Breaking Barriers –Their Daughter Will Interpret

“I had to translate to my mum that my dad had died.”
Pearl Clinton was only twelve when her dad passed away suddenly in 2003. Rather than sourcing a qualified BSL interpreter, doctors asked Pearl to break the news to her mum.1
It’s an almost unimaginable scenario, yet for thousands of children of deaf adults (CODAs) across the U.K., being used as vessels to communicate life-changing news is a familiar experience. From redundancies to police interviews to terminal cancer diagnoses, CODAs as young as six or seven can find themselves being tasked with relaying significant information that they themselves may not understand.
When Elisa Vallin was only eight years old she interpreted a mortgage meeting between her Deaf father and the bank, without any understanding of what a mortgage actually entailed. When she was ten, she had to explain that her mum was being made redundant, and at thirteen she had to tell her parents that her younger sister had been diagnosed with diabetes – a condition she had never previously heard of.2
Detective Constable James Dainton, himself a CODA, stresses the frequency in which children are asked to convey information that they are not able to mentally or emotionally understand, making it harder for them to process their own feelings and grief.3 This can take a huge toll on their mental health and cause tension between the child and their parents. It is common knowledge that legal and financial topics can be laced with jargon and complex concepts. This can, and often does, lead to mistranslations not done out of malice, but purely because the child does not know what is being said which in turn leads to higher levels of stress and anxiety. As professionals, we cannot expect children to assume this level of responsibility, regardless of the topic being discussed. Children who can barely grasp the complexities of their own emotions should not be expected to carry the weight of adult conversations.
Furthermore, family member interpreters, child or not, have what Dainton describes as a “vested interest” in discussions between their Deaf family and the professionals they are interpreting for. In legal instances such as will-writing, a client may not want any of their immediate family to know who is being left what after they die as this could leave the door open to coercion and abuse. Within the medical field, NHS 111 have reported problems with family member interpreters changing what is being asked or deliberately omitting parts of responses in order to fit in with cultural sensitivities and norms, most notably concerning questions about taboo or sexual topics. Deaf clients may not want to disclose private medical or financial information to close relatives such as adult children or siblings, and so by using a family interpreter you can end up cornering people into only saying what they are comfortable with the other person knowing.
Without an impartial third party, you cannot say with confidence that the translation you heard was actually what was being said – potentially harming both your client relationship and your professional reputation when things go wrong.
In the United States, it is illegal to use a child for language interpretation under the Affordable Care Act (2010) except for in dire emergencies. No such legislation exists in U.K. law. Due to increasing awareness, there have been countless petitions in the last decade aimed at banning the use of children and immediate family members as BSL interpreters, such as Pearl Clinton’s ‘Book BSL interpreters for ALL medical settings’ petition from 2021. Despite receiving thousands of signatures, the petition did not reach the number required for debate, but this topic shouldn’t be something up for debate. Children should never bear the responsibility of being language brokers, particularly not when pre-booked and VRS interpreting systems make finding a qualified interpreter so easy.
In a time of heightened awareness surrounding accessibility and inclusion, the continued reliance on CODAs to act as unpaid interpreters is a stumbling block in the path of equality and progress.
If you have a meeting with a Deaf client, use the NRCPD register (https://www.nrcpd.org.uk/) to find an interpreter in your local area or use an interpreting agency such as SignSolutions (https://www.signsolutions.uk.com/how-to-book/) as soon as possible. On-demand interpreters can be accessed through VRS systems like SignLive meaning that an interpreter is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
As we progress with 2025, let’s make it our mission to alleviate that responsibility carried by CODAs and treat our Deaf clients with the confidentiality, respect, and equality they deserve.
About the ADN: The Advisors for Deaf Network (ADN) is a not-for-profit initiative which exists to increase accessibility for d/Deaf clients accessing Legal and Financial Services. The ADN blog serves as a resource for increasing awareness of the barriers faced by the d/Deaf community in accessing services and for promoting best practice in accessibility.
1 https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/heartbreak-schoolgirl-sign-deaf-mum-20414639
2 https://www.deafumbrella.com/post/suffer-the-children
3 https://www.college.police.uk/article/being-child-deaf-adults-what-i-learned