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12.2. THE ROLE OF THE COURT INTERPRETER
Gorbatenko Olga Grigorievna, Ph.D in Humanities Work place: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
Neda Kameh Khosh, student of Master of Arts degree course of Peoples’ FriendshipUniversity of Russia
Study place: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
Annotation: The article is dedicated to the role of court interpreter. The current interest of the article is that the interpreter’s influence on the court proceeding outcome is analyzed. The tasks the court interpreter should solve are pointed out in the article. The novelty of the article is specified in analyzing the role of the court interpreter. The theoretical importance of the article is that the distinguishing characteristics between written and verbal interpreting are defined. The article may be beneficial for interpreters, lawyers, teachers and students.
Keywords: Court interpreter, court room, judicial setting, specific tasks, faithful echo, qualification, professional individuals, feedback
РОЛЬ СУДЕБНОГО ПЕРЕВОДЧИКА
Горбатенко Ольга Григорьевна, кандидат педагогических наук, доцент кафедры иностранных языков
Место работы: Российский университет дружбы народов
Неда Камех Хош, студентка магистратуры
Место учебы: Российский университет дружбы народов
Аннотация: Статья посвящена роли судебного переводчика. Актуальность статьи заключается в том, что анализируется влияние переводчика на исход судебного заседания. В статье указываются задачи, которые стоят перед переводчиком. Новизна статьи заключается в том, что анализируется роль судебного переводчика. Теоретическая значимость статьи заключается в том, что показаны различия между устным и письменным переводом. Статья может быть полезной для переводчиков, юристов, преподавателей и студентов.
Ключевые слова: судебный переводчик, зал судебного заседания, юридические вопросы, конкретные задачи, верный отклик, квалификация, профессионалы, обратная связь
Court interpreters as members of the mutual communication at court proceedings should perform some specific tasks and professional roles. According to this opinion, the differences between interpreting and translation could be even more distinguishable. Interpreting is “fraught with many more dangers of third party influence” than translation. In view of this, three most important roles of the court interpreters have been defined as passivity, invisibility and neutrality.
There are many discussions and statements on the role of court interpreters which endeavor to imagine one passive role for court interpreters during judicial proceedings. Many scholars in this field define court interpreters as “a bilingual transmitter, a translating machine, a (mere) conduit or channel, a cipher, an organ conveying (presumably reliably) sentiments or information, a mouthpiece, and a means of communication”.
Moreover, in most cases, requisite of passivity and invisibility of the court interpreters are flowing in the same
route because they are connected with each other coherently. In fact, if we regard the interpreter solely as a “translating machine”, he or she will be the invisible person who performs only interpreting task.
Professional translators and interpreters aid their clients in order to overwhelm the language obstacles. They achieve this objective by prosperously transmitting written or oral messages from source language to target language. This interpretation activity seems apparently a simple and non complex operation. If the readers or listeners do not understand the presence of an interpreter during interpreting process, it will be considered as a yardstick which estimates how far the interpretation process have been performed successfully. In other words, in such cases, interpretation and translation task interplay so well that individual gets invisible [6].
Meanwhile as a feedback to a mountain of debates and discussions about the role of interpreters and particularity of this rendering process, Shira L.Lipkin cites the opinion of one senior interpreter in Yehuda Military Court who is discussing about the confused borders of court interpretation process:
“the duty of the interpreter is, not just legally speaking, a very important job, the interpreter can mess everything up if he wants to, you cannot even imagine what he can cause, in my opinion the interpreter must also work on his own personality, an interpreter who steps into the courtroom must have a sense of his own worth, because there are lawyers who can put words into the interpreter's mouth if they sense his weakness, this is really what happens sometimes when you are interpreting the lawyer tell you - no, he didn't say this, he said that, and you have to tell him, no, I'm interpreter”.
Numerous researches in the court interpreting domain approve that court interpreters are actually one part of a very sophisticated legal - linguistic function. This function specifies how interpreters perform their task and how much they could be influential on their status in the court rooms. Interpreters are one section of a “triadic interaction” in the court rooms which are considered as a main factor and key element for designating the interpreter’s performance. Interpreters perform their tasks as an effectual and competent arbitrator between two clients who require their knowledge and proficiency and the contradictions and disputes encircling “obtrusiveness” of their performance.
With regard to some interviews which took place among several interpreters at the Yehuda Military Court, their responses emphasize a complexity in differentiating between the distinctive parts of their job. They believe that the frontiers between interpreting and utterance were unknown and the answers of interpreters were rather obscure subsequently. For instance, in a case of requesting them to explain their position in the court room, without any exception, they pointed to their administrative role as their primitive duty. In fact, they almost never mentioned their main status as a court interpreter. Although they restated that their job was very important and vital and they are the professionals who operate the court room process and keep it under control [1].
Interpreters really are interfering individuals in the court room which is not actually appropriate with anticipations of judges and attorneys. That’s why the trials are under the influence of interpreter’s involvement and performance. Interpreters’ role is probably to impose considerable influence on the result of the interaction at court proceedings.
Interpreter’s role as a mediatory or arbitrator of language is that he/she maintains the order of witness’s speech to
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be heard by adjudicating individuals. As a consequence, the interpreter who is able to render the accurate equivalent of the source language to the target language and vice versa, would assist the judicial and legal procedures and systems to operate accurately and precisely. It is obvious that if the interpreter departs from the accurate and exact interpretation and attempts to add or omit some extra words and even sentences, she or he will deform the utterances and falsify the testimony. This situation will eventually influence on the outcomes of court proceeding.
Some scholars emphasize at this point that the interpreter must perform “faithful echo” of all speeches which are conducted between clients and professionals at court proceedings. Interpreter should become a “non - partisan individual” during an interpretation process. It denotes that a devoted and loyal interpreter should be faithful to all utterances, word by word, in their genuine meanings in addition to recreating the intonation and emotional responses which are transmitted through tone of voice, sings of gesture, pauses, barriers and also self revisions [2].
However there are some strong disagreements between the ideal situations recommended by schools and specialized associations and the interpreter's occupation in real world. Some researchers contradict the notion of interpreter neutrality. They debate that neutrality in the court room is in contrast to the intricacy of legal proceedings. From their points of view, the nature of judicial environment is inescapably connected to the complex language of the law and in such situations, maintaining interpreters in perfect neutrality position may lead to some sort of malfunctions in the interpreter's duty.
As the court interpretation profession has improved, interpretation standards, norms and criteria have been specified, formed and approved to instruct and manage the interpreters in the judiciary systems and environments. Lawyers and judges are individuals who have specified and conducted operations of interpreters in the judicial settings. Language is one of the principal tools applied by legal individuals, specifically in adversarial proceedings. They are well aware of the reality that interpreters could have an influence on the outcome and results of court proceedings by deforming the meaning of utterances. Any adding elucidative sentences, abridging the repulsive phrases or interfering into the background details and information could influence the court case disastrously.
In most cases, the interpreter is not able to transmit quite exact interpretation of the same utterances which have been told during court proceeding. In such cases, the interpreter may prefer to submit a summary. Sometimes the judge asks a witness to stop speaking in order to give an opportunity to the interpreter to render the utterances. This situation also may cause problematic interpretation process. It means that the interpretation process accompanies some several non - real disruptions and probably leads to disruption in syntactic continuousness and eventually it may results in emerging a weak chain of utterances. In fact, in this case, the connection between speeches will be gradually weaker and weaker. Many interpreters who have experienced such situations explained that they would submit a summary so that defendant could obtain the main idea of utterances. It is obvious that in this way, interpreters could decide at their discretion which utterances are appropriate to render and which are not. Therefore the level of neutrality of interpreters will be reduced subsequently.
Sometimes interpreters may be investigated in open court about their professional qualifications and previous experiences before the start of court proceedings. This takes place in order to make sure that the selected court interpreters are actually well - qualified for performing the interpretation duties at the specific legal procedure. Simultaneously when the speaker is recognized as uttering through an interpreter, the presence of interpreter does not come into attention. Furthermore the name of interpreter may or may not come into view in the court proceeding or police report; it may not be at all recognizable in which language speakers explicit their meanings and utterances. Also it may not be clear that the recorded speeches belong to interpreter or speaker words [4].
Several models have been proposed through which the role of interpreters could be explained. Some of these models such as “conduit model”, “helper model”, “the communication facilitator”, “the moderator model” and “gatekeeper model” are mentioned. Nevertheless in Yehuda Military court proceedings and its court interpreters' experiences, there is no one sole model which overarches perfectly all situations in the court. Although the interpreters are not permitted to do anything which have not been specified within the limits of their tasks and the borders of interpreters' duties some certain situations show that they should take some extra measures for coping with some not - organized circumstances at their own discretion.
Reviewing the “conduit model” of interpreters which is defined by some researchers shows that interpreters have to recreate the same tone and choice of words/phrases as the original one and they should accept that this expectation is unsettled from one person to another. It goes without saying; some people speak noiselessly and quietly while other people have a higher pitch in their tone. Some people are shy meanwhile others possess an adequate level of self - confidence. It denotes that all these personal characteristics influence the transparency and lucidity of perspective of interpretation process. These circumstances promote the interpreter to influence the judicial proceedings; the interpreter acts as a lucid and transparent mediator/arbitrator in the interpretation process.
The main role of court interpreters is concentrating on interpretation activity in the court room for insuring the best possible quality. In this way, the optimal interpretation performance will be obtained. In fact, the interpreters believe that their administrative duties have not been less significant than their interpreting tasks at court proceeding. Most interpreters mention that when they initiated the interpretation process, their main goal of performing the appropriate process included their liability in direct-ing/administering the process as well as interpreting the utterances during the court proceeding.
Court interpreter should hear the speaker in his/her language and could ask the speaker some questions if necessary. In a simple definition, during a court procedure, the interpreter assists the speaker to communicate with other court participants in the court room comprising lawyers, court personnel and the judge. The court interpreters are confined by regulations of court ethics. According to these ethical codes, they are not permitted to restate to anyone what speaker tells his/her lawyer in private. Obviously they are not qualified to give their clients legal advice or discuss with them their legal case. Moreover, court interpreters cannot describe the meanings of the words and flow of events which are happening in the court. Furthermore they are not allowed to answer the client's ques-
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tions about forthcoming judicial and legal events in the court and also converse with clients and their family privately [5].
Attention should be drawn to the interpreter's tasks in judiciary systems especially in countries in which dramatic and drastic legal amendments and new judicial procedures in the courts have been introduced. During this tumult of organizing these legal modifications, the rights of people who communicate in foreign languages are often ignored. Interpreters should be more attentive to perform one optimal and appropriate interpretation process. This is barely the passive role imagined by the organizers of legislation and regulations which direct and monitor the interpretation process in the courts.
Interpreting process is perfectly distinctive from advocacy in this way: “Interpreting in this context means a close rendering of what was heard with cultural adjustments strictly limited to linguistic elements, while advocacy includes interventions by the interpreter on behalf of the clients and for their perceived benefit.”
Furthermore, there is a range of alternatives for interpreters' arbitration between what is supposed by most scholars as rejected advocacy for the individual clients and what most believe as an accepted form of advocacy during interpreting activity. This range has not been clarified yet. It goes without saying; in some extra situations, interpreters are quite capable and ready to submit cultural details for some clients who need more explanations for grasping the whole meaning of utterances completely.
Although the role of the interpreter as a cultural representative and a professional individual who negotiates foreigner's elements, concerns and significant information in the court is undervalued and declined to a kind of providing some pieces of translation advice, but because of identified defects in legislative standards in the field of interpreter's roles, the necessity of formal system has been recognized. This formal system will obviously constitute some patterns of interpreting behavior and performance in the form of more articulate definitions and put legal/court interpreters in more active role in reciprocal actions during the process of court interpreting [3].
Reference list:
1. L.Lipkin, Shira. Doing Justice to Court Interpreting. Bar-Ilan University, 2010.
2. M.A.Hussein, Nadia. Legal Interpreting in the Criminal System: An Exploratory Study. Montfort: De Montfort University, 2011.
3. Martin, A. & Valero Garces. "Evolving Views of the Court Interpreter's Role." John Benjamins, 2008.
4. Morris, Ruth. "Images of the Court Interpreter, Professional Identity, Role Definition and Self - Image." Translation and Interpreting Studies, 2010: 20-40.
5. Rabner, Stuart, Robert W Smith, and Glenn A Grant. "The Role of the Court Interpreter in the New Jersey Judiciary." New Jersey Courts, 2011.
6. Zanova, Sona. The Court Interpreters' Role and the Predicaments They Might Face. Masaryk: Masaryk University, 2013.
Список литературы:
1. Л. Липкин, Шира. Судебный перевод в аспекте отправления правосудия. Университет Бар-Ян, 2010.
2. М.А. Хуссеин, Надия. Юридический перевод в Уголовной Системе: Исследование. Монфорт: Университет Де Мон-форт, 2011.
3. Мартин А. и Валеро Гарсес. « Изучение взглядов о роли судебных переводчиков». Джон Бенжаминз, 2008.
4. Моррис, Рус. «Имидж судебного переводчика, Профессиональная принадлежность, Определение роли и самовыражения». Изучение письменного и устного переводов, 2010: 20-40.
5. Рабнер, Стюарт, Роберт В. Смис и Гленн А. Грант. «Роль судебного переводчика в судебной системе Нью-Джерси». Суды Нью-Джерси, 2011.
6. Занова, Сона. Роль судебных переводчиков и трудности, с которыми они могут столкнуться. Мазарук: Университет Мазарук, 2013.
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