From the Trial to the Transcription: Listening Problems Related to Thematic Knowledge. Some Implications for the Didactics of Court Interpreting Studies

Abstract

Interpreting is a phenomenon of such complexity that, particularly in highly specialized fields, such as court interpreting, it is easy to detect errors and omissions made not only by students, but even by experienced professional interpreters. These errors are often attributed to a lack of competence on the part of the interpreter, but they can also arise from the highly specialized nature of the setting in which the task is performed. The present study focuses on the second of these two factors in relation to both transcription and interpretation. It sets out to characterise errors of comprehension that may precede target discourse production in another language due to a particular setting in which much of the dialogic exchange takes place within a closed circuit, in the form of a triangle consisting of the judge, the defence counsel and the prosecution, and from which the defendant (and his or her interpreter) is excluded. To this end, we worked with an oral corpus of recordings of real criminal trial proceedings and the transcripts of those proceedings made by technicians employed and trained by the TIPp project (Translation and Interpreting in Criminal Proceedings), led by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Introducing New Hypertexts on Interpreting (Studies)

“…Bestué 2018, Orozco-Jutorán 2018, Arumí Ribas and Vargas-Urpí 2018. Within the scope of that project, the material serves as evidence of current practices, both good and bad, and has thus been used in the development of training materials in accordance with the accepted codes of ethics (Bestué 2019). The purpose of that analysis, which proscribes the non-ethical, is thus superficially different from the approach adopted here, where we try to understand why certain non-standard practices occur.…”

Dealing with legal terminology in court interpreting

“…In this sense, as Mikkelson (2017, 10) points out, currently there are record levels of international migration and court cases involving multiple languages, due to "the relative ease of travel and rapid communication, the globalization of trade, as well as ethnic strife and international border disputes". This constant demographic change has made it very difficult or impossible to predictlet alone train and monitor-court interpreting in languages which are not the "major languages", and this is what happens with most native speakers of African languages, who are asked to communicate with the interpreter in English or French, not only in Europe, but also in China, for instance (Angermeyer 2021;Bestué 2019b;Chromá 2016;Du 2019).…”

“…Although the ISO standard for legal interpreting establishes that "judicial and other authorities (…) are encouraged to provide legal interpreters access to case-related and other reference materials in order to enable them to prepare for the interpreting service" (ISO 20228 2019, 7), the reality is very different. In most countries the interpreter does not have access to case-related materials that are readily available to the prosecutors, counsels and judges, as many scholars point out (see, for instance, Bestué 2019b, Ortega 2011González et al 2012 regarding the USA; Hale 2011 and Wong 2020 regarding Australia, and Kinnunen and Vik-Tuovinen 2013 regarding Denmark). If the interpreters had previous access to the case-related materials, they could prepare glossaries with the terms included in those documents and carry out the necessary research, but unfortunately, this is usually not the case, so there is a lot of "unexpected" legal terminology in most court interpreting assignments and the interpreter must learn to deal with it in the best possible way, by preparing and researching in as many legal domains as possible, besides procedural and criminal terminology.…”

Non-standard court interpreting as risk management

“…Bestué 2018;Orozco-Jutorán 2018;Arumí Ribas and Vargas-Urpí 2018). Within the scope of that project, the material serves as evidence of current practices, both good and bad, and has thus been used in the development of training materials in accordance with the accepted codes of ethics (Bestué 2019). The purpose of that kind of analysis, which steers students away from anything non-ethical, is thus superficially different from the approach adopted here, where we try to understand why certain non-standard practices occur.…”