I am honoured to have been asked to write the foreword for this fascinating and highly relevant book. Fascinating, because it explores the complexities of a unique environment: the bilingual courts of Hong Kong. Relevant, because the bilingual courtroom is now a worldwide phenomenon that must be understood fully if jus tice is to be imparted to all parties, regardless of their language proficiency. I was already familiar with Dr. Eva N. S. Ng’s work, having first been capti vated by the paper she presented at the Critical Link 5 conference (E. Ng 2009). That first glimpse of the unique situation in Hong Kong piqued my curiosity, and I made it a point to seek out anything written by Dr. Ng thereafter. The book you have in your hands represents years of painstaking work examining transcripts of bilingual proceedings and applying a variety of sociolinguistic theories to reach critical conclusions with implications that extend far beyond Hong Kong. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. Dr. Ng’s engaging writing style makes this work accessible not only to specialists in interpreting studies, sociolinguistics and law, but also to anyone with an interest in the dynamics of interlingual, in tercultural communication and the swordplay of the adversarial courtroom. Her research yields rich data and raises new questions that will provide fodder for ad ditional studies in the years to come. Hong Kong is not the only bilingual territory in the world; Canada and Switzerland are but two examples of countries with more than one official language and with bilingual or multilingual legal systems. What distinguishes Hong Kong is that, because of its colonial legacy of English-language court proceedings, when the court chooses to conduct business in English the majority of the participants must rely on an interpreter to communicate, rather than just a few individuals who do not speak the language of the proceedings. The vast majority of the population, and most of the participants in court proceedings, speak Cantonese and have limited if any English proficiency; but a surprisingly large number of judges are still monolin gual English speakers. A more comparable environment is international tribunals whose legal personnel come from all over the world and must rely on interpreters for all communication, but in this case a key difference is that these tribunals feature simultaneous interpreting provided by teams of interpreters with proper booths and audio systems. In Hong Kong, by contrast, when the language of the proceedings is English much of the interpreting is done in the consecutive mode (English to Cantonese for the benefit of not only defendants and witnesses, but also jurors and spectators; and Cantonese to English for the benefit of monolingual judges and/or counsel). Although whispered simultaneous interpreting or chuchotage may also be provided for defendants, others in the courtroom with limited English proficiency are denied access to the interpretation. Readers of this book will learn of the added pressure interpreters face when working in a courtroom where every word is scru tinised by bilingual attorneys, witnesses who have some knowledge of English, and jurors – and where the record itself is bilingual and thus subject to verification. Dr. Ng first takes us through the history of Hong Kong as a British colony with a foreign language and government imposed on a local Cantonese-speaking popu lation, followed by the transition to Chinese sovereignty and the translation of existing legislation from English to Cantonese (all illustrated clearly in Appendix 1). She explains the resistance to abandoning English as an official language in the court system and the resulting complications. Interpreters must contend not only with the usual pressures of the adversarial courtroom, but also with judges, legal counsel and witnesses who speak heavily accented English with numerous grammatical errors. Anyone who has ever interpreted for a non-native speaker of the source language can attest to the additional stress involved in such a situation.
