Court interpreting as a type of dialogue or liaison interpreting has recently drawn an increasing level of attention in a variety of disciplines, including legal science, applied linguistics, and translation studies. ...Court interpreting as a type of dialogue or liaison interpreting has recently drawn an increasing level of attention in a variety of disciplines, including legal science, applied linguistics, and translation studies. Amongst discussions relevant to court interpreting, the area of sight translation has yet to be emphasized, despite its importance to the outcome of a trial. In this study I first had observations of court interpreting activities on several occasions. Based on these observations, I then formulated a questionnaire and distributed it to 86 interpreters in two training workshops organized by the Taiwan High Court in 2013. The key findings are as follows： most interpreters consider sight translation to be more difficult than other forms of interpretation in the courtroom; while conducting sight translation many interpreters pause in order to seek clarification or are interrupted; most interpreters would prefer the judge or the prosecutor to orally summarize the text to be sight translated; and, after ＂negotiation,＂ most practitioners tend to lower the level of formality when dealing with a text written in a formal style. These findings imply that interpreters conducting sight translation render a translation through ＂negotiation＂ with other participants of the activity; this negotiation can be seen as an attempt to build a ＂context＂ from the perspective of liaison interpreting. This study intends to raise the awareness of court interpreters regarding a number of key issues in sight translation, and the results are hoped to be conducive to the future study of other types of liaison interpreting and interpreting as a whole.展开更多
文摘Court interpreting as a type of dialogue or liaison interpreting has recently drawn an increasing level of attention in a variety of disciplines, including legal science, applied linguistics, and translation studies. Amongst discussions relevant to court interpreting, the area of sight translation has yet to be emphasized, despite its importance to the outcome of a trial. In this study I first had observations of court interpreting activities on several occasions. Based on these observations, I then formulated a questionnaire and distributed it to 86 interpreters in two training workshops organized by the Taiwan High Court in 2013. The key findings are as follows： most interpreters consider sight translation to be more difficult than other forms of interpretation in the courtroom; while conducting sight translation many interpreters pause in order to seek clarification or are interrupted; most interpreters would prefer the judge or the prosecutor to orally summarize the text to be sight translated; and, after ＂negotiation,＂ most practitioners tend to lower the level of formality when dealing with a text written in a formal style. These findings imply that interpreters conducting sight translation render a translation through ＂negotiation＂ with other participants of the activity; this negotiation can be seen as an attempt to build a ＂context＂ from the perspective of liaison interpreting. This study intends to raise the awareness of court interpreters regarding a number of key issues in sight translation, and the results are hoped to be conducive to the future study of other types of liaison interpreting and interpreting as a whole.
