Tension Between Role and the Pull of Compassion
Interpreters are bound by ethical guidelines to maintain neutrality. This can be difficult, particularly when interpreting for vulnerable individuals like children when the pull of compassion to go beyond the role can be very powerful. This creates a tension that can lead to the objectification of interpreters and their emotional labour by others, and even by interpreters themselves, who may come to see emotional suppression as a necessary part of the job, despite its negative effects. Managing these tensions increases the stress-load for interpreters.
In this one-hour session, Beverley Costa will explore the emotional demands of interpreting and ask: Why do some coping strategies leave us feeling worse? She will introduce practical self-care and preventative techniques and discuss how reflective group practice can support long-term wellbeing.
After qualifying as a psychotherapist, Dr Beverley Costa set up Mothertongue, a multi-ethnic counselling service (2000–2018) for multilingual clients. In 2009, she created a pool of mental health interpreters; in 2010, she established the national Bilingual Therapist and Mental Health Interpreter Forum; and in 2017, she founded The Pásalo Project (www.pasaloproject.org) to disseminate learning from Mothertongue.
In 2013, she launched Colleagues Across Borders, now a small project within Pásalo. It provides professional support and mentoring—via remote platforms—for people from refugee backgrounds who, since leaving their home countries, have trained as psychosocial workers, interpreters, and teachers, and who have been affected by traumatic experiences.
Since 2013, Beverley has trained over 5,000 therapists in working therapeutically across languages and with interpreters, for NHS services and NGOs. She is a Senior Practitioner Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading.
She has facilitated Reflective Practice Support groups for interpreters, psychological therapists and counsellors, researchers, nurses, teachers, lawyers, and psychosocial workers. She also developed an introductory course in facilitator skills for running Reflective Practice Groups, delivered both online and in-person to organisations across England, Scotland, Wales, and Belgium.
She is the author of Other Tongues: Psychological Therapies in a Multilingual World.
This event will be held on GoToWebinar.
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