Using a real corpus of court interpreting in Criminal Proceedings to train and assess quality in court interpreting
Orozco-Jutorán, Mariana (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Date:	2019
Abstract:	A funded research project was carried out from 2015 to 2017 in Spain, it was called TIPp ("Translation and Interpreting in Criminal Proceedings"). The project aimed at describing and assessing the reality of court interpreting in Spain and at creating a computer application which comprises a complete set of resources to facilitate court interpreters' performance. The researchers compiled, transcribed and analysed a representative oral corpus of real, video-recorded criminal proceedings with interpreting in the three language combinations studied (English, French and Romanian into Spanish). This corpus was then used as a basis to create didactic material with the form of role-plays and exercises which have been used with great success to train court interpreters for two years at the MA Degree on Legal translation and Court Interpreting at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. This paper presents some of the materials created, such as short video clips based on real problems observed in the corpus of criminal proceedings as well as the teaching methodology used in class. The author focuses specifically on how to interact with students to highlight and overcome the main pitfalls observed in the real practice of court interpreters. Regarding the methodology of the research project, an attempt was made to operationalise the quality of court interpreting by trying to measure it with various criteria. Therefore, the research combined a rigorous, qualitative design - ideally suited to describing real practice - with quantitative data analysis techniques and the creation of a measurement instrument. Two direct variables were chosen to describe the quality of court interpreting, namely interaction problems and textual problems, based on Wadensjö's distinction between "talk-as-activity" and "talk-as-text" (Wadensjö 1998, p. 21). The variables were operationalised into indicators to create a measuring instrument validated through a pilot study and consisting of several interval and categorical scales. All this work to operationalise the quality of court interpreting was also very useful in terms of students' performance assessment. The paper will thus also present a proposal of assessment criteria for court interpreting students that has been successfully used at the MA Degree on Legal translation and Court Interpreting at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Contribució a congrés
Subject:	Court interpreting ; Assessment and quality in court interpreting ; Corpus-based court interpreting research
Published in:	Critical Link 9: Interpreting in the age of AI. Tokyo (Japan), : 2019

21 p, 1.2 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Arts and Humanities > MIRAS (Mediació i Interpretació: Recerca en l'Àmbit Social)
Contributions to meetings and congresses > Presentations