Interpreter Association IMIA Starts Campaign To Promote Code Of Ethics For Medical Interpreters Worldwide

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 06 Jan 2009 - 5:00 PST

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The International Medical Interpreters Association, IMIA, announced its intention to disseminate the IMIA Code of Ethics worldwide, and to that end the first code of ethics for medical interpreters has now been translated into eleven languages: Arabic, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Continental Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. These have been created to address the burgeoning international nature of the medical interpreting profession, in keeping with the IMIA mission to promote language access for medical services globally, a human right. The IMIA thanked CyraCom for their key contribution to this translation project for ten of those languages, and also thanked JICE (Japan International Cooperation Center) for the translation into Japanese. The IMIA has begun a process of disseminating the Code of Ethics via mutual collaboration with interpreter and translation associations in the countries where those languages are spoken. Translations are being requested into other languages.

Medical interpreting is a practice profession and a code of ethics provides the guidelines and parameters of appropriate responses to patients and providers as they navigate the ethical dilemmas often faced by conflicting cultural behaviors and expectations. "Interpreters who are committed to the code of ethics are able to promote a professional relationship and better collaborate with the patients and providers. It brings about accountability, responsibility and trust to the individuals that the profession serves," states Izabel Arocha, IMIA President. Jon Sommers, Senior Vice President, Operations of CyraCom, adds, "CyraCom is strongly committed to the highest levels of training and professionalism for its medical interpreters and we are therefore delighted to participate in and support initiatives promoting high ethical and other standards." Akira Akaki, Secretary General of JICE, says, "We have abundant knowledge and human resources through our over thirty-year international cooperation activities. We are very proud of our contribution to the global spread and development of medical interpreters by sharing these experiences."

This will also enable the IMIA to disseminate the knowledge of the code to support the implementation of its patent-pending (filed 2008) Medical Interpreter Certification & Qualification Program. The IMIA is seeking the endorsement of its specialization exams from other interpreter organizations worldwide and in return will endorse their interpretation certifications, thus creating a web of mutual endorsements to promote a solid medical interpreter certification and qualification program that can cross borders in the age of globalization.

The International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA) is committed to the advancement of professional medical interpreters as the best practice for equitable language access to health care for linguistically diverse patients worldwide. Founded in 1986, it is comprised of over 1,600 members, and is the oldest and largest medical interpreter association in the world. While representing medical interpreters as the ultimate experts in the medical interpreting field, associate membership to the IMIA is open to multidisciplinary groups interested in medical interpreting and language access in health care, an international human right. IMIA has divisions of providers, corporate members, trainers and interpreters in over 100 languages. (http://www.imiaweb.org)

Source
Abbott Thayer
http://www.imiaweb.org