Vol. VII, No. 1 - Winter 1998

Hold the Phone

elephone interpreting has been a hot topic of late in the world of court interpreting. It is viewed with skepticism, if not outright hostility, by many interpreters who fear that it compromises the quality of the interpreting, while some administrators regard it as an effective cost-saving measure and/or a necessary evil.

As president of NAJIT and a member of the federal Court Interpreters Advisory Subgroup—a body that advises the Clerks Advisory Group, which advises the Judicial Conference—I felt duty-bound to learn more about the federal telephone interpreting project, see it in operation, and try it for myself so I could develop an informed opinion. In November 1997 I traveled to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to observe the U.S. Court Telephone Interpreting Project in action. The project is the brainchild of Chandler Thompson, Spanish interpreter at the district court in Las Cruces, where he has been on staff since 1989. Sharing the experience with me were Irene Tomassini, the chief interpreter, and Margarita Lloyd-Godsk, one of several staff interpreters, for the Southern District of Florida. They were interested in learning about the system in order to set up one of their own for short proceedings in their satellite courts in Fort Pierce and West Palm Beach.

I went to Las Cruces trying my best to keep an open mind. Hitherto my experience had been with the crudest forms of telephone interpreting, and I thoroughly disliked it. I had done a probation interview where I sat with the PO and his mediocre speaker phone as we interviewed an inmate. I had done impromptu interviews where an attorney collars me and says, “I need to talk to my client’s sister-in-law about his bail and she doesn’t speak English, here’s her telephone number,” and then stands over me while I talk to her on the telephone. I expected the federal telephone interpreting system to be far more sophisticated, and indeed it was.

On day one we started out with a briefing about the use of the equipment, followed by a demonstration. Thompson has been doing telephone interpreting since 1991, and last year his office covered over 500 proceedings in remote locations. The interpreter wears a headset with an attached microphone that leaves both hands free. The headset is plugged into a metallic gray box, about the size of a 40-quart cooler, with various dials and switches. There are two telephone connections established between Las Cruces and the remote courtroom, both of which feed into the interpreter’s headset. One line is for English, the other for Spanish. The interpreter hears the courtroom proceedings through the headset on the English line, and delivers the interpretation into the microphone over the Spanish line, which the defendant hears through a regular telephone handset (or with his own hands-free unit, if he is so equipped). When asked a question by the Court, the defendant answers in Spanish into his telephone. The interpreter’s box has a toggle switch with which to flip the interpreter’s output back and forth between the two telephone lines. When interpreting into English for the court, the interpreter flips the switch to the appropriate line so as to broadcast the interpretation over a conference speakerphone in the remote courtroom. In this instance, the speakerphone is a high quality unit manufactured by Polycomm that costs around $2,000. The equipment also features a device called a side-tone suppressor, which prevents the interpreter’s voice from interfering by coming back at him through the headset.

Test Driving the System

Lloyd-Godsk interpreted an attorney-client conference in which attorney and client were in an office and in jail, respectively, both in Alaska. The audio quality for all concerned was entirely satisfactory. With the side-tone suppressor and toggle switch it was a straightforward matter to do a simultaneous rendition, which is difficult in an ordinary conference call where all the voices interfere. I was favorably impressed. On the other hand, in this telephonic configuration all the participants are in different places, as opposed to the typical remote courtroom scenario where only the interpreter is someplace else.

On the morning of day two, my heart beating like a drum, I interpreted an initial appearance, and had trouble hearing because of too much white noise. I handed the headset to Chandler and let him finish the proceeding. He later told me you can usually find a sweet spot where various dials are set to just the right levels and the sound is good. Though one may well get used to dealing with monitoring the equipment, the remote interpreter has another task to think about besides interpreting.

The following day, I again interpreted a first appearance for a defendant in Omaha. Unable to see, I felt apprehensive and insecure. I had a little trouble hearing and was not sufficiently proficient with the controls to adjust them on the fly. At one point the government attorney’s voice faded almost to niente so I flipped the switch to the English line and announced to the court that the interpreter was unable to hear. The judge reminded the attorney to stay close to the microphone.

I speculate that with this system perhaps I stumbled a bit more than I would have if I had been in the courtroom live. Then again, my apprehension may have been heightened by having three interpreters there in the room listening to my every word, although it didn’t seem to bother them when the roles were reversed.

As a result of my experience in New Mexico, I come to several conclusions. One is that if this system is going to be used, interpreters should first undergo systematic training involving simulated proceedings so that real defendants are not used as guinea pigs. Interpreters need to get used to the equipment until the controls become second nature; otherwise, the technical details can get too distracting and interfere with interpreting. Second, advance preparation is especially important when interpreting for unfamiliar people and places. Thompson says he habitually requests that relevant documents be faxed to him and generally finds that court personnel are accomodating.

Third, I tentatively conclude that this particular form of telephone interpreting—with optimal equipment and capable, cooperative people all around—can work adequately for short, simple hearings, especially ones that are largely administrative and predictable, and most or all of the interpreting is simultaneous out of English. After our discussions and observations, I think it is hard to argue against using this system under certain circumstances. Consider the case of Alaska. The Court Interpreters Act leaves it to the discretion of the presiding judicial officer to decide what “reasonably available” is. If there is no federally certified Spanish interpreter in Alaska, and an Alaskan judge is not going to approve the cost of flying one in from British Columbia for a 12-minute status conference, then the alternatives are either a certified interpreter via the telephone system or a local interpreter of unknown and/or untested ability.

Important questions persist. Does the fact that a good remote interpreter is better than no interpreter or a poor interpreter make this system justifiable? Are there situations where only live interpreters should be used? Why or why not? Where, if at all, should one draw the line?

Need to See?

Nonverbal cues are all the more important when subjective judgements are being made and the delicate process of interlingual transfer of meaning is in play.

Some interpreters are disturbed by the inability to see the speaker, and find alarming the notion of interpreting, for example, trial witness testimony over the telephone. Nonverbal cues are an enormously important component of human communication under any circumstances, but all the more so where subjective judgements of such things as credibility are being made, and the delicate process of interlingual transfer of meaning is in play, with all its complexities, ambiguities and nuances. The countless subtleties of facial expression and body language have an effect on our (live) interpretation, whether or not we are conscious of those effects.

All this is lost over the telephone, raising the question of what impact that loss might have. Obvious though the fact of this loss may seem, there is not much published research on interpreting, less on court interpreting, and probably zero on telephone interepreting. So the debate remains speculative on both sides insofar as no one can say, “studies have shown conclusively that...” To do their best to understand and be understood, interpreters need all the sensory input they can get; they need to see the people for whom they are interpreting.

Or do they? “I can’t recall a time where I really felt that the interpreting was going south because I couldn’t see,” says Thompson. “Once you get into it, you become more aware of the fact that other people have got eyes and they’re there. You become better at listening. You learn to focus in on it.” When he first started telephone interpreting he used to peer uselessly out his office window at the horizon in the direction where the proceeding was happening a thousand miles away. But, Thompson says, you get used to it and you adapt. Some interpreters say that interpreting “blind” not only forces but also frees the interpreter to focus attention on speech alone. Live interpreters do rely heavily on visual cues to facilitate witness interpreting, the classic example being signalling a witness to pause in order to let the interpreter translate before recall capacity is exceeded. But according to Thompson, such cues can be equally or more effectively given verbally via the telephone.

When it comes to actual trials, Thompson does recognize the usefulness of having one interpreter on site while a second interpreter is on the telephone. The live interpreter can read notes or documents and has the mobility and flexibility to move around, and assist with quick attorney-client exchanges wherever needed, regardless of the availability of telephone lines. Thompson believes this one-live, one-remote interpreter arrangement is a workable, money-saving system.

Indeed, I had an opportunity to try it with a trial being held in Alaska, where Yolanda Salazar (a NAJIT member) had traveled from British Columbia. During the course of the proceedings the defense attorney decided, for reasons that were never made clear, that he didn’t want telephone interpreting, and the sole live interpreter was left to fend for herself. But before that happened, I had a chance to try simultaneously interpreting over the telephone the testimony of an agent through whom various government exhibits were being introduced—pager, cell telephone, photograph, driver’s license. The sound quality was fairly good, although I could not raise the volume of the input channel without also raising white noise to levels that were excessive.

Even if one agrees in principle that a remote interpreter is acceptable for trials so long as there is another interpreter on site, there are technical problems, not the least of which is the difficulty of comunication between the interpreters over the same line on which the remote interpreter is working. As I was interpreting I heard what I presumed to be the voice of the other interpreter trying to tell me something helpful. Coming over the same channel as the source that I was supposed to be interpreting, it was just a distraction. Earlier on, when Thompson was trying to get the on-site interpreter’s attention to suggest that they switch off, he could not because she had evidently removed her earpiece. Even the simple matter of timing a change of interpreters to coincide with a momentary break in the action can be problematic over the telephone, since the remote interpreter cannot see.

Competing Objectives

The U.S. Court Telephone Interpreting Project represents great savings for the courts that use it. If courts see no reason to prefer a live interpreter, then might they not do away with live interpreters altogether? Thompson, who has been accused by freelance interpreters of taking work away from them, says he has no interest in disturbing contract interpreters’ relations with the federal courts: “There are plenty of places where there’s nobody certified, so why waste resources on places where there are?” He sees the demand for certified interpreters in remote areas increasing faster than interpreters will move to those areas.

The Administrative Office contends that telephone interpreting will make capable interpreters available where interpreting would otherwise be done by lay people or interpreters of questionable competence, especially for languages in which good interpreters are rare. In Thompson’s view, high quality telephone interpreting should be expanded to extralegal realms such as the medical field so that the ultimate impact is a net improvement in the quality of interpreting generally, as the competent displace the incompetent.

There is merit to the argument that, for example, a good interpreter over the telephone for a domestic violence hearing is better than using the victim’s child—or alleged assailant—to interpret. On the other hand, according to ample anecdotal evidence, the worst-case scenario is one that takes place already, especially in those courts whose interpreting standards are relatively low: a poorly trained interpreter doing important proceedings over the telephone with inadequate equipment. Moreover, there is a disturbing tendency to frame the question as either/or, as though the third option of a live competent interpreter were beyond the boundaries of the possible. In some instances, surely this is so; on the other hand, the encroachment of telephone interpreting will make it harder to get competent interpreters on site if it is they who end up being displaced—or busy interpreting over the telephone themselves.

AIIC Standards

Pour mener à bien son rôle de vecteur de la communication multilingue, l’interprète de conférence doit réaliser simultanément plusieurs tâches complexes:

• écouter celui qui parle, observer les signaux non verbaux de son message, ainsi que les réactions qu’il suscite auprès des destinataires du message, et entre ces derniers;
• analyser un message éphémère et vivant dans sa globalité (le dit et le non-dit);
• interpréter le message dans une autre langue en respectant les caractéristiques de forme et de fond propres à une autre culture;
• établir avec son auditoire un contact visuel-gestuel pour confirmer la réception du message.

Dans ce contexte, la vue directe sur l’ensemble de l’évènement dans lequel s’inscrivent les messages à interpréter est essentielle.

While international conference interpretation and court interpretation are for different audiences, the basic processes of interpreting are substantially the same. Thus, it is noteworthy that AIIC and several other international organizations that have adopted this code regard the interpreter’s “direct view” of the participants as “essential.” Here they are referring only to conferences with some of the participants in remote locations. As for interpreters themselves working from an offsite location, the language is unequivocal:

[L]a tentation de détourner certaines technologies de leur but premier en imaginant, par exemple, de placer les interprètes devant des moniteurs/écrans pour interpréter à distance une réunion dont tous les participants se trouveraient réunis dans un même lieu (téléinterprétation), est inacceptable [emphasis in original].

Thus, according to AIIC standards, court telephone interpreting would be doubly unacceptable: first, because there is no visual contact; and second, because everyone is in the same place except the interpreter.

Tough Questions

It is important for court interpreters to discuss these issues so we can determine what our position is and ponder the question of what to do. As a group, we need to make ourselves heard as much as possible in the planning and implementation phases of various telephone interpreting initiatives. Equally important, we need to continue to educate and foster solidarity among interpreters to ensure that we have the ethical sense and integrity to make sound individual judgments as to the conditions under which we agree to work. Most interpreter codes of ethics include canons that require interpreters to bring to the court’s attention any circumstance that impedes their compliance with the oath of accuracy.

In years to come, the terms of the debate will change radically if, as technology experts predict, wireless networking, bandwidth and data compression and transmission speeds reach a point where we will be able to see and hear events happening practically anywhere. Until then, whether framed as an issue of conscience, convenience, competence or pure economics, the last word has not been said; court interpreters who want to do their job properly will be compelled to grapple with the technological, administrative, psychological and ethical aspects of telephone interpretation.