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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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062689
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06268900.060
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1990-09-22
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LETTERS, Page 8Speechless Courts
Thank you for your article pointing out the shortage of court
interpreters (LAW, May 29), a problem that is faced on a daily
basis by Michigan's hearing-impaired citizens. Although state law
requires Michigan courts to provide qualified sign-language
interpreters, in my experience the majority of our courts still
appear to believe all deaf people can not only read lips but also
understand legalese when it is written. Never mind that most
English-speaking and -hearing people generally lack the ability to
do so.
Gail Partridge, Coordinator
Interpreter Services, Division on Deafness
Lansing, Mich.
I am a native Spanish speaker who has performed court
translations as a parole and probation officer in Fort Lauderdale,
so I felt reasonably certain that I would not have a problem with
the interpreters' exam given last March. I passed the English part
of the written test with a good mark but failed the native-language
section, which used Spanish akin to the English that William F.
Buckley Jr. uses: beautiful but rarely encountered in the speech
of people accused of crimes.
Joseph Chad
Little Rock
In training interpreters, I teach that the most important
background needed, after the language, is knowledge of the foreign
culture. Furthermore, interpreting is not a mechanical process
based on a one-to-one approach to meaning. In a court case in which
I was serving as the German interpreter, the prosecuting attorney,
in an attempt to throw off the defendant's time frame, asked, "Did
you enter the building that night?" I informed the attorney that
since there are two words for night in German (Abend, from dusk to
about midnight; and Nacht, from midnight to about sunrise), I had
to know which one he wished me to translate. Miffed, the attorney
glared at me and withdrew his question.
J. Richard Guthrie Jr.
Christopher Newport College
Newport News, Va.