Interpreting services

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Interpreting Team
contact details

Telephone: 01535 292811 or 01535 292813

Email us

The interpreting booking office is open from 8.00am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday. Interpreters are also available after office hours, evenings, weekends and bank holidays.

For further information please speak to a member of the hospital staff.

At Airedale, we offer an interpreting service for patients who do not understand or can only communicate in limited English.

This service is also available for patients with hearing or sight problems.

An interpreter can be used at any time during your consultation, especially in the following situations:

  • Taking a medical history
  • Explaining diagnosis and treatment (including medical procedures)
  • Taking consent for a medical procedure
  • Discharge planning
  • In all areas of Allied Health
  • Providing important information that may affect you

Both the clinician and the patient have the right to request an interpreter to assist with communication.

Languages available by our interpreting team are; Arabic, Bengali/Bangla, British Sign Language (BSL), Cantonese, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Slovakian, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu plus many more.

To guarantee an interpreter for your appointment at Airedale Hospital, please:

  1. Ask your GP who is referring you to the hospital to include the required language in the referral letter.
  2. When confirming your appointment with the hospital, request the staff to book an interpreter for you.

If an interpreter has not been booked in advance, you may ask a staff member upon arrival to contact the Interpreting Services office. However, please note that interpreters may be pre-booked elsewhere, and you may have to wait.

We offer interpreting through the following methods:

  • Face-to-face interpreting
  • Telephone interpreting
  • Video interpreting

The interpreting booking office is open from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Monday to Friday. Interpreters are also available outside office hours, including evenings, weekends, and bank holidays.

For further information, please speak to a member of the hospital staff.

Telephone: 01535 292811 or 01535 292813

Email: anhsft.interpretingbookings@nhs.net

Should you have any specific queries the contact details are:

Shaida Latif-Ali
Interpreting Services Manager
Tel: 01535 294883

Email: shaida.latif@nhs.net.

An interpreter conveys meaning verbally from one language to another.  This can be done face-to-face or by telephone.
An interpreter is bound by a Code of Ethics.  The main points of the code are accuracy, impartiality and confidentiality.

The use of family or friends to interpret is inappropriate as:

  • They are unqualified and untrained in interpreting techniques
  • They could omit, add and/or edit information and may be biased
  • They are unfamiliar with medical contexts and terminology.

Additionally they cannot discharge the legal duty of care owed by the health care provider to his or her patient.

Bilingual staff are also not automatically qualified to act as an interpreter and would be obliged to apply to have their language competency assessed.