We asked Project Officer Lauren Campbell to tell us about the opportunities for interpreters within this NAATI initiative, which has been certifying Australia’s Indigenous interpreters, supporting them to get certified, and increasing the accessibility of resources available to them since its inception in 2012.
Lauren at a Kriol CPI testing workshop in Katherine, NT earlier this year
1) What roles are interpreters employed to fill within the IIP?
Interpreters are at the heart of the IIP’s work. We employ certified interpreters as mentors, co-presenters and guest presenters, and also as role-players and examiners for NAATI interpreter certification tests. We couldn’t support interpreters to prepare for and be successful in the NAATI test if there weren’t certified practitioners from their own language group sitting beside them through the process. NAATI-related training – for ethical competency, intercultural competency and CPI test preparation – is always really rich and practical when practitioners are involved. Which interpreters we engage depends on the languages that currently have demand for certification testing. Last financial year, we worked with 24 certified Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interpreters representing 11 different languages. We currently have one practitioner on the IIP team who is part of everything: candidate screening, online training development and delivery, testing support and face-to-face workshop delivery. Certified practitioners also make up the NAATI Indigenous Languages Reference Group, created to use their experiences and insights to help guide the work we do.
2) What qualities, skills and/or experience do you look for when hiring practitioners?
We look for practitioners who are strong in both their Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander language(s) and English, have good interpreting skills, are respected in their language communities, and are confident to share. When mentors can draw on recent on-the-job stories – from courts, hospitals, phone jobs, or doing audio translations of tricky scripts – it makes it real! It really inspires new interpreters by showing just how important those skills are in practice. And because we run a lot of workshops and PD sessions online, tech skills are also a big plus. Being comfortable, set up and available via Zoom means there are more opportunities to work together.
3) What do you think are the specific professional development benefits, for practitioners, of working within the IIP?
Practitioners often tell us that working with NAATI’s IIP team opens their minds to the wider translating and interpreting profession. They get to engage with national standards that apply across international, sign, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. At the same time, they can focus on strengthening the skills of interpreters from their own language group and supporting them to become certified. Many also value the chance to grow their networks, share experiences, and learn from the perspectives of others – all of which helps build stronger, more confident language professionals, whatever language pair(s) they are working in.
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