What is accurate interpretation?

Jelena Stojkovic-Ring, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Conference and Language Services Section, Conference Interpretation Unit

Interpreters working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have the right and duty to ensure accuracy of their output. Users of simultaneous interpretation in legal settings often believe that ‘accurate’ interpretation is a literal, word-for-word translation.

On the other hand, the practitioners for the most part believe that the purpose of the simultaneous interpretation is to faithfully transfer the message the speaker is trying to convey. For all intents and purposes, those who use the interpretation should have the same understanding of the speaker as those who listen to the original text.

The purpose of this presentation is to highlight situations in which the interpreters are forced to stick to the word-for-word strategy (to comply with the users’ perception of accuracy, particularly in low-context vs. high-context messages) at the expense of the sense, and to contrast them with situations where the interpreters judge it is ‘safe’ to do the opposite; situations where the interpreters have produced ‘accurate’ output but know it to be incomplete because it lacks cultural context (easily included in translation through translator’s notes etc.); situations where the linguistic means at the interpreters’ disposal cannot convey a full picture of the speaker (body language may be visible to all, but register or tone of voice are accessible only to those who speak the language).

This presentation will look at the means used by interpreters to bring the users’ attention to all those elements.

The presentation will analyze a number of situations in various trials before the ICTY, collected through a survey of interpreters. The analysis leads the authors to conclude that ‘accuracy’ (construed as word-for-word rendition) should not be set as the overarching objective of simultaneous interpreting in legal settings. Requiring interpreters to ‘convey the message faithfully’ would legitimize the current practice and lead to less confusion.

What can domestic courts learn from international courts and tribunals about good practice court interpreting? From the Australian War Crimes Prosecutions to the International Criminal Court

Ludmila Stern, University of New South Wales

The requirements for interpreter-mediated courtroom communication have sky-rocketed in recent years. This is due both to the creation of new international criminal courts and tribunals (ICTY, ICTR, ICC, Special Court for Sierra Leone, ECCC), and the increasing number of refugees in domestic courts throughout the world. In domestic courts, problems of interpreter-mediated communication are common and are blamed on substandard interpreting quality. This situation compromises the administration of justice, and the need to improve interpreting quality has been voiced in both journalistic and academic literature. However, unless a court case happens to gain international attention, for example in war crimes or terrorism trials, these problems are not adequately dealt with, even when they result in communication breakdown between the judiciary and counsel, on the one hand, and witnesses, on the other. In a number of prominent cases (Demjaniuk,1989) and the Australian War Crimes Prosecutions (1989-1993) bilingual and multilingual communication problems led to the court’s inability to reach a conviction (Morris, Shlesinger, Stern).

In contrast, there has been no systematic criticism of interpreting in the international criminal courts and tribunals (the Nuremberg Tribunal, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia), this despite the added complexity of the mixed jurisdiction, the use of simultaneous interpreting mode, and several working languages (Gaiba, Stern).

How have international courts and tribunals (eg., The Nuremberg Tribunal, ICTY, ICTY) tackled these challenges and achieved quality interpreting?  This paper will examine those factors that have ensured successful multilingual communication, seeking its roots in the experience of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (1945-46) (Hof, Mikulin) and modern international trials that owe much to this first international tribunal. Studies and recent interviews conducted with ICTY and ICC interpreter administrators, interpreters and interpreter users — judiciary and counsel — reveal rigorous standards of interpreter selection, evidence of pre-employment and in-house training, quality infrastructure of language services and interpreters’ working conditions, safety nets and quality control, and awareness of working with interpreters on the part of interpreter users (Hof, Stern).

Despite governments’ failure to demonstrate commitment to ensuring quality interpreting in domestic courts, the chronic shortage of funding and a lack of adequate court interpreter training and education of interpreter users and administrators, there is much that domestic courts can learn from the lessons of international courts in order to ensure quality interpreting practices.

Interpreting at the International Criminal Court: Linguistic issues and challenges

Nancy Schweda Nicholson, University of Delaware, USA

Located in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC) follows in the footsteps of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials.  Interpreting takes place not only in the courtrooms, but also in the field, as prosecution investigators search for witnesses and victims.

The official languages of the ICC are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.  However, current trials (such as the Lubanga Dyilo case) require Swahili, Lingala, and Kingwana, to name only a few African languages.  Linguistic challenges are ever-present.

A particular challenge at the ICC is the recruitment of local field “interpreters” who assist investigators on site.  I have interviewed the Chief Interpreters for both the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) and the Registry’s Language Services Unit.  They each face specific logistical challenges in locating, (sometimes) training and hiring interpreters, both in The Hague and in various African locations.

I traveled to the ICC in May of 2008 and observed in the courtroom on several occasions.   What was quite extraordinary was that, during the days I was there, language and interpreter issues were discussed in open court.  I felt very fortunate to have been a witness to these exchanges.

In sum, this presentation: (1) offers a basic overview of the ICC from the language services perspective; (2) includes information gathered from interviews with the Chief Interpreters; (3) highlights the linguistic challenges that have arisen in the Lubanga Dyilo trial; and (4) concludes with brief comments about my role as a faculty member in 4 training courses (held in The Hague and Montreal since 2004) that were developed to sensitize attorneys to the challenges of this unique legal environment.

L'interprétation juridique à la Cour de Justice

Daniela Amodeo Perillo, Hubertha Kuyf, Cour de Justice des Communautés Européennes

L'interprétation juridique à la Cour de Justice se fait dans un contexte multilingue, néanmoins le travail est comparable à celui qu'on accomplit devant les juridictions nationales.

En particulier, nous allons aborder les thèmes suivants:

- La place de la Cour de Justice dans l'ordre juridique communautaire

- Le rôle de la procédure préjudicielle, en particulier dans le cadre de la politique du visa, de l' immigration et de la coopération judiciaire.

-Des exemplesd'affaires'troisième pilier'

-Le traitementd'une affairedevant la Cour

-Le système mis en place pour garantir une interprétation de qualité ( formation, suivi de qualité, préparation des audiences, formation continue).