ETHICAL ASPECTS

This chapter discusses ethical issues relating to the use and impact of interpreting technologies. The chapter focuses on this interrelation between the use and impact of technologies as a matter of ‘technoethics’, highlighting how the technological tools available in the interpreting profession and industry are connected to moral and socio-economic issues. The chapter emphasises how these concerns are associated with four macro-areas: employment, working conditions, and potential automation and substitution of human labour; confidentiality, training, and corporate ownership of data; bias and linguistic diversity; and technology use in crisis-prone interpreting settings. It concludes by arguing that while the usefulness and viability of interpreting technologies should not be negated, there is a necessity for increased awareness, inclusive guidelines, regulation, and stakeholder collaboration in order to promote their fair and ethical deployment.