InfoGuides: INTP 326 American Sign Language VII: Readings: Legal Interpreting & Allyship

Last Updated: Feb 19, 2024 11:15 AM

Readings

Here are some readings related to "hearing privilege" and how it affects your work as an interpreter working with the Deaf community. Also, there are readings about the complexity of legal interpreting and some issues to be aware of in the field. Check out the Legal Interpreting InfoGuide.

Working in the legal setting requires advanced interpreting competence—including the ability to fluently execute consecutive and simultaneous interpreting of complex texts, work effectively in teams—particularly the ability to work collaboratively with Deaf Interpreters (DIs), and to adapt language use to a wide range of sign language users. Further, it requires an in-depth understanding of law enforcement and the legal system. There are unique parameters impacting the work of interpreters in this setting that are the result of case law, legal and evidentiary procedures. Typically, the knowledge and skills required of interpreters to work in this setting are acquired after completion of a solid academic foundation in interpreting, coupled with multiple years of practice, followed by specialized training in legal interpreting and supervised field experience Certification of interpreters in this area of specialization is administered by the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, and requires that one possess generalist certification, and completion of a set number of hours of training and supervised work experience prior to application. The certification process involves a stringent written and performance exam. More information about the Special Certificate: Legal can be found at the RID website.

Readings

Erosion of Trust: Sign Language Interpreters and Hearing Privilege
Be aware of hearing privilege and how to develop ally ship skills with the Deaf community.
Interpreter Preparedness for Specialized Settings
Sign language interpreters who begin work soon after graduating from post-secondary programs, either associate-level training programs or bachelor-level interpreter education programs are vulnerable to unique challenges for which they may be inadequately prepared, especially if they work as community interpreters in specialized settings. This descriptive study represents the initial attempt to understand how graduates determine personal readiness and identifies contributors to preparedness for working in specialized settings. The sample of recent program graduates provided a snapshot of how prepared interpreters felt in their first years following graduation regarding competency in Legal, Healthcare, Mental Health, Educational, and Deaf-Blind situations. This study highlights specializations in which interpreting graduates feel most and least prepared to work and informs us about the types of instruction or experience that most contributed to their readiness. The results revealed to what extent participants perceived their interpreter education programs prepared them for specialized settings.
Toward Effective Practice: Specialist Competencies of' the Interpreter Practicing within Court and Legal Settings
Interpreters can be sued if the interpretation leads to harmful legal errors, resulting in inappropriate sentencing and punishment.
Your Case Will Now be Heard: Sign Language Interpreters as Problematic Accommodations in Legal Interactions
This paper uses data from open-ended, videotaped interviews with 12 deaf people to examine their experiences negotiating access during interactions with legal authorities. In every case, these deaf persons preferred an accommodation that involved the use of an American Sign Language interpreter, and in every case, these accommodations were problematic. Three major themes emerged from the informants' narratives: difficulty obtaining the desired accommodation, dealing with a problematic accommodation, and enduring a partial accommodation. These findings suggest that accommodations involving sign language interpreters are not neutral and transparent and that they often have tangible effects on the experiences of and outcomes for deaf persons in the context of dealing with legal matters. Deaf people have very little control over the accommodation they receive and yet are held fully responsible for ensuring its efficacy. These results are discussed in relation to policies and procedures for ensuring that deaf persons have full access in their interactions with American legal institutions.
Signs of Injustice

Readings

Linguistic Diversity in Deaf Defendants and Due Process Rights
Seventy-five years after the Wilson case, George Hindsley, a deaf American Indian, was able to successfully move for the suppression of statements he made to the police following the smothering death of his 2- year-old son (Ross, 2000; Wisconsin v. Hindsley, 2000). Unlike Wilson, who almost certainly did not receive any interpreting services, the police provided Hindsley with a certified sign language interpreter.

However, the interpreter was not able to effectively interpret from the specialized legal vocabulary required for the administration of the Miranda warnings into the target language most readily understood by Hindsley. Hindsley communicated using an unusual mixture of two signed languages, which is commonly referred to as contact language by linguists. Hindsley’s language incorporated features of American Sign Language (ASL) and North American Indian Sign Language (NAISL). Despite the court-ordered suppression of his statements, Hindsley was incarcerated in a county jail for 3 years without a trial throughout the process of determining his language and how to communicate with him (“Landmark court case,” 2000; Ross, 2000). Neither Wilson nor Hindsley received a speedy trial. Despite a 75-year lapse between these cases, linguistic diversity in deaf defendants consistently confounds the courts even today.
Translanguaging in Court Proceedings: How Interpreter Pedagogy Needs to Address Monolingual Ideologies in Court Interpreting That Delegitimize Litigants’ Voices
The majority of court proceedings are based on monolingual ideologies that assume that the court is speaking one, specific, bounded language and the litigant another. Thus, interpreting processes in this context are framed as an L-B to L-A interchange, a bridge between two linguistically and culturally discrete entities. In increasingly superdiverse societies, however, court interpreters are finding that their clients do not always respect these rigid boundaries, often engaging instead in what has become to be known as translanguaging, a form of linguistically fluid, hybrid, and often creative discourse that sources all the client’s (para)linguistic repertoires, acquired throughout their personal and working life experiences.

Drawing on preliminary research, this article explores how monolingual biases appear to persist in community or public-service interpreting and suggests that interpreters are little prepared to deal with translanguaging practices. Moreover, findings suggest that such a phenomenon needs to be addressed in interpreter training pedagogy.
An Interpreter Isn’t Enough: Deafness, Language and Due Process
Provides a thorough explanation of the various linguistic issues present within the deaf community. Focuses on deaf individuals who have been declared or at risk of being deemed linguistically incompetent even with skilled interpreting provided by deaf interpreters.

Readings

“That Is Not the Question I Put to You, Officer”: An Analysis of Student Legal Interpreting Errors
Court interpreting is a challenging and highly skilled profession. Legal questions are designed to achieve a large variety of functions. Often the true function is not the most obvious, the meaning is not literal, or there is no direct lexical or grammatical equivalent in the target language. Preparing interpreting students for interpreting legal questioning is very difficult and best achieved by exposing learners to a wide range of question forms in a safe practice environment. In order to ascertain which question types are most difficult to interpret, the authors undertook an analysis of question forms extracted from courtroom discourse, had students interpret these questions, and then conducted an error analysis of the interpreted utterances. The extracts were taken from YouTube clips of televised New Zealand High Court murder trials and were interpreted by 17 student legal interpreters into eight different languages. Certain question forms proved more difficult to interpret accurately than others. Suggestions are provided for interpreter educators to best prepare students for courtroom interpreting.
Challenges of Court Interpreting: Implications for Interpreter Education
his article aims to examine the findings of a research study into challenges faced by court interpreters in New Zealand. Despite the research being conducted on court interpreters who were based in New Zealand, implications of this article may also be applicable to overseas court interpreter educators and practitioners. The research included an online survey followed by interviews with practicing court interpreters. A total of 30 court interpreters throughout the country participated in the survey, and 11 volunteered to be interviewed. Survey respondents were asked about challenges encountered at work, including legal terminology, terminology in other domains, tag questions, and so on. Based on the survey results, five questions were generated as an outline for semi-structured interviews. The authors report on the lexical and discursive aspects of these challenges established from the online survey and the interviews. It is hoped that the findings of this study can be used to improve court interpreter education and practice, and promote equal access to legal rights for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals residing in not only New Zealand but also other English-speaking countries.
The Bill of Rights, Due Process and the Deaf Suspect/Defendant
Authors suggest that a significant population of deaf people who interact with the legal setting have little formal language skills and as a result are denied their basic civil rights when interacting with the legal system even when provided with a qualified sign language interpreter. Research conducted through a readability analysis of 11 common legal documents. Authors conclude that this population cannot comprehend the documents even with the aid of a sign language interpreter.