Court interpreting, monolingual ideologies and legitimate language. How translanguaging voices are silenced in court proceedings

Abstract

“(T)he legal rationale for court interpreting rests on the assumption that litigants who are assisted by an interpreter cannot speak English at all” (Angermeyer, 2015:142). Hence, all proceedings are guided by monolingual ideologies where the court speaks ‘one language’ and the litigant another. However, court interpreters are becoming increasingly aware of how some clients ‘translanguage’ when called to testify. Drawing on research, involving 6 professional court interpreters in the UK, this article explores how court interpreters are seemingly little prepared for acts of translanguaging among their clients and how this needs to be addressed in interpreter training pedagogy