Court Interpreters and Fair Trials

Globalization has increased the number of individuals in criminal proceedings who are unable to understand the language of the courtroom, and as a result the number of court interpreters has also increased. But unsupervised interpreters can severely under

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Court Interpreters and Fair Trials

John Henry Dingfelder Stone

Court Interpreters and Fair Trials

John Henry Dingfelder Stone Hochschule Rhein-Waal Rhine-Waal University of Applied Science Kleve, Germany

ISBN 978-3-319-75354-6    ISBN 978-3-319-75355-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75355-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935930 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Laura Catlin / EyeEm Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book is dedicated to MDS, Juju and the Dude, for changing my life.

Preface

I worked as a trial prosecutor in Victoria, Texas for a few years when I was fresh out of law school. The location of the town meant that a number of our defendants (and witnesses) spoke only Spanish and were reliant on court-appointed interpreters throughout the judicial process. In practice, this meant that we used bilingual defense attorneys, court clerks, or even one of our own legal assistants from the District Attorney’s Office. It never occurred to me at the time that any of these defendants received anything less than a fair proceeding using one of our “interpreters”. After a few more years working as an appellate prosecutor, I got married, moved to Germany and began teaching part-time at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz’s Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies in Germersheim. As coincidence would have it, this was one of the preeminent training facilities for interpreters in the world and my interactions with the academic staff there fatally undermined every assumption I had made as a prosecut