ITI Conference 2011

Archive for November, 2010

With Yvonne Fowler, Aston University, Birmingham UK

Using video conferencing technology to process bail applications directly from prison is now an everyday occurrence: and for defendants in the UK it is mandatory. Another initiative, the Virtual Court Pilot Project, will almost certainly mean that, in the very near future, most defendants will be “offered the opportunity” to “attend” a court hearing immediately after charge and be sentenced whilst still at the Police Station.

References to interpreters are completely absent from the promotional literature. One government document states that “a Virtual Court Hearing is just like any other first hearing that takes place at a magistrates’ court” and “the timeliness of the process and the resource savings offered by the technology improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system in working together to put on effective first hearings – without any loss of quality”.

So is it really true to say that video conferenced court hearings are just like any other or that there is no loss of quality? Those promoting the use of video conferencing technology in court have failed to take account of the fact that a large number of defendants coming before the courts have ways of communicating which differ from the norm, for example, sign language users and non-English speakers. Few, if any, researchers have looked at the differences between face-to-face interpreted court hearings and video conferenced ones.

Building upon a pilot study, and making use of Bhatia’s Move Structure to provide a micro-analysis of the linguistic styles of a typical prison video link hearing, I use a combination of audio recordings, ethnographic observation and interviews to show that this technology alters communication in ways which are not immediately apparent, even to the interpreter. There are also differences in procedure and other factors requiring adjustment by the interpreter and the court if non-English speaking defendants are not to be disadvantaged.

In the very near future, more and more court hearings (perhaps including trials) will be heard through video link. Interpreters must be equipped to cope with the demand that the technology places upon them. What is at stake is nothing less than justice for  limited-English speaking defendants.

This workshop is designed for aspiring and practising court interpreters. It will use anonymised transcripts of real hearings to demonstrate the differences between working with defendants face to face and remotely and will attempt to raise the awareness of participants of such issues as the role of the interpreter in the video link court, the need for assertiveness in setting out the parameters of the interpreter’s professional duty, the power relationships in the courtroom and how these affect the interpreter, and, last but not least, the interpreting techniques that are required for dealing with the new technology.