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Technical Translations are always interested in learning about the experiences and backgrounds of professionals working in the industry, and we were keen to tune in to a programme about interpreters that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday; ’The Iraqi Interpreter’s New Home’, which highlighted the plight of a group of interpreters who had been hired by the British Armed Forces in Iraq and then been offered a home in the UK under the Locally Engaged Staff Assistance Scheme (LESAS) when their work there was over. 364 interpreters and their dependants came to the UK and many of these were settled in Glasgow and are living in council accommodation while they retrain and adapt to their new life over here.
Although they are not now subject to persecution or the horror of receiving a fatwa for helping ‘infidels’, that dreaded threat of death and destruction, all the men interviewed were facing a very new set of challenges, the chief of which seems to be difficulties encountered in their search for professional work. Some of them have had to come to terms with the fact that their Iraqi qualifications are not always recognised in the UK. They have all risked their lives for the British Government during active service in Iraq interpreting for the armed forces and have been both surprised and disappointed by experiences of negative or racist prejudice displayed by some locals, but they do stress the friendliness of most of the Glaswegians they have encountered.
What really struck me as a consistent pattern in the dialogues of the various men interviewed, however, was their upbeat and positive attitude to the opportunities offered by the move to the UK, even if it means that they will have to retake their qualifications to work in their former professions. "I fixed the teeth of British soldiers in Baghdad. I was a qualified dentist.” said a man calling himself Hashmat," Here I cannot touch anyone," he added, somewhat wistfully.
The four men interviewed were intelligent, humorous and thoughtful. They were also very well-educated and disliked being unemployed on benefits. They appreciated that work is scarce in the UK in the current economic climate, and did not expect to be fast-tracked into a job, but would have liked a little more recognition of the service that they provided and having put their own and consequently their families lives on the line, to be treated with rather more dignity than the average asylum seeker when they were repatriated. The Iraqi Interpreters New Home was broadcast on Friday 28th October and can be listened to on BBC iPlayer.
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