Working with interpreters effectively in the courtroom

Transcription

1 Working with interpreters effectively in the courtroom Paper presented at the AIJA conference: The use of interpreters in courts and tribunals March 2008, Freemantle, WA. By Dr Sandra Hale Associate Professor University of Western Sydney

2 Denial of justice through inadequate interpreting I am concerned that so many people who put their trust in the administration of justice in this province have suffered from incompetent interpretation. If you do not understand the proceedings through competent interpretation, you are denied justice. (Moustacalis, 2008; in Todd, 2008) Much said about incompetent interpreting, little done about it Blame seems to always fall on interpreters

3 Contradictions High expectations of interpreters No pre-service university training required Poor pay Poor working conditions

4 Misconceptions 1. The interpreter is there only to serve the non English speaker. 2. It is the interpreter s sole responsibility to ensure adequate interpretation takes place 3. Any bilingual can be an interpreter without any training 4. The interpreter s task is easy, all they have to do is just say what each person says in the other language, word for word. 5. Each word has only one equivalent

5 Misconception no. 1 The interpreter serves the non English speaker only When one participant in the legal process cannot understand or be understood, it is the legal process that suffers and justice cannot be done

6 Misconception no. 1 A lawyer s best efforts to ask the most strategic questions to elicit the answers that would benefit his/her case, would be thwarted by inadequate interpretation A jury s attempts to evaluate the credibility of a witness through an interpreter, would be frustrated by inadequate interpretation A magistrate s or a Tribunal member s decision on the evidence presented in another language would be flawed if based on inadequate interpretation.

7 Misconception no. 2 The interpreter is fully responsible The interpreter s level of competence The interpreter s specialist training in court interpreting Even the best interpreter will not be able to perform adequately if the conditions are not conducive The interpreter s prior preparation The physical working conditions The behaviour of all the participants involved in the interaction.

8 The speakers responsibility To speak clearly and coherently To pause at reasonable intervals To avoid overlapping speech To allow the interpreter to finish To allow the interpreter to ask for clarifications if needed

9 The speaker s responsibility (cont) To speak directly to each other To provide the interpreter with preparation materials To explain the interpreter s role to the other party To ask checking questions To assess level of education at the start and accommodate language accordingly

10 Misconception no. 3 Any bilingual can interpret no need for training lawyers rarely subject interpreters to the level of scrutiny regarding qualifications and reliability to which they would subject other types of experts. Indeed, it is nearly inconceivable that untrained, untested, unpaid volunteers would be used as expert witnesses with the frequency with which such volunteers are used for legal interpretation (Ahmad, 2007: 1059).

11 Balanced bilingualism a rarity Limited pool of balanced bilinguals Very high prerequisite to enter the profession Being bilingual does not ensure the ability to interpret

12 Why specialised training? High level of bilingualism and biculturalism in all registers Interpreting skills Content, subject matter Terminology Ethics, roles Training in linguistics An understanding of the discourse of the courtroom A thorough understanding of cross cultural pragmatic differences

13 Fear surrounding the establishment & enforcement of adequate standards Hertog et al. (2007) speculate that: governments may fear having to pay adequate fees to qualified interpreters unqualified practitioners may fear losing their work educational institutions may fear not attracting sufficient students or students with the high level of bilingual competence required to become interpreters They conclude that this unholy trinity of, often unnecessary fear, has hindered and still hinders progress (Hertog et al, 2007: 164)

14 What should the real fear be? Potential for misinterpretation Grave consequences they can have on the administration of justice Currently - few incentives for interpreters to spend time or money training In most cases, trained interpreters receive neither higher pay nor better working conditions If the legal system demanded a certain standard and was prepared to remunerate interpreters accordingly, the general standard would inevitably be raised

15 Quality does not mean problem-free situations Never a problem-free situation with no room for misinterpretation Despite the law s claim to precision, language is imprecise (Gibbons, 2003) Misunderstandings are common in monolingual situations, potential in bilingual situations is therefore much greater

16 Research results of untrained interpreters Open questions were translated more accurately than closed questions (Olga Keselman et al., 2008:110) - Sweden Tag questions were difficult to interpret and often changed to open questions (Hale, 2001) - Australia Interpreters split long questions, summarise, and add clarifications (Pöllabauer,2004 :159) Austria

17 Research results Interpreters concerned with making the non English speaker understand rather than interpreting accurately Interpreters interpret content and disregard manner and style Interpreters often misunderstand or fail to interpret the correct pragmatic meaning (Berk-Seligson, 1990; Hale, 2004)

18 Example 3 Question- Yeah, can you tell the court to the best to the best of your recollection, to the best of your memory? Interpreter- Pero algo recuerda usted? (But you remember something?) (Hale, 2004)

19 Example 4 ADJUDICATOR (APP) Und haben Sie Ihre Religion ausgeübt? (And did you practice your religion?) INTERPRETER Did you practice that religion? APPLICANT Yeah, I was a Christian! And I go to church. INTERPRETER Yes, but but- look, there are many Christians who never go to ch- You went to church? APPLICANT Yes. INTERPRETER Ich bin in die Kirche gegangen. (I went to church). (Kolb & Pöchhacker, 2008 forthcoming)

20 Misconception 4 just translate word for word Literal, word for word, verbatim, only one equivalent for each word

21 What do you think the sentences below mean? by God went-i to house brother-me and hit-i sister-me telephone no give-i more These are literal, word for word translations of original utterances

22 An accurate rendition 1. by God went-i to house brother-me and hit-i sister-me telephone I m telling you, I went to my brother s house and phoned my sister (From Arabic) (Campbell, 2001) 2. no give-i more I m dead tired (From Spanish)

23 The hierarchy of language DISCOURSE LEVEL (Pragmatic meaning, meaning in context, speaker s intention) SENTENCE LEVEL (Semantic meaning, context free meaning) WORD LEVEL (Literal meaning) (Hale, 2007)

24 Complex nature of language There are differences across languages at all the levels of the language hierarchy

25 Grammatical Differences word level Gender and number Friends (plural= > 1, no gender specified) In Spanish gender is marked In Arabic there are 2 plurals: > 1 and > 2 Verb tense Asian languages do not mark for tense in the verb but use an adverbial marker Eg. Yesterday you go

26 Grammatical differences syntactic level Word order differs across languages Example 5 Answer: Que en el lugar donde había aparqueado mi carro no estaba. (That the car wasn t in the place where I d parked it) Interpreter: That the place where I had parked my car was not there. (Hale, 2004)

27 Semantic differences Connotations Frugal vs stingy Smash vs hit Lexical gaps Varieties of rice False cognates Coach vs coche

28 Pragmatic differences All learners of a foreign language are familiar with the disturbing sensation of understanding every word, and the literal meaning, but somehow missing the point. (Cook, 1989:41)

29 Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962) Locutionary act the words used Illocutionary act the intention of the utterance Perlocutionary act the reaction in the listener Egs. How do we interpret offensive remarks such as Son of a bitch The locution consists of the literal meaning of each word The illocution is the purpose of the utterance, to insult The perlocution would be offence taken The interpreter needs to evaluate the illocution and the likely perlocution before deciding on the words in the target language, which may be very different from the original.

30 Cross cultural pragmatic differences Turn taking Tone and pitch Use of silence Ideas of relevance and responsiveness Shared knowledge

31 Research results into evaluation of credibility Powerful vs powerless speech (O Barr, 1982) It was found that witnesses who spoke using what the researchers called powerless style, were consistently found by jurors to be less credible, less intelligent, less competent and less trustworthy. Features of powerless speech include hesitations, fillers and hedges.

32 Manner and style of speech Example 6 Answer: Yo solamente le vi la hojita, que, o sea como, como brillosa, no más, y eso. (I only saw the little blade, that, I mean, like, like it was shiny, that s all, and that) Interpreter: I just saw the shiny blade of the knife (Hale, 2004)

33 Misconception 5 each word has only 1 translation Context, register, choice In a study of Russian/English police interpreting, Krouglov (1999:295) found that a key phrase allegedly uttered by a suspect, received three different interpretations by three different interpreters working at different times: I ll kill you, I ll get you and I ll stitch you up

34 Conclusion Adequate court interpreting depends on multiple interrelated factors: Interpreters need to be highly competent They need incentives to receive specialist training They need support to perform adequately Legal professionals need to work together with interpreters to achieve their ultimate goal Interpreters need to be recognized as experts in the interaction, and never as mere translation machines Yet, the current situation does not guarantee such level of interpreting expertise.

35 As Ruth Morris puts it: Ultimately, court interpreters try to square the circle. Even the best ones are doomed to failure from time to time. But when the system fails to acknowledge the need to train, qualify, certify and recruit according to the principle of excellence, it is condemning itself to low-calibre interlingual performance which will seriously impair the tissue of justice, by building in systematic missed stitches (Morris, 2008:39).

36 It s time for action Questions

37 References AHMAD, M. (2007) Interpreting communities: Lawyering across language difference. UCLA Law Review, 54, AUSTIN, J. (1962) How to do things with words, Oxford, Oxford University Press. BERK-SELIGSON, S. (1990 / 2002) The Bilingual Courtroom. Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. CAMPBELL, S. (2001) Interpreting in the courtroom. National Judicial Orientation program. Sydney, University of Western Sydney. COOK, G. (1989) Discourse, Oxford, Oxford University Press. GIBBONS, J. (2003) Forensic Linguistics, Malden and Oxford, Blackwell. HALE, S. (2001) How are Courtroom Questions Interpreted? An Analysis of Spanish Interpreters Practices.. IN MASON, I. (Ed.) Triadic Exchanges. Studies in Dialogue Interpreting. Manchester, St. Jerome. HALE, S. (2007) Community Interpreting, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan. HALE, S. (2004) The discourse of court interpreting. Discourse practices of the law, the witness and the interpreter, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins.

38 References HERTOG, E., CORSELLIS, A., RASMUSSEN K., W., VAN DEN BOSCH, Y., VAN DER VLIS, E. & KEIJZER-LAMBOOY, H. (2007) From Aequitas to Aequalitas. Establishing standards in legal interpreting and translation in the European Union. IN WADENSJÖ, C., ENGLUND DIMITROVA, B. & NILSSON, A.-L. (Eds.) The Critical Link 4.. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company. KESELMAN, O., CEDERBORG, A.-C., LAMB, M. & DAHLSTROM, O. (2008) Mediated communication with minors in asylum seeking hearings. Journal of refugee studies, 21, KOLB, W. & PÖCHHACKER, F. (2008) Stories Retold: Interpreting in Asylum Appeal Hearings. IN RUSSELL, D. & HALE, S. (Eds.) Interpreting in Legal Settings. Washington, DC, Gallaudet University Press. KROUGLOV, A. (1999) Police interpreting. Politeness and sociocultural context. The Translator, 5, MORRIS, R. (2008) Missing stitches. An overview of judicial attitudes to interlingual interpreting in the criminal justice systems of Canada and Israel. Interpreting, 10, O'BARR, W. M. (1982) Linguistics Evidence. Language, Power, and Strategy in the Courtroom, New York, Academic Press. PÖLLABAUER, S. (2004) Interpreting in asylum hearings: Issues of role, responsibility and power. Interpreting, TODD, R. (2008) Court interpreters inadequate?. Law Times.