Interpreter support and resources

Support for TIS National interpreters

Interpreter Liaison officers

TIS National interpreters receive direct support from a team of dedicated Interpreter Liaison officers to assist with enquiries relating to interpreting assignments.

Interpreter Liaison officers can assist to clarify ethical issues, report workplace health and safety concerns and provide feedback about interpreting assignments. The team can also provide assistance if you need to de-brief after a particularly challenging assignment.

You can contact the Interpreter Liaison team by phone or email.

Access to professional support

We consider the health and safety of interpreters on the TIS panel to be important and seek to provide programmes for their on-going support. TIS National provides free and confidential short term counselling for interpreters and their immediate families through the department’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

Benestar is the department's provider of the EAP and their staff are professionally qualified psychologists or social workers.

The EAP can cover a broad range of topics for work related or personal issues including:

career counselling
workplace mediation
interpersonal issues
performance and learning issues
organisational change
discrimination/harassment
emotional or psychological health
family/relationship issues
legal/financial issues
addictions/gambling issues
health and lifestyle

Contact the Interpreter liaison team for more information about the EAP for interpreters.

Quality assurance mystery shopping programme

TIS National conducts a quality assurance programme where services provided by TIS National interpreters are recorded and assessed for client experience by a multilingual National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) credentialed mystery shopper.

Supporting TIS National's commitment to ongoing service improvement, the mystery shopping programme is an opportunity to validate the high quality and professionalism of TIS National's interpreter panel, and also provides a quality assurance method to identify and address potential concerns. TIS National does not use the quality assurance programme as a punitive measure. It is an instrument to assist with coaching and development of our interpreters.

The mystery shopped calls assist the Interpreter Liaison officers to conduct coaching conversations with our interpreters which aim to build and enhance the professional expertise of TIS National interpreters and positively address any performance issues.

Interpreter Liaison officers may contact you to discuss findings from a mystery shopped assignment. We encourage you to use this opportunity to actively consider new techniques to improve the quality of services you provide to TIS National clients.

Resources for interpreters

Ethics guide to best practice

TIS National produced Ethics: A guide to best practice for TIS National interpreters as a resource to assist TIS National interpreters to understand and apply the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT) Code of Ethics and TIS National policies.

We are currently in the process of updating this resource to reflect the most recent version of the AUSIT Code of Ethics.

Other useful resources

Below are links to some other useful resources published by various organisations.

Organisation	Resource
Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit	Recommendations for practices and protocols for interpreters to follow in mental health interactions
Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT)	Interpreting – Getting it Right