Legal and Medical Interpreting

As if they were speaking English 

NCTA’s September General Meeting encouraged us to think about the stressors present for interpreters and provided insightful pathways into greater professionalism when dealing with the public.

The panel addressed the following special situations:

• Diminishing stress
• Respecting the ethics of interpretation
• Remembering the goal of facilitating cross cultural communication
• Knowing one’s rights and being unafraid to exercise them
• Maintaining impartiality in court

Maintaining impartiality
Fanny Suárez, a federal and state certified court interpreter in the Bay Area who also teaches Spanish/English Court Interpreting at SFSU, provided an overview of responsibilities embodied in the artful task of court interpreting—where mere bilingualism is not a sufficient condition. She emphasized the importance of training, being aware of rules of evidence, ethical standards, and a solid understanding of governmental regulations.

According to Fanny, strong training in professional interpreting ensures that we avoid the temptation to add, omit, or alter information in any way. A dilemma that may arise when interpreting specialized language—such as complex medical or legal terminology—is to wonder whether the role of the interpreter is that of an advocate or a conveyer of meaning.

Fanny emphasized that the role of court interpreters is to help non-English speakers access justice: a professional, neutral demeanor is essential. Essential to remaining neutral or impartial is the ability to render the same level of register, tone, regionalism, style, and apply the mastery of accurate interpretation to all parties involved in a conversation or case. This means avoiding the temptation to edit, summarize, or take any liberties that are not faithful to the language one hears. It is paramount to focus on converting the meaning, rather than mere words.

Some of the common challenges facing court interpreters, who are essentially acting as court officers, are:

• Interpreting for judges and attorneys while remaining faithful and neutral to the testimony.
• Fatigue during prolonged sessions (team interpreting, most commonly used in ASL, is one solution).
• Cognizance of their performance under pressure while interpreting for a witness.
• The necessity to prepare beforehand to gain insight into potential linguistic variations. Request a pre-appearance interview, police records, or statements (particularly true of vast differences in regionalism, slang, and technical terms: Spanish is spoken in 20 countries and by 423 million speakers).
• When two interpreters disagree with the rendition of a defendant’s meaning, the judge might call in a third to ask the defendant exactly what they meant.
• Bilingual doctors and lawyers diminish the value of trained, professional, certified interpreting work by offering to interpret.
• When the same interpreter is used for both plaintiff and defendant, the defendant can no longer be assured of impartiality under 6th amendment rights assuring sole representative counsel.

It is important that interpreters familiarize
 themselves with established conventions while looking out both for themselves and for the truth. It has been demonstrated that accuracy in court interpreting diminishes by 30-40% after a 45-minute session. Therefore, interpreters must insist on the statutory right to take breaks.

Poised sympathy
Aleira Salguero, a former student of Suárez who works as an in-house Spanish-English interpreter for Sutter Health Affiliates, provided an overview of present-day medical interpreting. Contrary to court interpreting, where teamwork is a possibility, medical interpreting is a solo show and preparation time is rarely available.

While interpreting skills required for outpatient visits are straightforward, inpatient interpreting is a completely different world: it ranges from being the only interpreter for all specialists present at a family conference to having to deliver sad news.

Aleira reminded us of a number of useful points:

• On neutrality: “An interpreter is not living the life of the patient.”
• Stay hydrated; breathe properly.
• Ask for a break when you really need it and the timing is right.
• If possible, obtain information about the case beforehand.
• Be clear-minded to ensure accuracy.
• If possible, choose and identify situations within your strengths.
• If you observe that the patient has not grasped a heightened meaning, ask the provider if you might clarify a point.
• Remember the importance of regular exercise after prolonged mental exercise.

Medical and legal interpreting may have some differences (medical interpreting can be more flexible; the interpreter may be an advocate, whereas in the legal field advocacy is not part of the interpreter’s role), but they share some features, as well:

• The interpreter’s job is to convey the meaning of an utterance while staying faithful to all aspects of the register.
• A glossary of commonly used terms is essential.
• Established rules, if observed, diminish the stress level.
• The temptation to get personally and emotionally involved must be resisted.
• A skillful and sharp-minded interpreter can better serve a population for whom access to justice may depend on a professional performance.

As the presentations came to an end, my grandmother’s entrepreneurial words of wisdom echoed in my mind: “Whatever you do in life, let it be the very best you’ve ever done.” Ana Bayat King, Principal, Modern Language Solutions

For more information on Northern California Translators Association, visit: http://ncta.org/

Persian is not Arabic

Clear Pronunciation Matters. Here is my take on Mr. Obama's Persian New Year Message.

On a linguistic level, Mr. Obama continues to be the straight A student whose efforts to pronounce foreign words as closely as possible to the target language do not go unnoticed. However, it strikes me that a language coach could have been very beneficial to him to ensure his closing wish of a happy new year for Iranians did not sound Arabic.

In Persian, the word 'eid' in the congratulory phrase 'Happy New Year', “Eid-e Shoma Mobarak”, is pronounced “eid” and “mobarak” rather than “aid” and “mubarak” (probably, the association of this word with the Egyptian polititian caused the president to pronounce the 'o' vowel as 'u', and that of 'e' as 'a').

Mr. President, you continue to come across as a learned man whose eloquence exhudes charm, intellect and linguistic knowledge. Hopefully, next year, we'll hear you say "Eid-e Shoma Mobarak!"

Content-wise, his message carries some information that was long overdue in the media: That of the fact that the Iranian people are the first group of people to suffer greatly at the hands of their “own” government, that the country is waiting to burst with youthful energy, talent and thirst for prosperity and that the level of censorship they are experiencing will not go unnoticed by the powers that be over here in the US.

Persian or "Farsi"?

Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in the number of websites and organizations that have substituted the English word to talk about the predominant language spoken in Iran, ‘Persian’, with the Persian word for the same, ‘Farsi’. However, it is also evident that reputable, world-class organizations such S.O.A.S. (University of London) or the BBC have maintained the term Persian as the correct English word when referring to the predominant language of Iran. To further highlight this significant difference and the importance to shifting back to its correct usage, consider the following:

• It's Spanish in English, but 'español' in Spanish

• It's French in English, but 'français' in French

• It's German in English, but 'deutsch' in German

• It's Italian in English, but 'italiano' in Italian

• It's Persian in English, but 'farsi' in Persian

If we said “Français” when referring to French, “Deutsch” when speaking of German and “Español” to refer to Spanish, then “Farsi” would be correct. But the English language already has a word to refer to the language of Iran and that is and has always been Persian. This is not a political point of view, but a purely linguistic one. Otherwise, we would no longer have a “Persian studies department” at Stanford University, for instance. Note: Cats are Persian, as are rugs, pistachios, saffron and caviar. So are the language and the culture. For a more elaborate argument on this argument, visit:

The Art of Film Subtitling

The 2012 Golden Globe award winner for best foreign language film, "Nader and Simin: A Separation" by Asghar Farhadi was not only outstanding in its universal way of examining the human condition, but also superior in the quality of its subtitling.

Having witnessed Persian into English translations in the form of subtitles at international film festivals in London in the 1990s with such examples as the word 'tomorrow' spelt with two 'm' letters to what we are witnessing today, focusing on the transfer of meaning in its most natural form, I was delighted to see the organic interactions on the big screen translated in the form of meaningful subtitles for English-speaking audiences.

With an innate keen eye on grammar and punctuation, I couldn't help but notice that in the scene where everyone is playing table football, the word 'davar' -which given the context is 'referee'- was translated as 'manager'. However, if that was the only thing that "went wrong", the quality of the subtitles are still superior to previous examples of Iranian films that have made it into the international arena.   

Here's to the art of good subtitling!

Human over machine translation

High-quality audio-visual translations matter. Here is why:

How often do you find yourself reading foreign language printed material that is translated by a machine and therefore lacks authenticity and seems awkward?

As an actor-linguist, I find it hard to turn off the editorial eye when going to on-camera and voice auditions in world languages. This is why I am eager to steer our ship toward a journey in audio-visual translation (film scripts for cinema or TV, voice over or subtitling in multiple languages).

A good translation will not only help the actors in their delivery, but it will also do justice to the product being advertised, promoted or created, which in turn safeguards the client's reputation.

Modern Language Solutions's goal is to cater to that need and ensure both actors and the nature of the texts are at the highest of linguistic standards.