Chapter 4
The interpreter as one of the bilinguals in court
The previous chapter explained the modes of interpretation and the audience roles in court proceedings, monolingual and bilingual. It compared the audience roles in two different bilingual settings, a common bilingual courtroom as well as the bilingual Hong Kong courtroom, where interpreters nowadays often have to work with court actors who share their bilingual knowledge. This chapter examines how the audience roles of the court actors, as construed in the previous chapter, affect their power and thus control over the interpreter-mediated interaction. In particular, this chapter illustrates an augmentation in the power of bilingual counsel while at the same time manifests a denial of the interpreter’s latitude in the interpretation of contextual clues and his/her loss of power in a courtroom with the presence of other bilinguals.
Article outline
- 1.Power and control in monolingual and in interpreted court proceedings
- 2.Bilingualism, participant roles and power of the interpreter and of other court actors
- 2.1Power and participant roles of court actors with the interpreter as one of the bilinguals
- 2.1.1Increase in audience roles of bilingual counsel
- 2.1.2Diminished role of the interpreter
- 3.Strategic use of language in the adversarial courtroom
- 4.Polysemy, ambiguity and context in court interpreting
- 4.1The issue: Meanings of saam1
- 4.2Prosecution case
- 4.3Defence case
- 4.4The interpreter’s strategy
- 4.5The cross-examiner’s strategy
- 5.The interpreter’s dilemma
- 6.Conclusion
-
Notes