The work of intercept interpreters in lawful communication surveillance: A daily trade-off between formal requirements and informal needs

Interpreting intercepted communication: From talk to evidence

“…Besides such resources stemming from the audio recordings, there are also other forms that may provide IITs with contextual information. One possible source of knowledge that IITs can use to filter content is insights, briefings and what has been learnt from previous investigations, but in the course of daily business, the main source for forensic knowledge is close and informal cooperation with investigators (Griebel and Hohl Zürcher, 2023). Hence, IITs in wiretapping operations apply forensic strategies during their translational task, such as identifying different voices and producing a written rendition (Drugan, 2020;González Rodríguez, 2015;Gradinčević-Savić, 2020;Härdi, 2015;Salaets, Alsulaiman, and Biesbrouck, 2015).…”

“…Bilingualism is often wrongly associated with interpreting skills, which may explain why the police engage untrained bilinguals to work as interpreters (Hale, Goodman-Delahunty, and Martschuk, 2019). Moreover, an unknown amount of collaborative coconstructing work jointly done by the investigators and the IIT remains undocumented (Capus and Griebel, 2021); first insights into this kind of cooperation have only recently been gained (Drugan 2020;Griebel and Hohl Zürcher, 2023). This crucial transdisciplinary collaboration in this very sensitive setting is still largely uncharted territory.…”