In:Common Law in an Uncommon Courtroom: Judicial interpreting in Hong Kong
Eva N.S. Ng
[Benjamins Translation Library 144] 2018
► pp. v–xii
Get fulltext
This article is available free of charge.
Published online: 30 November 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.144.toc
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.144.toc
Table of contents
List of tables
xiii
List of figures
xv
Transcription symbols and abbreviations used in this book
xvii
Acknowledgements
xxi
Foreword
xxiii
Chapter 1.Introduction
1
1.Research in court interpreting
1
2.The Hong Kong courtroom
3
3.Motivation of the study
4
4.Scope and aims of the study
5
5.The data
6
6.Summary of chapter contents
7
Chapter 2.The practice of court interpreting in Hong Kong
11
1.Introduction
11
2.Court interpreting in the early British colonial years
12
3.The birth of court interpreting and the first court interpreter in Hong Kong
12
4.The lack of competent interpreters and the quality of interpretation
13
5.The Student Interpreter Scheme
15
6.Court interpreting from the 1970’s to 1997
18
6.1The enactment of the Official Languages Ordinance in 1974
18
6.2The resistance to the use of Chinese in court by the legal arena
18
6.3The use of Chinese in the Magistrates’ Courts and the role of the interpreter
20
7.Post-colonial court interpretation in Hong Kong
20
7.1Increasing use of Chinese in the courts
20
7.2The need to work with bilingual court personnel
21
7.3Implementation of the bilingual court reporting system
22
8.The Court Interpreter grade
24
8.1The creation of the Court Interpreter grade
24
8.2Strength of the Court Interpreter grade
24
8.3Entry requirements for court interpreters
26
8.4Training for court interpreters
27
8.5The deployment of court interpreters
30
8.6The need for relay interpreting when a third language is involved
33
8.7Remuneration and career prospects of court interpreters
37
9.Conclusion
38
Chapter 3.Modes of interpretation and audience roles in interpreted trial discourse
39
1.Language of the court and of court actors in a common bilingual setting
39
2.Language of the court and of court actors in the uncommon bilingual Hong Kong courtroom
40
3.Trial procedure in the adversarial common-law courtroom
41
4.Modes of interpretation used in the courtroom
42
5.Audience roles in monolingual court proceedings
43
6.Audience roles in interpreter-mediated trial discourse in a bilingual courtroom
44
6.1The interpreter’s audience and the audience roles in court where the interpreter is the only bilingual
45
6.2The interpreter’s audience and the audience roles in the bilingual Hong Kong courtroom
46
7.Conclusion
48
Chapter 4.The interpreter as one of the bilinguals in court
49
1.Power and control in monolingual and in interpreted court proceedings
49
2.Bilingualism, participant roles and power of the interpreter and of other court actors
50
2.1Power and participant roles of court actors with the interpreter as one of the bilinguals
51
2.1.1Increase in audience roles of bilingual counsel
2.1.2Diminished role of the interpreter
3.Strategic use of language in the adversarial courtroom
56
4.Polysemy, ambiguity and context in court interpreting
57
4.1The issue: Meanings of saam1
60
4.2Prosecution case
60
4.3Defence case
61
4.4The interpreter’s strategy
61
4.5The cross-examiner’s strategy
62
5.The interpreter’s dilemma
67
6.Conclusion
70
Chapter 5.Interpreter intervention in witness examination
73
1.The power of the interpreter as the only bilingual in the triadic communication
73
2.Interpreter-initiated turns – the norm
74
3.Interpreter-initiated turns – quantitative results
75
4.Typology of interpreter-initiated turns
77
4.1To seek confirmation
79
4.2To seek clarification
80
4.3To seek further information
81
4.4To coach the witness
81
4.5To respond to the witness
82
4.6To prompt the witness
84
4.7To inform the court of the need to finish an interrupted interpretation
84
4.8To acknowledge the understanding of the witness’s utterance
85
4.9To point out a speaker mistake
85
5.Impact of interpreter-initiated turns
86
5.1The impact on participant roles of court actors
86
5.2The impact on the power of the monolingual counsel/judge
87
5.3The impact on the evaluation of counsel, the witness and the interpreter
89
6.Conclusion
90
Chapter 6.Judges’ intervention in witness examination
91
1.Accuracy in court interpreting
91
2.A judge’s role in witness examination in a common-law courtroom
92
3.Judges’ intervention in witness examination
93
4.Data and methodology
94
5.Findings and analysis
95
5.1Judges’ intervention to clarify with witnesses
96
5.2Judges’ intervention to clarify with counsel or to inject a comment
97
6.Impact on quality of interpreting and implications for NES participants’ access to the trial
108
7.Conclusion
109
Chapter 7.Chinese witnesses testifying in English
111
1.Mind the gap: Inequality before the law
111
2.Second language or dialect speakers in court
113
3.Witnesses and interpretation in Hong Kong courts
114
4.The court case
115
5.Analytical tools and signals of communication problems
116
6.Data analysis
117
6.1Decoding problems
117
6.1.1Absent or non-responsive answer
6.1.2Responding with apologies
6.1.3Clarifications requests (with or without apologies)
6.2Encoding problems
123
6.2.1Grammatical errors and mispronunciation
6.2.2Short answers or minimum feedback
7.Summary and conclusion
125
Chapter 8.English trials heard by Chinese jurors
129
1.Introduction
129
1.1Concern about jury comprehension
129
1.2Studies of jury comprehension in common-law legal systems
130
2.The issue of jury comprehension in Hong Kong
132
3.The jury system in Hong Kong
133
4.The bilingual Hong Kong courtroom and jury’s access to the interpreted trial discourse
134
5.The survey study by Duff et al. (1992)
135
5.1Background information about the respondents
135
5.2Findings about their comprehension of the court proceedings
135
5.3Comprehension and verdicts
136
5.4Suggestions from respondents
137
6.Observations from the authentic court proceedings
137
6.1Request for exemption from jury service for reason of poor English
137
6.2Witnesses testifying in English and jury’s access to the evidence
138
6.3Legalistic features of jury instructions identified – implications for Chinese jurors
138
6.4Mumbling and fast speech as aggravating factors
140
6.5Reading of the jury oath/affirmation
141
6.6Jury’s comprehension problem of legal terminology
141
7.Appeal against a jury verdict
142
7.1Inconsistency of verdicts and Court of Appeal’s response
142
7.2The jury’s confusion over the verdicts
143
7.3Conviction quashed
145
8.Conclusion and further research
145
Chapter 9.Who is speaking? Court interpreters’ use of first-person versus third-person interpreting
147
1.First-person interpreting as the norm
147
2.Third-person interpreting as a deviation from the norm
149
3.Data, methodology and quantitative results
152
4.Findings and analysis
154
4.1Substitution of judges’ and counsel’s first-person reference with third-person reference in Chinese interpretation
154
4.2Ellipsis/omission of judges’/counsel’s first-person reference in Chinese interpretation
158
4.3A shift from first-person to third-person interpreting
159
5.Findings and disassociation theory
161
6.Power asymmetry in the adversarial courtroom and hypotheses
162
7.Questionnaire results and analysis
162
7.1Different interpreting styles for different speakers
162
7.2Content of utterances and interpreting styles
163
7.3Rationale behind the styles of interpreting
163
7.3.1Psychological factor
7.3.2Pragmatic consideration
7.3.3Inherited practice
7.3.4A self-protective device
8.Impact of third-person interpreting
166
8.1Impact on the participant role, invisibility and neutrality of the interpreter
166
8.2Impact on illocutionary force of the speech act
167
8.3Ambiguity associated with the omission of first-person reference in Chinese interpretation
167
9.Conclusion
168
Chapter 10.Conclusions
171
1.Summary of findings
171
1.1English trials in a Chinese dominant society and modes of interpreting in court
171
1.2Limitations of chuchotage in the Hong Kong courtroom
171
1.3Complexity of audienceship
172
1.4Power of bilingual participants and of the court interpreter
172
1.5Impact of interpreter intervention on monolingual court actors
173
1.6Judges’ intervention in witness examination and its impact on accuracy of court interpreting
173
1.7Disadvantage of non-native English-speaking witnesses testifying in English and the impact on other participants in court
174
1.8The issue of jury comprehension in the Hong Kong courts
174
1.9Different interpreting styles for different speakers
174
2.Contributions of the present study
175
2.1Contribution to existing literature on court interpreting
175
2.2Contribution to translation and interpreting and sociolinguistic studies
176
2.3Contributions to forensic linguistics and social benefits of the study
176
3.Pedagogical implications
177
3.1Coping with legal language and strategic use of language in court
177
3.2Coping with challenges
177
3.3Interpreting for the record
178
3.4Dealing with lexico-grammatical differences
178
3.5Consistency in interpreting styles
179
4.Recommendations for best practice in the courtroom
179
4.1Team interpreting and the use of simultaneous interpreting equipment
179
4.2Training for court personnel
181
4.2.1Recognise the interpreter as a team member
4.2.2Pause at regular intervals for consecutive interpretation
4.2.3Avoid interruptions, rapid and overlapping speech
4.2.4Use plain English where possible
5.Institutional and administrative recommendations
184
5.1The need to raise the entry requirements
184
5.2The need to improve remuneration and career prospects
185
5.3The need to make pre-service training mandatory
185
5.4The need to restructure the Court Interpreter grade in Hong Kong
186
5.5The need to review the deployment mechanism
187
6.Recommendations for further research
188
6.1Participation status of jurors in an interpreter-mediated trial in the Hong Kong courtroom
188
6.2Contrastive study of the discourse of the witnesses’ testimony in a monolingual Cantonese trial with that in a bilingual English trial
188
7.Concluding remarks
189
References
191
Appendices
Appendix 1.Timeline of the use of Chinese in courts
205
Appendix 2.Percentage of criminal cases conducted in Chinese in various courts
207
Appendix 3.Scale points for court interpreter and simultaneous interpreter under the master pay scale for civil servants
209
Appendix 4.Transcript of the exchanges between the judge, the court clerk and the foreman of the jury, interspersed with remarks of the defence counsel
211
Appendix 5.Questionnaire on the use of direct or reported speech in court interpreting
217
Index
