Hello. My name is Hanno Koppel, and for ten years, until 2020, I was a counsellor for the NHS in Brighton and Hove.
I worked with asylum seekers and refugees (I was a trauma specialist) I needed interpreters in many of my sessions – I worked with over fifty different languages.
At the beginning I was a bit apprehensive – counselling is very private, and it requires building a high level of confidence. So I wondered how the privacy would work, and how I would be able to form a close relationship with not one, but two people.
As it turned out, I need not have worried. Every interpreter who SIS found me was the consummate professional. Each one had been trained to deliver interpreting of the highest level. Some people feel threatened when they are with people speaking a language that they do not understand. Not me. I am very comfortable around people speaking a language that I do not understand. Nevertheless, it sometimes feels strange when the displaced person talks for five minutes, and the interpreter says, “Tomorrow”!
However, I quickly discovered that the SIS interpreters always gave the right voice to the displaced people. They were a lot more than translating machines. They picked up on nuances and made quite sure that the displaced person was not merely heard but understood.
Sometimes they would do more than that. They might step out of just interpreting to ask me if a particular subtle cultural issue was making sense to me. They might ask my permission to put something in a different way, so that the displaced person would understand. A very simple example would be if I had used a cliché like, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”. Staying within their strict professional role, just turning this phrase into, say, Vietnamese, would result in something that would be understandable, but totally baffling to the displaced person. She had been talking about how hard it was filling in an application form when all her friends were trying to help her and Hanno started talking about chefs making soup!
The SIS interpreters with whom I worked always became part of the support system that I was trying to construct. They never broke boundaries, never strayed one millimetre from their professional role, yet each and every one brought something special to the work.
While, of course, this is very much a part of the personalities of the interpreters, I also want to recognise that by being the organisation that it is, underpins, supports and encourages its interpreters to be their very best. SIS offers training, mentoring, and advice – all these tangible benefits contribute to the virtuous circle of ever-increasing quality. Also profoundly important, but possibly less obvious is the culture generated and sustained by every member of SIS staff – starting with Arran and Shahreen, but actually everyone belongs on this list.
Thank you, SIS, for everything that you have done, and will continue to do, from me, and I hope from everyone who has the good fortune to have contact with you.