The work of interpreters in legal settings, whether they are spoken or signed language interpreters, is filled with enormous complexity and chal lenges. Not only do interpreters have to manage the specialized discourse that frames legal interactions, but they must also possess strategies to en sure the participants for whom they are interpreting have access to the legal proceedings in meaningful and authentic ways via the interpretation. The interactions in which interpreters find themselves in legal settings can be technical, traumatic, ethically challenging, sometimes amusing, and frequently demanding. The pressures of providing simultaneous and con secutive interpretation amidst convoluted questions and/or responses, com plex grammatical constructions, competing linguistic goals, cross-cultural ways of viewing the world, and making decisions about how best to con vey the same message in the target text are just a few of the many issues facing the interpreter working in legal domains. As with past volumes in this series on interpretation and translation, this volume endeavors to bring evidence-based practices from both signed and spoken language interpreter researchers with a particular focus on the work that occurs in legal settings. In the chapters that follow, the reader will find discussions on several topics that offer a window into the nature of interpreting in such a specialized field. We expect that the book will be of interest to students, practitioners, and educators, bringing together divergent experiences upon which to shape our evolving knowledge and practices. While the field of interpreting has grown in many countries around the world, interpreters still share the struggle to ensure their work is recognized and performed at the standard needed to provide the best possible interpretation in a mediated communication event. Our hope is that this volume will offer important insights into interpreting in legal settings, however we also believe that many of the concepts and discov eries discussed in the chapters will apply to multiple environments that interpreters encounter. The charge of treason or duplicity is often leveled at interpreters. If honest, no practitioner can claim that an innocent error has never been made or that the speaker’s intention has been never inadvertently betrayed. The legal setting introduces an additional complication—the justification (or otherwise) for providing interpreting services for a defendant or wit ness. Over the centuries, many lawyers and probably even more judges have doubted and at times castigated those who have claimed an inability to participate in legal proceedings without an interpreter. Nor does judicial criticism spare the often hapless interpreter. As has been argued elsewhere (Morris, 1993, 1995), when dealing with speakers who lack native command of the language of the proceedings, the legal system theorizes that all the interpreters on whom it is nolens volens condemned to rely necessarily attain perfection in their performance. It bases this assumption on an ideal world in which total equivalence is automatically achieved by any individual performing interlingual inter pretation in a forensic setting. It thereby discounts the ambiguities in herent in all human systems of communication because, in this idealized view, they are entirely overcome in the interpreting process. In addition, it also treats all interpreters equally, regardless of their specific qualifi cations, experience, and competence.
