A further call to action: training as a policy issue in court interpreting

Abstract

This article gathers research from three studies conducted by industry stakeholders in US court interpretingresearch which provides a blueprint for prioritising quality in courtroom language access and which concretely links court interpreter training to policy decisions in the areas of language access and interpreter certification testing. The first study examines training experiences of Spanish/English court interpreters in one US state (Wisconsin); the second surveys practising court interpreters in the same state to demarcate specific skill domains and content in which court interpreters wish to receive training; and the third study examines failure rates on the state-level oral court interpreting exams on a national level over a 15-year period, suggesting some key strategies to mitigate such failure. In light of the aforementioned studies, as well as in response to the National Center for State Court's recent publication entitled A National Call to Action, this article represents a further call to action, beseeching educators and policymakers to create meaningful training opportunities, to acknowledge the relationship between lack of training and widespread oral exam failure, and to reward and incentivise training and credentialing through proactive policy decisions.

The Invisible Labor and Ethics of Interpreting

“…Specific subfields and groups of interpreters have followed this model. In contexts outside of the UN, including US courts, scholars have noted that governments overemphasize certification and testing over ethical training and education, despite interpreter demands for these to improve performance (Drugan 2017, Wallace 2015. The result is a diminished pipeline into the profession, in which unprepared interpreters must often learn context-specific ethical and procedural knowledge on the job (Gonzalez et al 2012), leading them to adapt to interpreting settings in ways that can significantly shape interactions (Angermeyer 2015, Hseih 2007.…”