A scandalous presence in the courtroom: Indigenous immigrant interpreters and the politics of language ideologies in US courts

Abstract This article analyzes how the experiences and observations of Indigenous people from Latin America who work as legal interpreters reveal the ways that the position of court interpreter is racialized. The meaning of the norms of the “invisibility” and “neutrality” of the interpreter and the role of the interpreter as erasing barriers become points of contestation in the context of interpreting Indigenous languages of Latin America, revealing the ways that dominant norms and practices governing interpreting privilege a white speaker. Organizations of Indigenous interpreters articulate these experiences as a language rights issue of a transnational movement and point to the way that institutional claims to neutrality are symptomatic of a larger historical pattern of racism.