Make The Court Reporter's Day
Whether you are a freelance judiciary interpreter or a staff court interpreter,
you will find yourself working side by side with Court Reporters. Interpreters work
with the Court Reporter in the courtroom as well as in any sworn statement. Based
on our shared responsibility for the record, Reporters are often a source of evaluation
of our performance for Judges and lawyers. Court Reporting firms are frequently
relied upon to contract with freelance interpreters, and your reputation with them
can enhance or reduce your business. So, here's an additional support that can easily
add value to your service and make you stand out with Court Reporters.
Provide the Reporter with the spelling of foreign language names and places on a
Spellings Page. It's easy and quick to do and it means so much to the Reporter that
you will be remembered for this courtesy. I have been providing these pages for
over 18 years but I still hear about interpreters, who won't offer to provide spellings
for the Reporter. Often I am called by Reporters to help with spellings from another
interpreter's job.
A full understanding of the Reporter's job is important to appreciate the value
of this service. What an interpreter sees on the job is just the tip of the iceberg.
For every hour of actual reporting any statement under oath, the Reporter faces
at least another hour of editing before the transcript is ready to be delivered.
The Reporter is writing on a stenography machine in a language called "Steno"
which is basically a phonetic script of the syllables heard by the individual Reporter.
For example the word "attorney" in steno could be written as "toern",
interpreter could be "interp". Real time reporters are producing a near
complete transcript aided by a program installed in their laptop which is connected
to their stenography machine. Their laptop screens show the testimony already in
English because they input case specific terminology as part of the pre job preparation.
Unable to predict the pending testimony, they will afterwards need to add spellings.
Reporters often maintain a full dictionary for technical and scientific terms and
apply them to long running case depositions and statements. Even with the most contentious,
argumentative, English only deposition or courtroom proceeding, the transcript is
thoroughly and efficiently produced. Courtroom reporters will already have the specific
case names but any new evidence offered in testimony that contains foreign language
names will need correct spellings. The time required for hunting down foreign language
spellings can increase the workload for a Reporter.
Interpreters should also consider the accuracy of the record as part of their responsibility.
Veteran Reporter Rick Smith of Charlotte Smith Reporting in Houston, Texas points
out that "For both Reporters and interpreters the focus of our work is to be
verbatim and for us Reporters the entire transcript has to be verbatim. I sign a
certificate stating that what is contained in the transcript is transcribed to the
best of my ability. That includes correct spellings." Another reporter adds:
If anything, interpreters providing spellings make us look good by helping to provide
a complete and accurate transcript." Consider the potential transcript result
in a Spanish interpreted deposition when the reporter hears the following testimony.
The witness: Juanaset Ismael Covarrubios states his address as Pasaje Valle #1245,
Urbanización Antiguo Cuscatlán, San Salvador, El Salvador, stating
his wife's name: Aracely, his children are Toyoc, Beatriz, Cesar and Juanaset Jr.
The qualified interpreter is pronouncing these names of people and places in correctly
accented Spanish, but this sounds like gibberish to the monolingual reporter. The
transcript could look like this:
Q Please state your name for the record
A Jauntiest Israel CoverYour Bus
Q Please state your address
A Passage Value #1245, Urban Nation Ant Eater Cruise Atlanta, San Salvador, El Salvador.
Q Are you married?
A Yes
Q What is your wife's name?
A Ought to Sell It
Q And what are your children's names?
A Toyota, Beaters, Queasier and Jauntiest Jr.
The exactness of the record is required and regulated by the rules of civil procedure
thus protecting each individual 's civil rights. This example demonstrates how testimony
can be wrongly transcribed. In the discovery process the attorneys may want to rely
on contact information. It is doubtful any correspondence would make it addressed
to "Ought To Sell It Cover Your Bus" Passage Value #1245, Urban Nation
Ant Eater Cruise Atlanta, San Salvador, El Salvado. During the process of a witness
testifying, Reporters are accustomed to noting an unclear word but this interrupts
their concentration and flow. The Reporter is following along and taking down what
the interpreter is saying but since we are completely bilingual we will pronounce
the foreign language term in the source language pronunciation without skipping
a beat. This often throws the Reporter off for a second... unless they know in advance
that you will be providing them with the correct spellings.
Here's what you can do: Incorporate the correct foreign language spellings of certain
words into your note taking process. The Reporter will need both the accurate spelling
and the subject matter to enable finding it for insertion in the transcript. Most
of such terms will form part of the witness's response to certain questions. Since
most depositions follow a standard format of questioning, you can be prompted to
copy the spelling as soon as you hear the question. You can write the word down
adding an indication of the subject matter, for example "POB" for Place
of Birth. Starring it then will help you find it in your notes afterwards. It is
important though to not delay your interpreting flow while you are taking notes.
Some interpreters try to spell the words on the record, which can interrupt the
flow of questioning and the proceeding in general. It begins to sound like a Spelling
bee if too many words are spelled on the record. Practice beforehand will help you
with this double tasking process. It is reasonable for you to hurriedly write in
"chicken scratch", then a the end of the deposition, copy your list on
a fresh sheet of paper for the reporter to take. After a few years of fumbling around
with my legal pad to make a clean list, I started printing up special sheets for
this purpose. They have my name and contact information on them for further questions.
The two-column format has the left column titled Topic and to the right titled Spelling.
I even found lilac colored paper which is easier on the Reporters eyes.
Here is a suggested list of spellings the Reporter will need and the subject matter
in which they normally occur:
Spellings needed Question Topic
People's names and nicknames Personal history and family, co-workers and other witnesses
to incident.
Places (streets, towns, foreign company and agency names) Foreign residence and
employment. Be prompted by the Where? question.
Titles: individual, employment and degree. School and University names. Personal
history, education and profession.
Currency Employment or purchases made in foreign country.
Cultural events and traditions, dishes. Details about the incident. What action
was performed and why.
Even the most experienced interpreters can improve their service. Smith tells the
story of working with an interpreter whose interpreting skill impressed him but
who fell short in overall service. "I asked him when he first got there if
he wouldn't mind helping me out by spelling the words that have to be on the record
in Spanish and to just write them down for me before he left. Hours later, when
we finished, he was leaving and I asked for the spellings. He said, I thought you
were writing them down. It turns out he had not written any down. I had to explain
to him that I can only spell them out phonetically since I don't speak Spanish."
Taking the extra few moments to provide this service makes a difference to Reporters.
And you will be notably remembered.
By Diane E. Teichman. Copyright © 2004.
Published by lexicool.com, March 2004.
Diane E. Teichman, a Licensed Court Interpreter for the State of Texas and translator
has specialized in legal work since 1980. Diane, a member of ATA, NAJIT, HITA, FLATA
and AATIA was also the first administrator of the ID and the editor of the Interpreters
Voice. She is the Series Editor for the book series Professional Interpreting in
the Real World.