A Study Of The Role Of Court Interpreters

Court interpreting is a necessary means to guarantee judicial justice.The correct understanding of the role of the court interpreter is the prerequisite for the smooth communication.Although many scholars have made significant achievements in the study of the role of interpreters,emphasizing that interpreters are active participants in communication,these achievements have not yet been widely recognized by the public.The role of court interpreters in people's eyes is still the "translation machine" or "conduit",and the codes of conduct of professional organizations still require court interpreters to maintain absolutely "neutral" and "invisible".This is not only harmful to the interpreter,but also to both parties of communication,and it is not conducive to the protection of judicial justice.Titled the Research on the Role of Court Interpreters,with the help of the theories of translation studies,sociolinguistics and sociology,this thesis tries to explore the role of court interpreters,analyzing questions such as “whether they are visible”,“how are they visible” and “why are they visible”,as well as the reasons of role conflict faced by court interpreters and possible solutions.In addition to theoretical analysis,a questionnaire survey of interpreters,judges and lawyers,as well as in-depth interviews with experienced court interpreters are added.Triangulation strategies combining qualitative and quantitative studies are used to make up for the limitations of single research methods.As an interdisciplinary research attempt on the role of court interpreters,this thesis tries to break the closed perspective of interpreting studies,and draw lessons from achievements of other disciplines,and build an initial theoretical framework of the role of court interpreters.Rather than simply relying on qualitative evaluation in the literature review,this thesis has established foreign and domestic research literature databases on the role of interpreters.Using the method of bibliometrics,these databases have been analyzed from literature sources,the number of the literature,research field,research contents,research methods and researchers.Based on these analyses,the author points out the limitations of the present research and the necessity of conducting interdisciplinary research on the role of interpreters.The theoretical analysis is first conducted from the perspective of translation studies: translators' role has also undergone a corresponding change from the "invisible man" to the "loyal servant" to "active constructer" with the development of research paradigms from “writer-centered theory” to “text-centered theory” and to “reader-center theory”.The myth of the “invisible translator” has been dispelled,and the connotations of "faithfulness" and "neutrality" have been re-interpreted.Then,from the perspective of sociolinguistics,interpreters' switch of personal pronouns has been discussed as a means of “becoming visible”.Goffman's participation framework has been used to analyze interpreters' change from the “animator” to the “author” and to the “principal” in participant roles.Then,enlightened by Bourdieu's theory of pratique,the power relationship in legal field,the capital of different participants in communication and the habitus court interpreters formed through the accumulation in practice,have been discussed as the factors which may have impacts on interpreters' role behavior.Finally,under the guidance of the dynamic role theory in sociology,the causes of interpreters' role conflict such as contradicting role expectations,role behaviors and codes of conduct.On the basis of the above theoretical analysis,questionnaires for court interpreters,judges and lawyers,and in-depth interviews with experienced court interpreters were designed to investigate the perception of interpreters' role by themselves and the users of interpreting service,as well as interpreter's role behavior in practice.The research findings of this thesis can be used as reference in revising the codes of conduct of court interpreting,improving the education of court interpreters and changing the concept of legal professionals.Communication is a dynamic process,so provisions on the interpreter's role should be formulated in terms of function and objective,and give interpreters certain discretionary power,allowing interpreters to decide whether to be visible and how to be visible,in different stages of court interpreting,according to specific communicative purposes.The court interpreter education should pay more attention to the students' deep understanding of the interpreter's role.Role play in the simulated real scene could be used to achieve better results.Judges and lawyers are often the evaluators of the effect of interpreting and the makers of the relevant rules and regulations.Therefore,making them fully realize court interpreters' active role in communication and recognizing interpreters' power to decide when to be visible by using their professional knowledge through education,is of great significance not only to the successful work of interpreters,but also to the court interpreting profession as a whole.