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Article published In: Target
Vol. 30:2 (2018) ► pp.212–239

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Interpreter-mediated drafting of written records in police interviews

A case study

 | Ghent University
 |  Independent scholar
Published online: 27 March 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.16141.def
Abstract
Text drafting is an essential component of many of the contexts in which interpreters are called in to ensure communication (Määttä, Simo K. 2015. “Interpreting the Discourse of Reporting: The Case of Screening Interviews with Asylum Seekers and Police Interviews in Finland.” The International Journal for Translation and Interpreting 7 (3): 21–34.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). As Komter, Martha. 2006. “From Talk to Text: The Interactional Construction of a Police Record.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 39 (3): 201–228. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar shows, the drafting process itself can be considered a turn in the interaction. Interpreters involved in such contexts thus perform a communicative pas de quatre, crossing not only the language divide, but also the modal divide (oral vs. written). In this paper, we analyse how an interpreter in a Belgian police interview handles this complex task. It appears that she procedurally and declaratively recognises a written turn in the interaction and uses its authoritative voice to silence the witness by sight-translating the turn as it is being typed on the screen. In line with previous research on interpreters’ handling of dialogues (Hale, Sandra. 1997. “The Treatment of Register Variation in Court Interpreting.” The Translator 3 (1): 39–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), the interpreter also shapes turns, including the written turn, to the needs of the addressees: upgrading the register properties of the interviewee’s talk and downgrading those of the written turn.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Written records in police interviews
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Data of the case at hand
    • 4.1Preliminary note on the transcriptions
    • 4.2Interview data and interaction patterns
    • 4.3Primary speakers’ linguistic skills
    • 4.4Interviewee’s awareness of procedures
    • 4.5The interpreter
    • 4.6Position of the participants and the researcher
  • 5.A written turn in the interpreter-mediated police interview?
    • 5.1Turn-taking
    • 5.2Interpreting input
    • 5.3Information gathering
    • 5.4Register alignment of interviewee’s turns with the written turns
    • 5.5Properties of the written turn and their rendering by the interpreter
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (25)
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