14.5 Error Recognition, Repair & Transparency During Live Work

Every interpreter makes errors in every assignment. The NIC Role Delineation Study accordingly requires skill in "recovering and repairing within message conveyance" and in "minimizing miscues, deletions, additions, substitutions, distracting mannerisms, fillers, anomalies." CPC Illustrative Behavior 2.3 makes the standard explicit: interpreters render the message faithfully "and correct errors discreetly and expeditiously."

Two adverbs, two competing pressures. Expeditiously means now, before the error propagates. Discreetly means without theatrical self-flagellation that turns the encounter into a discussion of the interpreter.

1. Detecting your own errors

Error detection comes from four sources:

1. Internal monitoring. You notice a mis-selection as you produce it — the wrong sign, the wrong number, a locus assigned to the wrong referent.
2. Consumer back-channel. A furrowed brow, a gaze break, a repeated WHAT? (Chapter 14.4).
3. The team interpreter's feed. The formal mechanism; Illustrative Behavior 5.2 requires the support interpreter to be "monitoring the accuracy of the message."
4. Downstream incoherence. The conversation stops making sense, a party responds to something nobody said, or a later utterance contradicts what you rendered earlier — the classic signature of an error two minutes back.

2. Triage: does this error need repair?

Not every imperfection warrants an interruption. Sort by consequence.

Cokely's miscue categories — omissions, additions, substitutions, intrusions, and anomalies — give the vocabulary for this analysis (Chapter 3.1). The triage question is not "was that a miscue?" but "does the consumer now hold a false belief, and does it matter?"

3. How to repair

In the flow (preferred). Insert the correction as part of the ongoing rendering: SORRY, NOT THREE — FIVE and continue. This costs about a second, keeps the encounter moving, and models normal professional behaviour.

With a brief process statement. When the error is large enough that a silent correction would confuse: "The interpreter needs to correct: the doctor said five milligrams, not three." Use the third person ("the interpreter") in formal and legal settings, which is the courtroom convention; use plainer language in a community setting.

By requesting a repetition. When you know you missed something but not what: "One moment — the interpreter did not catch the last sentence, could you repeat it?" This is a repair even though it looks like a clarification request.

Through the team. The support interpreter feeds the correction; the working interpreter incorporates it. The feed itself should be discreet and agreed in the pre-conference.

4. What repair must not become

• Not an apology loop. Repeated apologizing consumes floor time, foregrounds the interpreter, and signals to hearing participants that the Deaf consumer's access is fragile.
• Not a defence. "The doctor was speaking very fast" relocates the error onto a participant. Correct and move on.
• Not a private negotiation. Fixing an error by whispering to the consumer while the hearing party watches creates exactly the appearance of a side conversation that erodes trust. Correct in the open.
• Not concealment. Discovering at minute forty that you got a critical fact wrong at minute five is uncomfortable. Surfacing it is still the right action — the alternative is a consumer making a decision on false information. Concealing a material error is the kind of conduct that becomes an EPS matter; correcting it late is not.

5. Errors made by other people

Distinguish carefully:

• A team interpreter's error is corrected through the feed, and afterwards in debrief, not by publicly overriding your colleague. Illustrative Behavior 5.1 requires maintaining civility toward colleagues, and 5.3 directs approaching colleagues privately about breaches, escalating only where attempts fail or the breach is harmful or habitual.
• A participant's factual error is interpreted, not corrected. If an attorney misstates a date, that misstatement is the message. Correcting it makes you a participant.
• A participant's misunderstanding of the interpreter's role — "tell her that…" — is a process matter handled as in Chapter 13.3.
• Your prior assignment's error, discovered afterwards, should be reported to the hiring entity where the consequence is material: an incorrect medication instruction, a wrong court date, a misinterpreted consent.

6. Transparency as a standing principle

Transparency means the parties can always tell what is interpretation, what is the interpreter speaking as the interpreter, and what is happening procedurally. Practically:

• Announce mode shifts and process interventions.
• Voice clarification requests so both parties hear them.
• Mark third-person interpreter statements clearly in formal settings.
• Never let an exchange between you and one party remain invisible to the other.

The reason is not etiquette. An encounter where one party cannot tell what the other actually said has lost the property that makes interpretation worth having — and in legal, medical, and employment settings, that property is the thing the law was written to protect.