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Part of
Handbook of Terminology: Volume 3. Legal Terminology
Edited by Łucja Biel and Hendrik J. Kockaert
[Handbook of Terminology 3] 2023
► pp. 570–593

Dealing with legal terminology in court interpreting

| Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The target of court interpreting is to ensure equal access to justice to all persons who are not proficient in the language spoken in a court of law. In that context, dealing effectively with legal terminology is crucial to interpret accurately and to keep the legal intent of the message. This chapter first explores the main difficulties of court interpreting, focusing on legal terminology. Then, some of the different existing models and criteria for accuracy in court interpreting are introduced. Finally, a training approach to help court interpreting students to create their own glossaries is presented, going from monolingual to bilingual research.

Keywords: court interpreting, legal terminology in court interpreting, accuracy in court interpreting, glossaries in court interpreting, difficulties in court interpreting, challenges in court interpreting, court interpreting training
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Main difficulties
    • 2.1Lack of access to case-related materials
    • 2.2General terms that become legal terms
    • 2.3General language features used as legal strategy
    • 2.4Domain-specific knowledge
  • 3.Standards for quality in court interpreting
  • 4.Training court interpreters to handle legal terminology
    • 4.1Working with monolingual legal terminology
    • 4.2Working with bilingual equivalents for legal terms
      • 4.2.1Research
      • 4.2.2Practice in context
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 1 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hot.3.dea1
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