This book provides an insight into the demands of courtroom interpreting and explores a range of linguistic and professional issues relating to the interpreting task. While the focus is on the special demands of working between a spoken language and a signed language, the issues raised have a resonance in the wider sphere of interpreting practice. The book draws upon the work of a major research project, "Access to Justice for Deaf People in the Bilingual. Bimodal Courtroom" carried out by a team of researchers in the Deaf Studies Research Unit at the University of Durham. For three years, researchers observed a wide range of court cases in which deaf people were involved as proceedings involving signed/spoken language interpreting were videotaped. The team also conducted in-depth interviews with deaf people and interpreters. This account reveals disturbing evidence that deaf people do not have equality of access at all stages of the justice process. It also provides further evidence that interpreters are not unobtrusive mediators, but rather impact upon courtroom interactions, either knowingly or unconsciously. Among other things, the researchers suggest that the differences between British Sign Language and English impose particular constraints on the signed/spoken language courtroom interpreter. In particular, British Sign Language typically encodes visual information which may be ignored in spoken interpretation, even though it may be providing clues which are highly relevant to the proceedings.