on advocacy. A disclosure that raises questions about confidentiality. A professional who looks to you for guidance rather than interpretation.

Sometimes the decision is about what you say. Sometimes it is about what you choose not to say. Sometimes it is about how you position yourself in the room. Professional codes of conduct offer important foundations: confidentiality, impartiality, accuracy, respect for autonomy. These principles are not optional. They exist to protect all parties and to safeguard trust in the profession.

But codes cannot anticipate every lived situation.

Ethics, in practice, is rarely a checklist. It is applied judgement under conditions of uncertainty.

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Ethics Seldom Announce Themselves

In moral philosophy, ethics is often described as the study of what we ought to do and why. Some approaches focus on rules (duty-based ethics). Others emphasise outcomes (consequentialist thinking). Others still centre character and practical wisdom (virtue ethics).

Interpreting draws on all three.

We work within rules and professional duties. We consider potential consequences of our choices. And over time, we cultivate professional character — discernment, restraint, courage, humility. But in real assignments, these strands do not line up neatly. They pull. You may feel pressure to protect someone’s dignity while also maintaining neutrality. You may recognise harm unfolding but be bound by role boundaries. You may need to decide, in seconds, whether stepping in clarifies communication or distorts it.

Ethics is situational and relational. It lives in context.

And it often arrives with pressure: to be invisible, but present; supportive, but not directive; culturally responsive, but not overreaching. These tensions do not disappear with experience. They simply become more familiar.

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What Sustains Ethical Practice

What steadies ethical work is not certainty. It is reflection.

Questions such as: What is at stake here? Who benefits from my intervention — or my restraint? Whose values are shaping this moment? What are the potential consequences of action or inaction?

This is not about finding perfect answers. It is about remaining ethically alert.

In the second reflection, I described tacit knowledge as accumulated pattern recognition. Ethical judgement builds the same way. Through exposure, missteps, supervision, dialogue, and sustained self-examination. It becomes quicker, but it should never become careless.

After 35 years, the tensions have not diminished — I simply recognise them sooner. The questions are more nuanced, the boundaries clearer and more deliberately held, the responsibility more visible. Interpreting is not something to master and finish, but a practice to inhabit. Ethics is not an added layer; it is woven through every linguistic and cultural decision we make.

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Rounding Up the Series

This mini-series has traced three interwoven strands of interpreting between BSL and English:

First, the dismantling of one-to-one equivalence.

Second, the cultural navigation and tacit knowledge that make real-time judgement possible.

Third, the ethical responsibility that underpins those judgements.

Once equivalence falls away, we see culture.

Once culture is acknowledged, we recognise knowledge.

Once knowledge is exercised, ethics becomes unavoidable.

What interpreting really involves is not simply bilingualism. It is culturally situated, knowledge-based, ethically accountable decision-making — carried out in real time, often invisibly. And perhaps the discipline of the work is this: not certainty, but attentiveness. Not perfection, but responsibility. Not mastery, but ongoing practice.

Between languages, we carry more than words.

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📚Further Reading

Eugene Nida on Dynamic Equivalence Formal vs. dynamic equivalence explained explained—how translating meaning, not just words, can shape entire disciplines.

Equivalence and Translation Studies A scholarly overview of how “equivalence” became both a cornerstone and a controversy in the world of translation.

Sign Language Interpreting and Cultural Framing This paper digs into how interpreters navigate culture, not just language—a sharp read from Heriot-Watt researchers.