What Does a Court Interpreter Do?

At present, with the acceleration of the global pace of the economy, especially China's accession to the World Trade Organization and the increasing popularity of the Internet, more and more foreign citizens have come to China to do business, set up factories, transport, travel, shop, and get married. Wait, some of them have violated our country's criminal or civil laws due to subjective or objective reasons, and have to be tried before the laws they are not familiar with.

Court interpretation

Author: Zhang Hong

Excerpt from Zhang Xinhong and Li Kexing's new work "Legal Texts and Legal Translation" (2006.01, China Foreign Translation and Publishing Corporation)

2.2 History of court interpretation

2.2.1 History of Western Court Interpretation

Court interpretation cannot be accurately traced back due to the unrecordable nature of spoken language in history, but historically recorded court interpretation can be traced back to the colonial period in South Africa in the 17th century (Moeketsi, 1999; Mikkelson, 2000). Colin & Morris (1996) recorded in more detail the trials of interpretation services conducted in the United Kingdom in 1682 and 1820 (cited by Mikkelson, 2000). The trial in 1682 involved a homicide, and the parties to the proceedings had a multilingual background. At that time, when the court decided which litigants were entitled to the court interpretation service, it was not based on the language needs of the parties but the class, that is, the English nobles were entitled to the interpretation service. The trial in 1820 was a general case involving Queen Caroline. The court interpreter in this case not only translated the linguistic content of the witness's testimony, but also explained the cultural differences (Mikkelson, 2000).

After the First World War, the need for a Paris peace treaty created a need for interpretation between English and French, which was the beginning of modern continuous interpreting. and

According to de Jong (1994), for the reasons mentioned above, the United States Federal Court enacted the Court Interpreters Act of 1978, requiring court interpreters to translate completely, accurately and verbatim The source language information shall not modify or omit the source language information, and shall not change the style and register of the source language. The bill provides the basis for the Federal District Court to use trial interpretation services in civil and criminal proceedings in the United States as a plaintiff. It also provides a basis for the issue of trial interpreter certificates. Professional recognition. Since then, court interpretation has become an independent profession, specializing in providing language services for people with poor English proficiency. The two types of services provided by the Act are those who speak or mainly speak languages other than English, and those who have hearing impairments.

The far-reaching impact of the Trial Interpreter Act is the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination (FCICE), developed and implemented in 1980. This test system introduces the concept of "performance-based interpreter testing" for court interpretation practice, requiring test takers to conduct a large number of drills for the test, reflecting the practice of court interpretation practice. Required knowledge, abilities, skills, and difficulties (see Note 1). The qualification test system consists of two modules: written and oral exams. The written part is divided into English and Spanish. Each part contains five types of questions, a total of 80 multiple choice questions, and an average of 16 major questions. Small question. The five major questions are reading comprehension, language use (to test the candidate's mastery of grammar and idioms), misidentification, synonyms (to test the candidate's vocabulary), and word translation (to test the candidate's ability to draw lines or phrases Translation capabilities). The English test is followed by a Spanish test. The number of questions is the same as above, and the two major sections add up to a total of 160 questions. Candidates must pass both the Spanish and English exams (75 points) to pass the written exam.

The oral test is a performance test of about 40 minutes. The purpose is to ensure that a translator who has obtained a certificate of competence is capable of conducting interpretation work in federal courts. To this end, this section mainly evaluates the functional proficiency that is actually required during the court's interpretation operation. The functional level is the ability or level of the translator to accurately retain the source language information, without modification and omission, and without changing the style and register of the source discourse.

The interpretation modes tested in the oral test include three modes: simultaneous interpretation, continuous interpretation, and visual interpretation. To pass the three modes of oral examination, the candidate's interpretation must reach 80% accuracy. In the exam, the topics of the three interpretation modes mentioned above are simulations of the actual operation of court interpretation. They are divided into five major questions. The interpretation section includes two types of test environments: the interpretation of monologue discourses and the questioning of witnesses ( witness examination). : Contempt translation (Spanish? English); contempt translation (English? Spanish); continuous interpretation (Spanish ?? English); simultaneous interpretation (monologue discourse); simultaneous interpretation (witness inquiry) . The Trial Interpreter Act and the 1988 Amendment (18 USC §§ 1827-1828) also determine that the Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) must be qualified to perform in federal courts Interpreters have standards to certify their qualifications and proficiency in translation, and the authority must also have some interpreters who have a court interpreter certificate. The bill stipulates that the Federal District Court must use qualified translators when it comes to the above two types of parties during the trial. In the absence of such translators, the presiding judge can use other translators who are qualified for the job. .

At present, under the influence and guidance of the U.S. Federal Court's Trial Interpreter Act, the Supreme Courts of many states in the United States have developed their own court interpretation implementation programs and court interpreter certification programs, such as Colorado, Nevada, Indiana, California, Minnesota, etc. (The above and other state courts' web links for court interpretation can be found in Herman, 2004).

The state's policies on court interpreter and interpreter certification are similar, and are based on the U.S. Federal Court's Trial Interpreter Act. The difference is that the states not only certify Spanish and English translations, but also other languages such as Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. Therefore, it can be said that the promulgation of the "Trial Interpreter Act" of the US Federal Court also marks the beginning of large-scale trial interpretation training and examinations. The training and examination work carried out in various places mainly involves Spanish, Italian, and Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin). , Japanese, French (Creole French), Korean, Portuguese, Arabic, and American sign language (de Jong, 1994). Of course, the largest demand for interpretation is the translation of Spanish and English. According to statistics from the Federal District Court (quoted from de Jong, 1994: 18-19), the demand for interpretation in Spanish courts reached 46,064 times in 1988 alone, accounting for the total of the year. 92.2% of the demand (49,946 times); the demand for Creole French is 538 times, ranking second, Cantonese is 520 times, ranking third, and the demand for Mandarin Chinese is 180 times, ranking sixth . By 1990, the demand for interpretation in Spanish courts had reached 61,379, while Cantonese had also risen to 709 times, while Mandarin Chinese had only risen to 204 times. This shows that the "Interrogation Interpreter Bill" promulgated in 1978 has far-reaching influence.

It is necessary to talk about court interpretation services in China. China is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-law system (that is, the domestic socialist law system, Macau's civil law system, and Hong Kong's Anglo-American law system). Many ethnic minorities still retain their own languages, and many ethnic minorities do not understand and do not speak Mandarin or local languages. Therefore, the courts in these areas where ethnic minorities live in compact communities should conduct trials in the local language. For litigants who do not understand the local common language, court translation services between the languages understood by the litigants and the local dialects should be provided, which is an important condition for ensuring equality before the law (Du Biyu, 2003).

From the Constitution of 1954 to the amendment to the Fourth Constitution and other laws in 2004, China has repeatedly enacted legislation to guarantee the rights of ethnic minorities to use their spoken and written languages and the parties' right to translation in court. Article 71 of the 1954 Constitution (Article 121, amended in 2004): "When performing their duties, the autonomous agencies of autonomous regions, autonomous prefectures, and autonomous counties use one or more languages commonly used by the local people." Article 77 provides (Article 134, as amended in 2004): "Citizens of all nationalities have the right to sue in their own language. People's courts should translate for those who do not know the local languages and languages. People living in ethnic minorities or more In areas where people of different nationalities live together, the people's courts should conduct trials in the local language and publish judgments, notices and other documents in the local language. "These two provisions on language equality and translation have remained in force until now and have been used in The Procedural Law (hereinafter referred to as the Criminal Procedure Law) is retained and elaborated. Article 77 of the above-cited Constitution was later retained as Article 9 in the Criminal Procedure Law. Other provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law concerning court translators are Articles 28, 29, 30, 31, 82, 151, and 154, which are mainly related to the obligations of translators as litigants, but do not specify how to select and hire translators. Personnel and translators should have no qualifications, nature of translation, translation operation process, etc. Articles 11, 45 and 240 of the Civil Procedure Law have provided legislative provisions for court translation in civil cases. Among them, Article 11 is similar to Article 9 of the Criminal Procedure Law; Article 45 deals with the issue of avoidance of participants in the proceedings. , Which is basically the same as Article 9 and Article 28 of the Criminal Procedure Law; while Article 240 stipulates the languages and translation costs required by the people's courts for foreign-related civil cases: Use the common language and script of the People's Republic of China. If the parties require translation, they can provide it, and the costs are borne by the parties. "It can be seen that the formal legislation for court translation has a long way to go, and currently has only sporadic regulations. Therefore, in practice, the court is generally more casual, and it is often at a university or translation company to find someone who can communicate with the litigants to act as a translator, regardless of whether they have undergone specialized interpreter training or have the necessary laws. Knowledge and legal language knowledge resulted in uneven translation levels and unguaranteed translation quality, which affected the litigation results of litigants (Du Biyu, 2003).

With the acceleration of the global pace of the economy, especially China's accession to the World Trade Organization and the increasing popularity of the Internet, more and more foreign citizens have come to China to do business, set up factories, transport, travel, shop, get married, etc. Some of them have violated China's criminal or civil laws due to supervisory or objective reasons, and have to be tried before laws they are not familiar with. The author has done many court interpretations. The charges listed in the indictment include: extortion, fraud, illegal sales of counterfeit and inferior products.

From the author's understanding of court interpretation practice, court interpretation in China has the following characteristics: Because there is no relevant legislation, hiring translators and court interpretation operations are more casual; insufficient understanding and attention to court interpretation work, and treating court interpreters Easy to go to extremes, either do not respect the rights of interpreters, do not consider the hard work of interpreters, or deify the ability of interpreters to take the interpreters to the sky; lack of excellent and professional court interpreters, the cultivation of talents in this area is imminent However, the domestic legal scholars' awareness of the importance and urgency of this issue is very insufficient, and the legislative agenda has not been mentioned; A large number of court transcripts and public prosecutions, public prosecution opinions, defense opinions, judgments and other court trials need to be translated before and after interpretation Written translations; court hearing translation mainly uses alternate interpretation, visual interpretation, abstract translation, etc .; professionals such as judges, prosecutors are not familiar with foreign-related cases and relevant national laws, and there are problems such as conflicts in legal culture and legal systems; some Attorney, public prosecutor and / or judge during trial Not professional enough will cause translation difficulties; If the defendant is a citizen of a large country or the consul of the defendant pays more attention to the case, the trial and court interpretation will be more complete and accurate, and vice versa; If the defendant has a higher education, the trial and court The process of interpreting is generally more complicated, time-consuming, and legal fairness is relatively more protected, and vice versa; sometimes there are major shortcomings in court trials, such as lack of time and desperate time, leading to the extensive use of translation methods, sometimes Even at the request of a judge; most of the remuneration of interpreters is paid by the court, and the remuneration is low, indicating that the remuneration for hard work is not guaranteed, and so on. It is proposed to strengthen legislation in this area, such as adding corresponding legislative provisions on court interpretation in the Criminal Procedure Law to meet the actual situation of court interpretation operations that are becoming more and more common.