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Interpreting in Legal Settings
The Fourth Volume in the
Studies in
Interpretation Series
From Interpreting, the International Journal of Research
and Practice in Interpreting In their edited volume,
Interpreting in Legal Settings, Debra Russell and Sandra Hale have put together
a collection of six highly interesting, empirically based papers covering the
field of interpreting across six countries and incorporating a number of
important theoretical and practical issues. As the title conveys, the
contributions share a research focus on interpreting in legal settings. In
addition, they are divided substantively between interpreting for the deaf and
interpreting for hearing persons. The data come from Israel, Austria, Denmark,
Australia, Canada, and Malaysia, from a set of highly reputable scholars in the
interpreting field. The chapters are reviewed below in the order in which they
appear in the volume.
Ruth Morris’s contribution, “Taking Liberties? Duplicity or the Dynamics of
Court Interpreting,” focuses on the frequent accusation leveled at interlingual
interpreters that the errors they make are due to treason or duplicity, and
convincingly demonstrates why this is rarely the case and why it is an
unjustifiable criticism of those who work in legal settings. In her analysis of
the 1987 trial in Jerusalem of Ivan (John) Demjanjuk — a Ukrainian speaker who
had been living in the United States for about 35 years and who was accused in
Israel of having been the gas chamber operator at the Treblinka concentration
camp during World War II — Morris makes the case that if interpreters are
“expected to consistently betray the court’s expectations of completeness and
fidelity” (p. 1), it is because they “can be placed by other participants in
legal proceedings in a position in which they are required — or encouraged or
allowed — to use differing degrees of power and latitude in performing their
role of interlingual mediation” (p.5). Specifically, the author shows how the
principal interpreter at the trial, whose interpretations from English to Hebrew
are the object of analysis in the chapter, in a sense acted as a gatekeeper who
to some degree controlled the flow of information and had “significant power to
manipulate channels of communication” (p.22, as quoted in O’Barr & O’Barr 1976:
22). So, while Morris acknowledges that the interpreter exhibited manipulative
behavior in her work role, it was not because she was “unscrupulous,
incompetent, irresponsible, lazy, or unaware of what she was doing, nor by any
stretch of the imagination unethical. Rather, at times she deliberately adjusted
her renderings pursuant to instructions from the bench, to whom she saw herself
as ultimately responsible, or requests from the witness who was being questioned
through the medium of her interpretation (p.22—23). Thus, rather than acting as
a conduit or machine, the chief interpreter “was trying to contribute to the
communication process taking place in the courtroom as effectively as she could,
at times balancing conflicting demands and expectations, some overt and some
unspoken” (p.23). Because of the complex dynamics of the interpreting situation
presented by this trial (e.g., some witnesses testified in Yiddish, when only
one of the three judges on the adjudicating panel understood the language; the
judges’ comprehension of English varied greatly; Demjanjuk’s original defense
attorney was from the United States and did not understand Hebrew; German and
Russian interpreting had to be added at some points), the main interpreter often
took on the role of gatekeeper, editor, and mediator. At the same time, at many
points during the multi-year long event, the presiding judge blamed the
interpreter for what appeared to him to be lack of comprehension on the part of
the defense counsel and counsel’s objections to the interpreter’s lexical
choices (e.g., the use of “Lower camp” versus “Camp 1” in reference to a
concentration camp, a distinction that became a major point of contention among
a witness, a defense counsel, and the presiding judge). Speed of delivery of
attorney questions and its adverse impact on the interpreter became another sore
point at the trial. In short, for numerous reasons, Morris argues, the Demjanjuk
trial demonstrates “how interpreters can be placed by other participants in
legal proceedings in a position in which they are required — or encouraged or
allowed to use differing degrees of power and latitude in performing their role
of interlingual mediation” (p. 5).
Next Page
Debra Russell is Director of the Western Canadian Centre of Studies in
Deafness and is the David Peikoff Chair of Deafness Studies at the University of
Alberta, Canada.
Sandra Hale is Associate Professor of Interpreting and Translation at the
University of Western Sydney, Australia.
ISBN 1-56368-396-2, 978-1-56368-396-1, ISSN 1545-7613, 6 x 9 casebound, 204 pages,
tables, figures, references, index
$75.00s
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