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For a successful and well-prepared interpreter, continuous professional development (CPD) is a must, and here at Cintra we take this very seriously. We make sure that our linguists have regular access to high-quality CPD events that help them become better professionals and ensure they can keep up with the latest hot topics and regulations within their fields.
As Tamás Kovács, our Human Resources Advisor explains: “The importance for linguists to attend our CPD events is mainly to further improve their knowledge and interpreting skills within a specific area. All major interpreting and translation qualifications heavily focus on interpreting and translation techniques and they often miss out vital parts like interpreting environment, personal safety and extra precautions. For example, the Zakon police CPD event in July explained and demonstrated the key rules which are to always safeguard yourself, know the exit routes and never be left alone with the victim or witness.
Apart from the specialised training these CPD events deliver (e.g. mental health, police training, human trafficking), another fantastic opportunity for our interpreters is to network with other linguists, learn the best practices and also, to meet and speak with Cintra staff members. Many linguists join our CPD events because of the great networking opportunities and also, to find out in what ways Cintra can help improve their qualifications and language skills.”
In the past two months we organised two special CPD events, one in Leicester and one in Norwich. The one held in Norwich on 23 November focused on interpreting for the police and advanced interviews. As Tamás said, we had a very similar event in the summer. After our July event, we received so much positive feedback from our interpreters who attended, that we decided to organise another training day on the very same topic with Zakon, so those linguists who missed the first one might also participate.
We held our other CPD day on 18 October in Leicester on transgender awareness with the help and support from Leicestershire Police. The session helped raise the visibility of transgender and gender non-conforming people, increased the linguists’ cultural awareness, knowledge and communication skills, it explained the rights and wrongs and what the Gender Recognition Act says. It mainly focused on the issues for police, custody staff and linguists. The session was led by Jane Chaplin and Penny Ellis from Warwickshire and West Mercia LGBT Independent Advisory Group and Lynne Woodward, Head of Equality and Human Rights at Leicestershire Police.
The linguists who attended these two events gave us very good feedback, saying these CPD days helped “fill gaps in [their] knowledge and refreshed earlier training that had been undertaken in this area.” They found them “very informative and professionally delivered”.
If you are interested in attending one of our future CPD sessions or have any feedback or suggestions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Tamás via email at hr@cintra.org.uk or by calling 01233 346870.
At Cintra we constantly strive for the highest standards of service and quality of delivery. For this reason we are extremely proud to have been certified to ISO 18841 for interpreting standards and ISO 20228 for legal interpreting standards. This news is made all the more pleasing by the fact that Cintra is the first organisation in the UK, and quite possibly the World, to have been certified for legal interpreting. Such an achievement testifies to Cintra’s ongoing commitment to providing first class language services in situations where quality cannot be compromised.
Read what our Head of Sales and Marketing, Ben Ablett, had to say to the ATC about our certification: “Cintra leads the way with ISO interpreting”
Part of our mission at Cintra Interpreting is to provide high quality and relevant training and continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities to our linguists, so that they can continuously provide an excellent service to our clients.
Our latest CPD event on 6 July was centred around police interpreting, more specifically advanced interview techniques. We partnered with Zakon Training to organise this informative event and deliver all-day training to our interpreters at the National Space Centre in Leicester.
…read moreCintra is like a machine with many interconnected and intricate pieces that have to align perfectly so that we can provide a great service to our customers. One part of this machine is, of course, our highly experienced and trained interpreters who are out there in the world, helping you communicate and make sure you can get your message across. However, out of public view there is a whole team of busy Bookings Coordinators who make sure that the right interpreters get to you at the right time, and help that Cintra machine stay well-oiled and run smoothly.
Today we’ve caught up with Bookings Team Manager Ursula Fairhurst to ask her about what her team do and how they can help you. …read more
Cintra is absolutely delighted to announce that following the recent procurement process, it has once again been chosen as a provider of face-to-face interpreting services for the INTRAN partnership, covering a large number of public sector and voluntary organisations in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Essex. This continues a working relationship which has already lasted since 2001, and which will allow Cintra to continue to serve many existing and new customers via the INTRAN Framework.
Cintra’s Chief Executive, Jerry Froggett, commented: “Having served so many public sector organisations so loyally for many years, it is especially pleasing that this will continue under the new INTRAN Framework, and we very much look forward to the future of this very long-standing relationship. Our loyal regular clients accessing Cintra’s services via the INTRAN Framework can continue to do so as they have always done when the new Framework agreement commences on the 1st July 2017.”
This news adds to an already exciting recent phase in Cintra’s interpreting business, with new contract wins for police forces (together with the renewal of existing contracts) as well as a partnership to enable Cintra interpreters to serve courts in the East of England leaving the company well placed to grow its overall interpreting operations during the remainder of 2017. Now holding positions on a range of national interpreting framework agreements, Cintra is fully accessible to the UK public sector. For further information about how Cintra can assist your organisation with its language service requirements, please contact Ben Ablett, Cintra’s Head of Sales & Marketing, by telephone, 01223 346675, or email, ben.ablett@cintra.org.uk.
The interpreter’s there in the interview room at the dead of night, with the suspect and the interviewing police officer. What’s the interpreter’s role in ensuring best evidence?
In child protection cases the interpreter’s Code of Practice advocates impartiality and objectivity. Coming at it from a different perspective, social services professionals often feel that their interpreter colleagues should get more involved. So when the interpreter is caught in the middle as the mouthpiece of a vulnerable child how does he win that young person’s trust so that he feels comfortable enough to tell his story without the unintended consequence of potentially undermining best evidence?
A services provider working with the elderly wants you as the interpreter to take the lead in building a rapport with an elderly gent whose needs they must understand, but who won’t talk to his social worker. Our Code of Practice is clear that it’s outside the role and professional competence of the interpreter to add mediation and negotiation to the task they’re there to perform: interpreting. How do you support your social services client to communicate with their client, but without yourself becoming an active third party in the exchange?
These were some of the issues Dr Rebecca Tipton, Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at The University of Manchester, explored with us and our packed audience of interpreters and translators at our AGM last week.
Dr Tipton’s research centres on the challenges of public service interpreting and we’d invited her to speak at our AGM as part of our continuous professional development programme. As you’ll have gathered from the professional dilemmas she outlined, interpreters daily face what can be heart-rending situations involving some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Highly qualified in languages and interpreting, our interpreters working with front line services not infrequently find themselves called upon to go way beyond their role, asked to support other professionals in their – very different – areas of expertise. For example, one of our interpreters was recently left alone by a social worker who assumed she would take over her role, settling a frightened young mum and victim of domestic abuse into her room in a refuge.
Dr Tipton’s talk at our AGM is just one of the ways we help our interpreters work out the best course of action in cases like this. Between now and January we’re running a series of CPD workshops exploring a whole range of dilemmas – all based on real life challenges our interpreters have faced. We also run courses for service providers, helping them manage translation and interpreting services as effectively and professionally as possible.
If you’d like more information on our CPD programme and our training for service providers, contact my colleague Dominique van den Berg at training@cintra.org.uk
I’m Jerry Froggett, Chief Executive here at Cintra Translation.
High quality. Highly professional.
That’s my team!
To talk to us, call +44 (0)1223 346870
Image credit: Child reaching / free images.com/Aron Kremer
