Melissa Wallace

This article examines the problem-solving strategies and resources that professional court interpreters in the United States use to address challenges in their daily work, with the goal of investigating the current influence of research on professional practice. The authors report on the first stage of a bipartite study consisting of focus groups conducted in California, New York, and Texas in the spring of 2018, the results of which directly shaped the development of a survey launched at the national level. Participants included a combination of junior and senior interpreters, staff and freelancers, and certified court interpreters with varying degrees of formal interpreter training and education. The anonymized transcripts of these groups were analyzed qualitatively following the principles of thematic analysis and a mixed top-down and bottom-up coding process. The results obtained interrogate the purported divide between theory and practice and reveal valuable information about t...

Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS)Volume 15, Issue 1Special issue: The Ethics of Non-Professional Translation and Interpreting in Public Services and Legal SettingsGuest Editors: Esther Monzó-Nebot (Universitat Jaume I, Spain) and Melissa Wallace (University of Texas at San Antonio, United States)

Court interpreting certifying bodies face a plethora of challenges in their quest to identify competent judicial interpreters so that speakers of all languages might be assured of due process under the law and equal access to justice. For the entities which develop and administer the oral certification exams which act as gateways to the profession of court interpreting, two such dilemmas are of particular interest: the first is high rates of exam failure, with a frustrating number of candidates not meeting minimum levels of qualification to practice in court. The second is an increasing need for qualified interpreters of languages of lesser diffusion. In the face of ubiquitous budget constraints, this article explores an abbreviated testing model as a mitigator of extreme exam failure at the same time as it reveals the results of a recent pilot project which focused on centralizing interpreting services protocols while prioritizing interpreter quality.

This article aims to describe the current state of affairs as regards national registers of legal interpreters and translators (LITs) in the United States and the European Union. After a brief overview of what translation and interpreting studies researchers and EU project participants recommend about their construction and utilization, a case will be made for the use of national registers as essential tools in two important struggles: professionalizing legal translation and interpreting and building public trust. Based on current models and recommendations by researchers, a proposal will be put forth for minimum characteristics of a national register of LITs. Rather than an afterthought, the interpreter register merits scrutiny and careful elaboration precisely because of an ever more ubiquitous need for states and countries to implement measures which are fair, transparent, cost-effective, which guarantee due process, and which provide users with ways to make an objective value ju...

This article gathers research from three studies conducted by industry stakeholders in US court interpreting – research which provides a blueprint for prioritising quality in courtroom language access and which concretely links court interpreter training to policy decisions in the areas of language access and interpreter certification testing. The first study examines training experiences of Spanish/English court interpreters in one US state (Wisconsin); the second surveys practising court interpreters in the same state to demarcate specific skill domains and content in which court interpreters wish to receive training; and the third study examines failure rates on the state-level oral court interpreting exams on a national level over a 15-year period, suggesting some key strategies to mitigate such failure. In light of the aforementioned studies, as well as in response to the National Center for State Court’s recent publication entitled A National Call to Action, this article represents a further call to action, beseeching educators and policymakers to create meaningful training opportunities, to acknowledge the relationship between lack of training and widespread oral exam failure, and to reward and incentivise training and credentialing through proactive policy decisions.

This chapter explores the implementation of a teaching and learning strategy that lends itself propitiously to social constructivist-oriented introductory translation courses. Team-based learning, a methodology developed by Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink (2004) that purports to foster accountability, cohesion, and solidarity among fixed work teams proved itself to be ideally suited to the undergraduate translation studies environment according to the results of a survey-driven assessment tool. Students revealed their perceptions of the effectiveness of learning teams – teams that were assessed in general for a specific course's course components and learning outcomes as well as in relation to the core make-up of the learning teams themselves. The chapter describes a variety of empowerment-building assignments as well as discusses the implementation of team-based learning in this context. Finally, the degree to which the methodology contributed to students' perceptions of their...

Extreme gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has prompted thousands of mothers and children to seek refuge in the United States. In response to the 2014 migrant crisis, the United States' use of family detention centers represents one of the most controversial aspects of the Obama administration's political response. For-profit detention centers located in Karnes, Texas and Dilley, Texas, are currently housing thousands of asylum-seeking mothers and children beyond capacity (García-Ditta 2015: n.p.). The gravity of the current refugee crisis is only exacerbated by language barriers-one of the direst obstacles to avoiding swift removal processes. A crucial step in the asylum-seeking process is the credible fear interview (CFI), an immigration proceeding in which a person must demonstrate credible fear of returning to his or her home country or be subject to deportation. This article directly locates language mediation in non-criminal immigration proceedings a...

This article aims to describe the current state of affairs as regards national registers of legal interpreters and translators (LITs) in the United States and the European Union. After a brief overview of what translation and interpreting studies researchers and EU project participants recommend about their construction and utilization, a case will be made for the use of national registers as essential tools in two important struggles: professionalizing legal translation and interpreting and building public trust. Based on current models and recommendations by researchers, a proposal will be put forth for minimum characteristics of a national register of LITs. Rather than an afterthought, the interpreter register merits scrutiny and careful elaboration precisely because of an ever more ubiquitous need for states and countries to implement measures which are fair, transparent, cost-effective, which guarantee due process, and which provide users with ways to make an objective value ju...

Performance assessment in the realm of interpreting studies is vitally important not only as pertains to the screening of applicants for entry into educational programs, providing feedback for students, or testing their knowledge and skills at the end of a course of study, but most germane to this dissertation, it is essential for qualifying exams such as the certification exams used in the field of court interpreting. In the United States, with 44 out of 50 states holding membership in the Consortium for Language Access in the Courts, the court interpreting certification exam administered by this entity holds absolute primacy and is the most important gatekeeper to the profession. This study seeks to discern whether or not success in one mode of interpreting on Consortium oral certification exams could potentially indicate performance aptitude for the other two modes. To answer this question, a three-pronged approach was used. First, recent scholarship which examines the three mode...

This monographic section of the Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law presents the findings of six critical perspectives on translation and interpreting policies and practices in modern societies that pose challenges for public institutions. Taking a critical and empirical stance, the papers provide data and reflections on how language access is critical to fulfilling fundamental rights and ensuring the ability of institutions to implement their mandates effectively. The introductory article reviews the role of public services in present-day multilingual societies and of translation and interpreting in relation to the policies governing language access. It goes on to review conflicting implicit theories of translation and interpreting by providing a brief discussion of the roles prescribed and described for translators and interpreters. Finally, it proceeds to present the papers, which are constructed around two axes: (a) an examination of practices capable of provi...

On the heels of recent advances in research methods in translation and interpreting studies (TIS), scholars have begun to put the methods by which we systematically analyze the practice, pedagogy, and politics of translation and interpreting studies on the map. This new prominence is evidenced by the inclusion of entries specifically related to methods in handbooks and encyclopedias (Millán and Bartrina 2013, Mikkelson and Jourdenais 2015, Pöchhacker 2015, Schwieter and Ferreira 2017), critical examinations of specific methods and methodological approaches (Wadensjö 2008, Hubscher-Davidson 2011, Oakes and Ji 2012, Zanettin 2013, Ji et al. 2017, Meister 2017, Han 2018), examinations of the dominant methods in different fields of TIS (Kainz, Prunč, and Schögler 2011, Bogucki 2015, de Pedro Ricoy and Napier 2017, Biel et al. 2019) and monographs aimed at offering overviews on available methods in translation, interpreting, or both (Hale and Napier 2013, O’Brien and Saldanha 2014, Angelelli and Baer 2016, Mellinger and Hanson 2017). When compared with previous decades, the increased attention in the last ten years to the methods we use to cooperatively advance our knowledge on translation and interpreting reflects a growing recognition among scholars that systematic collection and well-structured analysis of data, based on explicit and consistent assumptions, together with the diffusion needed to coordinate and advance research agendas have the potential to bring our knowledge on all aspects of translation and interpreting to a new era. In an effort to fuel the continued development of public service interpreting and translation (PSIT) as an inter-discipline characterized by methodological and scientific rigor and world-wide coordination in its investigative practices, this special issue of FITISPos aims to question the state of the art of research methods in PSIT with an eye to exploring the tools, practices and assessment methods applied to research as well as to expanding current notions of data collection, analysis and diffusion.

We welcome critical and empirical proposals for this special thematic issue on research methods in PSIT to be published in April 2020. The guest editors invite contributions including but not limited to the following lines of research:

• Assessing the quality of research in PSIT;
• Research methods in specific domains of PSIT;
• Open access and open research methods in PSIT;
• Teaching and learning research methods in PSIT;
• Interdisciplinarity and research methods in PSIT;
• Ethical requirements of research methods in PSIT;
• Empiricism in PSIT research;
• Technology at the service of research methods in PSIT;
• Action research and the role of translators and interpreters in PSIT research;
• Innovations in PSIT research methods;
• Methods to achieve scientific, social and political impact of research in PSIT.

Prospective authors are invited to send their paper proposals in the form of abstracts of 250-350 words (excluding references) in MS Word format to the guest editors by June 30th, 2019:

Esther Monzó Nebot: monzo@uji.es
Melissa Wallace: melissa.wallace@utsa.edu

Finland distinguishes itself not only for its expedient compliance with EU language rights legislation, but also for the diversity and flexibility with which it has developed a testing ground for a tripartite certification system that offers access to the legal interpreting  profession through university studies and subsequent accreditation, vocational training, and national exams. This chapter aims to examine accreditation models for court interpreters in a country with a consolidated tradition of translation and interpreting studies education at the postgraduate level as well as training opportunities at vocational adult education centers that offer competency-based instruction and assessment. In particular, the extent to which academic and non-academic stakeholder involvement informs and supports training is examined. Concrete examples of how educators are partnering with the profession in order to design curriculum and train novice legal interpreters and translators (LITs) are presented. Still evolving, legal interpreter accreditation schemes are simply too new to be assessed, although the argument will be made that Finland’s multiple gateways to the profession have the potential to improve interpreter education, open up professionalization to interpreters of languages of lesser diffusion, and directly improve procedural rights in the justice system.

Keywords: Interpreter certification models, competency-based interpreter training, university studies for interpreters, vocational interpreter training, language access compliance

Extreme gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has prompted thousands of mothers and children to seek refuge in the United States. In response to the 2014 migrant crisis, the United States' use of family detention centers represents one of the most controversial aspects of the Obama administration's political response. For-profit detention centers located in Karnes, Texas and Dilley, Texas, are currently housing thousands of asylum-seeking mothers and children beyond capacity (García-Ditta 2015: n.p.). The gravity of the current refugee crisis is only exacerbated by language barriers – one of the direst obstacles to avoiding swift removal processes. A crucial step in the asylum-seeking process is the credible fear interview (CFI), an immigration proceeding in which a person must demonstrate credible fear of returning to his or her home country or be subject to deportation. This article directly locates language mediation in non-criminal immigration proceedings as a human right to which institutional compliance is still unresponsive and ineffectual. The authors aim to offer a descriptive analysis of US immigration proceedings with a brief final discussion which contemplates the unexplored aspects of the legal and ethical grey zone of language access in borderland detention centers. Keywords: interpreting in asylum proceedings; detention centers; credible fear interview; language access in immigration hearings.

ACCÉS A SERVEIS LINGÜÍSTICS PER ALS SOL·LICITANTS D'ASIL EN ELS CENTRES DE DETENCIÓ DE LES ZONES FRONTERERES DE TEXAS
Resum La violència extrema de les bandes criminals d'El Salvador, Guatemala i Hondures ha provocat que milers de mares i nens busquin refugi als Estats Units. Com a resposta a la crisi migratòria del 2014, l'ús que els Estats Units ha fet dels centres de detenció per a famílies representa un dels aspectes més controvertits de la resposta política que va donar l'Administració Obama. Actualment, els centres de detenció privats que es troben a Karnes i Dilley (Texas) allotgen, per sobre de la seva capacitat, milers de mares i nens sol·licitants d'asil (García-Ditta 2015: s. p.). La gravetat de la crisi de refugiats actual es veu agreujada, a més, per la barreres lingüístiques: un dels pitjors obstacles per evitar processos de trasllat immediat. Un pas molt important en el procediment de sol·licitud d'asil és l'entrevista per deter-minar si hi ha un temor creïble (credible fear interview, CFI), un tràmit en l'àmbit de la immigració en què la persona ha de demostrar, de forma creïble, que té por de tornar al seu país d'origen o de ser deportat. Aquest article considera de forma directa la mediació lingüística dins els procediments d'immigració no penals com un dret humà la garantia del qual, per part de les institucions, encara no s'ha fet efectiva. Els autors busquen oferir una anàlisi descriptiva dels procediments d'immigració dels Estats Units que acaba amb una breu reflexió sobre els aspectes pendents d'explorar de la zona grisa jurídica i ètica de l'accés als serveis lingüístics en els centres de detenció de les zones frontereres. Paraules clau: la interpretació en els tràmits d'asil; centres de detenció; entrevistes per determinar si hi ha temor creïble; l'accés als serveis lingüístics en les audiències d'immigrants.

This article aims to describe the current state of affairs as regards national registers of legal interpreters and translators (LITs) in the United States and the European Union. After a brief overview of what translation and interpreting studies researchers and EU work group participants recommend about their construction and utilization, a case will be made for the use of national registers as essential tools in two important struggles: professionalizing legal translation and interpreting and building public trust. Based on current models and recommendations by researchers, a proposal will be put forth for minimum characteristics of a national register of LITs. Rather than an afterthought, the interpreter register merits scrutiny and careful elaboration precisely because of an ever more ubiquitous need for states and countries to implement measures which are fair, transparent, cost-effective, which guarantee due process, and which provide users with ways to make an objective value judgment regarding the competence of the interpreters they commission.
Keywords: legal interpreting, European Directive, professionalization, national register, regulation

El presente artículo pretende describir el estado de la cuestión de los registros nacionales de intérpretes y traductores jurídicos en los Estados Unidos y en la Unión Europea. Después de examinar brevemente las recomendaciones de investigadores y participantes en proyectos especializados a nivel europeo, se defenderá la importancia de utilizar los registros nacionales para dos fines importantes: profesionalizar la traducción y la interpretación jurídica así como fomentar la confianza pública. A continuación se planteará una propuesta, basada en modelos actuales y recomendaciones de investigadores que contempla las características mínimas de un registro nacional. Debido a la necesidad cada vez más presente de implementar medidas que sean justas, transparentes, rentables, y que protejan los derechos procesales de los ciudadanos, el registro debe ser elaborado cuidadosamente y con el esmero apropiado. Así también se puede garantizar que los usuarios de dichos registros dispongan de información objetiva sobre la competencia de los intérpretes a quienes contratan.

Court interpreting certifying bodies face a plethora of challenges in their quest to identify competent judicial interpreters so that speakers of all languages might be assured of due process under the law and equal access to justice. For the entities which develop and administer the oral certification exams which act as gateways to the profession of court interpreting, two such dilemmas are of particular interest: the first is high rates of exam failure, with a frustrating number of candidates not meeting minimum levels of qualification to practice in court. The second is an increasing need for qualified interpreters of languages of lesser diffusion. In the face of ubiquitous budget constraints, this article explores an abbreviated testing model as a mitigator of extreme exam failure at the same time as it reveals the results of a recent pilot project which focused on centralizing interpreting services protocols while prioritizing interpreter quality.

Los organismos oficiales que certifican a los intérpretes jurídicos se enfrentan a un gran número de desafíos a la hora de identificar a intérpretes competentes. Para las entidades que desarrollan y administran los exámenes orales de certificación, dos de estos dilemas son de especial interés. Uno de esos dilemas es el alto número de fracasos en los exámenes ya que muchos de los candidatos no alcanzan los criterios mínimos en los exámenes de certificación. El segundo es una necesidad creciente de identificar intérpretes cualificados en lenguas de menor difusión. A la vista de las limitaciones presupuestarias actuales, el presente artículo explora un modelo abreviado de examen que pudiera ayudar a disminuir el número de postulantes que suspenden los exámenes de certificación. Al mismo tiempo se revelan los resultados de un estudio piloto enfocado en la centralización de servicios de interpretación cuya prioridad fue seleccionar intérpretes cualificados.

This article gathers research from three studies conducted by industry stakeholders in US court interpreting – research which provides a blueprint for prioritising quality in courtroom language access and which concretely links court interpreter training to policy decisions in the areas of language access and interpreter certification testing. The first study examines training experiences of Spanish/English court interpreters in one US state (Wisconsin); the second surveys practising court interpreters in the same state to demarcate specific skill domains and content in which court interpreters wish to receive training; and the third study examines failure rates on the state-level oral court interpreting exams on a national level over a 15-year period, suggesting some key strategies to mitigate such failure. In light of the aforementioned studies, as well as in response to the National Center for State Court’s recent publication entitled A National Call to Action, this article represents a further call to action, beseeching educators and policymakers to create meaningful training opportunities, to acknowledge the relationship between lack of training and widespread oral exam failure, and to reward and incentivise training and credentialing through proactive policy decisions.

This chapter explores the implementation of a teaching and learning strategy that lends itself propitiously to social constructivist-oriented introductory translation courses. Team-based learning, a methodology developed by Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink (2004) that purports to foster accountability, cohesion, and solidarity among fixed work teams proved itself to be ideally suited to the undergraduate translation studies environment according to the results of a survey-driven assessment tool. Students revealed their perceptions of the effectiveness of learning teams – teams that were assessed in general for a specific course’s course components and learning outcomes as well as in relation to the core make-up of the learning teams themselves. The chapter describes a variety of empowerment-building assignments as well as discusses the implementation of team-based learning in this context. Finally, the degree to which the methodology contributed to students’ perceptions of their learning experience is examined.