L'interprete del tribunale (The court interpreter)
QCER B2288 parole
Rita has been interpreting in courts for nineteen years, and the question she is asked most often at parties is whether it is difficult to translate quickly. It is not, she says. Speed is the easy part; you can train speed. What is difficult is everything else.
An interpreter in a courtroom is not allowed to explain, to summarise or to improve. If a witness says something confused, the confusion has to survive the translation. If a witness is rude, the rudeness has to arrive. Rita once had to render, word for word, an insult aimed at the judge, in a room where everybody turned to look at her while she said it.
The hardest cases, she says, are not the violent ones. They are the ones where a word does not exist. She has been asked to translate legal terms into languages whose speakers have never lived under that legal system, and family relationships that the other language divides differently: a language may have two separate words where the court expects one, and the answer that a defendant gives will depend on which one the interpreter chooses.
In those moments she is supposed to stop everything and tell the court that there is a problem, which is exactly what nobody in a busy courtroom wants to hear at half past six in the evening. Judges are patient about this roughly as often as anyone else who is tired and running behind schedule, which is to say sometimes.
She has done it eleven times in nineteen years. She keeps the number because, as she puts it, those are the eleven occasions on which she was doing her job properly and everyone in the room wished she would stop.
Parole che forse non conosci
- courttribunale
- witnesstestimone
- to summariseriassumere
- rudenessmaleducazione
- to render (a phrase)rendere, tradurre
- defendantimputato, imputata
- properlycome si deve
Domande
Si risponde con il testo davanti. Non è memoria: è capire.
According to Rita, what is the easy part of her job?
Working fast — Speed is the easy part; you can train speed. Proprio quello che le chiedono alle feste è ciò che lei considera facile.
An interpreter may improve what a confused witness says.
False — Falso, e il testo è netto: non può spiegare, né riassumere, né migliorare. Se il testimone si confonde, la confusione deve sopravvivere alla traduzione.
Why does the writer mention the insult aimed at the judge?
To show that the rule applies even when obeying it is uncomfortable — Il dettaglio che lo dimostra è dove vanno gli sguardi: tutti si girano verso di LEI mentre lo dice. Rispettare la regola la mette nel posto scomodo.
What does Rita consider the hardest kind of case?
The ones where the other language has no equivalent word — Lo dice scartando ciò che ci aspetteremmo: NON sono quelli violenti. Sono quelli in cui una parola non esiste, o in cui l'altra lingua divide la parentela in modo diverso.
Why does it matter which word the interpreter chooses?
Because the defendant's answer changes with the word used — Il testo lo dice senza drammatizzare: se una lingua ha due parole dove il tribunale ne aspetta una, la risposta dell'imputato dipende da quale sceglie lei. La scelta non è di stile.
Why does Rita remember the number eleven?
Because they are the times she did her job properly and annoyed everyone — L'ultima frase unisce le due cose di proposito: farlo bene e che tutta l'aula volesse che tacesse. Undici volte in diciannove anni, e le tiene a mente per questo.