Abstract
Interpreting in legal settings outside the courtroom is an area where community and legal interpreting intersect, a “gray zone” where the rules from each of these areas may mesh or collide. Thus legal interpreting outside the courtroom is an area that has caused great confusion for both the legal interpreters and the community interpreters who practice in its confines. Two neighboring countries, the United States and Canada, have adopted different approaches to interpreting in this area and to the kind of certification necessary for those community interpreters who work in legal settings. This article discusses non-courtroom legal interpreting in the broadest sense in both the United States and Canada, overviewing spoken non-courtroom legal interpreting in both countries, addressing the various challenges involved, and summarizing the emerging best practices for legal interpreting outside the courtroom, including some current and developing certification programs that affect, or may affect, non-courtroom legal interpreting.
Highlights
The purpose of this article is to review, contrast, and compare non-courtroom legal interpreting practices conducted in the U.S and Canada and to propose guidelines for legal interpreters who perform their duties outside the courtroom
More and more courts in North America and around the world rely on interpreters with formal training and experience in court interpreting—thanks in part to organizations like the U.S.-based National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT), which has recently sponsored language-specific trainings in Korean, Russian, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Khmer and Punjabi—legal interpreting outside the courtroom is still very likely to be performed by interpreters with very little or no training in the field or by interpreters whose training and experience has focused almost exclusively on non-legal sectors
Ethics and standards for interpreting in Canada In recognition of the fact that interpreters work across sectors, as evidenced by the Gray Zone, a coalition developed in Canada that includes two language industry associations, the Language Industry Association (AILIA) and the Association of Canadian Corporations in Translation and Interpretation (ACCTI), as well as Critical Link (CLI), a Canada-based international organization that supports community interpreting, and the Healthcare Interpretation Network (HIN), a national organization in Canada that provides a forum for the development of standards for healthcare interpreters
Summary
The purpose of this article is to review, contrast, and compare non-courtroom legal interpreting practices conducted in the U.S and Canada and to propose guidelines for legal interpreters who perform their duties outside the courtroom. The impact of interpreter certification on non-courtroom legal interpreting in both nations. It is not an attempt to apply new standards and definitions. It does not address sign language interpreting in detail.
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