Fit to be shared? Measuring the acquisition of ethical awareness in interpreting students

Abstract

Science can determine or quantify human values with the help of fields such as philosophy or neuroscience, suggesting questions of morality and ethics can be measured too (Harris: 2010). Ethics and didactics are cross-disciplinary fields applicable to every profession: ranging from studies in medical ethics, to experiences on the role of the interpreters and their conduct, to psychological experiments on the way ethical behaviour is learnt, or the assessment of competence acquisition, the literature gives us a rich interdisciplinary background that can be of use when devising tools for improving ethical education for interpreters. This paper seeks to study whether measuring acquisition of specific competences in ethical awareness of a group of interpreting students is possible, and whether thinking about morality in terms of human well-being and cooperation is applicable to teaching and learning in our profession. We will ask ourselves what it is we consider as “ethical awareness” in interpreting, distinguishing it from deontological codes and linking it to didactic and research methodologies bearing a strong ethical component. From a critical perspective, it still remains unclear whether ethical behaviour can be unlearned or forgotten as environments change, whether manipulation occurs unavoidably in teaching as it does in communication, and whether it is indeed ethical on the part of a lecturer to think that his or her own set of values is fit to be shared.