Discussion notes from Hale (2002)

[Linnea Micciulla]

Here are some notes from Wednesday's discussion at BU (including a variety
of contributers):

A main CDA assumption is that we should ask: what’s the social problem?  In
this case: Are Spanish speaking people hurt by court translation?  Do they
lose because they can’t state their case powerfully?

It seems to be able to go both ways.  On one hand, the interpreter could
make the witness seem more powerful.  On the other hand, people should have
the right to manipulate their own language.

But, is it GOOD that jurors make snap decisions about witnesses?  Do you
think that an interpreter should reproduce ungrammaticality, or other
powerless speech?  There are a lot of different levels of mistakes.  Some
things people just leave out.

Is there an intersection between powerful speech and gender here?  Some
studies have shown that powerful speech is received negatively when produced
by a woman.  Would it be important to match the interpreter and the witness
by gender?  By race?  Or would this result in social stigmas being preserved
that would be better to do away with to have a fair outcome?  Does the
maintenance of the witness’ speech style, along with the content, maintain
unfair bias?

In a sociolinguistics class I took, it was suggested that females tend to
use powerless speech, and may do this volitionally.  But I don’t think I do
it.  I don’t hesitate to sound powerless; just to think of the word.  After
reading literature about gender and language, however, I feel that my
knowledge somehow forces me to find differences in men's and women's speech
style.

What other items could be measured to indicate the difference between
witness style and interpreter style?  How could prosodic accuracy be
measured in a cross-linguistic context?

There’s no way to translate prosody.  But you form an impression of the
paralinguistic features.  Qualities of voice of people from a different
culture can be shocking – ie. a high-pitched female voice in Japan may be
attractive, but in Korea it might be whiny.

How about when the interpreter adds hesitations or discourse markers that
weren’t there in the original speech?  Is it possible to represent style
accurately?

I think we have “language egos” – you may feel a little different speaking
another language.  My friend told me, “you sound different when you speak
English.”   In my experience (interpreting), I don’t use fillers.   They
seem to happen on a sub-conscious level.  Interpreting pragmatics is an
additional burden.  I think this article is just asking too much of the
interpreter.  The interpreter is already working too hard.

How about swearing?  Should you interpret that?  Does the interpreter say
it?  Should they switch to third person?

Would you argue that the interpreter has the responsibility to, not only
accurately represent content, but also a) accurately represent style?  b)
present the witness in the best possible light?  c) present the witness in a
neutral light?  d) something else?

In interpreter school, I was told to try to accurately represent style.

Conclusions: Interpreters need training to raise their consciousness.  But
there’s no way to do that completely.  Still it would be useful, and they
should know that their style can affect the witness’ credibility.
Solutions: Make the interpreter more aware.  Translate more one-to-one
rather than as a summary.  Train juries. How about bilingual or Spanish
speaking juries?  If someone is to be tried by a “jury of peers” then at
least some of the jurors should speak that person’s language.  It would be
good to have jurors who speak the language and understand the pragmatics.