The influence of governmental policy on public service interpreting in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, the government has become involved in public service interpreting by issuing measures shaping the professional conditions for interpreters and by monitoring the quality of their services. Under the Sworn Interpreters and Translators Act (2007) a register was set up for interpreters who meet predefined requirements for “basic interpreter competencies”. According to the 2007 Act, institutions in the legal domain as well as in the immigration and police services are obliged to work exclusively with certified interpreters. In this way, the government has contributed to the professionalization of legal interpreting. In recent years however, this development has been reversed in other sectors of public service interpreting (PSI). Some forms of PSI, it would seem, are more equal than others. In public health for example, there are only advisory regulations concerning the use of interpreters, and there is no obligation to work with certified interpreters. Although the government was initially involved in the administration and financing of interpreting agencies in all the fields of PSI, over the years it has gradually transferred this responsibility to the users of these services. In 2012, the government stopped most of its funding of healthcare interpreting. In spite of the presence of several indicators of professionalization of interpreters in the Netherlands, such as certification, a code of ethics, compensation and a system of continuing education for interpreters, their effectiveness is limited because they concern only interpreters working in the legal domain or in immigration and police services. The level of professionalization in PSI as a whole could be increased if the government were to implement its theoretical stance that both legal and healthcare interpreting are matters of public interest enshrined in the Dutch law, and if other fields of PSI besides legal interpreting were included in the existing framework for certification, training and continuing education.

A Small Laboratory Automation System Composed of Microcomputer-Based Spectrophotometers

A distributed microcomputer network system which consists of integral microprocessors in intelligent instruments has been developed for automating the spectroscopy laboratory. In this system, the master-slave arrangement of microcomputers is adopted to compose the system controller and three microcomputer-based spectrophotometers (an UV/visible spectrophotometer, an IR spectrophotometer, and a fluorescence spectrophotometer). The IEEE-488 standard interface bus is employed for the hardware compatibility of the communication between the system controller and spectrophotometer subsystems. The Tiny BASIC language is modified as a standard language in the system for real time execution along the communication through the IEEE-488 interface bus. The operation includes two modes: the local mode and the remote mode. In the local mode, the spectrophotometer is manually controlled independently from the system controller. In the remote mode, the modified Tiny BASIC program controls individual spectrophotometers. The program is written by the user at the system controller and is loaded down to the microcomputer of a spectrophotometer subsystem. This program is executed via the individual modified Tiny BASIC interpreter implemented in the subsystem. The system structure, design of the modified Tiny BASIC, and operating procedures are presented together with typical performance data.

Using DEC Operating System for X-Ray Diffraction and X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis

The Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) operating system RSX-11M has recently been installed on a DEC PDP 11/34 computer which is used for the control of, and to acquire and process data from, three X-ray diffractometers, one X-ray fluorescence analysis unit and an electron microprobe. The RSX-11M system replaced the modified DEC 1 - 8 User BASIC previously employed, thus replacing an operating system which was known in detail only to its writer by a system which is supported by the computer manufacturer. There are three major advantages in the use of RSX-11M over 1 - 8 User BASIC: an improved handling of program scheduling, the integration of the software driver for the computer - X-ray electronics interface into the operating system without a major modification of the latter, and the ability of RSX-11M to undertake concurrent execution of instrument control, data acquisition, and data reduction. The 11/34 - RSX-11M system has been implemented to use FORTRAN; a BASIC interpreter has, however, been added which allows users to interact on-line with the computer. A command interpreter which can accept a command line from a terminal has been included.