Disentangling the complex web of language, culture, and cognition: A case for interdisciplinarity in legal interpreting research

Language still often represents a barrier for many citizens or minority-language speakers involved in legal proceedings. In some jurisdictions, court and police ‘interpreters’ (individuals who have no academic or professional qualifications, but have a reasonable grasp of the language) are allowed to work in public service settings on a regular basis. However, as Berk-Seligson (1990: 204) clearly states, “no amount of oath-swearing can guarantee high quality interpreting from an interpreter who does not have the necessary competency” (my emphasis).But which qualities should legal interpreters have in order to interpret effectively? How does interpreted-mediated interaction work? Do utterances and the participants’ contextual assumptions influence each other in the construction of meaning? If so, how? Section 1 of this paper provides an overall critical review of literature on legal interpreters’ role perceptions and expectations. Section 2 focuses on legal interpreting publications drawn from pragmatics - in particular, (socio)-pragmatics and relevance theory - referring to the need for interpreters to achieve ‘pragmatic equivalence’ between the original and the interpreted utterance. In Section 3, I address the question of whether A cognitive relevance-theoretic framework can be reconciled with social, interactionist notions. In particular, Section 3 explores the tension resulting from the juxtaposition of cognitive-psychological relevance-theoretic and descriptive-social approaches to communication. By examining my data at both macro- and micro-level I show that it is indeed possible to bring together the two frameworks in a theoretically adequate description of (legal) interpreting. Finally, I provide concluding remarks and pave the way for further analysis.