Event Details

Interpretation and translation are critical in criminal justice systems worldwide for non-native speakers. Focusing on England and Wales, this talk considers how flawed interpretations can impact police investigations, along with the challenges in accessing police data and communicating insights.

Interpretation and translation services are widely used and accounted for in criminal justice systems across the world, where individuals who don’t speak the language of the legal systems they live in are legally entitled to be provided with language assistance (Art 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights).

However, as the form that this language assistance takes on varies from country to country, my research focuses only on interpretation and translation practices in the criminal justice system of England and Wales, and, specifically, on police interpreting and machine translation in the police context.

As police interpreting remains still under-researched, and linguistic outputs deriving from non-optimal interpretation/translation practices in the police setting can have serious legal consequences for the investigative process and the individuals involved, this talk will focus on (1) the reasons why linguistic analysis of authentic police data – interpreter-assisted police interviews in this case – could result in enhanced police practices in regard to interviewing strategies and the use of interpretation/translation services; (2) my hypotheses regarding the viability of machine translation software in high-stakes scenarios; and (3) the challenges I have faced so far in regard to data access, communicating with police forces and conveying the main points of my research to them.

If bridging the gap between academia and external institutions/bodies is the goal, sometimes it can be very difficult to achieve!