Reality-based court interpreting didactic material using new technologies

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ritt20 The Interpreter and Translator Trainer ISSN: 1750-399X (Print) 1757-0417 (Online) Journal homepage: http://tandfonline.com/loi/ritt20 Reality-based court interpreting didactic material using new technologies Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez & Paz Gómez Moreno To cite this article: Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez & Paz Gómez Moreno (2015) Reality-based court interpreting didactic material using new technologies, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 9:2, 188-204, DOI: 10.1080/1750399X.2015.1051770 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2015.1051770 Published online: 20 Aug 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 422 View related articles View Crossmark data Reality-based court interpreting didactic material using new technologies Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez*and Paz Gómez Moreno Department of Philology and Translation, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain (Received 11 April 2014; accepted 10 May 2014) Training for future court interpreters has traditionally been based on role-play exercises, recreations of actual trials or audios based on prototypical communicative situations. In the case of interpreting in court these kinds of simulations are not enough to train future court interpreters, since they do not fully reflect the great complexity of real communication in court. This article is intended to present a new reality-based audiovisual training material specifically devoted to court interpreters training in Spain. The material was inspired by the positive results of the conference interpreting teaching materials developed using real videos at the University of Granada. One of the most interesting aspects of the material presented here is its exclusivity, as it is, to date, the only didactic material for court interpreting training that achieves such a high degree of authenticity, since it works on the basis of real criminal trials. The material takes into account well-known translation subcompetences and it specifically addresses students who have previously received training in conference interpreting. Keywords: court interpreting; reality-based didactic material; interpreting training; information and communication technologies; interpreting teaching 1. Introduction Appropriate training and research are two of the factors that contribute most to the rapid development of professionalisation in any field. Given the ever-growing number of courses in court interpreting in Spain, the increase in academic publications and the proliferation of European Union (EU) initiatives in this regard, it would appear that the field of court interpreting is becoming professionalised. However, there is a lack of resources and materials specifically devoted to court interpreter training, especially materials based on real scenarios that take into account the specific characteristics of a trial and which are adapted to new learning styles. Training of future court interpreters has traditionally been based on role-play exercises, recreations of actual trials or audios based on prototypical communicative situations (Hale 2007, 179; Hunt-Gómez 2013, 179–185). In the case of interpreting in court –a very specific environment with extremely marked power relationships and a specific protocol with associated jargon –these kinds of simulations are not enough to train future court interpreters since they do not fully reflect the complexity of real communication in court. *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] The photographs and graphics proposed as figures are the property of Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez, one of the authors of the article, who gives permission to publish them. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 2015 Vol. 9, No. 2, 188–204, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2015.1051770 © 2015 Taylor & Francis Practice is fundamental in the training of interpreters and, in Europe, due to the changes introduced in the higher education system by the Bologna Process, students’ self-learning hours have a primary role in the new curricula (Calvo Encinas 2009, 179). This article is intended to present a new reality-based audiovisual training material specifically devoted to court interpreter training in Spain. The didactic material in question was inspired by the positive results of the conference interpreting teaching materials developed by de Manuel Jerez (2006) using real videos. One of the most interesting aspects of the material presented here is its exclusivity. Being based on actual criminal trials, it is to date the only didactic material for court interpreting training that achieves such a high degree of authenticity. Apart from precisely reflecting the specific characteristics of a Spanish criminal trial, other material advantages include listening to different accents, elocution rhythms and registers, and becoming familiar with legal language in use. The material takes into account the translation subcompetences established by Kelly (2002, 15) and it specifically addresses students who have previously received training in consecutive interpreting, as a certain command of note-taking techniques is needed in order to make full use of the material. Only a basic computer with a recording program, microphone, headphones and the free download viewer Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer® are needed to use it. The material is designed to encourage self-learning and self-assessment, as students are expected to correct their own production with the help of the annotated transcript included. The material is divided into three different parts. The first part is a video entitled How Do Criminal Proceedings Work? which describes the roles of the parties in a trial, their physical position in the courtroom and the different stages of criminal proceedings in Spain. The second part is a liaison interpreting exercise created from authentic material: the recording of a criminal trial where an offence of domestic violence is tried. The third part consists of an annotated transcript trial where reality is reflected, including suchlike. The transcript includes didactic annotations on ethical, professional, legal and linguistic issues. A prototype of the above-described didactic material was assessed by 127 students at 3 different Spanish universities, with excellent results as to interest, motivation and the benefits perceived in terms of learning (Hunt-Gómez 2013). 2. How can we help to improve the training of court interpreters in Spain? Despite several initiatives to professionalise Public Service Interpreting (PSI), specific certification is not generally required for interpreters working in PSI settings in Spain. This issue becomes even more critical in the case of court interpreting, where there is a sufficient national and international legal basis to guarantee the right to the presence of an interpreter in legal proceedings so that anyone who does not understand the language used in court is not discriminated against for linguistic reasons (Giambruno-Day Miguélez 1997; Foulquié Rubio 2002; Ortega Herráez 2006; Van der Vlis 2010; Hunt-Gómez 2013). It is accepted that competent interpreters –that is, trained and certified interpreters –are required in order to avoid such discrimination, so that in criminal proceedings the individual’s rights are not breached due to an interpreter’s incompetence. In general terms, the Spanish regulations establish that in order to guarantee due process, the interpreter, if needed, must be competent, and the assistance of an interpreter must be provided without charge in criminal proceedings pursuant to Article 55 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, if the Spanish law referring to the work of court interpreters is thoroughly analysed, several contradictions are found. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 189 First, even though the assistance of a certified and qualified interpreter is needed to guarantee due process, the judge, who appoints the interpreter, is not required to have any specific training in or knowledge of making well-founded decisions on this issue – see section 231.5 of the Spanish Act of the Judiciary (State of Spain, 1985). Second, despite the fact that a translation and interpretation degree has been offered by Spanish universities since 1994 (Martin 2006, 137), the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure (Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal), in force since 1882, establishes a weak order of precedence when appointing an interpreter in criminal proceedings: ‘The interpreter shall be chosen from among those who hold such qualifications, should there be any such persons available. If that is not possible, a school teacher of the corresponding language shall be appointed, and if there is no such person, any person who knows the language’(our translation). Moreover, section 762 of the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure attaches more importance to the fact of assisting the defendant than it does to the quality of that assistance; that is, the ability of the person who assists. Consequently, under the current legal provisions the training required for court translators and interpreters is not clearly defined, leaving a serious obstacle to the professionalisation of court interpreters in Spain. An analysis of the literature on the profession of court interpreter in Spain (Giambruno-Day Miguélez 1997; Ortega Herráez et al. 2004; Ortega Herráez and Foulquié Rubio 2005; Abril Martí 2006; Ortega Herráez 2006,2010) leads to the conclusion that interpreter-service provision in Spanish criminal proceedings is inconsistent and clearly needs improvement. The necessary degree of proficiency required for interpreters varies depending on the institution or organisation to which they belong, and on occasion it is not even specified. In Spanish courts there is no official code of ethics or protocol for court interpreters to follow, and court interpreters’work is not properly recognised, either in monetary or professional terms. Interpreters find themselves in a precarious situation when working within the Spanish court system; many situations involve substantial disparities in the training required for the job, and the payment received varies depending on the institution or company for which the interpreter works. Furthermore, many interpreters lack job stability and often their work is not sufficiently recognised. In short, their working conditions need to be improved. It bears highlighting that specific initiatives have been carried out successfully in Spain. Amongst others, it is worth mentioning the translation and interpreting services in the courts of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where interpreting service provision is coordinated by an in-house translator and interpreter who has created a list of freelance interpreters based on qualification, professional experience and availability (APTIJ 2012; Ortega Herráez 2010, 135), and the 11-M Madrid bombing trial, where, due to the social impact of the trial, highly qualified interpreters were hired. These initiatives can be considered a starting point or even a cornerstone for the improvement of court interpreting service provision in criminal proceedings in Spain (Ortega Herráez 2010, 143; Valero Garcés and Abkari 2010; Martin and Ortega Herráez 2011). The praxis of court interpreting needs to be regulated efficiently throughout the country in order to guarantee a fair trial for a defendant who lacks full command of the language used in the court, and, further, to give professionals in the sector appropriate recognition for their work. On a positive note, advances made by the EU in the professionalisation of court interpreting should be highlighted. The culmination of these initiatives is the Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings, which deals specifically with aspects related to training, accreditation and qualification of interpreters (European 190 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno Parliament, and Council of the European Union, 2010). While it was planned to transpose the Directive in October 2013, the Spanish Government is still debating the best way to implement it. Academics and professional associations have published press releases aimed at helping those in charge of the transposition to establish the required training and accreditation for court interpreters, and to bring fundamental changes to court interpreting practice (CCDUTI and Red Vértice 2014), with the hope of bringing fundamental changes to court interpreting practice as well as defining and establishing the required training and accreditation for court interpreters. In addition, new technologies are becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives and in teaching methods. Specifically as regards the field of interpreting didactics, verified studies demonstrate the success of applying new technologies to conference interpreting training (Sandrelli and de Manuel Jerez 2007, 269–303). In line with this, the court interpreting training material presented here has been inspired by the material created by de Manuel Jerez (2006) in the field of conference interpreting. This material used multimedia recordings, digitisation, and transcriptions of materials compiled from real situations for instructional purposes. De Manuel Jerez developed his material for specific instructional courses on conference interpreting in the Department of Translation and Interpretation at the Universidad de Granada. Several student groups have found real-life interpretation situations to be appropriate, useful and motivating (de Manuel Jerez 2006). Furthermore, some materials and resources have been developed by the EU for the training of future court interpreters. One is the project Building Mutual Trust: A Framework for Implementing EU Common Standards in Legal Interpreting and Translation JSL/2007/JPEN/219, coordinated by the University of Middlesex. As part of that project a database of specific resources to train court translators and interpreters was created. The project’s aim was ‘to contribute to the establishment of common standards in legal interpreting and translation by facilitating the establishment of legal interpreting and translation training in EU Member States’(Townsley 2010, 6). The second part of the project, Building Mutual Trust 2 JUST/2010/JPEN/AG/1566, was devoted to the training of the judiciary through the use of videos showing good practices when working with interpreters. Other initiatives are the projects AVIDICUS I and II, coordinated by Dr Sabine Braun of the University of Surrey with the aim of establishing a series of recommendations for interpreters and users when videoconferencing in communicative situations related to the field of justice (Braun and Taylor 2012). In the United States, the National Center for Interpretation of the University of Arizona offers a series of materials called Legal Interpretapes. This material is designed to be used as lab-type practice. Users can record their efforts at home using a CD player, headphones, a microphone and a recording device. The material’s language combination is Spanish into English, and it is specifically designed for people training themselves in order to obtain the accreditation of Federal Interpreter. Apart from providing very specific practical exercises, Legal Interpretapes also offers renditions of accredited interpreters, translation suggestions and glossaries. Acebo, a site that displays legal interpreting training materials in several language combinations, provides some interesting didactic material created by Holly Mikkelson (Acebo 2011–14). The following materials are offered by Acebo: The Interpreter’s Edge Third Edition;The Interpreter’s Edge Turbo Supplement;Edge 21: An Interpreter’sEdgeforthe21stCentury;Two-Tone CDs, Volume 1: English-Spanish Simultaneous Practice and The Interpreter’s Companion on CD-ROM.TheTwo-Tone CD is developed following a concept in whicheachCDhastworecordings:ontheleft The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 191 channel there is a speech for the student to practise and on the right channel there is a model of interpreting rendition performed by an interpreter (Mikkelson 1993b,1993a). The exercises were created from real material and include political and controversial subjects for the student to confront. Consecutive and simultaneous interpreting can be practised with the Acebo materials. Apart from those materials and EU initiatives, there are other didactic materials applying information and communication technologies (ICT) to court interpreting and designed specifically for the Spanish context that should be noted. One is Linkterpreting, an online platform of the Universidad de Vigo, which has a specific module devoted to court interpreting (Linkterpreting 2014). This module is divided into three sections: bibliography and resources, didactic material, and documents. There is an introductory section of a theoretical nature, a list of the national and international regulations affecting the profession and a selection of relevant literature regarding court interpreting studies. To date, the didactic material provided by Linkterpreting is made up of nine audio simulations of court communicative situations. A transcript accompanies each audio. However, since they are role-plays, they do not fully reflect all the complexity of a criminal trial in Spain, although from a didactic point of view the material remains very useful. Also, the material does not provide a blank space for the students to act as interpreters. In Spain, court interpreting has started to become professionalised as universities conduct an ever-increasing number of specific studies. Currently there are subjects specifically devoted to court interpreting or that include it in their syllabi, all of which are being taught in various Spanish universities. These are subjects such as mediación social para traductores e intérpretes (social mediation for translators and interpreters) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2012), interpretación bilateral (liaison interpreting) at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (2012) and the very specific subject interpretación en la administración de justicia (interpreting in justice administration) at the Universidad Alfonso X (2012). There are also postgraduate courses linked to public service interpreting or mediation that include modules on court interpreting; for example, the courses offered by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2012), the Universidad Europea de Madrid (2012), the Universidad de Granada (2012) and the Universidad de Alcalá (2012), amongst others. However, despite the past success of real-life-based materials in the field of conference interpreting (de Manuel Jerez 2006), to date there is no record of a teaching initiative applying ICT to PSI with the same level of sophistication and authenticity as the material presented here. The didactic material prototype presented in this article was created in 2012 by Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez, as a partial solution for the lack of specific and updated training material in the field of court interpreting in Spain. Given that the assistance of an interpreter in criminal proceedings is a defendant’s right and this right must be observed in the proceedings, the interpreter provided must offer high-quality interpretation. Specific training is also expected to raise the quality of court interpreting services as well as improving the overall situation and visibility of court interpreters in Spain. It must be highlighted that the material is restricted to court interpreting. It is limited to interpretation practice performed in criminal proceedings, firstly because this is the field in which the Spanish state is required to provide interpretation services pursuant to the law (Ortega Herráez 2006, 11), and further because this is a requirement of the third pillar established in the Maastricht Treaty (European Union 1992) in the EU sphere. There were several difficulties in the preparation of the material such as the compilation of court recordings, the selection of the most suitable recording and the transformation of the selected recording into teaching material. 192 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno When compiling the material, the arduous process of searching criminal audiovisual records was undertaken in several courts in Andalusia. Even though a corpus of real trial recordings with the participation of English-speaking interpreters was eventually compiled, the reticence of some figures in Andalusia’s court system had to be overcome, and the people who had custody of the court records had to be identified, specific regulations to request the records had to be examined and multiple legal requirements had to be fulfilled in order to gain access to audiovisual copies of the court records. In that sense, it has to be said that the compilation of court recordings of criminal proceedings was systematically hampered by the authorities receiving the request. In Spanish courts the judge is the highest authority in the courtroom and usually the person who authorises copies to be made while criminal proceedings are ongoing, whereas court clerks are in charge of the custody of the court transcripts and recordings, and of providing copies once the trial is finished, as stated in section 743.1 of the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure. Apart from the compilation of a corpus of recordings of criminal trials, one of the most difficult stages of this research project –following the selection of the material, which will be dealt with below –was transforming the selected recording into teaching material. As stated earlier, the material was obtained from the records of several criminal courts and, on most occasions, the audiovisual quality was inadequate not only for didactic purposes, but also for legal ones, as poor quality made it impossible for most of the recordings to serve as an effective transcript of the content of the trial. Sound engineers had to improve the audio, and even if the image is not of the highest definition it perfectly allows students to understand the development of the trial. The recording had to be treated by operating specific programs and also had to be adapted to the legal requirements for the use of sensitive material. Thus, the material was anonymised to protect the parties of the proceedings, and the interpreter’s speech was eliminated and replaced with a fixed black-and-white trial image with a pictogram of a pair of headphones over it, in order to indicate that it is the turn of the student to interpret. These processes were laborious because of the complexity and the attention to detail required by the recording process. The material was prepared in the firm belief that specialised training and professionalisation in the field of court interpreting should be provided in the academic sphere. More specifically, it shows that the application of information and communication technologies to court interpreting training improves the preparation of interpreters in terms of interest, motivation and perception of usefulness. This teaching material prototype, which tries to reflect all the characteristics of criminal trials in Spain, has been created specifically for court interpreting training and is based on real-life material. 3. What does the material consist of and how does it work? The didactic outcomes of the material are based on the translation subcompetences established by Kelly (2002, 15). By using the material students will be able to: ●identify the different parties participating in a trial and locating them correctly in the courtroom through analysis of the introductory video and visualisation of the material (cultural and thematic subcompetences); ●become familiar with the professional aspects of court interpreting as they will be working with real material which exactly reflects criminal trials in Spain (thematic, instrumental and professional subcompetences); The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 193 ●improve the necessary skills to assess others and their own work by using the annotated transcript and by analysing the production (interpersonal and psychophysiological subcompetences); ●gain a good command of the necessary tools to develop their learning process autonomously as the material can be used individually (professional and strategic subcompetences); and ●improve liaison and consecutive interpreting techniques by practising with the material (instrumental and professional subcompetences). Since the material has been created using authentic recordings from criminal trials, apart from precisely reflecting the specific characteristics of a criminal trial in Spain, it also offers the possibility of listening to a wide range of speakers, accents, registers, elocution rhythms, topics and levels of difficulty. It specifically addresses students who have previously received training in consecutive interpretation, but have no or little training in the field of court interpreting. The material’s language combination is English-Spanish- English, and it is limited to Spanish criminal proceedings. It can be used autonomously on a normal computer with software that is widely used and can be downloaded free of charge. Only a basic computer equipped with a recording program, microphone, headphones and the free download viewer Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer® is needed. The material is designed to encourage self-learning and self-assessment, as it allows students to correct their own production. The material has three different parts. The first is introductory and context-oriented; the second is a liaison interpreting exercise created from authentic material (a criminal trial); and the third is an annotated transcript of the teaching material. The first part is an introductory video called How Do Criminal Proceedings Work? This video highlights the specific nature of criminal trials and offers detailed explanations of relevant legal terms. Its aim is to provide students with some general knowledge of the workings of criminal proceedings in Spain. The content of the video was supervised by the Court Clerk of Criminal Court No. 13 of Malaga, and all aesthetic and visual aspects were designed by graphic designers. In the material, a voiceover describes the different stages of the proceedings. The material is adapted to the new learning styles in order to make it more attractive to students. The video is divided into two main parts: the first shows the physical location in the courtroom of the parties appearing in a criminal trial in Spain. A schematic version of the courtroom that shows the customary location of the judge, the defence, the prosecution, the witnesses, the defendant and the interpreter is provided (Figure 1). The second part of the video covers the different stages of a criminal trial. It begins by describing how the trial starts, and what the judge normally says to open it. It also describes the standard procedure of reading the defence and prosecution written submissions on the evidence in case the defendant does not know that information. This stage is omitted when the defendants make it clear that they are aware of that information. In the second stage, preliminary questions are posed by the prosecution and the defence. At this stage the parties have the possibility of presenting new witnesses or evidence. The third stage described in the video is the questioning. The video explains the order in which the witnesses give their evidence: the defendant –who has the right to remain silent –is questioned first; then the witnesses; and finally any expert –such as a forensic expert or police officer –whose opinion could be relevant to the issues in the trial. The fourth stage described in the video relates to the judge’s clarifications of the questioning. Evidence such as pictures, videos or documents can be examined in this stage. The fifth part is 194 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno the second part was composed of 13 items that measured the perception of the prototype in terms of interest, motivation and benefits for interpreter training; finally, there was a blank space for subjects to make comments and suggestions regarding the usability and usefulness of the material. Data referring to material perception were measured using a Likert-type scale in which 5 indicated complete agreement, and 1 complete disagreement. Subsequently, data referring to material perception was cross-referenced with demographic, labour and academic data in order to measure their influence on it. The questionnaire, which was designed to measure the material perception but without trying to extrapolate the results to all Spanish universities, was administered to 127 subjects of 8 different university student groups of translation and interpreting studies at 3 different universities: the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona (Figure 6), the Universidad de Granada and the Universidad Pablo de Olavide of Seville. The groups were composed of 13–21 students who were enrolled on degree courses and postgraduate courses of translation and interpretation. The first aim of the questionnaire was to measure the degree of interest that the material created. According to the results, the interest was rated as high or very high and the material was considered to be highly interesting because it is new, uses ICT, is Reality-based and encourages self-learning. The second aim was to measure the degree of usefulness perceived by the students. In this case the results were very satisfactory in terms of the usefulness of the material, the use of real material, the possibility of using the material autonomously and the use of ICT. The third aim was to measure the benefits perceived by the students for their education derived from the use of the material. In general terms, the results were satisfactory in terms of perception of self-learning, use of ITC, self-assessment and autonomous learning as beneficial. The fourth aim consisted of measuring personal data, working experience and training, and crossing the data with the ones regarding perception. On this occasion, no significant differences were appreciated in terms of age, sex or working experience. However, students who had previous training in interpreting or PSI had more positive answers. Figure 6. Testing the material at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 201 The compiled data showed that the perception of the prototype by the students was highly satisfactory regarding interest, usefulness and benefits for the students’ education. 5. How can this be improved? In Spain, few initiatives focus on court interpreting training with a authenticity-based approach. Authenticity-based material is considered fundamental when dealing with the specific characteristics of this kind of interpreting, given that a trial is a very particular communicative situation highly influenced by the context and strict protocols. The successful results achieved by applying ICT to conference interpreting training (Sandrelli and de Manuel Jerez 2007), together with the results of this research work in the field of court interpreting, justify a deeper study of the area, as well as its application to other branches of PSI. In this context, a multitude of initiatives could be pursued from a pedagogical and scientific approach. One of these initiatives would be to produce multimedia teaching material following the prototype model presented in this article in different linguistic combinations and then assessing the results and their usefulness. In that regard, it would be particularly useful for training speakers of minority languages in court interpreting. Another interesting initiative would be to gather information from professionals and university teachers, using a specifically created questionnaire designed to find out their interests and needs when it comes to training court interpreters. A third possible initiative would be the creation and grading of material coming from real trials in a systematic way and its possible use in university courses, e-learning or self-training. This could result in a very useful corpus of material which could be made available to students, and which would allow them to work independently and to learn with multiple variables: different speakers, situations, accents, elocution rhythms and suchlike. From this corpus, an action-research mechanism could be implemented with students working with the material and giving their opinion on it, and helping to point out new difficulties in the annotated transcript, thus enhancing a collaborative working network. Another future line of study would be to explore possible improvements of the material –related to expenses, capacity or time –that had not yet been developed. These could include adapting the material to free software and less-extended operating systems, and even to adapt it for use on smartphones and tablets; exploring the possibilities of language or interpreting laboratories that make it possible for the teacher to assess and supervise students’corrections, as well as experimenting with peer learning. It would be helpful to complete the material with other kind of documents related to the proceedings, such as witness statements or police reports. This material is intended to improve future court interpreting training. Such an improvement would have valuable implications for the correct functioning of justice administration in Spain and would contribute to a better acknowledgement of the profession in our country. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. 202 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno References Abril Martí, M. 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Universidad Europea de Madrid. 2012. “Grado en traducción y comunicación Intercultural.” Accessed August 24, 2012. http://madrid.universidadeuropea.es/estudios-universitarios/grado- en-traduccion-y-comunicacion-intercultural. Universidad Pablo de Olavide. 2012. “Grado en Traducción e Interpretación. Inglés.”Accessed August 24, 2012. http://www.upo.es/aga/export/sites/aga/oficina-matriculas-y-pagos/Oferta_ Academica/Documentos_12_13_GRADOS/GTEI.pdf. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 2012. “Grado de Traducción e Interpretación.”Accessed August 24, 2012. http://www.uab.cat/web/estudiar/listado-de-grados/informacion-general/traduc cion-e-interpretacion-1216708258897.html?param1=1228291018508. Valero Garcés, C., and A. Abkari. 2010. “Learning from Practice: Interpreting 11M Terrorist Attack Trial.”The International Journal of Translation and Interpreting Research 2 (2): 44–56. Van der Vlis, E.-J. 2010. “The Right to Interpretation and Translation in Criminal Proceedings.” JoSTrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation 14: 26–40. http://www.jostrans.org/issue14/ art_vandervlis.php. 204 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ritt20 The Interpreter and Translator Trainer ISSN: 1750-399X (Print) 1757-0417 (Online) Journal homepage: http://tandfonline.com/loi/ritt20 Reality-based court interpreting didactic material using new technologies Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez & Paz Gómez Moreno To cite this article: Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez & Paz Gómez Moreno (2015) Reality-based court interpreting didactic material using new technologies, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 9:2, 188-204, DOI: 10.1080/1750399X.2015.1051770 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2015.1051770 Published online: 20 Aug 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 422 View related articles View Crossmark data Reality-based court interpreting didactic material using new technologies Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez*and Paz Gómez Moreno Department of Philology and Translation, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain (Received 11 April 2014; accepted 10 May 2014) Training for future court interpreters has traditionally been based on role-play exercises, recreations of actual trials or audios based on prototypical communicative situations. In the case of interpreting in court these kinds of simulations are not enough to train future court interpreters, since they do not fully reflect the great complexity of real communication in court. This article is intended to present a new reality-based audiovisual training material specifically devoted to court interpreters training in Spain. The material was inspired by the positive results of the conference interpreting teaching materials developed using real videos at the University of Granada. One of the most interesting aspects of the material presented here is its exclusivity, as it is, to date, the only didactic material for court interpreting training that achieves such a high degree of authenticity, since it works on the basis of real criminal trials. The material takes into account well-known translation subcompetences and it specifically addresses students who have previously received training in conference interpreting. Keywords: court interpreting; reality-based didactic material; interpreting training; information and communication technologies; interpreting teaching 1. Introduction Appropriate training and research are two of the factors that contribute most to the rapid development of professionalisation in any field. Given the ever-growing number of courses in court interpreting in Spain, the increase in academic publications and the proliferation of European Union (EU) initiatives in this regard, it would appear that the field of court interpreting is becoming professionalised. However, there is a lack of resources and materials specifically devoted to court interpreter training, especially materials based on real scenarios that take into account the specific characteristics of a trial and which are adapted to new learning styles. Training of future court interpreters has traditionally been based on role-play exercises, recreations of actual trials or audios based on prototypical communicative situations (Hale 2007, 179; Hunt-Gómez 2013, 179–185). In the case of interpreting in court –a very specific environment with extremely marked power relationships and a specific protocol with associated jargon –these kinds of simulations are not enough to train future court interpreters since they do not fully reflect the complexity of real communication in court. *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] The photographs and graphics proposed as figures are the property of Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez, one of the authors of the article, who gives permission to publish them. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 2015 Vol. 9, No. 2, 188–204, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2015.1051770 © 2015 Taylor & Francis Practice is fundamental in the training of interpreters and, in Europe, due to the changes introduced in the higher education system by the Bologna Process, students’ self-learning hours have a primary role in the new curricula (Calvo Encinas 2009, 179). This article is intended to present a new reality-based audiovisual training material specifically devoted to court interpreter training in Spain. The didactic material in question was inspired by the positive results of the conference interpreting teaching materials developed by de Manuel Jerez (2006) using real videos. One of the most interesting aspects of the material presented here is its exclusivity. Being based on actual criminal trials, it is to date the only didactic material for court interpreting training that achieves such a high degree of authenticity. Apart from precisely reflecting the specific characteristics of a Spanish criminal trial, other material advantages include listening to different accents, elocution rhythms and registers, and becoming familiar with legal language in use. The material takes into account the translation subcompetences established by Kelly (2002, 15) and it specifically addresses students who have previously received training in consecutive interpreting, as a certain command of note-taking techniques is needed in order to make full use of the material. Only a basic computer with a recording program, microphone, headphones and the free download viewer Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer® are needed to use it. The material is designed to encourage self-learning and self-assessment, as students are expected to correct their own production with the help of the annotated transcript included. The material is divided into three different parts. The first part is a video entitled How Do Criminal Proceedings Work? which describes the roles of the parties in a trial, their physical position in the courtroom and the different stages of criminal proceedings in Spain. The second part is a liaison interpreting exercise created from authentic material: the recording of a criminal trial where an offence of domestic violence is tried. The third part consists of an annotated transcript trial where reality is reflected, including suchlike. The transcript includes didactic annotations on ethical, professional, legal and linguistic issues. A prototype of the above-described didactic material was assessed by 127 students at 3 different Spanish universities, with excellent results as to interest, motivation and the benefits perceived in terms of learning (Hunt-Gómez 2013). 2. How can we help to improve the training of court interpreters in Spain? Despite several initiatives to professionalise Public Service Interpreting (PSI), specific certification is not generally required for interpreters working in PSI settings in Spain. This issue becomes even more critical in the case of court interpreting, where there is a sufficient national and international legal basis to guarantee the right to the presence of an interpreter in legal proceedings so that anyone who does not understand the language used in court is not discriminated against for linguistic reasons (Giambruno-Day Miguélez 1997; Foulquié Rubio 2002; Ortega Herráez 2006; Van der Vlis 2010; Hunt-Gómez 2013). It is accepted that competent interpreters –that is, trained and certified interpreters –are required in order to avoid such discrimination, so that in criminal proceedings the individual’s rights are not breached due to an interpreter’s incompetence. In general terms, the Spanish regulations establish that in order to guarantee due process, the interpreter, if needed, must be competent, and the assistance of an interpreter must be provided without charge in criminal proceedings pursuant to Article 55 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, if the Spanish law referring to the work of court interpreters is thoroughly analysed, several contradictions are found. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 189 First, even though the assistance of a certified and qualified interpreter is needed to guarantee due process, the judge, who appoints the interpreter, is not required to have any specific training in or knowledge of making well-founded decisions on this issue – see section 231.5 of the Spanish Act of the Judiciary (State of Spain, 1985). Second, despite the fact that a translation and interpretation degree has been offered by Spanish universities since 1994 (Martin 2006, 137), the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure (Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal), in force since 1882, establishes a weak order of precedence when appointing an interpreter in criminal proceedings: ‘The interpreter shall be chosen from among those who hold such qualifications, should there be any such persons available. If that is not possible, a school teacher of the corresponding language shall be appointed, and if there is no such person, any person who knows the language’(our translation). Moreover, section 762 of the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure attaches more importance to the fact of assisting the defendant than it does to the quality of that assistance; that is, the ability of the person who assists. Consequently, under the current legal provisions the training required for court translators and interpreters is not clearly defined, leaving a serious obstacle to the professionalisation of court interpreters in Spain. An analysis of the literature on the profession of court interpreter in Spain (Giambruno-Day Miguélez 1997; Ortega Herráez et al. 2004; Ortega Herráez and Foulquié Rubio 2005; Abril Martí 2006; Ortega Herráez 2006,2010) leads to the conclusion that interpreter-service provision in Spanish criminal proceedings is inconsistent and clearly needs improvement. The necessary degree of proficiency required for interpreters varies depending on the institution or organisation to which they belong, and on occasion it is not even specified. In Spanish courts there is no official code of ethics or protocol for court interpreters to follow, and court interpreters’work is not properly recognised, either in monetary or professional terms. Interpreters find themselves in a precarious situation when working within the Spanish court system; many situations involve substantial disparities in the training required for the job, and the payment received varies depending on the institution or company for which the interpreter works. Furthermore, many interpreters lack job stability and often their work is not sufficiently recognised. In short, their working conditions need to be improved. It bears highlighting that specific initiatives have been carried out successfully in Spain. Amongst others, it is worth mentioning the translation and interpreting services in the courts of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where interpreting service provision is coordinated by an in-house translator and interpreter who has created a list of freelance interpreters based on qualification, professional experience and availability (APTIJ 2012; Ortega Herráez 2010, 135), and the 11-M Madrid bombing trial, where, due to the social impact of the trial, highly qualified interpreters were hired. These initiatives can be considered a starting point or even a cornerstone for the improvement of court interpreting service provision in criminal proceedings in Spain (Ortega Herráez 2010, 143; Valero Garcés and Abkari 2010; Martin and Ortega Herráez 2011). The praxis of court interpreting needs to be regulated efficiently throughout the country in order to guarantee a fair trial for a defendant who lacks full command of the language used in the court, and, further, to give professionals in the sector appropriate recognition for their work. On a positive note, advances made by the EU in the professionalisation of court interpreting should be highlighted. The culmination of these initiatives is the Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings, which deals specifically with aspects related to training, accreditation and qualification of interpreters (European 190 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno Parliament, and Council of the European Union, 2010). While it was planned to transpose the Directive in October 2013, the Spanish Government is still debating the best way to implement it. Academics and professional associations have published press releases aimed at helping those in charge of the transposition to establish the required training and accreditation for court interpreters, and to bring fundamental changes to court interpreting practice (CCDUTI and Red Vértice 2014), with the hope of bringing fundamental changes to court interpreting practice as well as defining and establishing the required training and accreditation for court interpreters. In addition, new technologies are becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives and in teaching methods. Specifically as regards the field of interpreting didactics, verified studies demonstrate the success of applying new technologies to conference interpreting training (Sandrelli and de Manuel Jerez 2007, 269–303). In line with this, the court interpreting training material presented here has been inspired by the material created by de Manuel Jerez (2006) in the field of conference interpreting. This material used multimedia recordings, digitisation, and transcriptions of materials compiled from real situations for instructional purposes. De Manuel Jerez developed his material for specific instructional courses on conference interpreting in the Department of Translation and Interpretation at the Universidad de Granada. Several student groups have found real-life interpretation situations to be appropriate, useful and motivating (de Manuel Jerez 2006). Furthermore, some materials and resources have been developed by the EU for the training of future court interpreters. One is the project Building Mutual Trust: A Framework for Implementing EU Common Standards in Legal Interpreting and Translation JSL/2007/JPEN/219, coordinated by the University of Middlesex. As part of that project a database of specific resources to train court translators and interpreters was created. The project’s aim was ‘to contribute to the establishment of common standards in legal interpreting and translation by facilitating the establishment of legal interpreting and translation training in EU Member States’(Townsley 2010, 6). The second part of the project, Building Mutual Trust 2 JUST/2010/JPEN/AG/1566, was devoted to the training of the judiciary through the use of videos showing good practices when working with interpreters. Other initiatives are the projects AVIDICUS I and II, coordinated by Dr Sabine Braun of the University of Surrey with the aim of establishing a series of recommendations for interpreters and users when videoconferencing in communicative situations related to the field of justice (Braun and Taylor 2012). In the United States, the National Center for Interpretation of the University of Arizona offers a series of materials called Legal Interpretapes. This material is designed to be used as lab-type practice. Users can record their efforts at home using a CD player, headphones, a microphone and a recording device. The material’s language combination is Spanish into English, and it is specifically designed for people training themselves in order to obtain the accreditation of Federal Interpreter. Apart from providing very specific practical exercises, Legal Interpretapes also offers renditions of accredited interpreters, translation suggestions and glossaries. Acebo, a site that displays legal interpreting training materials in several language combinations, provides some interesting didactic material created by Holly Mikkelson (Acebo 2011–14). The following materials are offered by Acebo: The Interpreter’s Edge Third Edition;The Interpreter’s Edge Turbo Supplement;Edge 21: An Interpreter’sEdgeforthe21stCentury;Two-Tone CDs, Volume 1: English-Spanish Simultaneous Practice and The Interpreter’s Companion on CD-ROM.TheTwo-Tone CD is developed following a concept in whicheachCDhastworecordings:ontheleft The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 191 channel there is a speech for the student to practise and on the right channel there is a model of interpreting rendition performed by an interpreter (Mikkelson 1993b,1993a). The exercises were created from real material and include political and controversial subjects for the student to confront. Consecutive and simultaneous interpreting can be practised with the Acebo materials. Apart from those materials and EU initiatives, there are other didactic materials applying information and communication technologies (ICT) to court interpreting and designed specifically for the Spanish context that should be noted. One is Linkterpreting, an online platform of the Universidad de Vigo, which has a specific module devoted to court interpreting (Linkterpreting 2014). This module is divided into three sections: bibliography and resources, didactic material, and documents. There is an introductory section of a theoretical nature, a list of the national and international regulations affecting the profession and a selection of relevant literature regarding court interpreting studies. To date, the didactic material provided by Linkterpreting is made up of nine audio simulations of court communicative situations. A transcript accompanies each audio. However, since they are role-plays, they do not fully reflect all the complexity of a criminal trial in Spain, although from a didactic point of view the material remains very useful. Also, the material does not provide a blank space for the students to act as interpreters. In Spain, court interpreting has started to become professionalised as universities conduct an ever-increasing number of specific studies. Currently there are subjects specifically devoted to court interpreting or that include it in their syllabi, all of which are being taught in various Spanish universities. These are subjects such as mediación social para traductores e intérpretes (social mediation for translators and interpreters) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2012), interpretación bilateral (liaison interpreting) at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (2012) and the very specific subject interpretación en la administración de justicia (interpreting in justice administration) at the Universidad Alfonso X (2012). There are also postgraduate courses linked to public service interpreting or mediation that include modules on court interpreting; for example, the courses offered by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2012), the Universidad Europea de Madrid (2012), the Universidad de Granada (2012) and the Universidad de Alcalá (2012), amongst others. However, despite the past success of real-life-based materials in the field of conference interpreting (de Manuel Jerez 2006), to date there is no record of a teaching initiative applying ICT to PSI with the same level of sophistication and authenticity as the material presented here. The didactic material prototype presented in this article was created in 2012 by Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez, as a partial solution for the lack of specific and updated training material in the field of court interpreting in Spain. Given that the assistance of an interpreter in criminal proceedings is a defendant’s right and this right must be observed in the proceedings, the interpreter provided must offer high-quality interpretation. Specific training is also expected to raise the quality of court interpreting services as well as improving the overall situation and visibility of court interpreters in Spain. It must be highlighted that the material is restricted to court interpreting. It is limited to interpretation practice performed in criminal proceedings, firstly because this is the field in which the Spanish state is required to provide interpretation services pursuant to the law (Ortega Herráez 2006, 11), and further because this is a requirement of the third pillar established in the Maastricht Treaty (European Union 1992) in the EU sphere. There were several difficulties in the preparation of the material such as the compilation of court recordings, the selection of the most suitable recording and the transformation of the selected recording into teaching material. 192 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno situation and it provides additional information regarding the case and the offence in question. It also includes a list of the different parties to the trial and didactic annotations on ethical, professional, legal and linguistic issues (Figure 5). A colour code is used to distinguish three kinds of linguistic issues related to legal phraseology and terminology: general legal jargon is marked in green, legal jargon related to the offence is marked in yellow, and legal phraseology is marked in purple. The singularities of the use of language in the courtroom –for example, the use of reported speech when the parties address the interpreter in Spanish courtrooms –are highlighted so the students can reflect upon them when assessing their efforts. In these cases, a list of references is included in a footnote in order to make it easy for students to do further reading on these aspects if they so wish. Regarding professional ethics, the transcript pays special attention to sensitive issues and includes several links to different codes of ethics, such as the one proposed in its website by the Spanish Professional Association of Court and Sworn Interpreters and Translators (APTIJ). Thus students can compare and discuss different approaches, given the aforesaid lack of an official code of ethics for court interpreters working in Spain. In this regard, the transcript also proposes discussions on those topics, and asks students relevant questions regarding the way they would deal with similar situations. This kind of note is intended to make them think about possible professional solutions to some of the interpretation problems in each kind of communicative situation. Additionally, in order to provide the students with the further knowledge they need so as to work properly as interpreters in Spanish criminal court proceedings, the annotations include excerpts from the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure that are relevant to the different cases, offences and situations. In this sense, a number of the annotations put the words of the judge or of the prosecutor, for example, in context, thus making them meaningful to lay students and showing them the importance of a previous documentation stage. Given that the prototype was designed to increase levels of interest, motivation and benefits related to the training of future court interpreters in Spain, all aesthetic aspects of the material were supervised by two graphic designers so as to make it user-attractive and user-friendly in terms of visualisation and legibility. One of the most interesting aspects of the material presented by this article is its exclusivity, as it is the only didactic material for court interpreting that achieves such a high degree of authenticity. Figure 4. Photograms of the audiovisual material. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 199 4. How do we know it works? A prototype of the above-described didactic material was assessed by 127 students at 3 different Spanish universities with excellent results in terms of interest, motivation and the benefits perceived in terms of learning (Hunt Gómez 2013). For assessment purposes, a questionnaire was created following the model proposed by Hernández Sampieri, Fernández Colladoy, and Baptista Lucio (1991, 293). The questionnaire was divided into 3 parts: the first covered the age and sex of the subjects, their education, and their working experience, if any, in court interpreting or related fields; Figure 5. Annotated transcript. 200 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno the second part was composed of 13 items that measured the perception of the prototype in terms of interest, motivation and benefits for interpreter training; finally, there was a blank space for subjects to make comments and suggestions regarding the usability and usefulness of the material. Data referring to material perception were measured using a Likert-type scale in which 5 indicated complete agreement, and 1 complete disagreement. Subsequently, data referring to material perception was cross-referenced with demographic, labour and academic data in order to measure their influence on it. The questionnaire, which was designed to measure the material perception but without trying to extrapolate the results to all Spanish universities, was administered to 127 subjects of 8 different university student groups of translation and interpreting studies at 3 different universities: the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona (Figure 6), the Universidad de Granada and the Universidad Pablo de Olavide of Seville. The groups were composed of 13–21 students who were enrolled on degree courses and postgraduate courses of translation and interpretation. The first aim of the questionnaire was to measure the degree of interest that the material created. According to the results, the interest was rated as high or very high and the material was considered to be highly interesting because it is new, uses ICT, is Reality-based and encourages self-learning. The second aim was to measure the degree of usefulness perceived by the students. In this case the results were very satisfactory in terms of the usefulness of the material, the use of real material, the possibility of using the material autonomously and the use of ICT. The third aim was to measure the benefits perceived by the students for their education derived from the use of the material. In general terms, the results were satisfactory in terms of perception of self-learning, use of ITC, self-assessment and autonomous learning as beneficial. The fourth aim consisted of measuring personal data, working experience and training, and crossing the data with the ones regarding perception. On this occasion, no significant differences were appreciated in terms of age, sex or working experience. However, students who had previous training in interpreting or PSI had more positive answers. Figure 6. Testing the material at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 201 The compiled data showed that the perception of the prototype by the students was highly satisfactory regarding interest, usefulness and benefits for the students’ education. 5. How can this be improved? In Spain, few initiatives focus on court interpreting training with a authenticity-based approach. Authenticity-based material is considered fundamental when dealing with the specific characteristics of this kind of interpreting, given that a trial is a very particular communicative situation highly influenced by the context and strict protocols. The successful results achieved by applying ICT to conference interpreting training (Sandrelli and de Manuel Jerez 2007), together with the results of this research work in the field of court interpreting, justify a deeper study of the area, as well as its application to other branches of PSI. In this context, a multitude of initiatives could be pursued from a pedagogical and scientific approach. One of these initiatives would be to produce multimedia teaching material following the prototype model presented in this article in different linguistic combinations and then assessing the results and their usefulness. In that regard, it would be particularly useful for training speakers of minority languages in court interpreting. Another interesting initiative would be to gather information from professionals and university teachers, using a specifically created questionnaire designed to find out their interests and needs when it comes to training court interpreters. A third possible initiative would be the creation and grading of material coming from real trials in a systematic way and its possible use in university courses, e-learning or self-training. This could result in a very useful corpus of material which could be made available to students, and which would allow them to work independently and to learn with multiple variables: different speakers, situations, accents, elocution rhythms and suchlike. From this corpus, an action-research mechanism could be implemented with students working with the material and giving their opinion on it, and helping to point out new difficulties in the annotated transcript, thus enhancing a collaborative working network. Another future line of study would be to explore possible improvements of the material –related to expenses, capacity or time –that had not yet been developed. These could include adapting the material to free software and less-extended operating systems, and even to adapt it for use on smartphones and tablets; exploring the possibilities of language or interpreting laboratories that make it possible for the teacher to assess and supervise students’corrections, as well as experimenting with peer learning. It would be helpful to complete the material with other kind of documents related to the proceedings, such as witness statements or police reports. This material is intended to improve future court interpreting training. Such an improvement would have valuable implications for the correct functioning of justice administration in Spain and would contribute to a better acknowledgement of the profession in our country. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. 202 C.I. Hunt-Gómez and P.G. Moreno References Abril Martí, M. 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