http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6302-581X
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ABSTRACT
Recent legislation in Spain has transposed Directive 2010/64/EU, which recognises interpretation as an essential tool for safeguarding fairness in criminal proceedings, in particular, for preventing any state of defencelessness. Previous research, however, has suggested important deficiencies in court interpreting in this country. This article analyses court interpreting from Chinese to Spanish, based on a case study of a recording of a criminal trial that took place in Barcelona in February 2015. The trial was transcribed verbatim and annotated in accordance with Cecilia Wadensjö’s distinction between “talk as text” and “talk as activity.” The analysis focuses on examples of errors of interpretation (non-translated speech acts, omissions, and additions), speech style and non-renditions. The results are compared with those of a corpus of 55 court proceedings in which the interpretation was from Spanish to English and from French to Romanian. The article concludes with a discussion of the factors—such as lack of specialised training, lack of deontological codes or general unawareness of the interpreter’s role—that may have affected the quality of the interpretation in the trial analysed. The low proportion of interpretation during that court session (only 17.6% of the total duration) is perhaps the most striking result of the case study.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Dr. Carmen Bestué for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and Peter Collins for proofreading the English text.
Notes
1. The translations of the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure are from Del Pozo Triviño and Blasco Mayor, “Legal Interpreting in Spain.”
2. Hertog, “Directive Citation2010/64/EU.”
3. The reports are available at http://administraciojusticia.gencat.cat/ca/seccions_tematiques/servei_traduccions_interpretacions.
4. These figures are from the Catalan Institute of Statistics (IDESCAT). http://www.idescat.cat/poblacioestrangera/?b=12.
5. For Arabic-Spanish court interpretation, see, e.g., Feria García, “La traducción judicial,” and Ortega Herráez, “La interpretación árabe-español”; for Darija-Spanish, see Bouhlal, “La interpretación judicial”; for Romanian-Spanish, see Onos, “La interpretación.”
6. This project is led by Dr Bestué Salinas and Dr Orozco-Jutorán of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
7. A more detailed description of the corpus of 55 court proceedings is provided in Orozco-Jutorán, “The TIPp Project,” and in Orozco-Jutorán, “Anotación textual.”
8. See, e.g., Berk-Seligson, “Fallacies in Judicial Assumptions,” and The Bilingual Courtroom; de Jongh, Introduction to Court Interpreting; Dueñas González, Roseann, and Mikkelson, Fundamentals of Court Interpretation; Edwards, Practice of Court Interpreting; and Hale, “Pragmatic Considerations,” “Interpreter on Trial,” “Treatment of Register Variation,” and “Interpreters’ Treatment of Register.”
9. Ortega Herráez, “Análisis de la práctica.”
10. Peñarroja Fa, “Intérpretes jurados.”
11. See, e.g., Herrero Muñoz-Cobo, “La interpretación en los juzgados”; Arróniz Ibáñez de Opacua, “La traducción y la interpretación”; Peñarroja Fa, “Traducción e Interpretación”; González Lara, “La interpretación ante los tribunales.”
12. Hunt Gómez, “La aplicación”; Onos, “La interpretación”; Del Pozo Triviño et al., Comunicación entre profesionales.
13. See, e.g., Feria García, “La traducción judicial”; Hussein, “La problemática de la traducción”; Casamayor Maspons, “El rol desempeñado.”
14. See, e.g., Gascón Nasarre, “Una breve radiografía”; Del Pozo Triviño and Blasco Mayor, “Legal Interpreting in Spain.”
15. Emmermann, “La traducció i la interpretació.”
16. Some examples: Placer, “Los juzgados me contrataron,” and “Confundir ‘puñetazo’ con ‘puñalada’”; Pita, “Y el acusado recusó.”
17. Yin, “Case Study Methods.”
18. Whispering (chuchotage) is a form of simultaneous interpretation where the interpreter is often located behind the recipient, so that all the interpretation may be performed very quietly.
19. Vargas-Urpi, “Judicis multilingües a Barcelona.”
20. For a detailed description of the TIPp corpus, see Orozco-Jutorán, “Anotación textual,” and Arumí and Vargas-Urpi, “Annotation of Interpreters’ Conversation.”
21. EXMARaLDA is a system for working with oral corpora on a computer. It consists of a transcription and annotation tool (Partitur-Editor), a tool for managing corpora (Corpus-Manager), and a query and analysis tool (EXAKT). http://exmaralda.org/en/ Accessed May 12, Citation2017.
22. See Orozco-Jutorán, “The TIPp Project.”
23. Wadensjö, Interpreting as Interaction.
24. Examples of how the codes apply in the corpus may be found in Arumí and Vargas-Urpi, “Annotation of Interpreters’ Conversation Management”; Orozco-Jutorán, “Anotación textual.”
25. Bestué, “El esfuerzo de escucha”: “Todo ello parece indicar que la atención que se presta en los juicios orales al acusado está menos orientada a informar que a extraer información” (my translation).
26. Non-renditions were first described in Wadensjö’s Interpreting as Interaction. A more detailed explanation of how they occur in the TIPp Project is found in Arumí and Vargas-Urpi, “Annotation of Interpreters’ Conversation Management.”
27. Rudvin, “Professionalism and Ethics.”
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Mireia Vargas-Urpi
Mireia Vargas-Urpi is visiting professor at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. She holds a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), as well as a Master’s degree in Chinese-Spanish Translation and Interpreting and in Research on Contemporary East Asia. Her research interests include public service interpreting with the Chinese community, intercultural mediation, and translation of materials for the Chinese. She is a member of UAB’s MIRAS and TXICC research groups.