Immigration Court interpreters interpret for people who come before the immigration courts who cannot communicate effectively in English. Interpreters also work in out-of-court settings such as attorney-client meetings, depositions, witness preparation sessions, and interviews with court support personnel (e.g., probation).
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Immigration Court interpreters must have superior, unquestionable command of the two languages and must be able to manipulate registers from the most formal varieties to the most casual forms, including slang. The interpreter’s vocabulary must be of considerable depth and breadth to support the wide variety of subjects that typically arise in the judicial process. At the same time, the interpreter must have the ability to orchestrate all of these linguistic tasks while interpreting in the simultaneous and consecutive interpretation modes for persons speaking at rates of 200 words or more per minute.
The goal of an immigration court interpreter is to enable judges to react in the same manner to a non-English-speaking witness as they do with one who speaks English. Also, the legal equivalence provided by the immigration court interpreter is the record. It serves as the basis for any potential appeal.
For the immigration court interpreter, protecting the record is accomplished through disciplined and rigorous attention to transferring the conceptual message and style from the Source Language (English or Other Language) to the Target Language (Other Language or English).
Through the interpreter, the judge is given the opportunity to make judgments about the general socioeconomic, educational, and cultural background of the witness on the basis of the speaker’s linguistic style and choice of words. The latter point is especially important in terms of its legal implications.
Since 2009, our training seminars, which are held throughout the United States, have helped immigration court interpreters of all languages to start their professional journey in the following areas:
