Justice Under Microscope: Analysing Mandarin Chinese Markers in Virtual Courtroom Discourse

As codified in professional guidelines, professional interpreters should faithfully interpret everything that has been said exactly as the original speakers. In other words, court interpreters are expected to adequately interpret both the content and the manner of original utterances into their pragmatic equivalence to the best of their knowledge. However, little has been known about the court interpreters’ accuracy in rendering the manner of speech in remote settings in non-European languages. The present paper reports initial findings from a larger experiment research study that assesses Australia-based professional interpreters’ accuracy in interpreting discourse markers and speech style in court-related remote settings. This paper focuses on the way in which discourse markers were used by the Mandarin Chinese-speaking defendant in courtroom examination answers and interpreted by practitioners. Mandarin Chinese markers ‘呗(bēi)’, ‘啦(à)’, ‘啊(a)’, ‘吧(bā)’ and ‘嘛(mà)’ were analysed using a collection of models of markers in Mandarin Chinese. A general disregard for discourse markers was found in remote settings, as reflected by omissions, mistranslation and moderations of illocutionary forces, particularly the use of the monotone in practitioners’ renditions of some attitudinal markers in Mandarin Chinese. Such disregard may have further implications for the accuracy of court interpreting in remote settings. The findings of the present study intend to inform future interpreter education and contribute to interprofessional collaboration between interpreting service users and providers.