From the Trial to the Transcription: Listening Problems Related to Thematic Knowledge. Some Implications for the Didactics of Court Interpreting Studies

Abstract

Interpreting is a phenomenon of such complexity that, particularly in highly specialized fields, such as court interpreting, it is easy to detect errors and omissions made not only by students, but even by experienced professional interpreters. These errors are often attributed to a lack of competence on the part of the interpreter, but they can also arise from the highly specialized nature of the setting in which the task is performed. The present study focuses on the second of these two factors in relation to both transcription and interpretation. It sets out to characterise errors of comprehension that may precede target discourse production in another language due to a particular setting in which much of the dialogic exchange takes place within a closed circuit, in the form of a triangle consisting of the judge, the defence counsel and the prosecution, and from which the defendant (and his or her interpreter) is excluded. To this end, we worked with an oral corpus of recordings of real criminal trial proceedings and the transcripts of those proceedings made by technicians employed and trained by the TIPp project (Translation and Interpreting in Criminal Proceedings), led by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.