Search

This study explores interpreters' role performance, lawyers' reactions to interpreters' performance, and the perceptions and expectations of the interpreter role among these two groups of professionals. It adopts an ethnographic approach to generate data from observations made in Australia of 20 authentic interpreted lawyer-client interviews and post-observation interviews with the lawyers and the interpreters respectively. The study shows that interpreters are very active participants in lawyer-client interviews, as manifested in their various forms of intervention and in their adoption of roles not stipulated in their professional ethics. The interpreters' active performance of their role relates to their perception of their function, their understanding of the relevant communicative tasks, their assumptions about lawyer's professional needs, and their previous interpreting experience. While lawyers strongly supported an understanding of the interpreter role as "impartial and faithful" and spoke against certain types of interpreter interference, such as interpreters using summarisation, yet in actual practice, very few lawyers were observed to question or stop interpreters' interference, and the lawyers' inaction may in fact be partly responsible for the interpreters' adoption of additional roles. These findings have implications for the professional development of interpreters and for lawyers in how to conduct effective interpreted legal interviews.

Professional interpreters are obliged by their codes of ethics to interpret the speakers' speech faithfully, including offensive, profane or vulgar language. In order to achieve this goal, interpreters need to be pragmatically competent, so as to understand the intention and effect of the offensive remark in the source language and be able to appropriately render it into the target language to achieve the same effect in the hearer. Research has shown, however, that not all interpreters abide by this requirement, and many tend to tone down or even omit any offensive language, for a number of reasons, including attempts to protect the hearers or to save their own face. This study examined the ways in which Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish speaking interpreters interpreted offensive language by a suspect in a simulated police interview into English. Experienced qualified interpreters in the three languages, maintained the highest levels of pragmatic equivalence.

Canvassing views through a questionnaire-based online survey of 25 lawyers and 85 interpreters working in Australia, the present study investigates the approaches to interactional management employed by both lawyers and interpreters in interpreter-facilitated legal aid interviews. Specifically, the study examines lawyers' and interpreters' efforts at coordination before and during interpreted interviews, as well as interpreters' success in complying with ethical principles, and lawyers' knowledge of how to work with interpreters. The findings show that lawyers had a good understanding of their responsibilities when working with interpreters and played the role of coordinator by actively managing turn-taking and monitoring interpreting quality. Although most of the interpreter respondents performed to the ethical standards expected, some knowingly violated ethical principles by engaging in side conversations with the clients or by summarising rather than interpreting fully. The study further found statistically significant correlations between interpreters' level of professional qualifications and their competence in managing interactions and following ethical principles, which highlights the importance of training and professional accreditation for maintaining professional standards among interpreters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores interpreters' role performance, lawyers' reactions to interpreters' performance, and the perceptions and expectations of the interpreter role among these two groups of professionals. It adopts an ethnographic approach to generate data from observations made in Australia of 20 authentic interpreted lawyer-client interviews and post-observation interviews with the lawyers and the interpreters respectively. The study shows that interpreters are very active participants in lawyer-client interviews, as manifested in their various forms of intervention and in their adoption of roles not stipulated in their professional ethics. The interpreters' active performance of their role relates to their perception of their function, their understanding of the relevant communicative tasks, their assumptions about lawyer's professional needs, and their previous interpreting experience. While lawyers strongly supported an understanding of the interpreter role as "impartial and faithful" and spoke against certain types of interpreter interference, such as interpreters using summarisation, yet in actual practice, very few lawyers were observed to question or stop interpreters' interference, and the lawyers' inaction may in fact be partly responsible for the interpreters' adoption of additional roles. These findings have implications for the professional development of interpreters and for lawyers in how to conduct effective interpreted legal interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]