The Linguist

20 The Linguist Vol/65 No/2 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist FEATURES compliance with professional deontology – delivering the best possible service – but a worrying disregard for health issues. Raising awareness is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for interpreters' health – even more so in the case of those freelancers who have no professional organisation to rely on. As competition is growing, both from human interpreters and from the booming offer of AI-based machine interpreting in the global marketplace, the danger of self-exploitation and self-imposed lowering of health standards becomes all the more real. Only if interpreters internalise that self-care is an ethical responsibility can we make our clients understand what is at stake and help them choose the kind of language assistance they need while ensuring working conditions do not put interpreters' health and psychophysical wellbeing at risk. The new book by Gabriele Mack and Amalia Amato, Interpreters' Health and Wellbeing: An overview across modes, modalities and settings (Routledge, 2026), can be downloaded for free at https://cutt.ly/MackAmato. Notes 1 ISO (2024) ISO 17651-1: Simultaneous Interpreting – Interpreters' working environment – Part 1: Requirements and recommendations for permanent booths; ISO (2024) ISO 17651-2: Simultaneous Interpreting – Interpreters' working environment – Part 2: Requirements and recommendations for mobile booths 2 See, e.g, Eichmeyer, D (2017) Luftqualität in Dolmetschkabinen als Einflussfaktor auf die Dolmetschqualität: Interdisziplinäre Erkenntnisse und translationspraktische Konsequenzen, Frank & Timme; Gerbino, M (2025) 'Indagine esplorativa sulle cabine di simultanea in uso in Italia' (Unpublished Master's thesis), Universita di Bologna, Forli, Italy; Grée, D (2006) 'De l'utilité de cabines normalisées pour une qualité optimale en interprétation. Communicate!' In The AIIC Webzine, December; Hsu, J (2008) 'An Exploratory Study of the Working Environment of Conference Interpreters: Built-in booths in Taipei' (Unpublished Master's thesis), National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan 3 Kurz, I (1981) 'Temperatures in Interpreters' Booths: A hot iron?' In AIIC Bulletin, 9,4, 39-43; Kurz, I (1983) 'Temperatures Inside and Outside Booths – A comparative study'. In AIIC Bulletin, 11,2, 67-72; Kurz, I (1983) 'CO2 and O2 Levels in Booths at the End of a Conference Day – A pilot study'. In AIIC Bulletin, 11,3, 86-93; Kurz, I and Kolmer, H (1984) 'Humidity and Temperature Measurements in Booths'. In AIIC Bulletin, 12,2, 42-43 4 Sound quality is another occupational hazard, but we have not discussed it here as it is not related to booths alone. 5 AIIC (2020) 'Acoustic Shocks Research Project: Final report' Sue Leschen gets an insight into the extreme conditions faced by interpreting students in Ukraine Studying in a war zone LIVING WITH UNCERTAINTY Students living near the Russian border can lose internet signal suddenly and try to stay connected by switching from a laptop to a mobile phone R ecently I found myself presenting a webinar on 'Professional Standards and Challenges in Legal Interpreting' to yet another group of university students – but this one was a first for me, because this group is living in a war zone. Studying English or German at Chernihiv Polytechnic National University in Ukraine, approximately 80km from the border with Russia and Belarus, they are frighteningly close to the fighting. Associate Professor Olena Rosstalna advised me in advance that the number of attendees would depend on various factors, including the fact that some of the students live in "occupied territories". The paramount consideration would be the security situation in each person's geographical area on the day. "We can have attacks when students need to be in bomb shelters and the internet connection is bad," she explained. A typical email would read: "Apologies for the delayed response. There was a very long power cut in the city due to an attack by Russia." On the day of the webinar, Olena emailed to warn me that we might not be able to go ahead because "Unfortunately, we have drones flying very low and we will need to monitor the situation." Fortunately, we were able to proceed – with about 50 students and their lecturers attending – but in the knowledge that we could lose connection at any minute. Not knowing whether training sessions can start and/or continue to the end makes for a stressful situation for everyone involved: lecturers, students and speakers. One thing that wasn't an issue, though, was the students' fluency in English. Meanwhile, my knowledge of Ukrainian was limited to the much-publicised patriotic © SHUTTERSTOCK / DEAN DROBOT

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