La Gabacha Esa
13 Years Experience
Borderlands, US
Female, 37
I interpret for people who speak only or primarily Spanish who come into contact with the justice system as case participants defendants, witnesses, or family members. I have 10 years of experience in state and federal courts, freelance and staff, in the Northeast and Southwest, and also teach and train court interpreters and am active in our local and national professional associations.
As far as lexicon, for the most part every language has the same issues--differences in the legal system and legal terms that don't have equivalents in the other language. Every language has its words with no equivalent in the other, but usually not to such a degree that one stands out from the others. (American Sign Language, though, does have a particular lexical difficulty because it has no generic terms like "vehicle, weapon, go." You have to make it clear what type of vehicle, what type of weapon, how the person went [speed, direction, walking vs driving vs flying, etc.].) Grammar/syntax is a much bigger problem--the more different a language's structure is from English, the greater the décalage (lag time) needed in simultaneous interpreting. Spanish can keep fairly close behind the English (maybe 2-5 seconds?) because its sentence structure is similar, but Hindi lags farther behind (10-15), and Navajo farther than that (15-20). (Incidentally, I have heard inexperienced interpreters of non-European languages claim that it's "not possible" to interpret simultaneously into their language because it's so different from English; but that's not really true--a well-trained, experienced interpreter of any language can interpret simultaneously with enough lag time. And occasionally I have had students in my interpreting classes say the same thing about Spanish! It's just that people don't realize what they are capable of until they actually do it.) The biggest language issue that courts across the country face right now is finding interpreters in the smaller indigenous languages of the Americas, especially in Central America. We can usually find the major ones like Mixtec, Zapotec, Quiche; but there are many languages spoken by only a few hundred people and if we are very lucky, there is one or even two trained interpreters in that language--if we are *extremely* lucky, that person interprets direct into English instead of doing what we call relay interpreting (he or she interprets Quiche into Spanish, and a Spanish interpreter interprets into English). For just about any language that someone speaks somewhere in the US, there is a court somewhere that has needed to find an interpreter for that language. Other than Latin America, the hard-to-find languages I've seen requested most are spoken by small populations in Africa, southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands. Of course, the less populated the area you live in, the fewer qualified [i.e. trained, certified, and experienced] interpreters you have ready access to. I don't have any qualified Polish interpreters locally, and that's a huge shock when you come from a state that gets so many Polish requests that one district has one *on staff*.
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Well, first off, despite what the media tells you ("Voice of Translator"), it's interpreter, not translator. (Actually there's a Supreme Court case on that issue going on right now). :-) They're actually fairly different fields, like say cardiology and oncology, or being a classical pianist and rock keyboardist. Some people do both, or change from one to the other, but it's rare. I could take the State Dept's escort interpreter exam, which would qualify me to do that if I passed, but there are tons of State Department interpreters already and the demand for Spanish isn't high (the percentage of Spanish speakers in the US is much higher than the percentage of countries that speak it). Also, that's a really tough gig (mucho travel, long days without breaks, and a lot of standing around at state dinners watching people eat when you're hoping you'll have enough time to scarf the sandwich you're carrying in your bag. Plus the risk of starting a war.) I like court work,... and I like the lawyers who become judges better than the ones who become politicians. To do escort interpreting, you have to be far more adventurous than I am. The State Department also certifies interpreters in conference and seminar interpreting, which is for things like international summits, not usually politicians (although it's the type used at the UN). I've tried for that a couple times, but I'm underqualified because of my lack of on-camera experience, so I can't get a staff position and I'm not brave enough to go back to independent contractor work. (I'd have to get experience first as a contractor. Also, move to DC, although I'd love to do that anyway.) The federal courts accept State Dept credentials, but not vice versa, unfortunately.
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Well, I think it's a ton, but my colleagues in the courts that are located right on the border laugh at me. Immigration crimes in probably make up about 90% of my caseload by numbers and 75% of my time in court--if I were right on the border, the percentages would stay the same, but I would have three times as many cases and spend about 50% more time in the courtroom. (The number of immigration cases increases the closer you get to the border, and decreases the farther away and also the larger your nearest major metro area is--near New York City, for example, immigration-related cases are probably less than a quarter of the interpreter's caseload in federal court.) 48% of all federal criminal cases in the United States are for the single charge of 8 USC § 1326, Illegal Reentry of a Removed Alien. That doesn't include other immigration crimes, the most common being (approximately in order) Entry Without Inspection (EWI), which is a federal misdemeanor; transporting or harboring undocumented aliens; possession or manufacture of a fraudulent immigration document; perjury on the I-9 form; false claim to US citizenship; and possession of a firearm or ammunition by an undocumented alien. I don't have the numbers for those charges, but I assume that the total easily exceeds 50% of all federal criminal cases; and of course, people charged with those crimes are more likely to need a Spanish interpreter.
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Well, to answer the last question first, if you can pass the (incredibly difficult) certification exam, it's assumed that you know how to do the language part of the job, although frankly, speaking two languages is the easy part. But since you need near-native to native fluency in two languages, there's no particular reason that there should be a requirement as to which is your first. Each has its advantages and disadvantages--you tend to make more, but insignificant, mistakes interpreting into your second language (things like saying the wrong preposition or conjugating a verb wrong), and fewer but bigger mistakes interpreting into your first (saying a completely different word from what was said). At the top levels, it's pretty close to 50/50 which language is someone's A (first) language and which is B (second). I alluded above to the fact that people who learn a language at home, vs. studying it formally, are at a disadvantage. That goes for both languages--the interpreters I know who have the best command of both languages are the ones who lived in a country that spoke one language but studied the other formally, preferably in an immersion situation, from an early age. My school district started us with a couple days a week of Spanish for one quarter in 6th grade, 3 days a week all year in 7th, and it became a regular 5-day class in 8th grade. I have a BA in Spanish and an MA in Spanish Translation and Interpreting, and I've lived briefly in Spain and Ecuador.
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The federal and state laws that specifically govern court interpreters usually apply only to in-court events or ones that are directly part of the judicial process (like interviews outside court by court staff), and in some cases they apply only to certain types of cases (in federal court, for example, it applies only to defendants and defense witnesses in criminal cases; states are slowly expanding to cover all people who come into contact with the courts). But yes, something like Miranda warnings or a consent-to-search can be ruled invalid if they are given only in a language the suspect doesn't understand. But that can mean that it's given by a Spanish-speaking police officer (how well the officer speaks Spanish is frequently a subject of suppression motions) or that a Spanish-language form is signed (ditto for the quality of the translation), instead of using an interpreter.
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Usually the former, partly because they don't know that much English but mostly because they're wearing headphones and can't *hear* what's going on in English (also in some systems, the verdict isn't just 1-2 words, it's a full sentence: "We the members of the jury find defendant Fulano de Tal guilty of the offense of possession with intent to distribute a mixture and substance containing methamphetamine as charged in the indictment."). We try especially hard to keep right on top of the English when interpreting a verdict, for that reason. Trials are much rarer than they seem on Law & Order, though. IIRC, about 95% of defendants in criminal cases plead guilty rather than going to trial.
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Neither, actually. The standard phrasing is "without alteration, addition, or omission"; but that refers to is what we call "units of meaning." One word in one language might have several units of meaning (the phrases "last will and testament" and "power of attorney" are each one word in Spanish ... and "plea bargain" is at least a sentence) and things like "um, uh," tone/volume of voice are also units of meaning that we have to convey. (Sometimes in words--Spanish is very monotone, so someone raising their voice for emphasis in English might get interpreted with an additional word instead. "So you WERE there that night?" "¿Así que sí estaba allí esa noche?" The sí is an extra word to convey the raised voice ... and vice versa, if the person said "sí estaba allí" i'd raise my voice on "I WAS there." To answer the second part, we try to interpret things the way the person would have said them if he/she spoke English (or alternatively, so the listener understands the same thing he/she would if he/she spoke Spanish). A lot of times that's not literal at all (a really common dangerous one is Se me hizo fácil, literally it became easy for me, but it actually means I didn't think before I acted--interpreting that literally gives the judge a much worse impression of the defendant than he/she should have.) We can't always do it 100% though, because the cultures are so different. Spanish uses a lot of religious language that we usually don't in English, for example, and we can't just leave out that whole unit of meaning. It's both an art and a science.
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It's been fun for me, too. I do a lot of trainings and info sessions for people who are getting into the field, but I rarely get to hear questions from "outsiders," so to speak. Thanks! I should mention that overall, I do really believe in our justice system. It gets a bad rap, but if you're in it day in and day out, it mostly works the way it's supposed to. So actually, the only *criminal* case that comes to mind is one where I honestly felt that the defendant was innocent but the jury found him guilty, and in that case the judge ended up entering what's called a "judgment notwithstanding the verdict"--basically acquitted him despite the verdict. (If you're wondering, it's *very* rare for that to happen, and it can't happen in reverse--if the jury acquits, the judge can't convict anyway.) But actually the most heartbreaking cases are always the ones involving children, especially abuse and neglect cases. I spent a long time working in a family court system that presumptively removed all children where abuse was considered a possibility (basically, guilty until proven innocent). The ones that have been hardest for me have been ones where the parents actually were innocent (probably because (1) if they weren't, then the system was working as it should and (2) I rarely ever saw the children themselves). The worst was a newborn removed from her very young, very distraught parents because she had 3 major broken bones in her first month of life ... and it took 90 days of lost parent-child bonding time for the initial diagnosis of brittle bone disease to be confirmed (that is, the doctors suspected brittle bone rather than abuse from the start, but the baby was *still* taken from her parents, who were only allowed to see her with close supervision while the testing was carried out). That's probably the hardest case I've ever done, and while we mostly rotate so it's rare for a case to only ever be handled by one interpreter, I did happen to be there for almost all of their hearings (including the 6-month and 12-month follow-ups), which is probably why it sticks with me.
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Now there's a dangerous question to ask a Spanish interpreter, especially a federal one. In general, the more people you know in a given situation, the more sympathetic you are to their situation. So yes, working on a daily basis with people whose children are starving to death or whose spouses are dying of cancer because there's no work in Mexico or because their store was burned down and brother murdered because they couldn't come up with a big enough bribe to the local cartel does change one's perspective. I'll skip the entire lecture, but the two main points are that (1) I'm far from convinced that illegal immigration is actually doing more harm than good to this country, either economically or in any other way, once you balance all the benefits against the negatives; and (2) trying to stop it by the current policies is a lot like trying to cure a brain tumor by giving the patient ibuprofen--you may manage to reduce the symptoms a little, but there's no way in heck it's going to get anything but worse unless you actually address the problem itself--the reason that people are choosing to leave their home, their families, everything they've ever known and loved to come here and live in fear and be treated like **** for wages most teenagers wouldn't accept. Also, I think most of this country either never studied US history or finds it more convenient to forget that their forebears from Ireland, Italy, China, Germany, and so forth were looked upon just the same way that today they're looking at Mexicans.
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Yes and no. Yes, because everyone makes mistakes and sometimes one word can have a huge impact in ways you can't foresee. No, because part of the job is owning up to your mistakes ASAP. I have had to correct the record in front of the jury or in a transcript before, but as far I know none of my mistakes has ever gone to the judge/jury with the error uncorrected.
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Roughly equal, although most of my cases are immigration-related so obviously it's rare for a native English speaker to have that type of charge. Equal access is what interpreters are trying to achieve and I think we mostly more or less do. Studies have shown that testimony is usually considered a bit more credible when delivered without an accent (so testifying through an interpreter instead of in heavily accented English) but the content and demeanor is far more important. That's the only major difference and it's between using/not using an interpreter, not LEP[limited English proficient] and native speakers. Some potential jurors hate when people use interpreters, but the court tries to weed them out.
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Well, to be a judge, you have to be a lawyer first, so that knocks "judge" off the list of career paths for me. I don't have the patience for legal research that lawyers need. In my job, the research is presented to me (well, to the judge, but I get to see it) already done, and I just read it. Finding the caselaw I need would drive me crazy. Also, law school is really expensive, and lawyers (at least the ones who work in criminal justice) work really grueling hours, whereas my job is mostly 40-hours-a-week.
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Actually, there was a case earlier this year in Toronto, Ontario, in which a mistrial was declared due to errors in the interpretation from Hindi to English, on the grounds that the defendant had effectively been prevented from being present at his own trial. But that's pretty rare (both in Canada and in the US). Most caselaw relates to the interpreter's qualifications or lack thereof, not to problems with the interpretation per se, and any errors in interpreting have to be pervasive--one error (even a major one) has never caused a reversal that I know of; it's being consistently bad throughout the whole proceeding that *can* lead to a reversal. But most appeals on the grounds of interpreting error, fail, for several reasons. 1. It can be hard to prove because interpreter renditions aren't usually recorded. 2. In most situations, if an error is not objected to on the spot, it cannot be objected to later (that goes for all sorts of errors, not just interpreter errors). 3. In the case of an error in the interpretation of witness testimony, usually if the evidence is so overwhelming in one direction or another that the result would be the same without that witness's testimony, the decision is allowed to stand. I believe the overall trend is that it is slowly becoming more common for appeals to be granted based on interpreting errors, but the most recent caselaw I can find written evidence of, dates from about 2000. I've been to conferences more recently where this issue is discussed, though, and that's been my impression.
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Well, two main reasons: first, most state constitutions require the record to be kept in English. Mine is the only exception I know of--if the judge, defendant, both lawyers, the. Probation officer, and court reporter all speak Spanish [or any other language] then the hearing can be held in that language. Second, most lawyers/judges who claim to speak Spanish, don't (most of them learned at home as children but never studied it formally). At least, not the highly educated legalese they'd need. I work with a lot of "bilingual" attorneys (at least half the ones I work with regularly) and at least half of them speak enough to vacation in Costa Rica without difficulty (the other half can just about order a beer and enchiladas), but maybe half of those speak it the way someone who'd studied law in Mexico does--because of course they haven't. They study American law. We study linguistics and comparative international law. And to hear a casse in Spanish, everyone would need to be thinking American legal argument *and* figuring out how to explain it in Spanish at the same time. Also, judges have to be assigned to cases at random, so you couldn't give all the Spanish speakers to the same judge.
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Happens all the time, actually. Depending on how long the hearing is expected to last, how long of a sentence the defendant is facing (shorter sentence = more urgent), and the particular language, we would get someone by telephone or bring them in from out of town. With very rare languages, sometimes a court will need to train someone who's bilingual in that language and English to interpret.
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Well, simultaneous interpreting is a skill like anything else--you start by doing the simplest possible component and build from there. In this case, you start by doing what's called "shadowing"--repeating a speech given very slowly (usually starting at 100 words per minute) in the same language. Most people can learn to do that to some extent, eventually--just like with any other profession, not everyone has the talent to do it well enough to make a living at it. Some people do listen to the input with one ear and the output with the other--personally, I find it easiest to get the input in both ears. The downside to that is that it's harder to control the volume you're speaking at. I said that normally we start practicing at about 100wpm. We're tested at 120wpm on the Consortium exam (the exam used by most state court systems--National Consortium on Language Access in the Courts) and at varying speeds from 120-160wpm on the federal exam. Normal, comfortable speech is usually 160 (this is the speed audio books are recorded at), and people who are fast talkers or are reading aloud often top 250wpm. (The exam is more difficult grammar and vocab-wise than natural speech would be, which compensates for the slower speed.) As for asking someone to slow down ... Generally speaking, yes we absolutely are allowed to (and in fact required to) ask the judge (or whoever) to slow down if necessary. But generally speaking, we should be able to keep up, even with the 250wpm rate--mostly because people simply can't talk significantly slower than is natural for them and maintain natural flow, which is more important to us than speed. (Also because judges hate to be interrupted, and asking once is never enough.) I heard a suggestion once to ask people not to slow down (because it's subjective and they can't do it anyway), but to pause after every complete sentence (a concrete instruction that's easier to follow). That's particularly effective with someone who's reading aloud, because they can see the end of the sentence. In any case, fast but straightforward speech is much easier to interpret than slow but convoluted speech. (Fast, convoluted speech is, of course, really hard.) Or in short, we *can* ask, but being able to learn to speak fast enough to keep up is one of the skills you need to acquire to make it in this field. (Incidentally, the person we're interpreting for can and often does speak up if the interpretation is too fast, which will be the judge's cue to slow down so we can. But most people can comfortably understand up to about 300wpm.)
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Court administrators who don't know anything about what actually happens in the courtroom. Most court staff never see the inside of a courtroom (think finance, IT, HR, file clerks, etc.). When I had my orientation at my staff job, there were 30 of us who'd all been working there for 60-90 days, and I was the only one who'd actually entered a courtroom in that time. Then those people get promoted over and over without ever learning what the court is here to do, until (for example) you have a CPA trying to tell which interpreter to hire based on financial concerns rather than who can actually interpret the best. I had been going to say "court administrators who don't know anything about interpreting," but really, what we do is contribute to what goes on in the courtroom, so if they'd ever seen the inside of a courtroom, they'd trust us to do our job the way the judges, lawyers, courtroom clerks, etc. do.
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You mean starting a language in college and becoming an interpreter in a country where their first language is spoken, directly after graduation? Probably not--four years of classes are probably not enough.
Start the language in college, move to a country where it's spoken, and become an interpreter there? Or even live in that country for awhile (years, not months) and then move back and interpret in one's home country? Happens all the time.
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That's sort of a complicated question to answer, but the gist of the answer is that (1) in nearly all cases, assigned attorneys are competent to handle the cases they're assigned and are doing the best they can, and (2) the higher the stakes, the better an assigned attorney will be--and the more good private representation would cost. Truly great attorneys work in courts that pay more and have more interesting work, but a straightforward minor case can be handled just fine by an attorney who's merely competent. There are always a few (both assigned and private) who "phone it in," but in my experience the judges will weed out bad assigned attorneys fairly quickly because ultimately, those attorneys answer to the court--whereas if it's a privately-retained attorney, the court can't interfere in the private attorney-client relationship, so they have to be *really* bad to get the court to do anything about it. All in all, if the stakes were high *or* I wanted to admit my crime and accept the consequences, I'd prefer an assigned attorney. If it were a low-stakes case (e.g. municipal) I wanted to fight, I'd probably hire one--not because I think an assigned attorney wouldn't do his/her best, but because he/she *might* not be quite as good and/or *might* have too many cases to devote enough attention to mine. In my courtroom personally, I would always, always say you should take an assigned attorney if you qualify.
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Believe me, the judges want things to move along as much as you do. There are a lot of things that need to be decided on the spot because they have to be decided based on what's already happened, and that explains a lot of the long recesses in the middle of the trial. Also, both sides' attorneys have the responsibility to "zealously advocate for" their clients, and so the judge can't limit that too much.
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In my experience, a freelance court interpreter who's good enough both at interpreting and at other professional stuff like networking, punctuality, etc., will make $60-100K annually by working more or less full time and without getting into things like State Department work. That holds pretty steady across the country, though it can vary by location within that range. So how hard it is to find a staff job depends mostly on how much that job pays and partly on how many qualified people are available locally. In my state, a staff interpreter job starts at $32K/year, so pretty much no one wants to do that rather than freelance. In a state where a staff interpreter starts at $60-65K, there's a pretty good balance--most people who want staff jobs can get them, but there's enough qualified applicants to fill the staff jobs that arise. And in federal court, which starts at close to $80K and goes up quickly from there, the jobs are highly in demand and very hard to get. (There are also fewer of them--about 100 positions nationally to be filled by about 1000 federally certified interpreters.)
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