Legal Interpreting

Teaching, Research, and Practice

Jeremy L. Brunson, Jeremy L. Brunson

• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781944838997
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Lingüística

Linguistic minorities are often severely disadvantaged in legal events, with consequences that could impact one's very liberty. Training for interpreters to provide full access in legal settings is paramount. In this volume, Jeremy L. Brunson has gathered deaf and hearing scholars and practitioners from both signed and spoken language interpreting communities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Their contributions include research-driven, experience-driven, and theoretical discussions on how to teach and assess legal interpreting. The topics covered include teaming in a courtroom, introducing students to legal interpreting, being an expert witness, discourses used by deaf lawyers, designing assessment tools for legal settings, and working with deaf jurors. In addition, this volume interrogates the various ways power, privilege, and oppression appear in legal interpreting.Each chapter features discussion questions and prompts that interpreter educators can use in the classroom. While intended as a foundational text for use in courses, this body of work also provides insight into the current state of the legal interpreting field and will be a valuable resource for scholars, practitioners, and consumers.

Part One

Applied

1WHAT IS LEGAL INTERPRETING? INTRODUCING IPP STUDENTS TO THE PRACTICE

Jeremy L. Brunson and Gino S. Gouby

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Interpreting students are often eager to learn about legal interpreting. They want to know what’s involved. They are curious about situations they may get to interpret and how to handle them. The conundrum that we as teachers and trainers are facing is that students are not ready to practice legal interpreting, let alone step into a courtroom. So how do we introduce them to legal interpreting, provide them with enough information so they can understand what’s involved, and still dissuade them from attempting to enter the realm of legal interpreting too early? In their review of the literature on legal interpreting, Brunson and Gouby provide an outline for presenting information to interpreting students. Touching on topics such as deaf interpreters (DIs), defining legal interpreting, legalese, and several other relevant topics, Brunson and Gouby tackle this difficult subject.

INTERPRETER PREPARATION PROGRAM (IPP) instructors often ask those of us who work providing legal interpreting to give talks and training to other individuals who would like to work in that arena one day. For some of us, this request fills us with unease. On the one hand, we remember sitting around with colleagues and having feverish discussions about why IPP students should not be talked to about legal work. “They aren’t going to do it for many years.” “This time can be spent focusing on foundational interpreting skills.” “They should focus on those areas they will interpret: educational, medical, vocational rehabilitation.” “They are going to think they can do it.” “Any discussion about legal interpreting for IPP students should aim to scare them into never ever doing this kind of work.” All are comments we have either said or heard and typically agreed with over the years. However, we also remember how we wanted to learn about legal interpreting when we were training as an interpreter. We often wondered how it was different from other types of interpreting work. We remember thinking that it would be interesting to do even if we knew we didn’t want to do it immediately.

What is our job, as experienced practitioners, educators, scholars, and future colleagues, if not to share what we have learned? So, rather than attempting to scare the students or reminding them that they are nowhere near ready to take on this kind of work, some of us have decided to share what it is we know and let them decide when they are ready to enter this area of interpreting. The authors have taken this approach. We have decided to empower them to make informed decisions.

As part of our discussions here with educators of would-be legal interpreters, we aim to encourage a dialogue on systematic analysis. Like the sociology of interpreting adopted by Brunson (2011), we discuss issues beyond the language work. Focusing on which sign expresses which word provides an incomplete picture of the work required to interpret. A systemic analysis requires that we begin to see, and teach others to see, our work is embedded in larger apparatuses (for further discussion, see Stone & Brunson, 2020). During our analysis, we hope to unpack the challenges and differences in legal interpreting. Access to various resources will aid in our ability to do our jobs and identify who is necessary and who is not (e.g., DIs, teams). Of course, we also want to explore how we, as practitioners, can perpetuate certain practices or challenge them.

In doing this, we have taken as our task to provide students with the findings of various studies. Our respective presentations have changed slightly over the years as more studies have been published. We have found this approach useful in that students get to see what legal interpreting is, discuss interesting anecdotes, and see where the gaps are in the literature. What we present here is an overview of our presentations to students. These are presentations that we have given independently of each other. However, over the years we have spoken about legal interpreting, attended each other’s presentations, and find that many of the topics we discuss are similar.

WHAT DO WE CALL LEGAL?

We typically start our presentations with a question: “How well do you know the legal system in your country?” To this, we usually get, “I have had a speeding ticket.” Or “I went through a divorce.” We then follow up with a question about the characteristics of our legal system. Of course, people mention rights, judges, and jails. This is a time to get a feel for how the students think about the legal system. It never fails; it is always more limited than what the legal system actually is.

In states where there is interpreter licensure in place, such as Arizona, attempting to discuss the broad range of events that could be legal can be complicated. What we, as academics, educators, and practitioners, consider to be legal are not the same as those enshrined in statute. As we know, legal is far more than what occurs in the courtroom (see Bancroft et al., 2013; Benmaman, 1995; Hale, 1995; Marszalenko, 2014; Mathers, 2018; Pöchhacker, 1997; Walker & Shaw, 2011). However, in Arizona, where both of us have lived, “legal” is limited to court, attorney/client meetings, and police interactions (A.R.S. § 12-242). In this way, Arizona has done what most studies have done—limiting legal interpreting to a few moments in the legal process. Indeed, Monteoliva-Garcia (2018) found in her review of literature that most publications between 2008 and 2017 focused on courtroom interpreting.

Regardless of this limitation by state statute, educators should attempt to expand what it is that students may think of as legal. We use examples of contracts such as modern-day marriage. To be sure legal scholars still debate whether marriage is a status or a contract (Halley, 2010; Scott & Scott, 1998).

The myriad contract interactions and court-ordered evaluations are often left out of discussions of legal interpreting. But we think it is important to at least mention them to students during our presentations. We want them to begin to see how mundane events can be legal. Within a broader conceptualization of legal events something like an Individual Education Plan (IEP), in the United States, can be considered a legal contract (Brunson & Stone, 2021). Indeed, Campos (1998) suggests,

Now law comes to us, whether we want it to or not. Legal modes of vocabulary and behavior pervade even the most quotidian social interactions; the work place, the school and even the home mimic the language of the law, and as a consequence replicate its conceptual schemes. (p. 5)

However, we warn students that we must not consider every part of human life to be legal just because the law interacts with it. This can be a challenge because the law intersects with nearly every part of our social, private, and professional lives.

What is typically missing are contracts (e.g., IEPs, marriages) and court-ordered counseling and evaluations. What makes these interpreted events legal, we argue in our presentations, is their proximity to the court. While the law permeates every part of our lives, for these events the influence of the law is far more tangible; that is, while interpreting in each of these events, the law dictates how the meeting is organized, who is present, what can be shared outside of the meeting and when, and the documents that must be kept as a record. Therefore, whereas typically these events do not occur in a courthouse and often do not have badged or judicial officers present, they are often considered legal by us and should be included in any lesson to would-be legal interpreters.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE CURRENT LITERATURE?

The literature, from both sign language interpreting and spoken language interpreting, is filled with various issues that are relevant to legal interpreting. The topics that are discussed range from language-neutral issues such as legalese, rules of the courtroom, roles and responsibilities of interpreters, trust, and accuracy to language-specific issues such as interpreting for jurors, reasons for not doing legal interpreting, training, and DIs. We also discuss credentialing bodies that are of specific interest to the audience to whom we are presenting.

Legalese

Legalese, or the “register of English that is used by lawyers and judges specifically for legal proceedings” (Berk-Seligson, 2002, p. 16), is often too complicated for the untrained individual to comprehend. Butt (2001) suggests that legalese is unnecessarily complicated:

Mysterious in form and expression, it is larded with law-Latin and Norman-French heavily dependent on the past, and unashamedly archaic. Antiquated words flourish—words such as herein, therein, whereas—words long lost to everyday language. A spurious sense of precision is conjured through liberal use of jargon and stilted formalism: the said, aforesaid, the same, such (used as an adjective). (p. 28)

Although Butt (2001) is talking about legal English, his point could apply to any country. Whether it is referred to as “legalese” or a formal register, the fact is that courts are linguistically inaccessible to many people who are not trained in the discourse. This occurs across the world. Given the “stilted” and “mysterious” forms of expression, it is no wonder that interpreters may find it difficult to (a) comprehend the language and (b) interpret that into another language that does not have a courtroom or legal discourse history.

People do not speak in their everyday lives as they do in legal encounters. However, even the language used in settings out of the court has legalese integration. Legal discourse is unique in that it is not intended to be understood by people outside the field of law. Napier and Spencer (2008) found in their experiment that although legal facts and concepts can be interpreted into Auslan, interpreters stated the “legalese” created difficulty for interpreting for a deaf juror.

Credentialing Bodies

In the United States, we have two credentialing bodies: the Board of Evaluators of Interpreters (BEI) and the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID). RID issues certifications for generalists and specialists through knowledge-based and skills-based assessments. The Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI) certification, which has been criticized because some believe that it does not capture what DIs do (see Johnston, 2005), does not test for legal competency; however, many CDIs find themselves thrust into this arena immediately after passing their exam. The specialist certification for legal work is the Specialist Certificate—Legal (SC:L). In 2015, the RID suspended the SC:L exam, citing financial reasons (Roy et al., 2018). Before it was suspended the certification was awarded to deaf interpreters and nondeaf interpreters alike. This complicates issues for the courts as well. Trying to explain that DIs provide a unique addition to the interpreting work in legal settings is often challenged as they hold the same credential as nondeaf interpreters. Whether RID will reinstate the certification is yet to be seen. However, the conflating of deaf interpreters and nondeaf interpreters into a single certification system should be examined if we continue to argue for the unique skills brought to the work by DIs.

Rules of the Courtroom

Another unique characteristic of legal interpreting, specifically the work that occurs within a courtroom, is that it is rule governed (Fowler, 1995). Who can speak and when is predetermined by the culture and formality of the courtroom. In the United States, for example, the prosecution presents its case first in criminal cases. In a civil case, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff, and therefore they get to present their case first. In most cases, particularly criminal, where one is represented by counsel, they are unable to address the court directly. All noncourt officers must speak only through their legal representatives. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but only those familiar with the setting and its rules will know this. Most people who have business before the court will not know these rules. Discussing these rules with students allows them to begin to see the distinction between this type of work and others. It also shows the students how they are not prepared for this kind of work since they are not familiar enough with the rules used in the court.

Accuracy

Discussing an overview of the characteristics of court processes and legal interactions lay the foundation for students. But many are still far more interested in the interpreting aspects of this type of work. Therefore, we discuss the issue of accuracy. Students are hyperaware of issues of accuracy. They often have rigid ideas about accuracy versus errors. We try to reframe their understanding by examining how accuracy is discussed in the literature:

To achieve accuracy of interpretation, the interpreted version must not only convey the “general idea” of the message, but also the speaker’s intentions. It must be uttered in a way that would achieve the same reaction in the Target Language (TL) listener as it would in the Source Language (SL) listener. (Hale, 1995, p. 202)

Furthermore, “accurate interpretation does not equate with literalness, and that linguistic omissions and additions are often required to ensure accuracy” (p. 211). The court sees accuracy differently from how interpreters see it. The court wants to know that what was said or signed was then interpreted verbatim in the target language. Students must understand this expectation and how to address it with the court.

Roles and Resp...