Abstract
The legal discourse analysis team of the community interpreting SIG of JAIS conducted a
mock trial on September 22, 2007 at the JAIS Annual Convention. The scenario included
abundant slang and foul expressions spoken by the victim’s group in an injury case. The
post-trial analysis revealed that interpreters’ intervention gave a grave impact on impression
of mock lay judges. There were not only omissions and editing (semantic errors), but also
interpreters’ own interjections; i.e. fillers showing their own hedging and hesitation
(pragmatic errors) in interpreters’ renditions. Both semantic and pragmatic equivalences
were not maintained in the interpreted version. As a result of this, mock judges had an impression favouring the victim. Interpreters functioned as a cushion, absorbing impacts of vulgar expressions of the original speech that otherwise might have been placed upon the mock judges directly. Concerning the interpreting skills of these interpreters, one of them has some actual interpreting experiences, having completed a conference interpreting course at a professional training school, and the other has received an interpreting training both at undergraduate and graduate levels. I cannot, therefore, necessarily conclude that the errors were caused by their insufficient interpreting skills. Then, what are the factors affecting interpreters’ performances? In answering to this question, a socio-pragma-linguistic model of politeness theory is referred.
