A intérprete do tribunal (The court interpreter)
QECR B2288 palavras
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.
Palavras que talvez não conheças
- courttribunal
- witnesstestemunha
- to summariseresumir
- rudenessgrosseria
- to render (a phrase)verter, traduzir
- defendantarguido, arguida
- properlycomo deve ser
Perguntas
Respondem-se com o texto à frente. Não é memória: é perceber.
According to Rita, what is the easy part of her job?
Working fast — Speed is the easy part; you can train speed. Justamente o que lhe perguntam nas festas é o que ela considera fácil.
An interpreter may improve what a confused witness says.
False — Falso, e o texto é taxativo: não pode explicar, nem resumir, nem melhorar. Se a testemunha se atrapalha, a confusão tem de sobreviver à tradução.
Why does the writer mention the insult aimed at the judge?
To show that the rule applies even when obeying it is uncomfortable — O pormenor que o demonstra é para onde vão os olhares: todos se viram para ELA enquanto o diz. Cumprir a regra deixa-a no lugar incómodo.
What does Rita consider the hardest kind of case?
The ones where the other language has no equivalent word — Di-lo afastando o que esperaríamos: NÃO são os violentos. São aqueles em que uma palavra não existe, ou em que a outra língua divide o parentesco de outra maneira.
Why does it matter which word the interpreter chooses?
Because the defendant's answer changes with the word used — O texto di-lo sem dramatizar: se uma língua tem duas palavras onde o tribunal espera uma, a resposta do arguido depende de qual ela escolher. A escolha não é de estilo.
Why does Rita remember the number eleven?
Because they are the times she did her job properly and annoyed everyone — A última frase junta as duas coisas de propósito: fazê-lo bem e que toda a sala quisesse que se calasse. Onze vezes em dezanove anos, e guarda-as por isso.