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In:Handbook of Terminology: Volume 3. Legal Terminology
Edited by Łucja Biel and Hendrik J. Kockaert
[Handbook of Terminology 3] 2023
► pp. 570–593

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Dealing with legal terminology in court interpreting

 | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 1 December 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hot.3.dea1
Abstract
The target of court interpreting is to ensure equal access to justice to all persons who are not proficient in the language spoken in a court of law. In that context, dealing effectively with legal terminology is crucial to interpret accurately and to keep the legal intent of the message. This chapter first explores the main difficulties of court interpreting, focusing on legal terminology. Then, some of the different existing models and criteria for accuracy in court interpreting are introduced. Finally, a training approach to help court interpreting students to create their own glossaries is presented, going from monolingual to bilingual research.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Main difficulties
    • 2.1Lack of access to case-related materials
    • 2.2General terms that become legal terms
    • 2.3General language features used as legal strategy
    • 2.4Domain-specific knowledge
  • 3.Standards for quality in court interpreting
  • 4.Training court interpreters to handle legal terminology
    • 4.1Working with monolingual legal terminology
    • 4.2Working with bilingual equivalents for legal terms
      • 4.2.1Research
      • 4.2.2Practice in context
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (89)
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