Negotiated exchanges in the Spanish–English bilingual courtroom

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the interpreters’ use of requests for clarification in two criminal (Spanish–English) jury trials. The aim of the paper is to study how interpreters in the case studies reconcile expected courtroom protocols and standards with perceived communicative breakdowns that require clarification. The interpreters’ attempts at clarification, which at times also shape the witnesses’ treatment of misunderstandings and/or other repairs, appear to interfere with both the quality of the interpreters’ renditions and, more significantly, the attorneys’ ability to control the direction of courtroom proceedings. When discursive lines are blurred in bilingual institutional exchanges, witnesses and interpreters may negotiate communicative failures without mediation from the court. This is problematic because it may change the prescribed identity and role of the attorney, witness and interpreter in the bilingual courtroom.

KEYWORDS:

• bilingual courtroom
• echo questions
• requests for clarification
• other repairs
• negotiation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marianne Mason is an assistant professor of translation and interpreting studies at James Madison University. Her main areas of research interest include language and the law/forensic linguistics, translation and interpreting studies, discourse analysis and pragmatics. She has published in these areas in journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics: Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association, Translation and Interpreting Studies, Police Quarterly and The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.

Notes

1 See http://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/federal-court-interpreters.

2 See https://najit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NAJITCodeofEthicsFINAL.pdf.

3 Refer to note 1.

4 At the attorneys’ request, the names of the cases and parties have been omitted.

5 See http://www.ncsc.org/education-and-careers/state-interpreter-certification.aspx.

6 Pauses will be marked in the text in brackets [Pause], hesitations and/or false starts will be noted with a dash, followed by the clarified or repaired term (e.g. sa- saw), and overlaps/interruptions in speech will be noted under the interrupted utterance after the dash: e.g. He was at the club and – --He was where?

7 To maintain confidentiality, as requested by the defence attorneys, the names of all parties have been omitted from the excerpts and the following terms are used for reference: A (attorney), W (witness), I (interpreter), and J (judge). In addition, the author’s translations from Spanish–English appear in brackets.