Court Interpretation: Fidelity v. Elegance
Posted by anuska072 on December 16, 2009
The NAJIT Code of Ethics states that, “The rendition should sound natural in the target language, and there should be no distortion of the original message through addition or omission, explanation or paraphrasing.” Some interpreters may be tempted to edit renditions uttered by judges or by counsels, so an LEP could understand them better. Changing the register in such a way is clearly a violation of the interpreter ethical principles.
However, with so few direct semantic, lexical and syntactic equivalents between the languages, court interpreters always face a dilemma: do I stick to the original as much as I can even if my delivery doesn’t sound perfectly “elegant” in the target language or can I tweak the original here and there, but my output will be smooth and linguistically “stylish”? The rule of thumb is that in legal settings, unlike in conference settings, linguistic fidelity should always prevail over our natural desire to deliver grammatically and structurally sound segments. All the pauses, hesitations, false starts, fragmented sentences and other idiosyncrasies of discourse should be preserved. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can afford needlessly sloppy delivery or butcher target language unnecessary.
In medical settings, interpreters may act as clarifiers and can bring to the parties’ attention the fact that the register may need to be adjusted, so a patient could indeed understand what health care providers are saying to him or her. Court interpreters are lacking this luxury.
Many interpreters train their skills using television and radio programs, where professional anchors and media personalities use well-written scripts. It is nice to interpret well-trained public speakers. However, practicing interpretation of unscripted, colloquial speech with all its paralinguistic elements and choppy pattern may be invaluable for court interpreters.
Filed Under: Legal Interpreting
