Witness or Interpreter?: Converting a Litigant Into a Court Interpreter in a Self-Interpreted Testimony Presentation

Akungah O'Nyangeri, John Habwe, Zaja Omboga

Source Title: International Journal of Translation, Interpretation, and Applied Linguistics (IJTIAL)4(1)

ISSN: 2575-6974|EISSN: 2575-6982|EISBN13: 9781683183198|DOI: 10.4018/IJTIAL.314790

MLA

O'Nyangeri, Akungah, et al. "Witness or Interpreter?: Converting a Litigant Into a Court Interpreter in a Self-Interpreted Testimony Presentation." IJTIAL vol.4, no.1 2022: pp.1-20. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJTIAL.314790

APA

O'Nyangeri, A., Habwe, J., & Omboga, Z. (2022). Witness or Interpreter?: Converting a Litigant Into a Court Interpreter in a Self-Interpreted Testimony Presentation. International Journal of Translation, Interpretation, and Applied Linguistics (IJTIAL), 4(1), 1-20. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJTIAL.314790

Chicago

O'Nyangeri, Akungah, John Habwe, and Zaja Omboga. "Witness or Interpreter?: Converting a Litigant Into a Court Interpreter in a Self-Interpreted Testimony Presentation," International Journal of Translation, Interpretation, and Applied Linguistics (IJTIAL) 4, no.1: 1-20. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJTIAL.314790

Export Reference

Favorite Full-Issue Download

View Full Text HTML

View Full Text PDF

Abstract

This study demonstrates that self-interpretation does indeed occur in Kenyan courtroom proceedings, a situation that necessitates the use of a language other than the regular and official languages of Kenyan courts. Such language use rendered mostly in terms of self-interpretation has far-reaching ramifications on the content, facts, style, and meaning predispositions of a witness's testimony. Most studies in courtroom communicative interactions, language, and speech manifestations, have been largely and dominantly sociolinguistic in approach and there is so much that has been asserted in that dimension. However, this study's point of departure is that it seeks to adopt a Translation Studies approach to analyze self-interpreted presentations made by four witnesses in selected criminal cases at Kisii Law Courts in Kenya. Their self-interpreted testimonies which constitute the data used in this discussion were collected between October 2020 and June 2021. The testimonies rendered constituted: one murder case in the high court, one rape case, and two assault cases in the magistrate court. The overarching aim of this study is an attempt to show that, bilingual litigants, who have habitually and for a long time been regarded as persons of limited language competence, can in practical renditions be astute self-interpreting persons in testimony presentation. However, the confrontational experience they undergo throughout has adversarial effects on the facts of the case and the eventual outcomes of such cases, the disadvantages of their competence in L2 (the official language of the court) notwithstanding. Consequently, a translation studies approach, as applied in this paper, offers a framework of reference through which it is possible to analyze the encumbrances of comprehending legal procedures, terminology, and propriety which litigants undergo to accentuate meaning shifts, stem contextual meaning deviations besides the overall factual misrepresentations which emerge during and as a result of self-interpreted renditions as constrained by the contextual imperatives of traditional courtroom language.