Research into court interpreting has demonstrated that interpreters themselves often intrude upon the proceedings more than they or other participants realize. Moreover, as in any interpreting, there is always some tension between the nature of the source and target language output. When interpreting occurs not just between two languages, but between two languages with different modalities - spoken and signed - the relationship between source and target texts can be even more complex. This article discusses some of the issues which arise in part because of differences in modality. Special attention is given to the notion of visual encoding in British Sign Language (BSL) whereby BSL incorporates information about the physical world in a more regular way than is typical of spoken languages. This results in dilemmas for the interpreter and potential problems of access to justice for the Deaf person.