This chapter reviews a number of key cases from different English speaking countries where poor interpretation created legal problems. The author attributes these problems to three major reasons: (1) The complete absence of an interpreter; (2) the provision of unqualified bilinguals or interpreters in the wrong language; and (3) the services of “professional accredited” but untrained interpreters who do not possess the required high level skills to perform as legal interpreters. The author argues that monocultural or Anglophone lawyers and judges often lack an understanding of the interpreting process and the work of interpreters, which may lead to forensic error. The chapter ends with recommendations for the way forward.
For over a century, English was the only language in which law was practiced in Hong Kong, yet the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 has made legal bilingualism inevitable. In translating existing laws into Chinese, the Law Drafting Division emphasises the need to establish a semantic mapping between the Chinese statutes and their English counterparts, and to strive for both adequacy and acceptability when selecting a Chinese term or expression to represent a common-law concept. This paper examines how legal translators and interpreters resolve the tension between adequacy and acceptability, and concludes that the effort to achieve adequacy at the expense of acceptability may not always pay off.
Community and conference interpreters are concerned by misunderstanding and for the preservation of linguistic diversity. Rather than emphasizing differences in context or mode, this chapter seeks to deepen parallels and similarities across the spectrum of professional simultaneous interpretation by describing a discourse of simultaneous interpreters within “the largest professional interpreting community in the world” (Interpreter #2). The multilingual and democratic institution of the European Parliament (EP) provides a unique venue to explore shared responsibility between interpreters and interlocutors. As policy makers who regularly use interpreters, the effectiveness of interpreted communication in the EP is of imminent interest to all participants in interpreted interaction. Because codes of ethics typically constrain interpreters’ ability to provide coherent feedback to the interlocutors with whom we work; this paper summarizes one specific and situated interpreter concern. A contrast between the ritual and transmission views for conceptualizing the purpose of communication is used to illuminate the struggle in Interpreting Studies to clearly distinguish linguistic meaning from socially-emergent meaningfulness.
This chapter explores healthcare interpreter policy in the wider context of broader healthcare agendas and changing multicultural policies. It questions whether the interpreter policy objective of universal access for limited English speakers is viable in the context of the rapidly changing modern healthcare environment. This chapter reviews some interesting new material derived from my research on modes of language facilitation in a pilot hospital and the experiences of patients with limited English proficiency. The chapter makes a series of challenging suggestions for future healthcare interpreter service policy.
This is is an exploration of the tensions between interpreting ethics and customary law distilled from interviews with interpreters in Aboriginal languages as part of research commissioned by the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia (2006). While accuracy, impartiality and confidentiality are key principles in interpreting ethics, it was found that for Australian Indigenous interpreters each of these principles may be seriously compromised in practice by rules of customary law. Suggested strategies for resolving potential conflict between interpreting ethics and customary law include: Indigenous communities requiring public education about the interpreter’s role; health and legal professionals undertaking cultural awareness training; requiring use of trained and accredited interpreters; and an expanded role for interpreters to occasionally act as cultural broker.
To date, no research has been conducted on interpreting for deaf jurors, as people are not typically eligible to serve as jurors if they cannot understand the language of the court. This chapter reports one aspect of a pioneering pilot study in Australia, which sought to investigate the capacity for deaf people to serve as jurors in criminal court by accessing courtroom discourse via signed language interpreters. Results of an experimental comprehension test administered to six deaf and six hearing mock “jurors” revealed that levels of comprehension between deaf and hearing participants were similar. Thus it appears that the deaf participants were not disadvantaged by accessing information indirectly via interpreting, and could legitimately serve as jurors, although this needs to be further investigated.
This paper addresses a specific aspect of interpreting in Austrian asylum review hearings, i.e., the interpreter’s role as a co-producer of the written record. The interpreter-mediated encounter is viewed as a joint, co-constructed activity, with responsibility for its content, progression and outcome shared by all the interacting parties. This includes the production of the written record of the interview, which is typed by a recording clerk under the supervision of the adjudicator. The discourse-based analysis of fourteen hearings with English-speaking asylum seekers from African countries shows that most interpreters tend to adjust to a striking degree to the needs of record production. This perceived need to interpret “for the record” not only entails an increased cognitive task load but also a significant degree of shared responsibility on the interpreter’s part for the legally relevant manifestation of the interview.
Basque is one of the official languages of the Basque Country, a region in Northern Spain. Within the legal system, translators and interpreters are mandatory, in order to guarantee the linguistic rights of citizens in their dealings with that system. Because of the nature of the Basque language itself and because of the delicate political situation in the Basque Country, the interpreter’s job is extremely arduous. This chapter will report on the results of an analysis of court cases compiled over the last decade. The cases were classified according to the nature of the trials and hearings in which Basque was used. The strategies developed by Basque interpreters in order to meet the quality criteria which the profession requires are also part of the analysis.
This paper presents the results of a study aimed at determining how community interpreters in Spain perceive their work. The study involves interpreters in different settings including hospitals, social services, emergency and civil defense organisations, the security forces and the law courts. It has basically been conducted in Andalucía and in the case of the justice system it includes data gathered nationwide. The aim is to explore the interpreters’ perception of their role and specifically the limits of that role with regard to adaptation of language register, cultural explanations, expansion and omission of information, the relation with clients, and specialized terminology, amongst other aspects. As in previous studies by the GRETI research group, the methodology is questionnaire-based and has also resorted to a structured interview. The results show that in terms of professionalisation there are certain differences between the law courts (where interpreting is explicitly legally provided for), and other settings. However, in both instances interpreters seem to shape their role according to intuition, and the majority would seem to go beyond the function that most codes of ethics stipulate. Moreover, the results reveal a total lack of knowledge regarding interpreting as a specialized professional activity.
This pilot study examines the use of rating scales in the assessment of interpreting performance quality. The three criteria and descriptors in the band scale were developed a priori based on intuitive understanding of different levels of interpreting quality and the rating scale models used in second language assessment. Nine professional Korean interpreters rated five English Korean consecutive interpreting performances using the scales, and provided feedback on the use of rating scales. The results indicate that rating scales may enhance the reliability of assessment of interpreting performance.
This paper presents an interpreter training program recently implemented at an Italo-American healthcare facility and illustrates how the notion of “norm”, as developed within Descriptive Translation Studies, successfully shifted the trainees’ attention away from externally imposed instructions onto internally generated behavioural patterns. The process of critical rethinking was carried out through guided self-assessment of both authentic and simulated interpreting performances, based on transcript analysis. Exemplification is provided here by the use of first vs. third person. Given the highly specific context of the medical institution in question, the experience described in this study is significant only insofar as it indicates how to make rigid and undifferentiated rules superfluous while, at the same time, assuring quality services and enhancing the professionalisation of healthcare interpreting.
The literature on discourse studies is vast yet the field of community interpreting has been fairly slow in making good use of it. This chapter briefly outlines three approaches to discourse analysis and emphasizes the sociolinguistic importance of the speech event. Implications of some of the findings from discourse studies of medical interpreting using the social semiotic approach (systemic functional linguistics) are discussed. They are: the generic structure of the interpreted medical consultation; interpreting everything that is said including organisational discourse markers and feedback to the patient; understanding the physician’s checking strategies; and the role of cohesion in the interpreted exchange. All are relevant for high quality curriculum design and teaching of community interpreting courses; and high quality professional practice.
The cultural and linguistic diversity of Australian society presents an ongoing challenge to the health care system. The 30th anniversary of the New South Wales Health Care Interpreter Service (HCIS) provided stimulus to reflect on the interpreter’s contribution to improved health care and better health outcomes, from the viewpoint of the interpreters themselves. This paper, based on an examination of case studies prepared by eighteen staff at one HCIS centre in metropolitan Sydney, highlights the importance of technical skills, a professional approach and experience in achieving quality in health care interpreting. Dealing successfully with the scope and challenges of the interpreter role, and being a valued member of the health care team, leads to job satisfaction which also leads to increased quality.
This paper is based on a project with the title Centering the Human Subject in Health Research: The Meaning and Experience of Research Participation. This paper looks at research interpreters and research workers who are influenced by both professional and ethical codes and broader research policies which govern the ethical conduct of clinical and community-based research. It is based on a review of the research ethics literature and a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews with fourteen key informants including researchers, interpreters and members of Research Ethics Boards (REBs). These interviews were completed with individuals with direct experience working across language barriers, sometimes as interpreters and sometimes as researchers; it is these interviews that provide the framework for this paper. It asks two main questions: (1) What are the differences and similarities between interpreters working in research and medical interpreters; and (2) How do the codes and policies governing research ethics compare with the professional codes of ethical conduct applied to interpreters. To answer the first question we revisit the three models of the medical interpreter: the interpreter as conduit, the interpreter as cultural broker, and the community embedded interpreter (Avery, 2001). We provide a brief description of each model and discuss the roles of interpreters, focusing on language and relationships. We also examine the implications of language barriers for research ethics, focusing on informed consent and the technical and ethical challenges of translating consent forms from one language to another. We then compare the professional codes of ethical conduct developed for medical interpreters by their own profession with the rules and regulations issued by government policy and research funding agencies and implemented by Research Ethics Boards. Lastly, we look at the question of community consent and at the roles played by some interpreters in speaking “for” a researcher and a research project.
This chapter reviews a number of key cases from different English speaking countries where poor interpretation created legal problems. The author attributes these problems to three major reasons: (1) The complete absence of an interpreter; (2) the provision of unqualified bilinguals or interpreters in the wrong language; and (3) the services of “professional accredited” but untrained interpreters who do not possess the required high level skills to perform as legal interpreters. The author argues that monocultural or Anglophone lawyers and judges often lack an understanding of the interpreting process and the work of interpreters, which may lead to forensic error. The chapter ends with recommendations for the way forward.
For over a century, English was the only language in which law was practiced in Hong Kong, yet the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 has made legal bilingualism inevitable. In translating existing laws into Chinese, the Law Drafting Division emphasises the need to establish a semantic mapping between the Chinese statutes and their English counterparts, and to strive for both adequacy and acceptability when selecting a Chinese term or expression to represent a common-law concept. This paper examines how legal translators and interpreters resolve the tension between adequacy and acceptability, and concludes that the effort to achieve adequacy at the expense of acceptability may not always pay off.
Community and conference interpreters are concerned by misunderstanding and for the preservation of linguistic diversity. Rather than emphasizing differences in context or mode, this chapter seeks to deepen parallels and similarities across the spectrum of professional simultaneous interpretation by describing a discourse of simultaneous interpreters within “the largest professional interpreting community in the world” (Interpreter #2). The multilingual and democratic institution of the European Parliament (EP) provides a unique venue to explore shared responsibility between interpreters and interlocutors. As policy makers who regularly use interpreters, the effectiveness of interpreted communication in the EP is of imminent interest to all participants in interpreted interaction. Because codes of ethics typically constrain interpreters’ ability to provide coherent feedback to the interlocutors with whom we work; this paper summarizes one specific and situated interpreter concern. A contrast between the ritual and transmission views for conceptualizing the purpose of communication is used to illuminate the struggle in Interpreting Studies to clearly distinguish linguistic meaning from socially-emergent meaningfulness.
This chapter explores healthcare interpreter policy in the wider context of broader healthcare agendas and changing multicultural policies. It questions whether the interpreter policy objective of universal access for limited English speakers is viable in the context of the rapidly changing modern healthcare environment. This chapter reviews some interesting new material derived from my research on modes of language facilitation in a pilot hospital and the experiences of patients with limited English proficiency. The chapter makes a series of challenging suggestions for future healthcare interpreter service policy.
This is is an exploration of the tensions between interpreting ethics and customary law distilled from interviews with interpreters in Aboriginal languages as part of research commissioned by the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia (2006). While accuracy, impartiality and confidentiality are key principles in interpreting ethics, it was found that for Australian Indigenous interpreters each of these principles may be seriously compromised in practice by rules of customary law. Suggested strategies for resolving potential conflict between interpreting ethics and customary law include: Indigenous communities requiring public education about the interpreter’s role; health and legal professionals undertaking cultural awareness training; requiring use of trained and accredited interpreters; and an expanded role for interpreters to occasionally act as cultural broker.
To date, no research has been conducted on interpreting for deaf jurors, as people are not typically eligible to serve as jurors if they cannot understand the language of the court. This chapter reports one aspect of a pioneering pilot study in Australia, which sought to investigate the capacity for deaf people to serve as jurors in criminal court by accessing courtroom discourse via signed language interpreters. Results of an experimental comprehension test administered to six deaf and six hearing mock “jurors” revealed that levels of comprehension between deaf and hearing participants were similar. Thus it appears that the deaf participants were not disadvantaged by accessing information indirectly via interpreting, and could legitimately serve as jurors, although this needs to be further investigated.
This paper addresses a specific aspect of interpreting in Austrian asylum review hearings, i.e., the interpreter’s role as a co-producer of the written record. The interpreter-mediated encounter is viewed as a joint, co-constructed activity, with responsibility for its content, progression and outcome shared by all the interacting parties. This includes the production of the written record of the interview, which is typed by a recording clerk under the supervision of the adjudicator. The discourse-based analysis of fourteen hearings with English-speaking asylum seekers from African countries shows that most interpreters tend to adjust to a striking degree to the needs of record production. This perceived need to interpret “for the record” not only entails an increased cognitive task load but also a significant degree of shared responsibility on the interpreter’s part for the legally relevant manifestation of the interview.
Basque is one of the official languages of the Basque Country, a region in Northern Spain. Within the legal system, translators and interpreters are mandatory, in order to guarantee the linguistic rights of citizens in their dealings with that system. Because of the nature of the Basque language itself and because of the delicate political situation in the Basque Country, the interpreter’s job is extremely arduous. This chapter will report on the results of an analysis of court cases compiled over the last decade. The cases were classified according to the nature of the trials and hearings in which Basque was used. The strategies developed by Basque interpreters in order to meet the quality criteria which the profession requires are also part of the analysis.
This paper presents the results of a study aimed at determining how community interpreters in Spain perceive their work. The study involves interpreters in different settings including hospitals, social services, emergency and civil defense organisations, the security forces and the law courts. It has basically been conducted in Andalucía and in the case of the justice system it includes data gathered nationwide. The aim is to explore the interpreters’ perception of their role and specifically the limits of that role with regard to adaptation of language register, cultural explanations, expansion and omission of information, the relation with clients, and specialized terminology, amongst other aspects. As in previous studies by the GRETI research group, the methodology is questionnaire-based and has also resorted to a structured interview. The results show that in terms of professionalisation there are certain differences between the law courts (where interpreting is explicitly legally provided for), and other settings. However, in both instances interpreters seem to shape their role according to intuition, and the majority would seem to go beyond the function that most codes of ethics stipulate. Moreover, the results reveal a total lack of knowledge regarding interpreting as a specialized professional activity.
This pilot study examines the use of rating scales in the assessment of interpreting performance quality. The three criteria and descriptors in the band scale were developed a priori based on intuitive understanding of different levels of interpreting quality and the rating scale models used in second language assessment. Nine professional Korean interpreters rated five English Korean consecutive interpreting performances using the scales, and provided feedback on the use of rating scales. The results indicate that rating scales may enhance the reliability of assessment of interpreting performance.
This paper presents an interpreter training program recently implemented at an Italo-American healthcare facility and illustrates how the notion of “norm”, as developed within Descriptive Translation Studies, successfully shifted the trainees’ attention away from externally imposed instructions onto internally generated behavioural patterns. The process of critical rethinking was carried out through guided self-assessment of both authentic and simulated interpreting performances, based on transcript analysis. Exemplification is provided here by the use of first vs. third person. Given the highly specific context of the medical institution in question, the experience described in this study is significant only insofar as it indicates how to make rigid and undifferentiated rules superfluous while, at the same time, assuring quality services and enhancing the professionalisation of healthcare interpreting.
The literature on discourse studies is vast yet the field of community interpreting has been fairly slow in making good use of it. This chapter briefly outlines three approaches to discourse analysis and emphasizes the sociolinguistic importance of the speech event. Implications of some of the findings from discourse studies of medical interpreting using the social semiotic approach (systemic functional linguistics) are discussed. They are: the generic structure of the interpreted medical consultation; interpreting everything that is said including organisational discourse markers and feedback to the patient; understanding the physician’s checking strategies; and the role of cohesion in the interpreted exchange. All are relevant for high quality curriculum design and teaching of community interpreting courses; and high quality professional practice.
The cultural and linguistic diversity of Australian society presents an ongoing challenge to the health care system. The 30th anniversary of the New South Wales Health Care Interpreter Service (HCIS) provided stimulus to reflect on the interpreter’s contribution to improved health care and better health outcomes, from the viewpoint of the interpreters themselves. This paper, based on an examination of case studies prepared by eighteen staff at one HCIS centre in metropolitan Sydney, highlights the importance of technical skills, a professional approach and experience in achieving quality in health care interpreting. Dealing successfully with the scope and challenges of the interpreter role, and being a valued member of the health care team, leads to job satisfaction which also leads to increased quality.
This paper is based on a project with the title Centering the Human Subject in Health Research: The Meaning and Experience of Research Participation. This paper looks at research interpreters and research workers who are influenced by both professional and ethical codes and broader research policies which govern the ethical conduct of clinical and community-based research. It is based on a review of the research ethics literature and a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews with fourteen key informants including researchers, interpreters and members of Research Ethics Boards (REBs). These interviews were completed with individuals with direct experience working across language barriers, sometimes as interpreters and sometimes as researchers; it is these interviews that provide the framework for this paper. It asks two main questions: (1) What are the differences and similarities between interpreters working in research and medical interpreters; and (2) How do the codes and policies governing research ethics compare with the professional codes of ethical conduct applied to interpreters. To answer the first question we revisit the three models of the medical interpreter: the interpreter as conduit, the interpreter as cultural broker, and the community embedded interpreter (Avery, 2001). We provide a brief description of each model and discuss the roles of interpreters, focusing on language and relationships. We also examine the implications of language barriers for research ethics, focusing on informed consent and the technical and ethical challenges of translating consent forms from one language to another. We then compare the professional codes of ethical conduct developed for medical interpreters by their own profession with the rules and regulations issued by government policy and research funding agencies and implemented by Research Ethics Boards. Lastly, we look at the question of community consent and at the roles played by some interpreters in speaking “for” a researcher and a research project.