The EthnoMed Podcast

Provider Pulse Episode 23: From Siberia to Harborview - Yuliya Speroff and the Art of Medical Interpreting (Part 1)

• Dr. Duncan Reid, MD @ EthnoMed.org • Season 1 • Episode 23

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Medical interpreter and educator Yuliya Speroff traces her path from a book-filled childhood in Siberia to high-stakes conversations in Seattle hospitals. 

She explains how medical interpreting in the U.S. often falls to interpreters juggling work for many different fields, how vicarious trauma can affect medical interpreters, and what it means to convey emotion faithfully—without theatrics. 

Along the way: a rare moment of acknowledgment that stayed with her, the cardiology lecture that hooked her on medical interpretation, and a reminder that empathy in care must be both deep and disciplined. 

Find more interpreter resources at Yuliya's blog: https://medicalinterpreterblog.com/


Visit EthnoMed.org for additional resources. Follow us on YouTube and Instagram @EthnoMedUW

Provider Pulse Episode 23

Yuliya_251024_Part 1

Cold Open

Yuliya: [00:00:00]  When I watch a TV show and something ,unpleasant happens, I fast forward.

Like fight scenes. I fast forward when you are interpreting, you can't fast forward or tune out. You have to listen, you have to process it, you have to think about how to say it, and then you repeat it in the first person, whatever people said. Right? It can be really, really traumatic 

 And so that's what I tell providers. If it was intense for you, it was likely intense for the interpreter.   sometimes even a simple acknowledgement of, you know, [00:00:30] this was intense for me. How was this for you? How are you doing?

 

Duncan: Welcome to the EthnoMed Podcast. In today's episode of the Provider Pulse series, we talk with Yulia Speroff medical interpreter supervisor in the interpreter services department at Harborview Medical Center.

Yuliya leads a team that provides both in-person and remote interpretation for Harborview's diverse patient community. In this first part of a two-part series, we explore how Yuliya's fascination with the English language began as a young girl [00:01:00] growing up in Siberia and how that early love of language evolved into a career in medical interpretation. We also take a closer look at the art and complexity of medical interpreting itself.

Yuliya: My name is Yuliya Speroff. I'm a medical interpreter supervisor at the Interpreter Services Department at Harborview Medical Center, and I'm also a certified Russian interpreter. I have been with the department in Harborview for five years now.

Duncan: can you tell us you're a supervisor, what does a day look like for [00:01:30] you?

Yuliya: I, oversee a team of our medical interpreters, And so throughout the day, I might have interpreters and other staff members come into my office and maybe they need to debrief after a difficult encounter, or they might have other questions.

I still go and interpret myself as well, which I really enjoy. I manage translation projects for the hospital. So a large portion of my day is coordinating translation, so getting requests, doing some negotiations, figuring out what is the deadline, what are the [00:02:00] languages that we need to translate things into, What is the most efficient way to do this?

 I also provide training to hospital staff and providers on partnering with interpreters. I might come to a staff meeting for five minutes and provide a quick refresher for the staff. Or I might be talking to incoming residents from a UW Medicine Program and just give them, maybe, if I'm fortunate, a full hour overview of why our department exists, how we can support them in taking care of patients and [00:02:30] family members with a language of care rather than English.

 And what are some of the best practices . 

Duncan: Can you tell me some stats about how many interpreters there are in the department at Harborview and any other languages?

Chapter 0.5 Medical Interpretation, specifics of Harborview

Yuliya: Yes, of course. Let me backtrack a little and say that this area, language access, which is whatever services we can provide to folks who have limited English proficiency to access services, and these could be healthcare services. This could be, talking to their kids teachers at school, these could [00:03:00] be access and legal systems.

And so there are federal laws that mandate language access that says like, Hey, you're a federally funded institution, if you have folks that need to access your services and don't speak English, you have to provide language access. And it does specify some of it, but it's up to each institution to choose how.

And so not every hospital, not every clinic will have an interpreter services department. And here at Harborview, we're so fortunate, we have an incredibly robust department. The interpreter services [00:03:30] department actually is home to three different programs. EthnoMed, of course, which you are the medical director of, community house calls with our amazing caseworker cultural mediators, and then interpreting and translation services.

And so we have 22 medical interpreters. So these are our qualified professional staff interpreters who work here in person, and serve both inpatient and outpatient clinic sides of the hospital. We have 12 case worker cultural mediators together they speak [00:04:00] 17 languages. Some of the top languages here at Harborview are Spanish, Vietnamese, Amharic and Tigrinya, Somali, Cantonese and Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Cambodian. However, annually we see 140 languages. And so even with our amazing, robust team, we can't really cover all of that. And so we partner with these large vendors that help us provide services over the phone and over video as [00:04:30] well.

some professionals who maybe have worked with us may know us under a different name, the wrong name. So translator, you know, I'm sure you know the difference.

Interpreters, help with spoken of signed communication, whereas translators work on written document translation. So a translator might be a person who translates clinical trial documentation or a book of poetry, right? They may or may not also be an interpreter, and vice versa, an interpreter may or may not be able to do document [00:05:00] translation.

So different jobs. But, it is a unique profession and I came to it in a very roundabout way, and it's a little unorthodox. 

Chapter 1: Roots in Siberia

Duncan: Long before her work at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Yuliya was growing up in Siberia where she was an avid reader and became interested in the English language through movies and conversation. 

Yuliya: I'm from Russia, from Novosibirsk, a large, very urban city in Siberia. But growing up my favorite thing to do was reading. Our local library was [00:05:30] just across the street from my home, and so over the summers they had this reading room where they had books and magazines that you couldn't take home

And I went there so often and just sat there and read them. Eventually they were like, just, just take them home. Like we, you're, we trust you. You're here every day. Just go stop hanging out here all the time. So that's how much I loved reading. You know, I could and still can finish a book in a day. And then at some point I really got interested in the English language.

I didn't use to like it, my first teachers, it [00:06:00] was all like rote learning and that was just torture. You have to memorize, verbs and, and things like that.

When I was in middle school, we had this teacher, everybody was really afraid of her. And she would say, well, we want to learn some, more colloquial English, so we're going to take a song, we're going to memorize it, and then we're going to sing it by ourselves with no music one by one acapella style. Imagine in middle school, you're forced to sing in front of your classmates with no music. And the songs she picked [00:06:30] were things like We Will Rock You, nothing else Matters, by Metallica. And clearly we had no idea what the lyrics meant, even with the dictionary, you know, it's so hard to understand the lyrics because it's never very straightforward meaning, and then you, at 13, you just sit in front of your classmates and go, we will, we will rock you, and nobody laughs at you because they're next.

So that didn't really help my love for English. But then finally in high school, I had this teacher, and she [00:07:00] really was the first person I saw that was teaching English, following this more modern communicative approach where we actually used it to talk. We would watch a movie, like a real movie, and then we would discuss it.

We would read these graded readers. So these are adapted books to the level of English learners. And they were colorful and modern, freshly produced. And so then I'm like, I want to do something with languages.

I wasn't sure what, but I just knew that. And so fast forward, I ended up, teaching English [00:07:30] and then doing translation and interpretations. 

Chapter 1.5: Interest in Movies

Duncan: Can you tell me more about this fascination with language? So you were young, you were reading, what were you reading? Anything.

Yuliya: Anything. Yeah, you're right. I was reading, I really liked those, detective books, you know, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Brothers, the Fabulous Five, like all of these books where children and teenagers are solving major crimes because that somehow is a thing. Spy novels, romance like Barbara Cartland for example.

So really [00:08:00] anything.

Duncan: what I'm getting at is that the Russian language has this incredible literary history, cultural history, and then I imagine that when you're studying English to me. An interest in different language is probably an interest in that culture that accompanies it as well. Was that something you felt, or was this just a pure language thing that you were interested on its own terms?

Yuliya: that's a good question. I mean, it's both. I know you're saying Russian has this literary tradition, there's war and peace. And here I am reading Barbara Cartland and [00:08:30] Nancy Drew. But it's both the culture and the language. So I remember reading my first English language books

And I rememberthe first phrase I underlined was, you appear to be under the mistaken impression that I care. And I was like, wow, what a great way to say something. So you could say, I don't care. But you could say this and it sounds amazing, and I want to learn it, and, I want to have an opportunity to say it. And so just like the actual language, the way that you can say something, the [00:09:00] millions ways you can say something.

I learned a lot of my English from books and I haven't necessarily heard some of the things being spoken out loud. And I remember one time talking to my friends and I said, oh, we are going to this restaurant.

Is it going to be swanky And they're like, what now? And I'm like, is it a swanky restaurant? And they're like, what are you talking about? And I spelled it and they're like, oh, you mean swanky? And I was like, you know, the way I only ever read this word somewhere, like in books. It [00:09:30] just looked like it would be pronounced swanky. 

And then part of it is culture too. So, I also credit my level of English with the TV show Friends, which I used to rent on VHS tapes and watch over and over again with subtitles.

And same thing. I would pause and I would write down some of the phrases that they said. And there are so many cultural references. If you look on YouTube, there are hours of videos that are specifically devoted to explaining cultural references. 

And so I had to keep [00:10:00] looking things up. You know, why is this funny? Who is this person? Why is it funny that one of the characters looks like this other character? Right? So definitely by learning the language, you are learning a lot of the culture and some of it is pop culture,  I think it's, roughly in the mid eighties and nineties that we started getting products from the United States, including the movies. I do have, a big fondness for these eighties and nineties movies like The Problem Child and [00:10:30] Beethoven and Police Academy, and, Dennis The Menace. watching Dennis the Menace there is one scene where this little boy, is staying with his neighbors and he's very naughty. He plays a lot of pranks. He just can't help himself. And his elderly neighbor is using mouthwash.

I had never heard of mouthwash. I had no idea what it was. And so I'm like, what is this bottle with blue liquid? And then he pours it into this little paper cup, like a disposable product. Why don't you just drink it from the bottle? So all of this was mysterious to [00:11:00] me. You know, I did not have any frame of reference and I guess.

 Now of course there is, mouthwash available in Russia, but yeah, at the time it was just such a, study in human nature.

What are they doing and why are they using a paper cup? And, I think he played a prank on him by switching it with something else that was, I don't even remember what it was that he gargled with. And then. 

Duncan: So maybe This is your training to be an interpreter, is that you're already decoding all of these cultural things from these movies, and have a immense [00:11:30] curiosity in them. You're picking apart language because of it too. So you're really breaking down these characters in a way that is very essential for the work of interpretation.

Yuliya: that's a very interesting way to look at it because I think, and maybe, and I cannot absolutely speak for all interpreters, but for many interpreters they had to learn another language. It could be English or English could have been their native language and they had to learn then, Spanish or French. And so when you learn language, for sure, you learn about the culture because all of [00:12:00] these things are embedded in the language. So you're right. Maybe that's where it started having to figure out why the background laughter track on Friends is on. And you know what's so funny and looking it up. 

Chapter 2: Discovering Interpreting

Duncan: After finishing school, Yuliya is drawn to the world of language instruction where her love of English begins to take shape as a vocation.

Yuliya: And so I was in my mid twenties and I was looking for a job and previously to that I had known I wanted to do something with languages but then at some point I just wanted a [00:12:30] job. And so I came to this language school, and I applied for a job as an office manager.

And the director who was interviewing me said, well, you know, I see your resume mentions that you speak English really well. Would you like to be an English teacher? And you know, a language school is a private organization that provides language lessons mostly to adults who want to learn English, you know, maybe to advance in their job, to find a better job, to be able to travel internationally or just to be able to understand movies without subtitles.

[00:13:00] Right. All kinds of reasons. And so I thought, you know, why not? Even though I didn't really have a particular background or training in that, I just thought, you know, sure, I'll try. And I tried and I'm pretty sure if I look back now, I think, what a disaster. you know, you have a textbook.

I hadn't realized it actually came with a teacher's book where you had all of the answers and all of the instructions. I thought being a teacher meant you had to do all of the exercises yourself first and figure out the answer. 

I didn't know to ask [00:13:30] for a teacher's book. I didn't really think about the fact that English learners have different levels, right? There is somebody who is a complete beginner. There is somebody who is at an advanced level, and so they will need exercises, at different levels, explanations at different levels.

Again, didn't really think about that. And so once I've taught a couple of lessons, despite my ignorance of how things work. Somehow I managed to teach a couple of good lessons. I figured out, you know, I am kind of good at this. I do have [00:14:00] something that makes me a good teacher, even though I don't know what I'm doing.

The students seem to like me. And so I said, okay, I'm going to take this seriously. And I became a self-taught, English language teacher, English as a second language and it wasn't until a couple of years later that I got, a certificate called CELTA from Cambridge assessment certificate of teaching English 

Duncan: a few years later, I got Delta, which is a similar credential, Yuliya then took on some interpretation jobs with similarly little training.

Yuliya: at some point the director came up to me and [00:14:30] said, you know, we have a request for an interpreting assignment.

Would you like to try it? And I said, sure. Again, same story. Have no idea what I'm doing. Have no training. And the very first assignment was, a training event for IT folks. it was something to do with, cars having this video detection system that kept the car in the lane at the time, it was revolutionary, right?

And so I had to do simultaneous interpretation with equipment. And simultaneous [00:15:00] interpretation involves interpreting at the same time the speaker is speaking. 

So somehow I survived that. I don't really remember how, I think I went into a trance and I did it, 

The, very second opportunity I had to interpret was this lecture by a visiting professor at a local healthcare institution. I still remember it, totally thoracoscopic ablation for atrial fibrillation. At the time, it just sounded like words to me, but I took this seriously, I actually took a week off work. I did a lot of research, [00:15:30] so luckily they sent me a PowerPoint ahead of time. So I just did a deep dive into what is atrial ablation, what is you know, thoracoscopic and, and things like that. And so I prepared to the extent that the professor at some point said, you know, do you have any medical training?

You're doing really good. So that was very rewarding. My, preparation paid off. I will say though, I memorized the PowerPoint. I memorized both English and Russian versions of all of the [00:16:00] terminology. But when, providers that were listening to this talk, attending physicians and residents, they started asking questions and that I wasn't ready for.

And so they would say like, you know, how does this affect, I dunno, ejection fraction. And I'd be like, Hmm, what do I do now? And so, fortunately, medical terminology has a lot of cognates. So we were able to figure it out collectively. So that really led me to be interested in interpretation, and in medicine similarly with written [00:16:30] translation.

Duncan: This experience of interpreting for a physician reminded her of her own family connection to medicine through her grandmother. 

Yuliya: I hadn't thought about medicine even though my grandmother is a doctor. And she would always tell me stories of her, working as an ear, nose, throat doctor in a very remote village, where sometimes she had to do all kinds of doctoring because, there weren't a whole lot of other doctors.

 She worked as a doctor in an ambulance. She worked as a prison doctor for a while. And so these stories were [00:17:00] interesting, but she never encouraged us, or my mom, to go into medicine. It was always like, this is really hard work. I'm not going to tell you to follow in my footsteps.

So I never really thought about it. And then don't laugh, but I started watching this TV show called Grey's Anatomy. And

Duncan: In Russia.

Yuliya: In Russia, yes. I mean, it was in English, but because at that point I was already like teaching English. My husband is from the US so you know, we were speaking English at home.

and so I started watching Grey's Anatomy and so now I work in a hospital.

I know how [00:17:30] hospitals work. I'm like, this show is crazy pants. Nothing works the way they, they show it. But at the time I was like, whoa, medicine, whoa, doctors. And then I found this book, it's called The Surgeon's Life of Death in a top heart center by Charles R. Morris. And so there is this writer that embedded himself with this team in New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York. And he just started following them around and writing about their work and their [00:18:00] patients. And a lot of these stories were really dramatic because, you'd learn about this patient's life, so now you're invested and the doctors are trying to decide, you know, are they going to get a heart transplant?

and that made such a huge impression on me that. There are these people and that's what they do in their day-to-day life.

So I was very interested in medicine and so when I got that chance to interpret at a lecture about atrial fibrillation, and later when I learned that medical interpreting exists and I was like, whoa, I could work with people like [00:18:30] that, you know? I could work in a hospital clearly my passion is languages, communication, teaching.

So these are my strengths, things that make me happy and that I love doing.  science. maybe like hands-on things are not, but I love them and I'm interested in them. And so this job allows me to do that, to be here, to witness it, but not necessarily have to be the one to do it because I don't think I could.

Chapter 3: Interpreter of all Trades, the generalists

Duncan: I guess one of the things that stands out to me is that when you're talking about [00:19:00] doing this atrial fibrillation talk is you also need to be an expert in some of this language, so required an immense amount of studying as well.

So that's something that I think maybe a lot of providers don't think about is the specialized language, even across domains of medicine.

Yuliya: it's tricky because a lot of professional document translators will specialize. So somebody will only translate documents related to let's say pharmaceuticals, right? They will translate maybe clinical trial documents. They [00:19:30] will translate the instructions you get with your medication and that's the only thing they'll do.

And so even in that area, you can't specialize in everything, but that narrows it down. Some professional interpreters will specialize in oil and gas, for example. And so they'll interpret maybe workers or consultants who are hired to consult like a local company. So some people are able to specialize that way. When we talk about medical interpretation here in the US, I would say most people are [00:20:00] expected to be jacks of all trades. I know that there are some staff interpreters in some hospitals that say, you know, I mostly interpret in this area, I mostly interpret in oncology.

 Maybe they're an independent contractor and they happen to contract with a particular institution. And so this is what happened to me when I first moved to Seattle, as an independent contractor. I was working with an agency that had a contract with a local cancer care center.

And so that's where I ended up interpreting a [00:20:30] lot. So it wasn't necessarily something I chose to specialize in, but it just happened that way. But most of the time, so let's say you are an interpreter who works from your home and you work over the phone or you work over video. Most likely the company that you contract with or maybe multiple companies have contracts all over the country.

They have contracts with nine one one call centers. They have contracts with law enforcement. They have contracts with hospitals and clinics and public health institutions and [00:21:00] insurance companies. And so you pick up a phone and it's somebody in labor. You pick up your phone again and it's an end of life discussion.

You pick up your phone again, it's a nine one one phone call. You pick up your phone again and it's an insurance discussion about premiums and deductibles and things like that. And so the required training for medical interpreters in the US in order to get nationally certified, 

 It's 40 hours.

 I have a colleague in [00:21:30] the field who she always says, you know, to be a yoga instructor you have to have 100 hours of education. And here we are with 40 hours and that is expected to cover US healthcare and cultural awareness and interpreting skills and interpreter ethics and code of practice.

There are some programs that are longer than the required 40 hours, but at the end of the day, that's what you're required to do. 40 hours 

Duncan: So that I think, puts a lot of perspective when we're talking to some of these telephonic [00:22:00] interpreters that they might be fielding a number of calls in a number of different specialties, and there sounds like there's like probably an emotional aspect to it too, where if you're on a 9 1 1 call, you're drawn into those from a medical, when you're drawn into them, then you're drawn into some legal thing as well.

Chapter 3.5: Move to the U.S.

Duncan: Yuliya goes on to describe her move to Seattle and her path to Harborview Medical Center. She met her husband an American while they were both teaching at the same language school in Russia.

Yuliya: My husband and I, we got married, we lived in Russia for a while, and then we [00:22:30] lived in Turkey for a while. We were both teaching English at a university He was completing his master's degree, 

And that's where I got my certificate in teaching English to speakers of other languages. And then, towards the end of our time in Turkey, we were thinking of how we had lived all these other countries, and now it was time to live closer to his parents. 

Travel to U.S., Tennessee, Seattle

Yuliya: we went to Tennessee and then he got the job at Vanderbilt. And I got my, training as a medical interpreter. But, he didn't have a whole lot of work. It was a part-time job. And for [00:23:00] me as a medical interpreter, there isn't a very big Russian community.

 And so we started to look for jobs everywhere and he ended up finding a job in, Seattle or rather in Bellevue. 

 And we drove our things in our little red Toyota Yaris across the whole country. And when we moved here to Seattle, I started working as a freelance medical interpreter.

I started doing interpreter training. I met an incredible mentor who is now a friend, who saw the potential in me. And she said, oh, you [00:23:30] have all of this experience. You have this teaching background, you have this curriculum development background, you have to put it all together and become an interpreter trainer.

And she helped me figure that out. And I learned that Harborview was the prototype for the Grey's Anatomy Hospital. actually that was my first thought when my husband said, I found a job in Seattle. And I was like, yes, yes. Whatever it is, we're moving to Seattle. And when I first got a chance to [00:24:00] come to Harborview on an assignment as a freelance interpreter, I remember seeing these elevators that had code blue buttons on them.

And I thought, wow, this hospital takes care of really sick patients. This is amazing. I hope someday I can come here more often. , And so I kept working and doing my freelance assignments. And when this position opened up, I applied. And fortunately, I was hired and I loved this so much.

 [00:24:30] Harborview is such a special place. I mean, forget about Grey's Anatomy again. All of that doesn't really convey how amazing Harborview is and the people who work here. I think that's one of the biggest draws tha t people who work here want to work here. Not necessarily in healthcare, not necessarily in a hospital or a level one trauma hospital, but Harborview specifically.

Chapter 4: Vicarious Trauma

Duncan: Working at a trauma and safety net hospital like Harborview Medical Center can be emotionally demanding for both [00:25:00] providers and interpreters. Yuliya describes a delicate tension at the heart of interpretation. How to care deeply enough to connect with patients, yet remain objective enough to ensure accuracy. 

Yuliya: I think this job, can make you tremendously vulnerable to what we call vicarious trauma, which is what happens when you are exposed to suffering of others. And even though it's not you who is experiencing the pain, the loss, any other emotions, but just by witnessing that you can be affected and you can be [00:25:30] affected profoundly. Anywhere from, feeling distressed in the moment to having almost PTSD like symptoms where, you know, maybe you can't sleep, maybe you keep having persistent thoughts and flashbacks of this situation, and so on.

So I've been doing this job in the US for a long time now, for years. I will say there's been only a handful of times where somebody acknowledged my role in this. And this happened when I was interpreting for a victim's advocate at a police station. And [00:26:00] so they were trained to do this job, right?

They were trained to counsel victims of violent crimes. And so when we were meeting before the appointment, they said, you know, I'm going to work with someone who experienced a violent crime, and as part of their therapy, I'm going to ask them to recall it in a lot of detail, most likely more than once.

So you're going to have to hear this, you're going to have to interpret. If you're having a hard time, you're welcome to stay after the session. And this was again, at the very beginning of my career. So I thought, wow, what a nice job this is. [00:26:30] People really care about you. People are going to make sure you're okay.

This never happens again. It only happened once. And so when I provide training to hospital staff and providers, I do tell them, you know, if this encounter was difficult for you, somebody else had to say everything you are saying in the first person. Meaning when you said, I'm so sorry I have bad news for you.

Somebody else said, I'm so sorry I have bad news for you. When the patient said, I can't take it anymore, the interpreter [00:27:00] also had to say, I can't take it anymore.

Chapter 5: Empathy and Boundaries

Duncan: And thinking about this, it sounds like an element of empathy is probably very important at being an effective interpreter.

Yuliya: You know, I actually wrote an article in my blog the medical interpreter blog about what compassion means for interpreters. And what I came to understand is interpreters have role boundaries like other professions. We have the scope of our role, and the majority of the time, our job is to be other people's voices.

So we interpret what [00:27:30] other people say, we have to interpret it accurately without changing, editing or omitting anything. And there's not a whole lot of room for our own voice. So mostly we speak in our own voice when there is an issue. So I might say, this is the interpreter, the interpreter's not familiar with the term you used.

Would you clarify? Or this is the interpreter would you, repeat what you said, things like that. So there isn't a whole lot of room for me speaking in my own voice, to console someone, to comfort someone. And so then probably empathy and compassion [00:28:00] means you do your job to the best of your ability, so that if a provider consoles someone, then you do your best to convey that emotion in their voice.

If the patient is upset or distraught without theatrics, you do your best to convey that so that the provider is able to comprehend what they're feeling.

Duncan: my question is to do that effectively, my sense is that you probably need to feel those emotions somewhat yourself to be able to express them. Or are you able to disconnect those two?

Yuliya: [00:28:30] Personally, I try to disconnect because I found early on letting those emotions in can be very distracting. So the first time that I had to interpret bad news, the doctor said, you know, I have some bad news. Despite all of the treatments and all efforts, your, tumor is growing.

And I was so upset to hear that on behalf of the patient. It took me a minute to remember how to say grow in Russian. And this is the language I grew up speaking. This is also my working professional language. And if you think about it, [00:29:00] you could say grow in many different ways. You could say become larger, increase in size did not shrink if you wanted to paraphrase it that way.

None of that was accessible to me at the moment because I was so affected emotionally. And that was a really good lesson to me leave those emotions outside, focus on the job at hand. Kind of like a nine one one dispatcher. When you call them, they will ask you some very specific questions because that's their job to get you the help that you need.

And they don't have time to say, oh [00:29:30] no, this is awful. Or they just have to be like, okay, you know, what's going on? Where is it going on? What are some important details? So I feel like that's the job for me at that moment is to be the interpreter, channel the information, and then I can fall apart later.

Chapter 6: Conveying Emotion without Theatrics

Duncan: when you're interpreting the voice of the patient, my guess is that a lot of what you're trying to communicate to the physician are those nuances of feeling and of emotion. So how do you at once disconnect yourself from your own emotions, but also [00:30:00] act faithfully to transmit those.

Role of emotion wihtout affecting your ability to interpret

Yuliya: Probably you have to have a bit of, an acting skill without the theatrics. So it's a fine line. You don't want to be completely robotic where it happened to me. So outside of this job, I volunteer with the victim support team, which supports survivors of domestic violence and some other crimes. And so clearly sometimes we speak to survivors who speak other languages.

So we would speak through an interpreter and I remember talking to somebody and consoling them, and I was using, you know, my soft voice and I'm [00:30:30] so sorry. And the interpreter was very efficient, but they were just like I'm so sorry this happens and just focused on a very quick delivery.

 And I, without speaking that language, you know, I may be wrong, but I feel like I didn't get that sense of kindness in the voice. But then there is another, opposite that we also don't want to fall into, if somebody is like, oh no, you're not a good doctor. You are horrible. Why are you doing this to me?

So you don't want to necessarily be yelling, right? So you have to find that balance between like, oh no, you're a [00:31:00] horrible doctor. I don't want you treating me anymore. And also having to yell and maybe shake your fists.

Duncan: While you're hinting at this thing that I didn't think about, in enough detail, but it's this fine balancing act, and then you have to transmit the sensation of the emotions, but you have to regulate it in a way for whoever's receiving it on the other end. So you're doing a, complicated balancing equation.

And like you're saying, you can't just be empathetic listener because you have a job to

Yuliya: Mm-hmm.

Duncan: The balance [00:31:30] between conveying emotion while being attuned to the needs of the listener is where interpretation becomes an art. 

Yuliya Speroff traced her journey as a young girl in Siberia, in love with books to a love of American culture and the English language.

 She also discussed some of the challenges faced by interpreters, including vicarious trauma and the role of transmitting tone and emotion in interpretation. 

In part two of our discussion, we will discuss more of the details on how providers and interpreters [00:32:00] can work together to provide effective care. Thank you for listening to this episode of the EthnoMed podcast. Visit ethnomed.org for additional resources. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend.

 See you on part two of our interview with Yulia Speroff.