31

Interpreting outside the courtroom

‘A shattered mirror?’ Interpreting in law
enforcement contexts outside the courtroom

Krzysztof Kredens, Eloísa Monteoliva-​García and Ruth Morris

Introduction
Globalization has brought ever larger numbers of people to places where the local legal
systems were not used to dealing with speakers of other languages, or if they were, with
only a small linguistic range. Inevitably, non-​proficient or ‘second-​language’ speakers
become involved in law enforcement practices, whether as victims, witnesses or suspects.
In order to ensure equal access to justice, decision-​makers in a rapidly growing number of
countries must nowadays find ways of coping with the resulting increased linguistic diver-
sity at all stages of the judicial process.
Given the nature of courtroom language, with its highly structured discourse, com-
peting narratives and speech styles, court interpreting is often regarded as the most
important sub-​domain of legal interpreting (see Hale, Chapter 30, this volume). It is
certainly the most researched sub-​domain, being the subject of more than half of the
publications on interpreting in legal and law enforcement settings between 2008 and 2017
(Monteoliva-​García 2018). However, in the context of forensic linguistics, no less relevant
are issues of interpreter-​mediated communication in other legal and forensic contexts; this
chapter is devoted to just such issues.
In the law enforcement chain that begins with a crime, interpreters for second-​language
speakers, whether they be suspects, victims or witnesses, can be an all-​important link.
Unless the highest standards are maintained at all stages, problems may result further
down the line, at trial or at a subsequent appeal. In what follows we discuss interpreting
at five stages of the judicial process: initial contact, police interviews, client–​ lawyer
interactions, probation meetings and prison visits. These different stages do not neces-
sarily pose different kinds of linguistic problems. Rather, they can each be associated with
certain consequences (1) for the interpreter, who may be subjected to various sources of
pressure and often forced to take on unexpected roles, (2) for the second-​language speaker,
who will be variously disadvantaged depending on the context, and, finally, (3) for the
administration of justice.

502
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

Emergency interpreting
A second-​language speaker’s experience of law enforcement may begin with an emergency
call to the police. In the UK, when a caller is deemed to have limited proficiency in English,
the police service operator uses a telephone interpreting service, such as Language Line,
which claims on its website to be able to provide 24-​hour access to interpreters working in
over 240 languages (www.languageline.co.uk). In New York the NYPD Language Access
Plan1 (revised in August 2018) includes telephone interpreting provision, interpreting in
the field and interpreting at police facilities, and Language Line has been the contractor
for telephone interpreting services there since July 2005. The programme was originally
piloted in 2004 in some of the city’s most ethnically diverse communities. Police officers
were equipped with cellular and dual-​handset speaker phones which had direct, instant
access to interpreters of over 180 languages, in order to better assist immigrant victims
of domestic violence. By 2018 there were ten designated or baseline languages city-
wide: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish
and Urdu. Among the services included in the NYPD Language Access Plan is in-​house
interpreting for 911 callers, provided primarily by bilingual Spanish-​speaking operators.
Telephone-​based and videoconference interpreting, while a most welcome develop-
ment, are not without problems (Napier, Skinner and Turner 2017), most of which have
to do with the absence of the non-​verbal cues that normally facilitate turn-​taking and
also enable the interpreter to make decisions about pragmatic aspects of the message.
The interpreter is disadvantaged also because, as Moser-​Mercer (2003) writes, ‘the coord-
ination of image and sound, the piecing together of a reality far away and the concomi-
tant feeling of lack of control, all draw on mental resources already overcommitted in
this highly complex skill’ (http://​aiic.net/​ViewPage.cfm/​article879). This coincides with
the outcomes of an experimental study on videoconference interpreting conducted by
Braun (2014). Additionally, individuals requiring police assistance are often emotionally
distressed. In such cases the interpreter may actually have to intervene by taking over,
whether explicitly or implicitly, the task of assuaging the caller’s agitation in order to be
able to obtain relevant information.
The need for what can be termed ‘emergency interpreting’ may arise in situations
where the police respond to an emergency call by arriving at the location only to find
that they are unable to communicate with the individuals concerned. This problem is well
illustrated by the case of Robert Dziekański, a Polish man who died after being tasered
by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Vancouver Airport in October 2007.
Although his death seems to have been triggered by a combination of factors including
a delayed flight, failure by airport staff to locate Dziekański following a request from
his mother, who was waiting for him in the arrivals hall, and his disorientation following
a prolonged period in a confusing environment (he had never flown before), the most
important factor was probably his inability to communicate in English. After he left
the immigration waiting area, some nine hours after his arrival, he became agitated and
apparently in an attempt to attract attention, threw a computer monitor onto the floor
and overturned a table. When the police officers arrived, they were unable to establish
communication and, finding his behaviour threatening, tasered him five times, following
which he died on the scene. The police officers had also been erroneously advised by
bystanders that Dziekański spoke Russian, which –​though ultimately unrelated to what
followed –​illustrates a further problem integral to emergency situations. A crucial, but

503
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

often overlooked, factor is the proper identification of the specific language spoken by the
individual with whom the police need to communicate, and/​or even the need to provide
an interpreter or other effective means of communication with witness, victim or sus-
pect. Widespread assumptions –​such as that most people from Eastern Europe can speak
Russian, or that people from India or Pakistan can all understand each other through
a common language, be it Urdu or Hindi, or that everyone from South America speaks
Spanish –​can result in miscarriages of justice (see the Iqbal Begum case below). As made
all too clear by the Dziekański case, unless an appropriate medium is chosen in a specific
instance, communication may be defective at best or non-​existent at worst.
When access to a reliable telephone interpreting service is unavailable, modern tech-
nology can offer a number of stopgap methods of communication. With the widespread
availability of text-​to-​text Google Translate and its in-​development video features, ways
of addressing communication needs in real time are improving. Smartphones can enable
Deaf sign-​language users to communicate via a remote interpreting service. However,
‘translation apps’ are far from perfect and their use in pre-​trial legal contexts requires
careful consideration but, accompanied by the arguably universal semiotics of the police
uniform, they may be effective in identifying the initial circumstances and telling those
involved that they are being taken to the police station, where a ‘live’ interpreter will join
them. Where the language spoken by a suspect can be correctly identified, remote mobile
telephony can normally provide on-​the-​spot interpreting at the moment of arrest.

The police interview

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which addresses the right to a
fair trial, stipulates in its section 3(1) that everyone charged with a criminal offence has
the right to be informed promptly, ‘in a language which he understands [emphasis added]
and in detail’, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him. Article 14.3(a) of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights uses almost identical language. In
the European Union, a number of promising legislative instruments were passed between
2010 and 2013, including Directive 2010/​64/​EU on the right to interpretation and trans-
lation in criminal proceedings from the moment a person is made aware that they are
suspected or accused of having committed a criminal offence until the conclusion of the
proceedings. Article 2(1) of the Directive provides that:

Member States shall ensure that suspected or accused persons who do not speak or
understand the language of the criminal proceedings concerned are provided, without
delay, with interpretation during criminal proceedings before investigative and judicial
authorities, including during police questioning, all court hearings and any necessary
interim hearings. [emphasis added]

The Article acknowledges the range of grounds that may make interpreting necessary and
the prompt provision of interpreting throughout the process. Quality of translation and
interpreting services are referred to in Article 4, and Article 5 establishes that Member
States shall endeavour to establish a register of appropriately qualified translators and
interpreters.
Apart from Directive 2010/​ 64/​
EU, three other directives are significant for legal
interpreting. These are Directive 2012/​13/​EU on the right to information in criminal
proceedings; Directive 2012/​29/​EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support

504
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

and protection of victims of crime, and replacing Council Framework Decision 2201/​220/​
JHA; and Directive 2013/​48/​EU. Blasco Mayor and del Pozo Triviño (2015) provide a
thorough overview of these directives and their significance for interpreting and commu-
nication in legal proceedings.
Police practice when dealing with second-​language speakers varies greatly worldwide.
For example, in Britain and Australia police forces normally work with outside interpreters
from the interview stage onwards. In the United States, where the vast majority of cases
involve Spanish, standard practice is for the police to try to manage with the linguistic
skills of their own officers, to recruit bilingual personnel and provide them with inter-
preter training, or to deploy bilingual personnel in areas where second-​language speakers
are particularly numerous. The relevant recommendations are comprehensive and map
out highly detailed plans to assess language needs and implement language access plans,
including initiatives to train personnel on language access policies.2 Whereas measures
such as deploying bilingual officers in areas with a large second-​language population
and having bilingual personnel within the institution can improve community–​police
relationships and initial language provision, risks related to conflicting roles of officers
acting as interpreters still exist, and more research is needed to examine quality assurance
issues.
When an officer conducts the interview and another acts as ‘interpreter’, problems
abound, as Berk-​Seligson (2000, 2009) shows in a review of appellate cases from 1965
to 1999 drawn from three states –​California, Florida and New York. In particular, she
identifies the absence of clear-​cut demarcations between certain sorts of legal actors and
others, such as court interpreters, community interpreters and police interpreters. Where
the police employ an incompetent interpreter, there will inevitably be major pitfalls, such
as violation of the right to waiving Miranda rights knowingly or voluntarily when the
rights are delivered by an officer acting as an interpreter, or when the translations of
interview transcripts are conducted by officers in their dual role as police officers and
translators.
The delivery and interpretation of the police caution has been the focus of numerous
studies (Berk-​Seligson 2002; Ikane 2007; Vernon and Coley 1978). Writing about the
delivery of the caution through interpreting with special reference to Japanese native-​
speaker suspects in the Australian criminal investigation system, Nakane (2007) identifies
a number of factors which may lead to difficulties in communicating the suspect’s rights
in police interviews: (1) rendering an originally written legal text in face-​to-​face speech
mode; (2) the degree to which the illocutionary force and the legal implications of the
caution can be maintained in the translation; (3) the interpreter’s understanding of the
meaning and legal implications of the cautions; (4) the dynamics of interpreter-​mediated
interaction; (5) the degree to which cultural or institutional gaps are to be bridged by the
interpreter; and (6) the interpreter’s professional competence.
Nakane reports that both Shuy (1997) and Gibbons (2001) argue that, in some cases
they had worked on, there was some evidence that the suspects tended to say ‘Yes’ to
the comprehension check question when they actually had little understanding of the
cautions, a phenomenon Liberman (1981, in Eades 1994) has called ‘gratuitous con-
currence’. Nakane quotes a passage that illustrates this point to perfection. Taken from
Coldrey (1987: 84–​85, cited in Gibbons 2003: 209), the material graphically illustrates
the problems involved with cautioning an Aboriginal man, who is ostensibly an English
speaker and hence no interpreter is involved in the exchange.

505
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

(1)
P: Right. Now I want to ask you some questions about the trouble out there
but I want you to understand that you don’t have to answer any questions
at all. Do you understand that?
W: Yes.
P: Do you have to tell me that story?
W: Yes.
P: Do you have to though?
W: Yes.
P: Do you, am I making you tell me the story?
W: Yes.
P: Or are you telling me because you want to?
W: Yes.
The exchange in (1) makes it clear that the problem lies with the suspect’s inability to
understand the questions he is being asked by the police officer, who is trying hard to
convey the intent of the cautions. This raises the question to what extent would a compe-
tent, trained, experienced interpreter have been able to overcome these problems, which
fall in part under Nakane’s category (5), the degree to which cultural or institutional gaps
are to be bridged by the interpreter.
As is clear from Nakane’s paper, and as Hale (Chapter 30, this volume) also makes
clear in her chapter on court interpreting, even high-​level proficiency in the languages
concerned combined with two-​way interpreting skills does not necessarily guarantee the
provision of high-​calibre communication in the legal system. Interviewing mechanics
can clash with the cognitive and interactional demands of interpreting (Wadensjö 1998).
Lack of awareness of interviewing techniques among interpreters and the strategic use
of some discourse features can lead to misinterpretations of interviewers’ input such
as e.g. silent pauses (Nakane 2011) and reformulations (Nakane 2014; Monteoliva-​
García 2017). At the same time, some interviewing techniques, e.g. the promotion of
free uninterrupted flow to enhance recall in witness interviews, are difficult to maintain
in an interpreted interview, where interruptions in the narrative flow are unavoidable
in the consecutive mode (Böser 2013; Heydon and Lai 2013). In his study of authentic
audio-​recorded interpreted interviews with Portuguese and Italian suspects in England
and Wales, Gallai (2013) shows how footing shifts in the interpreter’s role can disrupt
rapport-​building efforts by interviewers. Lai and Mulayim (2013) also show that whereas
professional interpreters translated TED (Tell/​Explain/​Describe) questions accurately,
they had difficulties maintaining the less accusatory How come? questions recommended
by the 2004 New Zealand Police Guidelines (Mulayim et al. 2014: 25), thus introducing
a more accusatory wording in the versions that interviewees received. However, inter-
preter training improves quality (Hale et al. 2018) as does training for police officers in
how to work with interpreters (Perez and Wilson 2007). In specific types of interviews
specialised knowledge of the particular demands and risks of police procedure are of
the utmost importance, as in the case of investigative interviews with minors (Balogh
and Salaets 2015) and with victims of domestic violence (Toledano and Del Pozo Triviño
2015; Tipton 2017). Böser and LaRooy (2018) propose adaptations of child interviewing
protocols for interpreter-​mediated child interviews, which are multiparty and highly sen-
sitive, including a protocol to allow time for the interpreter to establish contact with the
child before the interview and a clear protocol to establish conversational rules.

506
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

A number of extralinguistic aspects of the various speech events, some of them not
directly related to the interpreting itself, play a role in determining the quality, and
hence effectiveness, of interpreting. In her survey-​based study with police officers and
interpreters, Mayfield (2016) shows how a lack of awareness of the effect of interpreting
upon the interaction prevails among English police officers. Bilingual competencies
among interpreting users can also have an impact on quality. This can refer to the inter-
viewee, such as in Gallai (2013) and Monteoliva-​García (2017a, 2017b), as well as to lan-
guage transparency among interpreters if more than one is present (Kredens 2017). When
interviewers have some knowledge of the language used by interviewees and interpreters,
this can lead to confusion regarding the language regime and the interpreter’s role.
In his above-​mentioned study of interpreter-​mediated police interviews with English-​
Portuguese and English-​Italian suspects, Gallai (2013) reports on an interview in which
the interpreter was observed interrupting, overlapping, shifting footing inconsistently and
omitting information in order to try to establish whether the suspect should speak English
and only resort to the interpreter occasionally, or should stick to speaking Italian. Excerpt
(2), turns 13–​27, is reproduced below. In the preceding sequences the interpreter (I) had
informed the police interviewer (P) that Antonio (A) spoke some English and suggested
a potential solution:

(2)
13 P I’m just [I’m just wonde]ring er would it be:: is it easier for you to speak in
Italian (.) and then we we don’t get mixed up?
14 A [(find the) word] sometime you know why? because er:: I have the habit
to:: speak er half and half
15 P Right
16 A And sometime I confuse but…
17 P Right
18 A Sometime I feel like I want to:: speak English and sometime in Italian (.) when
I: don’t (.) I really don’t know (.) English words (.) I find it (using) to: speak
Italian
19 P To speak Italian alright (.) I’m just wondering whether while we’re here whether
it’s easier to speak in Italian
20 I Tutto il [tempo Lei intende] no? vuol parlare sempre in italiano (.) e io traduco
e così…
All the [time she means] right? would you mind speaking Italian all the time
(.) and I translate so…
21 A [yeah yeah yeah yeah] okay
22 I Because otherwise it gets a little bit complicated
23 P [Ye]ah
24 P [E-​] e-​exactly and er…
25 I Yeah
26 P We can understand that (.) so like misunderstandings can arise
27 I Yes

What the interpreter proposed is the so-​called stand-​by mode of interpreting (see e.g.
Angermeyer 2008: 390). In this mode, the primary participants speak their ‘shared’
language and the interpreter is on stand-​by, interpreting intermittently when the need

507
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

emerges. Whereas this mode acknowledges the range of resources some participants can
bring with them to the interaction, it can lead to injustices if imposed at times selected by
the institutional users, as shown in the studies on court interpreting by Nakane (2010) set
in Japanese courts and Du (2015), whose study focuses on a bilingual hearing in South
China. In both studies, the judges’ assumptions on language proficiency, the degree of
proficiency required and lack of attention to a complex linguistic make-​up resulted in
injustice. In Du’s (2015) study, the defendant’s mother tongue was Hakka, a dialect, and
the hearing was adjudicated in Putonghua, which is considered the national standardised
spoken language. Whereas interpretation of the defendant’s utterances into Putonghua
was requested, the interpreters were not required to interpret utterances in Putonghua
into Hakka.
A study by Monteoliva-​García (2017, 2020) explored video-​recorded police interviews
with suspects using stand-​by interpreting. In the interviews, all participants shared the
responsibility of initiating interpreter participation, including the interpreter herself,
following different cues and criteria. The interpreter reacted when miscomprehension
or lexical deficits were observable, whether in the body language or in verbal actions by
the suspects, who sought interpreter participation to address production deficits. Police
officers, too, prompted the interpreter when they observed miscomprehension, and rou-
tinely in the most formal phases, including the delivery of the caution. The example below
(Monteoliva-​García 2017a: 212) shows the interpreter (right column) reacting to a gaze
shift and a prompt by the detainee (middle column) and the detainee responding directly
in English to the interviewer (left column):

(3)
Interview 1. Questioning Phase [00:24:05-​00:24:20].

Unit POLICE OFFICER(S) DETAINED PERSON 1 INTERPRETER

564. So, for drugs OR for your
clothes.
565. Yeah, I-
566. ((nodding: ºOkayº)), okay.
((/docs)) ((/dp1)) When was
the last time you wrapped up
drugs with this thread?
567.→ ((/int: Mmh?))
568. ¿Cuándo fue la última vez
[((/int, /dp1)) [que envolviste drogas
[((/po1)) [con esa::: eh hilo?
When was the last time
[((/int, /dp1)) [that you wrapped up drugs
[((/po1)) [with tha::t erm thread?
569. Two days ago.
570. ((nodding: Two days ago.))
571. Hm.

As shown above, this under-​researched and ‘atypical’ format changes the demands of
interpreting not only regarding the stand-​by mode of the interpreter and the interactional
dynamics, but noticeably because one of the main tasks of the interpreter on stand-​by
becomes monitoring the communication process.
Another emergent and atypical interpreting mode that results from language transpar-
ency is ‘adversarial interpreting’ (Kredens 2017). This label applies to contexts in which
two interpreters, often sourced by opposing parties in a case, participate in an interpreter-​
mediated encounter. Drawing on interview transcripts and surveys with interpreters,
Kredens (2017) observes that, as in stand-​by interpreting, monitoring becomes a highly

508
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

salient task. The interpreter who is not institutionally ratified monitors and/​or challenges
the other interpreter’s output. This monitoring/​challenging task can improve accuracy
through corrections and by offering support, but it can also have a negative impact upon
interpreters’ self-​perception and, if used as a tactical mechanism to identify fault, it can
affect the monitored interpreter’s performance and credibility, as well as interpreting
quality. This resonates with Ng’s (2013) study of what she labels the ‘atypical bilingual
courtroom’, where jurors, lawyers and other participants with bilingual skills are able
to monitor and indeed challenge the interpreters’ output and change the interpreting
dynamics.
With regard to police officers’ views on interpreting, Gibbons (2001: 443) reports that
in New South Wales the police were found to be reluctant to use interpreters, for a number
of reasons, including delay, financial considerations and the perceived negative effects
of interpreter mediation (impeding police officers’ reading of non-​verbal signals and the
suspect’s gaining of extra time to answer questions). Gibbons identifies past ‘gross under-​
use’ of interpreters by NSW Police. A new version of the force’s Code of Practice was
subsequently produced on the basis of input from a range of people, including Gibbons.
It reads: ‘Use an interpreter when someone cannot understand and speak the English lan-
guage well enough to enable them to fully understand and fully reply to questions. If in
doubt, get an interpreter.’ (Gibbons 2001: 444, emphasis added for this chapter.) Gibbons
further makes the point that even apparently clear-​cut instructions, for example on how
to question suspects, often fail because they lack explicitness. Clearly this was the case
in Beck v. Sager (1979), where even the defendant failed to realize that he did not under-
stand the whole purpose of the police procedure. The point is that communication is a
continuum from unattainable perfection to total non-​communication. As the final NSW
Police Code of Practice cautions: ‘Do not presume that people understand even the most
simple [sic] questions’. This means that even the most competent interpreter cannot neces-
sarily overcome a lack of comprehension on the part of the suspect. Gibbons makes the
point that yes/​no questions are not a good way of checking comprehension. In fact, he
argues that encouraging narrative accounts of a sequence of events when interviewing
(rather than ‘interrogating’) suspects is more likely to prove effective (Gibbons 2001: 446).
Gibbons also suggested to the New South Wales Police that the new Code of Practice
include a reference to the new NSW Procedures for Evidence Act, which is far more com-
prehensive and considerably more explicit. With regard to criteria for using an interpreter,
the latter reads:

Use an interpreter if the person (suspect or witness) you are interviewing: is unable to
communicate in English; has a limited understanding of English; is more comfortable
communicating in their own language. NB: Just because someone can speak English
to do everyday tasks does not mean they can cope with the added stress of a police
interview.
(Gibbons 2001: 445)

As Russell (2000) shows, when the caution is being administered by English police
officers, they are supposed to check that the second-​language speaker has understood
its implications, by paraphrasing the caution and lowering the register. However, as she
points out, the catch is that the police, being untrained in linguistics, are often unable to
make the switch from the ‘legal’ caution to the ‘in your own words’ version. As a result,
as Russell says, ‘the burden for lowering the register falls squarely, if not fairly, upon

509
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

the interpreter’. The drawback, of course, is that interpreters manage this with varying
degrees of success, depending, of course, upon their competence and experience, but also
upon their own understanding of the caution, particularly as many interpreters are simply
native speakers of their language and are as untrained as the officers themselves (Russell
2000: 42–​43). The whole process is therefore fraught with dangers, as testified to by the
number of cases in which the defence claims that the defendant failed to understand the
administration of the caution or Miranda rights and expert witnesses testify on the issue
(see Berk-​Seligson 2000). Even when, as Rock (2007) points out, the police have made
other language versions of the caution available in written and sometimes spoken versions
(2007: 145), firstly not all languages are covered, and secondly without the presence of an
interpreter there is nobody to act as intermediary between the second-​language speaker
and the duty officer in order to clarify implications and ask for rights to be enforced.
The research-​informed Guidelines for Communicating Rights to Non-​ Native
Speakers of English in Australia, England and Wales, and in the USA published
by the Communication of Rights Group (2016) comprise a comprehensive set of
recommendations related to the wording of rights and their communication to non-​
native speakers of English.

Sourcing interpreters
Police forces have three main ways to source interpreters, if they do not have within-​force
individuals able to act as interpreters. There may be a professional association of police
interpreters, a register of qualified interpreters, either public or held by the police, or the
provision of interpreters may be outsourced to an agency. In the Republic of Ireland, for
example, the latter arrangement is applied to the entire police force, the Garda. An April
2009 article in the Irish Times reported a highly negative assessment of the interpreting
services provided to the Irish police, which since January 2009 had been outsourced to
agencies on the basis of tender. The resultant selection of interpreters was so poor that not
only were their overseas criminal records not checked, but some reportedly lacked basic
accreditation and language proficiency. To cap it all, a Chinese interpreter hired to assist
in interviewing a suspect was found to be an illegal immigrant.
Across the water, a decade later, the picture is just as gloomy. Outsourcing to private com-
panies has become the norm in Britain throughout the criminal justice system, including
the police. In the second decade of the 21st century, there has been a much-​criticized
switch to the privatisation of public sector interpreting. The upshot is the awarding of
a single interpreting contract to a commercial agency that supposedly can save the gov-
ernment vast sums of money. In practice, the result is that rates paid to interpreters drop,
qualified competent interpreters refuse to work for agencies, and agencies preferentially
use unqualified individuals. The upshot is a deterioration in the quality of interpreting. In
a British parliamentary debate (March 11, 2009), the government representative stated:

Police forces are outsourcing their requirement for interpreters as a pragmatic

approach because they need to progress investigations. They have to get the balance
right, to make sure that investigations are carried out fairly, with a high level of proof,
and to make sure that people are not spending time in custody unnecessarily. We must
all recognise that those issues are difficult to balance, while ensuring that we maintain
the quality of interpreting.
(Hansard, 11 March 2009: Column 136WH, online)

510
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

As in the court system, as conditions worsen, fewer experienced interpreters are prepared
to do police work, and good interpreters have boycotted the new system. The resulting
shortfall is filled by people who have no interpreting qualifications and no interpreting
experience and are simply speakers of the foreign language in question. Inevitably the
quality of interpreting for the police is adversely affected.

Transcript issues
So far, this chapter has focused on common law systems encountering second-​language
speakers outside the courtroom. Komter (2002) explains how in Dutch trials, suspects
are confronted with written versions of statements they made to the police and the inves-
tigating judge earlier in the criminal law process. These statements are supposed to be
written down as far as possible in the suspect’s own words, but they are in fact the police
officers’ written versions of what was said in the interview. They are simultaneously reports
of previous talks held in the police interrogation room and part of the interaction in the
courtroom, both of which are conducted for a different purpose. Thus, suspects are held
accountable for what they supposedly told the police, and if they challenge the record,
judges can rebut their protests by pointing out that they themselves had provided the
information in question to the police. The implications where a third party, the interpreter,
was present in the police interview room and where either the same or another inter-
preter subsequently mediated the courtroom interaction can be imagined. Since police
interrogations are not usually audio-​or video-​recorded in the Netherlands, and because
the records are made by the police themselves, Komter (2002) indicates, it is impossible to
prove what the suspect actually said to the police at the time.
A related problem exists in England, where –​although interviews with suspects are
routinely tape-​recorded –​only monolingual (English) transcripts of interpreter-​mediated
interviews are prepared by the police and may have to be subsequently (back)translated
into the second language for the benefit of the non-​English-​speaking suspect. This kind of
document, normally sourced by the suspect’s lawyers, poses interesting strategic questions
per se, but is fraught with problems when, as is commonly the case, the translator has no
access to the original recordings and relies solely on the police transcript, which may in
turn be inaccurate or incomplete.
In such cases, due to the almost infinite number of linguistic permutations available, the
back-​translated version in the suspect’s language is highly likely to differ, perhaps signifi-
cantly, from the actual message that they uttered. If a second-​language speaker is confronted
with what he supposedly said at a police interview, in a variation on ‘Chinese whispers’ it is
highly likely that anything the interpreter in the second language produced will differ, and
often significantly, from what was actually said at the police interview. The only way to avoid
such issues is to insist on obtaining an acoustically clear tape recording of everything said in
both, without any overlapping material and accompanied by an accurate transcript.
The following transcribed and translated excerpt is from a videotape of the police
questioning a mother in a baby abuse case (State of Delaware v. Lizbeth Rivera in Superior
Court, New Castle County 2005):

(4)
Suspect:Que no lo, que no lo agarrara así, porque yo luego lo agarré por el bracito.
No fue a propósito, pero, lo agarré por el bracito, y ella me dijo, ‘No lo agarres
así que eso, esto, a lo mejor, tú agarrándolo así, tú le pudiste hacer eso, las…los…’

511
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

Literal translation:That I shouldn’t, that I shouldn’t grab him up like that, because
then I did grab him up by his little arm. It wasn’t on purpose, but I picked him up
by his little arm, and she said to me, ‘Don’t pick him up like that, since that, this,
maybe you picking him up like that, you could do something to the, the…’
Interpreter:(Over suspect’s words) Don’t pick him up like that. So she yanked
him by one arm. And she…Okay…This lady told her, saw her picking her up
the baby up, and told her don’t, don’t pick the baby up like that. You’re going
to hurt the baby like that.

The interpreter (a police officer) uses the third person (she) instead of the first (I), completes
an incomplete statement, changes intensity (from ‘grab’ to ‘yank’), changes a possibility
into a certainty (‘could’ to ‘going to’), does not reproduce repetitions (agarrar is once
rendered as ‘pick up’, once as ‘yank’), fails to render a diminutive (bracito is rendered as
‘arm’, not ‘little arm’), omits material (‘it wasn’t on purpose’), renders a pronoun (ella)
as a noun (‘this lady’), renders something less specific (‘you could do something’) with a
more specific formulation (‘you’re going to hurt the baby’), changes the order of phrases
and modifies the wording (starts with ‘Don’t pick him up like that’, when this is in fact
material towards the end of the suspect’s version). In sum, this is an unprofessional per-
formance which in fact led to no charges being brought.

Lawyer–​client interaction
The lawyer–​client consultation meeting is likely to pose fewer problems for the interpreter.
The context is not as formal as that of the police interview and certainly more relaxed
than emergency situations, prisons or probation offices, with the goals of the parties
common rather than divergent. Most problematic seem to be the usual pitfalls of legal-​lay
communication; as Gibbons (2003: 172) notes, ‘much lawyer-​client interaction is spent
negotiating ways round this lack of shared [legal] knowledge’. Even more effort has to
be expended when second-​language speakers are involved, because of the need to explain
legal concepts that do not necessarily exist in the clients’ culture.
Most second-​language speakers are unable to pay for legal representation and have
to rely on state-​provided solutions. This has obvious consequences for power issues in
lawyer–​client interactions. Additionally, because providing state-​sponsored legal aid is not
as well remunerated as representing individuals of independent means, solicitors working
with second-​language speakers may have limited financial resources, which in turn could
have a negative impact on the quality of the interpreting. In England there is no require-
ment for solicitors to use accredited interpreters and as a result law firms may choose cost,
as a primary consideration when sourcing interpreters, at the expense of quality.
When it comes to the interaction between lawyers and interpreters, a revealing study
by Foley (2006), who investigated perceptions of duty and partiality among the two
professions, found that the two groups ‘have markedly different cultural notions as to
who their client is (and whether duties are owed and to whom)’ (2006: 99). While the
lawyers spoke of ‘a delicate balancing act’ between their duties to their client, to the
court and to the profession, some of the interpreters rejected the notion of a ‘client’, and
others said that even if they did have a client –​be it the second-​language speaker, the
court, the police or the lawyer –​they owed no duty to them in the sense that lawyers did.
Ahmad (2007: 1002), a lawyer, sees the interpreter’s presence as ‘inject[ing] the subjectivity
of a third person –​her thoughts and feelings, attitudes and opinions, personality and

512
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

perception –​into what previously had been the exclusive province of the lawyer and client’
and addresses his colleagues thus:

Once we acknowledge the subjectivity that inheres in interpretation, we can move in

one of two directions: either to squelch that subjectivity and attempt to force the inter-
preter back into the fictive box of technology; or to embrace the subjectivity, draw it
out further, scrutinize it rigorously, and engage it dialogically. Most lawyers, and the
legal system as a whole, attempt the former. I argue unambiguously for the latter.
(Ahmad 2007: 1003)

Baixauli-​Olmos (2017) reports on pre-​trial lawyer–​client encounters in prison settings and

explains that they tend to be particularly complicated due to their more practical and
confrontational nature, and that a high degree of stress and lack of will or ability to com-
municate can make these encounters particularly challenging.
Finally, the difficulties faced by defendants working with lawyers are exemplified by the
English case of Iqbal Begum. After Mrs Begum had been sentenced to life imprisonment
for murdering her husband and had served some five years in prison, her conviction was
appealed, on the grounds that she had pleaded guilty without understanding with what
she was charged. In point of fact, it turned out that there had been no effective commu-
nication between her and her legal representatives from the very beginning, since she did
not understand the individual engaged to interpret at the pre-​trial and trial stages. She had
remained silent throughout the entire time that she was in custody, even in sessions with
her legal representatives. In ruling that the trial had been a nullity, since no proper plea
had been made, the appellate court observed that

unless a person fully comprehends the charge which that person faces, the full
implications of it and the ways in which a defence may be raised to it, and further is
able to give full instructions to solicitor and counsel so that the court can be sure that
that person has pleaded with a free and understanding mind, a proper plea has not
been tendered to the court.
(Iqbal Begum (1991) 93 Cr.App.R. 96 at 100)

Probation offices
In many jurisdictions around the world, individuals convicted of a relatively minor crime
may be placed under probation supervision and thereby avoid incarceration, provided
that they complete a course of action intended as punishment and designed to prevent
them from re-​offending. This may involve community service work, completion of a drug
rehabilitation programme, finding a job or staying away from known criminals. Imposed
by the court, such measures are enforced by probation officers, who meet their supervisees
on a regular basis throughout the probation period. Particularly important is the first of
such meetings, where conditions of the court order are explained and provisions made
for them to be adhered to. At this early stage effective communication plays a particu-
larly important role because, if the offender misunderstands the probation conditions
and breaches the order, he or she may have to return to court and end up in prison after
all. This is illustrated by the case of Alex Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant to the USA.
On 13 April 2006, in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Ramirez, having pleaded guilty

513
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

to violating probation, said in his defence that an important reason for the violation was
his inability to communicate with his probation officer. It is sobering to read the judge’s
response to Ramirez:

Now, so let me understand this. Not only do we have to let him come into the country
illegally and stay here, not only do we have to provide him with public assistance, not
only do we have to provide him with free health care, not only do we have to provide
him with a free attorney when he gets in trouble, now he wants a bilingual probation
officer, because otherwise it’s inconvenient for him.
(www.leagle.com/​decision/​infdco20120417b20)

Probation supervision meetings are interesting from a linguistic point of view as they
seem to occupy middle ground between legal and ‘lay’ language. The probation officer’s
primary aim is determined by legal requirements, but to achieve it certain communicative
goals have to be pursued with only limited use of specialised discourse. The institutional
is thus combined with the interpersonal, a situation with potentially adverse effects for the
judicially unversed offender: what seems like a friendly chat can in fact have serious legal
repercussions. All this means that the interpreter must be sensitive to even the slightest
changes in register and respond accordingly, because, when used in a legal context, cer-
tain lexical items take on new meanings. In England, when a police officer uses the verb
‘caution’ at the beginning of an interview with a suspect (‘I’m going to caution you now’),
the most frequently encountered definition (‘warn or advise’) has little to do with the legal
meaning of ‘formally inform one of one’s legal rights and consequences of one’s decision
to withhold information from the interviewing police officers’.
Another interesting aspect is the seemingly limitless semantic scope of the supervision
interview. While interpreters can expect some legal terminology, the relatively unstructured
nature of the interaction is conducive to the emergence of unexpected topics with their
domain-​specific vocabulary. Fairly frequent are for example medical terms, whose accurate
rendition is essential if the probation officer is to make a fully informed decision about the
offender’s ability to perform certain actions. This can be illustrated with an example from
a supervision meeting interpreted by one of the present authors. When the offender was
asked a routine question about health issues claimed to be preventing him from undertaking
community work at a building site, he answered with the story, complete with specialised
medical vocabulary, of a meniscus cartilage tear he had suffered several years before.
Another surprise afforded by probation supervision meetings may be the necessity to
switch modes of interpreting. In many probation offices in the UK for example, prior to
starting community service, offenders are asked to watch health-​and-​safety videos. Given
the related temporal and technical constraints, simultaneous interpreting may then be the
best option. Finally, sight translation –​that is delivery of a spoken version of a written
text, provided on the spot without any preparation –​is routinely used when the content of
a form filled in by probation officers with input from the supervisees needs to be relayed
back to them.

Prisons
Interpreting in prison settings is arguably the most underexplored topic in the litera-
ture, with few but notable exceptions. Baixauli-​Olmos (2013, 2017) and Martínez-​Gómez
(2014, 2018) have explored interpreting in prison settings through different lenses, and

514
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

documented the need for training, provision and professionalization in this domain.
Apart from discussing the problems of interpreter-​mediated communication in correc-
tional institutions in Brazil, Martínez-​Gómez (2014) provides a comprehensive overview
of prison language policies and national legal instruments in 40 countries around the
world. The study highlights the good practices existing in Australia and California, as well
as in England and Wales, in particular because the systems rely primarily upon external
interpreters rather than using inmates as interpreters, they have translated materials avail-
able in different languages and they require interpreters to meet a set of requirements,
even if modest, to work in prison services.
On the face of it, by the prison stage of the law enforcement chain, second-​language
speakers, already familiar with the role of the interpreter, should cause few problems.
Nevertheless, prolonged isolation in a linguistically alien environment often means that
inmates treat interpreter-​mediated visits not only as a welcome change in the daily rou-
tine, but also as an opportunity to interact with someone of the same or similar cultural
background (see also English, Chapter 29, this volume). Viewed as an ally, a confidant,
the interpreter is then erroneously expected to take on roles outside of the professional
remit (Morris 1999). An inmate may address him or her directly with questions regarding
the latest news, or ask for a message to be passed on to someone outside. Linguistically,
the problems are similar to those characteristic of probation supervision meetings, with
the notable difference that inmates with long sentences gradually learn the language of the
jurisdiction, including prison argot, which they may use when code-​switching. Not infre-
quently, they also attempt to ask or answer some of the questions themselves, still relying
on the interpreter for more complex meanings and legal jargon.
The spatial conditions of the prison domain and its functioning shape communi-
cation practices, including multilingual ones. Over the past decade, videoconference
interpreting has made it possible to provide interpreting between the courtroom and
correctional facilities (Braun and Taylor 2012; Fowler 2013) although, as mentioned
above, not without risks. Baixuali-​Olmos (2013) explored the impact that contextual
conditions have upon the prison interpreter’s role and communication. Drawing on
input from interpreters, inmates, prison managers and workers from the USA, UK,
Australia, Argentina and Spain, he identified prison interpreting as being largely shaped
by tight security, spatial restrictions, time constraints and delay. Poor audio quality is
another problematic issue he raised. There is no doubt that extralinguistic factors play
a significantly greater role in the prison setting than elsewhere. The negative impact
of the physical environment, the discomfort of the entry procedure, and contact with
potentially dangerous individuals can all contribute to the interpreters’ increased stress
levels (as can some aspects of the interaction itself) and, consequently, affect the quality
of the job.
Another relevant aspect of prison interpreting is its provision. The studies conducted
to date reveal that, in most countries, interpreting is provided primarily by inmates or
at times officers for inmates (Martínez-​Gómez 2014, 2015b). In some countries, training
initiatives and a degree of organization are available for bilingual inmates. Baixauli-​Olmos
(2013) observed that, whereas most interpreters who work in prisons provide interpreting
in encounters of a legal nature, half of the inmates reported having interpreted in training
and social services sessions. Martínez-​Gómez (2015b) also found that external interpreters
were brought in almost exclusively for lawyer–​client interactions.
In her study of prison interpreting, Martínez-​Gómez (2015a) analysed adherence to
norms and users’ perceptions and experts’ evaluations. Her corpus comprised 19 prison

515
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

interviews between an inmate and either a psychologist or an educator mediated by an

interpreter. Both good practice and risks in the type of interpreting provided by inmates
were observed. While some inmates deployed effective strategies to solve communica-
tion problems and to clarify cultural terms, accuracy issues affected message transfer
in various ways. Partial translations, omissions and impressions added by some of the
interpreters themselves, at times acting as advocates of the other inmate and at other
times even revealing information obtained outside the event, were observed in the inmates’
interpretations.
Finally, a rarely mentioned aspect of prison interpreting is the influence of the cultur-
ally conditioned stigma of imprisonment. Inmates from some cultures, when confronted
with an interpreter, who they assume shares the same values, may try and exculpate them-
selves to the interpreter for fear of losing face. In such situations the inmate’s visitors are
mere hearers and the interpreter becomes the addressee of the message, to use Hymes’s
(1977) terms. Needless to say, in such cases the presence of the interpreter affects not
only the dynamics of the conversation, as is normally true of any interpreter-​mediated
exchange anyway, but also its content.

Conclusions
There is basically nothing new about the issues of interpreting in non-​court settings in
the early 21st century. Technology can sometimes offer solutions which, although not
necessarily perfect, nevertheless enable interpreters to assist in communication where
otherwise nothing could be done. However, the need for competent interpretation
remains as vital as ever. Having an incompetent telephone interpreter mediate between
prisoner and counsel is potentially worse than having no interpreter at all. In today’s
cash-​strapped situation, the efficient use of resources is vital. Bowing to the pressure to
outsource and award a contract for the provision of interpreters in the legal system to
the cheapest bidder with no attempt at quality control is often the opposite of a wise
allocation of resources. Employing adequately trained civilian staff to source quality
interpreters would be a time-​and money-​efficient use of resources. Interpreters should
be viewed as a quality resource which must be sourced appropriately for the particular
task to be dealt with, not as faceless voices to be bought in bulk through for-​profit com-
panies who treat interpreters as commodities to be exploited in order to maximize their
revenues, not to serve the ends of justice. The adoption of legislative instruments such as
the EU Directives, which are binding on all EU national governments, should contribute
to the adoption of mechanisms to regulate recruitment, training, organization, working
conditions, sourcing of interpreters and, importantly, quality control, to safeguard the
fairness of the proceedings and serve the ends of justice. Their transposition and imple-
mentation, though, are proving complex and controversial (Gialuz 2019, Katschinka
2014, Ortega-​Herráez and Hernández-​Cebrián 2019). Ortega-​Herráez and Hernández-​
Cebrián (2019) illustrate striking differences and gaps in several member states in relation
to the establishment of national registers and codes of ethics as part of the quality control
mechanisms contained in Directive 2010/​64/​EU.
The equal access principle, which has increasingly come to underpin the modern crim-
inal justice system, requires legal systems to expand their frameworks of reference beyond
the narrow view, so that linguistic equality must also include such matters as pre-​sentencing
reports and correctional programmes. To expect interpreters to undertake costly training
and then not be appropriately compensated is unrealistic.

516
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

The future, if not exactly bright, seems quite promising. In England and Wales for
example, thanks in no small measure to the rapid growth of forensic linguistics and its
more and more visible social presence, some police forces are beginning to recognise and
respond to at least some of the problems discussed here, although the outsourcing phe-
nomenon, with its negative ramifications, is a worrying trend in various jurisdictions. The
perspective of the legal profession, however, is still one of impractical expectations, with
the interpreter viewed as a passive, machine-​like entity. This kind of perception is not new.
In 1979 in United States v. Anguloa the court instructed the jury following the replacement
of an incompetent interpreter that ‘[a]‌n Interpreter really only acts as a transmission belt
or telephone’; a former Australian Supreme Court judge, in turn, stated that ‘[t]he inter-
preter should look upon himself rather as an electric transformer, whatever is fed into him
is to be fed out again, duly transformed’ (Wells 1991, in Hale and Gibbons 1999: 207). As
a result, the tacit assumption in the legal system has been that the interpreter’s version
is always a faithful reflection of the original. Meanwhile, a more fitting metaphor of the
interpreting process in legal and forensic contexts is possibly that of a shattered mirror: the
contours, shapes and colours can still be discerned in the fragmented reflection while
some fine, but potentially crucial, details may be missing because of the cracks. Some of
the damage is inevitable: typological differences between languages and the presence of
language-​specific pragmatic assumptions mean that it may be simply impossible to repro-
duce some meanings successfully. There is then an unavoidable tension between the law
needing absolutes and meaning being inexact. However, as demonstrated in this chapter,
there are a number of extralinguistic factors that result from work-​related pressures, dis-
parate expectations, ignorance and inadequate professional practice, which, unlike the
linguistic issues, could be addressed by institutional, or possibly even legislative, solutions
for all stages of the judicial process, minimising the distortion in the semantic mirror.

Notes
1 www1.nyc.gov/​assets/​nypd/​downloads/​pdf/​public_​information/​language-​access-​plan-​aug-​2018.
pdf (accessed 16 February 2019).
2 See e.g. the US Department of Homeland Security LEP Resource Guide for Law Enforcement
and the Vera Institute Translating for Justice executive summary, www.dhs.gov/​sites/​default/​files/​
publications/​lep-​resouce-​guide-​law-​enforcement_​0.pdf (accessed 18 February 2018) and www.
lep.gov/​resources/​vera_​translating_​justice_​final.pdf (accessed 18 February 2018), respectively.

Further reading
Berk-​Seligson, S. (2000) ‘Issues in pre-​trial phases of the judicial process’, Forensic Linguistics: The
International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 7(1): 213–​238.
Colin, J. and Morris, R. (1996) Interpreters and the Legal Process, Winchester, UK: Waterside Press.
Cooke, M., Eades, D. and Hale, S. (eds) (1999) Forensic Linguistics, 6(1) (special issue devoted to
interpreting in legal contexts).
Morris, R. (1995) ‘The moral dilemmas of court interpreting’, The Translator, 1(1): 25–​46.
Nakane, I. (2014) Interpreter-​ Mediated Police Interviews: A Discourse-​ Pragmatic Approach,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Legal sources
Beck v. Sager [1979] RTR 475.
Iqbal Begum (1991) 93 Cr.App.R. 96.

517
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

State of Delaware v. Lizbeth Rivera in Superior Court, New Castle County (2005).
State of New Jersey v. Alex Ramirez, 04-​06-​1127 (2006).
United States v. Anguloa, 598 F2d 1182 No. 78–​1183 (1979).

References
Ahmad, M.I. (2007) ‘Interpreting communities: Lawyering across language difference’, UCLA Law
Review, 54(5): 999–​1086.
Angermeyer, P.S. (2008) ‘Creating monolingualism in the multilingual courtroom’, Sociolinguistic
Studies, 2(3): 385–​403.
Baixauli-​Olmos, L. (2013) ‘A description of interpreting in prisons: Mapping the setting through an
ethical lens’, in C. Schäffner and K. Kredens (eds), Interpreting in a Changing Landscape: Selected
Papers from Critical Link, 6: 45–​60.
—​—​—​(2017) ‘The development of prison interpreting roles: a professional ecological model’,
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 75: 65–​87.
Balogh, K. and Salaets, H. (2015) Children and Justice: Overcoming Language Barriers,
Cambridge-​Antwerp-​Portland: Intersentia.
Berk-​Seligson, S. (2000) ‘Interpreting for the police: Issues in pre-​trial phases of the judicial process’,
Forensic Linguistics, 7(2): 212–​235.
—​—​—​(2002) ‘The Miranda warnings and linguistic coercion: the role of footing in the interroga-
tion of a limited-​English speaking murder suspect’, in Janet Cotterill (ed.), Language in the Legal
Process, London: Palgrave: 127–​146.
—​—​—​ (2009) Coerced Confessions: The Discourse of Bilingual Police Interrogations, New York:
Walter de Gruyter.
Böser, U. (2013) ‘So tell me what happened! Interpreting the free recall segment of the investigative
interview’, Translation and Interpreting Studies, 8(1): 112–​136.
Böser, U. and LaRooy, D. (2018) ‘Interpreter-​ mediated investigative interviews with minors’,
Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting
Studies Association, 13(2): 208–​229.
Braun, S. (2014) ‘Comparing traditional and remote interpreting in police settings: Quality and
impact factors’, in M. Viezzi and C. Falbo (eds), Traduzione e interpretazione per la società e le
istituzioni, Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste: 161–​176.
Braun, S. and Taylor, J. (eds) (2012) Videoconference and Remote Interpreting in Criminal Proceedings,
Cambridge/​Antwerp: Intersentia.
Coldrey, J. (1987) ‘Aboriginals and the criminal courts’, in K.M. Hazlehurst (ed.), Ivory Scales: Black
Australia and the Law, Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology www.aic.gov.au/​
publications/​archive/​archive-​126 (accessed 23 July 2020).
Communication of Rights Group (2016) Guidelines for Communicating Rights to Non-​ Native
Speakers of English in Australia, England and Wales, and the USA www.linguisticsociety.org/​sites/​
default/​files/​Communication_​of_​rights_​language.pdf (accessed 23 July 2020).
Du, B. (2015) ‘The silenced interpreter: A case study of language and ideology in the Chinese crim-
inal court’, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law-​Revue internationale de Sémiotique
juridique, 28(3): 507–​524.
Eades, D. (1994) ‘A case of communicative clash: Aboriginal English and the legal system’, in
J. Gibbons (ed.), Language and the Law, London: Longman, 234–​264.
Foley, T. (2006) ‘Lawyers and legal interpreters. Different clients, different culture’, Interpreting,
8(1): 97–​104.
Fowler, Y. (2013) ‘Business as usual? Prison video link in the multilingual courtroom’, in C. Schäffner
and K. Kredens (eds), Interpreting in a Changing Landscape: Selected Papers from Critical Link,
6: 225–​248.
Gallai, F. (2013) ‘“I’ll just intervene whenever he finds it a bit difficult to answer”: Exploring the
myth of literalism in interpreted interviews’, Investigative Interviewing: Research and Practice
(II-​RP), 5(1): 57–​78.
Gialuz, M. (2019) ‘The implementation of the directive on linguistic assistance in Italy, between
changes to the code of criminal procedure and case-​law resistance’, in T. Rafaraci and R. Belfiore
(eds), EU Criminal Justice, Cham: Springer, 27–​41.

518
 Interpreting outside the courtroom

Gibbons J. (2001) ‘Revising the language of New South Wales police procedures: Applied linguistics
in action’, Applied Linguistics, 22(4): 439–​469.
—​—​—​ (2003) Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System,
Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell.
Hale, S. and Gibbons, J. (1999) ‘Varying realities: Patterned changes in the interpreter’s representa-
tion of courtroom and external realities’, Applied Linguistics, 20(2): 203–​220.
Hale, S., Goodman-​Delahunty, J. and Martschuk, N. (2018) ‘Interpreter performance in police
interviews. Differences between trained interpreters and untrained bilinguals’, The Interpreter
and Translator Trainer, 13(2), 107–​131.
Heydon, G. and Lai, M. (2013) ‘Police interviews mediated by interpreters: An exercise in
diminishment?’, Investigative Interviewing Research and Practice, 5(2), 82–​98.
Hymes, D. (1977) Foundations in Sociolinguistics, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ikane, J. (2007) ‘Problems in Communicating the Suspect’s Rights in Interpreted Police Interviews’,
Applied Linguistics, 28(1): 87–​112.
Katschinka, L. (2014) ‘The impact of Directive 2010/​64/​EU on the right to interpretation and trans-
lation in criminal proceedings’, in C. Falbo and M. Viezzi (eds), Traduzione e interpretazione per
la società e le istituzioni, Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste.
Komter, M.L. (2002) ‘The suspect’s own words: The treatment of written statements in Dutch
courtrooms’, Forensic Linguistics, 9(2): 169–​192.
Kredens, K. (2017) ‘Making sense of adversarial interpreting’, Language and Law /​Linguagem e
Direito, 4(1): 17–​33.
Lai, M. and Mulayim, S. (2013) ‘Interpreter linguistic intervention in the strategies employed
by police in investigative interviews’, Police Practice and Research: An International Journal,
15(4): 307–​321.
Martínez-​Gómez, A. (2014) ‘Criminals interpreting for criminals: Breaking or shaping norms?’,
Jostrans–​The Journal of Specialised Translation, 22: 174–​193.
—​—​ —​(2015a) ‘Interpreting in prison settings: An international overview’, Interpreting,
16(2): 233–​259.
—​—​—​ (2015b) ‘Prison Settings’, in F. Pöchhacker (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting
Studies, London and New York: Routledge.
—​—​—​(2018) ‘Language, translation and interpreting policies in prisons: Protecting the rights
of speakers of non-​official languages’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language,
251: 151–​172.
Mayfield, K. (2016) The Issues and Challenges Surrounding Interpreter-​ assisted Investigative
Interviews of Victims and Witnesses, Masters’ Dissertation, London Metropolitan University.
Mayor, M.J.B. and del Pozo Triviño, M. (2015) ‘Legal interpreting in Spain at a turning point’,
MonTI. Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación, 7: 41–​71.
Monteoliva-​García, E. (2017a) The Collaborative Construction of the Stand-​by Mode of Interpreting
in Police Interviews with Suspects, unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh: Heriot-​Watt University.
—​—​—​(2017b) ‘La relevancia de las secuencias de interpretación en entrevistas policiales con
interpretación en stand-​by’, Revista de Llengua i Dret, 68: 100–​116.
—​—​—​(2018) ‘The last ten years of legal interpreting research (2008–​2017). A review of research in
the field of legal interpreting’, Language and Law /​Linguagem e Direito, 5(1), 38–​61.
—​—​—​(2020) ‘The collaborative and selective nature of interpreting in police interviews with stand-​
by interpreting’, Interpreting: Online-​First Articles.
Morris, R. (1999) ‘The gum syndrome: Predicaments in court interpreting’, Forensic Linguistics,
6(1), 6–​29.
Moser-​Mercer, B. (2003) ‘Remote interpreting: Assessment of human factors and performance
parameters’ http://​aiic.net/​ViewPage.cfm/​article879 (accessed 23 May 2009).
Mulayim, S., Lai, M. and Norma, C. (2014) Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting: Context,
Challenges, and Strategies, Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Nakane, I. (2007) ‘Problems in communicating the suspect’s rights in interpreted police interviews’,
Applied Linguistics, 28(1): 87–​112.
—​—​—​(2010) ‘Partial non-​use of interpreters in Japanese criminal court proceedings’, Japanese
Studies, 30(3), 443–​459.
—​—​—​(2011) ‘The role of silence in interpreted police interviews’, Journal of Pragmatics, 43(9),
2317–​2330.

519
Kredens, Monteoliva-García and Morris

—​—​—​ (2014) Interpreter-​Mediated Police Interviews: A Discourse-​Pragmatic Approach, Basingstoke/​

New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Napier, J., Skinner, R. and Turner, G.H. (2017) ‘“It’s good for them but not so for me”: Inside the
sign language interpreting call centre.’ Translation and Interpreting, 9(2): 1–​23.
Ng, E. (2013) The Atypical Bilingual Courtroom: An Exploratory Study of the Interactional Dynamics
in Interpreter-​Mediated Trials in Hong Kong, unpublished PhD thesis, Aston University.
Ortega-​Herráez, J.M. and Hernández-​Cebrián, N. (2019) ‘Instrumentos y medidas para transponer
al ordenamiento jurídico interno el mandato de calidad de la traducción e interpretación de la
Directiva 2010/​64/​UE: el caso de España a través de un análisis comparativo transnacional’,
Revista de Estudios Europeos Nº extraordinario monográfico, 2019(1): 97–​117.
Perez, I.A. and Wilson, C.W. (2007) ‘Interpreter-​mediated police interviews: Working as a profes-
sional team’, in C. Wadensjö et al. (eds), The Critical Link 4: Professionalisation of Interpreting in
the Community, Amsterdam/​Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 79–​94.
Rock, F. (2007) Communicating Rights: The Language of Arrest and Detention, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Russell, S. (2000) ‘“Let me put it simply …”: The case for a standard translation of the police
caution and its explanation’, Forensic Linguistics, 7(1): 26–​48.
Shuy, R.W. (1997) ‘Ten unanswered language questions about Miranda’, Forensic Linguistics,
4(2): 175–​195.
Tipton, R. (2017) ‘“You are foreign, you are nothing in this country”: Managing risk in interpreter-​
mediated police interviews with victims of domestic abuse’, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses,
75: 119–​138.
Toledano, C. and Del Pozo Triviño, M. (eds) (2015) Interpretación en Contextos de Violencia de
Género, Valencia: Tirant Humanidades.
Vernon, M. and Coley, J. (1978) ‘Violation of Constitutional Rights: The language impaired person
and the Miranda Warnings’, Journal of Rehabilitation of the Deaf, 11(4): 1–​8.
Wadensjö, C., (1998) Interpreting as Interaction, London and New York: Longman.
Wells, W.A.N. (1991) An Introduction to the Law of Evidence, S. Australia: A.B. Caudell (in Hale
and Gibbons 1999).

520