Interpreters demand to stay out as Trump row throws spotlight

Explosive allegations that US President Donald Trump concealed conversations with Russia have thrown an unwelcome spotlight on interpreters, whose quick wit is vital to diplomacy and who stay scrupulously in the shadows.

Interpreters, whether they are working at high-stakes international summits or in low-level court hearings, abide by a code of ethics not to divulge anything they hear.

Trump fuelled suspicions about his ties with Russia when, in a sharp break with standard diplomatic practice, he dismissed top aides for two hours of talks with President Vladimir Putin during their first formal summit in July.

Only one American remained in the room in Helsinki -- Marina Gross, an interpreter provided by the State Department.

House Democrats last year unsuccessfully sought to force Gross to testify about the summit, saying Trump's extraordinary actions required extraordinary measures in turn.

Reviving concerns, The Washington Post reported that Trump snatched her notes after an earlier encounter with Putin in 2017 on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Hamburg and instructed Gross not to discuss the conversation even with other administration officials.

"It's actually unprecedented that we are in the spotlight as much as we are now," said Uros Peterc, president of the Geneva-based International Association of Conference Interpreters.

Peterc, who quipped that his was the world's second-oldest profession, said that non-disclosure of conversations was the paramount principle of interpreters.

"It's been clear since forever that an interpreter is somebody the principal has full and total trust in," said Peterc, who was part of the interpretation team in Slovenia for Putin's summit with newly elected US president George W. Bush in 2001.

"It's the same thing when you go to a doctor. You don't expect the doctor to meet you on the street and say, 'How is that cancer?'"
Trump -- whose presidential campaign's relationship with Russia is the focus of a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller -- has denied secrecy about the summit and declared Monday on the snowy grounds of the White House, "I never worked for Russia."
"It would be extremely unusual for a president to cut off all other members of his administration from the substance of what is said."