Court interpreting processes are invariably complex, and so legal interpreters have to follow patterns and variety of tasks in order to meet cross-linguistic and cross-cultural equivalence. Through rendering or conveying crucial messages, interpreters can actually determine the result or outcome of the entire legal procedure; this may either result in communication failure or in a failure to perform the task with ethics and professionalism.

There are some dilemmas in terms of ethical conduct that a court interpreter may face during legal procedures. Legal interpreting refers to the process of rendering or conveying messages that are required by legal procedures and settings, such as in a courtroom, in immigration offices, in police departments, etc. Basically, the purpose of legal interpreting is to provide an effective communication between clients and their legal counsel.

Ideally, court interpreters can tackle various kinds of legal cases involving different people of different cultural background, beliefs, perspectives and literacy status. Thus, these people need some knowledge support about beliefs, cultural background and extensive knowledge about vocabulary from slang words to legal language.

Because of the linguistic and cultural barriers between the claimants and the judiciary, interpreters should provide communication and understanding in legal procedures. Appropriate interpretation does not only involve conveying the right message of the clients or the other way around, but it should also uphold the ethical standards of interpreting in order to ensure the justification and truthfulness of the entire legal procedures.

In the case of court interpreting, there are by definition people involved that cannot speak and understand the same language. Sometimes, these people would think and talk about what is less and what is too much or what can appear awkward in a formal procedure. Thus, the presence and help of an interpreter is essential in this situation. They serve as the mediator and a significant factor in overcoming language barriers for an effective communication.

An interpreting process is bound with ethical standards and interpreters have to support these standards when conveying the right message, in order to avoid risks. Ethical conduct or principles involve confidentiality, impartiality, professional conduct and fidelity.

The actual job of the interpreter is to provide an effective communication link between the claimants and lawyers. However, this does not entirely mean that their only task is to encode and decode the message but they are also tasked with ensuring that the translation process is equal and fair. Interpreter should preserve the actual words and languages used, hence, adding and omitting words is to be avoided at all cost in any interpreting procedure.

Article Source: sooperarticles.com/law-articles/ethical-principles-court-interpreting-525274.html

About Author:

Charlene Lacandazo works for Rosetta Translation, a legal translation agency that specialises in providing court interpreters in London and around the world. Rosetta also deals with other technical translations of course.Author: Charlene Lacandazo