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Article published In:
Interpreting
Vol. 20:2 (2018) ► pp.232–258

Non-renditions and the court interpreter’s perceived impartiality

A role-play study

| Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This experimental study examined whether non-renditions are linked to the court interpreter’s perceived impartiality. A witness examination was simulated in three variations on a scripted role play, with consecutive interpreting between Cantonese and English. A sample of female Cantonese speakers, divided into two experimental groups and a control group, each played the part of the witness in one role play; the interpreter and the English-speaking bench (judge and defense attorney) were always played by the same three actors. In two experimental groups, the interpretation included some utterances with no source speech counterpart (non-renditions): a Cantonese non-rendition group (16 individuals) had procedural and textual non-renditions addressed to them in Cantonese, without English interpretation for the bench; an English non-rendition group (15 individuals) heard some brief exchanges between the interpreter and the bench, with no Cantonese interpretation. A control group (15 individuals) was not exposed to non-renditions. All three groups completed a questionnaire after the role play. The English non-rendition group rated the interpreter significantly lower than the others on impartiality, and was also the only group to comment unfavorably on the interpreter. A possible explanation is that the Cantonese speakers in this group could not follow the English non-renditions and felt excluded.

Keywords: non-rendition, court interpreting, perceived impartiality, role play
Article outline
  • 1.Non-renditions
  • 2.Participants’ perceptions of interpreters
    • 2.1Non-renditions and institutional participants
    • 2.2Non-renditions and lay participants
  • 3.Research method
    • 3.1Research design
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Role play
    • 3.4Questionnaire
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Quantitative results
    • 4.2Qualitative results
      • Positive evaluations
      • Negative evaluations
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 24 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.00011.che
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