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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
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