Cover not available
Article published In:
Police interviews: Communication challenges and solutions
Edited by Luna Filipović
[Pragmatics and Society 10:1] 2019
► pp. 72–94

Translating accurately or sounding natural?

The interpreters’ challenges due to semantic typology and the interpreting process

| University of East Anglia
Police interview interpreting is a complex task, as interpreters make difficult choices under pressure and time constraints. The main dilemma of the interpreter is whether to remain faithful to the original text, with the risk of rendering non-idiomatic translations, or to give preference to more idiomatic versions that may entail an addition or an omission from the original text. This article presents an analysis of Spanish-English bilingual police interviews in California. The analysis is based on the discrepancies found between an interpreter present in the interrogation and a control interpreter who translates the whole interview post-hoc. This is an original methodology that can be used for future research in this and other contexts. The results show different types of inaccuracies in the interpretation, which can be attributed to contextual pressures and overall challenges of interpreting and to challenges related to typological differences between the two languages involved.
Keywords: interpreting, transcribing, police interviews, register, Spanish-English interpreting, Applied Language Typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Forensic linguistics and interpreting
    • 2.1Interpreting skills
    • 2.2Applied language typology
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results: Discrepancies
    • 4.1Agentivity
    • 4.2Information loss
    • 4.3Loss of intensity
    • 4.4Manner of motion
    • 4.5Modal verbs
    • 4.6Euphemisms
    • 4.7Grammar errors
    • 4.8Addition of intensity
    • 4.9Addition of information
    • 4.10Emotions
    • 4.11Other discrepancies
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.00016.hij
References (41)
References
Alexieva, Bistra. 1997. “A Typology of Interpreter-Mediated Events”. The Translator 3(2): 153–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alonso, Amado. 1964 [1935]. “Noción, emoción, acción y fantasía en los diminutivos”. In Estudios Lingüísticos. Temas españoles, 195–229. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Aske, Jon. 1989. “Path predicates in English and Spanish: A closer look”. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 151, 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berk-Seligson, Susan. 1983. “Sources of Variation in Spanish Verb Construction Usage: The Active, the Dative and the Reflexive Passive”. Journal of Pragmatics 71: 145–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 2009. Coerced Confessions: The Discourse of Bilingual Police Interrogations. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Negotiation and Communicative Accommodation in Bilingual Police Interrogations: A critical Interactional Sociolinguistic Perspective”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2071: 29–58.Google Scholar
Berman, Ruth, and Dan I. Slobin (eds.). 1994. Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Biagini, Marta, Elena Davitti, and Annalisa Sandrelli. 2017. “Participation in Interpreter-mediated Interaction: Shifting along a Multidimensional Continuum”. Journal of Pragmatics 1071: 87–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Braun, Sabine. 2017. “What a Micro-analytical Investigation of Additions and Expansions in Remote Interpreting Can Tell us About Interpreters’ Participation in a Shared Virtual Space”. Journal of Pragmatics 1071: 165–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cadierno, Teresa. 2017. “Thinking for Speaking about Motion in a Second Language. Looking Back and Forward”. In Motion and Space across Languages. Theory and Applications, ed. by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 279–300. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curcó, Carmen. 1998. “¿No me harías un favorcito? Reflexiones en torno a la expresión de la cortesía verbal en el español de México y en el español peninsular”. Diálogos Hispánicos de Amsterdam 221: 129–171.Google Scholar
Davidson, Brad. 2000. “The Interpreter as Institutional Gatekeeper: The Social-Linguistic role of Interpreters in Spanish-English Medical Discourse”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3): 379–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. César. 2006. “Linguistic Politeness in Mexico: Refusal Strategies among Male Speakers of Mexican Spanish”. Journal of Pragmatics 381: 2158–2187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filipović, Luna. 2007. “Language as a Witness: Insights from Cognitive Linguistics”. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 14(2): 245–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Speaking and Remembering in One or Two Languages: Bilingual vs. Monolingual Lexicalisation and Memory for Motion Events”. International Journal of Bilingualism 15(4): 466–485. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Constructing Causation in Language and Memory: Implications for Access to Justice in Multilingual Interactions”. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 20(1): 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. “May vs. Might in Native vs. Non-native English: Implications for Inference and Judgement in Legal and Educational Contexts”. Applied Linguistics Review 7(2): 181–201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017a. “Applied Language Typology: Applying Typological Insights in Practice”. Languages in Contrast 17(2): 255–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017b. “Applying Language Typology: Practical Applications of Research on Typological Contrasts between Languages”. In Motion and Space across Languages. Theory and Applications, ed. by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 399–418. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filipović, Luna, and Alberto Hijazo-Gascón. 2018. “Interpreting Meaning in Police Interviews: Applied Language Typology in a Forensic Linguistics Context”. Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics VIAL 151: 67–103.Google Scholar
Gile, Daniel. 1997. “Conference Interpreting as a Cognitive Management Problem”. In Cognitive Processes in Translation and Interpreting, ed. by Joseph H. Danks, Gregory M. Shreve, Stephen B. Fountain and Michael McBeath, 96–214. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Hale, Sandra Beatriz. 2007. Community Interpreting. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, Yan. 2007. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide. 2012. “Placement and Removal Events in Basque and Spanish”. In The events of putting and taking. A crosslinguistic perspective, ed. by Anetta Kopecka and Bhuvana Narasinhan, 123–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide, and Luna Filipović. 2013. “Lexicalisation patterns and Translation”. In Cognitive Linguistics and Translation, ed. by Ana Rojo and Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 253–284. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jacobsen, Bente. 2002. Pragmatic Meaning in Court Interpreting: An Empirical Study in Consecutively Interpreted Question-Answer Dialoguers. Unpublished PhD Thesis. The Aarhus School of Business.Google Scholar
Krouglov, Alexander. 1999. “Police Interpreting: Politeness and Sociocultural Context”. The Translator 5(2): 285–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
López Morales, Humberto. 2005. “Sociolingüística del tabú”. Interlingüística 16(1): 7–20.Google Scholar
Rojo, Ana, and Paula Cifuentes-Férez. 2017. “On the Reception of Translations: Exploring the Impact of Typological Differences on Legal Contexts”. In Motion and Space across Languages. Theory and Applications, ed. by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 367–398. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Russell, Debra. 2002. Interpreting in Legal Contexts: Consecutive and Simultaneous Interpretation. Burtonsville, Md.: Linstok Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1991. “Learning to Think for Speaking. Native Language, Cognition and Rhetorical Style”. Pragmatics 11: 7–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996a. “From ‘thought and language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’”. In Rethinking linguistic relativity, ed. by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson, 70–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1996b. “Two Ways to Travel: Verbs of Motion in English and Spanish”. In Grammatical constructions. Their form and meaning, ed. by Masayoshi Shibatani and Sandra A. Thompson, 195–220. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
1997. “Mind, Code and Text”. In Essays on language functions and language type. Dedicated to T. Givón, ed. by Joan Bybee, John Haiman, and Sandra A. Thompson, 437–467. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, Dan I., and Nini Hoiting. 1994. “Reference to Movement in Spoken and Signed Languages: Typological Considerations”. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 201: 487–503. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Song, Jae Jung. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1988. “Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition”. Cognitive Science 121: 49–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1991. “Path to Realisation: A Typology of Event Conflation”. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 171: 480–519. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Vermeer, Hans J. 1998. “Starting to Unmask what Translatology is about”, Target 10(1): 41–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (9)

Cited by nine other publications

Combe, Christophe & Dejan Stosic
2024. Processing manner under high cognitive pressure: Evidence from French–English and English–French simultaneous interpreting. Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Elder, Chi-Hé & Luna Filipović
2024. “I never said that”. Pragmatics and Society DOI logo
Korkman, J., H. Otgaar, L.M. Geven, R. Bull, M. Cyr, I. Hershkowitz, J.-M. Mäkelä, M. Mattison, R. Milne, P. Santtila, P. van Koppen, A. Memon, M. Danby, L. Filipovic, F.J. Garcia, E. Gewehr, O. Gomes Bell, L. Järvilehto, K. Kask, A. Körner, E. Lacey, J. Lavoie, M. Magnusson, Q.C. Miller, T. Pakkanen, C.E. Peixoto, C.O. Perez, F. Pompedda, I.A. Su, N.E.J. Sumampouw, Celine van Golde, G.F. Waterhouse, A. Zappalà & R. Volbert
2024. White paper on forensic child interviewing: research-based recommendations by the European Association of Psychology and Law. Psychology, Crime & Law ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Filipović, Luna, Mika Brown & Paul E. Engelhardt
2023. Evidential meanings in native and learner Japanese and English. Pragmatics and Society 14:3 ► pp. 484 ff. DOI logo
Hijazo-Gascón, Alberto, María Gómez-Bedoya & Luna Filipović
2023. Interpreting Swearwords in Police Interviews and Perceived Offensiveness of Insults in the UK and Spain. Applied Linguistics DOI logo
Ünal, Ercenur, Ezgi Mamus & Aslı Özyürek
2023. Multimodal encoding of motion events in speech, gesture and cognition. Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Filipović, Luna
2022. The tale of two countries. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 24:2 ► pp. 254 ff. DOI logo
Filipović, Luna
2022. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Miscommunication in UK Police Interviews and US Police Interrogations. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 37:2 ► pp. 297 ff. DOI logo
Filipović, Luna
2022. Language and Culture as Sources of Inequality in US Police Interrogations. Applied Linguistics 43:6 ► pp. 1073 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.