Interpreting the discourse of reporting in interviews conducted by law enforcement agents

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which the discourse of reporting, i.e. the implicit and explicit presence, production, and usage of written texts in public administration reifies monolingual and monolithic language ideologies in interpretermediated police interviews and screening interviews with asylum seekers. The goal is to provide new insights into the analysis of complex networks of power relations that determine whether human rights can actually be exercised through public service or community interpreting. The paper derives from ethnographic data emanating from participant observation as an interpreter for migrants, asylum seekers, and international offenders using French and English in the Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland. In addition to being an interpreter, the author is also a researcher informed by critical discourse studies and sociolinguistic theory. The main argument of the article is that many problems related to public service interpreting that are thought to stem from cultural differences or the interpreter’s general lack of competence can be interpreted as resulting from language ideologies, reified in the practices in which they appear. One of the most important of such practices is the discourse of reporting, effectively blurring the distinction between written and oral language and denaturalizing “spontaneous” speech of interpreter-mediated communicative encounters. The paper suggests that a critical reflection on the nature and function of language and multilingualism and the consequences of language use is necessary in order to allow the interpreter to occupy subject positions from which power relations can be negotiated and linguistic equality delivered. Such a reflection should be part of both interpreter and service provider training.

The impact of emotionally evocative information on interpreting accuracy in a mock asylum interview

“…Despite this limitation this approach was chosen to promote equivalent treatment of neutral and emotionally evocative sections, to reduce risk of potential coding bias between conditions and to protect against stringently coding literal interpretations of the source speech. Literal interpretation, although requested by the Home Office (2021), is often not possible or appropriate (Hale, 1996), especially when interpreting emotion words (Basnight‐Brown & Altarriba, 2016; Kayyal & Russell, 2013) and when interpreting across languages from different cultures (Kalin, 1986; Määttä, 2015; Pöllabauer, 2015), as in the case of English and Arabic. Nonetheless, this study's proportion of error scores were high compared with other studies (e.g., Wilson, 2020), which could suggest a tendency by this study's coders to code literal interpretations, introducing a low error threshold.…”

Exploring positionality management in complex interpreting interactions: a simulation method

“…In recent years, interpreting in challenging contexts has received increased attention in Interpreting Studies literature. These contexts include police interviews (Gallai, 2019;Määttä, 2015), asylum hearings (Bergunde & Pöllabauer, 2019;Inghilleri, 2003), human rights missions (Barghout & Ruiz Rosendo, 2022;Ruiz Rosendo, Barghout & Martin, 2021), humanitarian contexts (Delgado Luchner & Kherbiche, 2019;Ruiz Rosendo, 2023), legal proceedings (e.g. Hale, 2014), medical contexts (Gez & Schuster, 2018;Radicioni & Ruiz Rosendo, 2022a, 2022b, military contexts (Ruiz Rosendo, 2020;Snellman, 2016), refugee settings (Jiménez Ivars & León Pinilla, 2018;Todorova, 2016Todorova, , 2017Todorova, , 2019, and NGOs (Delgado Luchner, 2018;Tesseur, 2018), among other studies.…”

“…These calls, in conjunction with the general discourse surrounding untrained interpreters, would appear to indicate that interpreters' difficulties in meeting expectations are the result of a lack of training. Whilst training is, of course, necessary to prepare interpreters for their work, there is evidence to suggest that some of the difficulties that interpreters face are inherent in the context in question (Delgado Luchner & Kherbiche, 2018;Määttä, 2015). Furthermore, calls for training, although welcome, rarely specify whether training is required in interpreting skills, in ethics, in the specific context, or in all three (and if so, to what degree in each case).…”

Fight for focus: attention and agency in sight-translated interaction

“…The interpreter might not be prepared for the task, rather being asked to translate a document on site. In some assignments, sight translation is always expected, such as written reports at the end of police hearings or documents presented in court (Maatta, 2015). Sight translation sometimes makes up the main part of the assignment, such as proclaiming a decision or verdict on site or over the phone.…”

“…Sight translation practices are thus multifaceted and far from being standardised, oftentimes not thought or regarded as a specialist translation method but is also treated as one somewhere. Belgian codes of ethics, for example, advise against sight translation (Maatta, 2015). In Norway, sight translation is not mentioned in professional codes of ethics, but it forms part of the degree of BA in Interpreting in the Public Sector (Nilsen & Havnen, 2019).…”