TeleInterpreters Customer Login  |  Contact Us
Home Language Services Over The Phone Language Interpretation Services Interpreter Qualification Practices

Interpreter Qualification Practices

TeleInterpreters’ high standards of quality begin with the interpreter hiring process, where fewer than 10 percent of applicants pass our evaluation process. Setting the bar high to select the most qualified interpreters makes the critical difference in the care of our customers’ business. These criteria encompass not only the ASTM International standards for interpreter qualifications, but also comprise more rigorous benchmarks based on our decades of leadership experience in the language services industry.

Accredited Interpreters

TeleInterpreters hires accredited interpreters who have language and interpretation certifications from universities and language institutes. Academic-based language programs cover as many as 40 languages, which represent the most widely spoken foreign languages and the majority of our most requested languages.

Professional Interpreters

TeleInterpreters recruits professional interpreters, rather than bilingual speakers who, by definition, only have varying degrees of proficiency in a language pair. Professional interpreters have a much higher skill set to perform advanced consecutive interpretation required for telephony-based support of business and healthcare applications, including:
  • Mastery of the interpretation skills and knowledge base to quickly comprehend the source language and just as quickly re-express the information in the target language with fullness of meaning
  • The ability to listen carefully and have immediate recall of information to instantly and accurately transfer it into another language
  • Adherence to specific protocols to ensure precise interpretation
  • Native quality fluency in both English and the foreign language
  • Command of cultural differences to convey the appropriate meaning of culture-specific expressions.

Certified Interpreters

There is no national certification standard for interpreters that covers 170 languages, but there are state government programs that provide certification in some of the most frequently spoken languages for interpreters practicing within the legal and healthcare fields. These certified interpreters represent the highest of standards and TeleInterpreters’ greatest resource.

The state of California offers the most comprehensive interpreter certification program and serves as the model for TeleInterpreters’ performance-based interpreter evaluation, which assesses and validates:
  • Over the phone, consecutive interpreting skills using simulated application scenarios
  • Language fluency in both the target language and English, measuring breadth of vocabulary and proper grammar usage through error detection
  • Comprehension of industry-specific concepts and terminology
  • Voice presentation and customer service skills
  • Cultural aptitude to evaluate understanding of different regionalisms
Need More Information or Have a Question?

Please start by giving us your email.