Translation Quality Assessment in Court Interpreting

The current study investigates the quality assessment of interpreting in courtrooms. This study aims at examining the accuracy of interpreting in courts. The data of the study comprise a trail Arabic girl named Tahani in the Providence court in Rhode Island state. To assess the interpreting quality, the model of Pöchhacker & Shlesinger (2008) of interpreting quality assessment is adopted. The study presents an overview of interpreting by comparing it with the activity of translating. Then, it examines the concept of court interpreting and the types of interpreting used in courts. The study also explores the parameters or criteria usually used to assess the quality of interpreting. The analysis of the selected data reveals that the interpreter violates these criteria in some cases. It shows the frequencies and the percentages of the violated criteria and presents the overall findings and conclusions.