Legal Interpreting and Translanguaging: Contested Spaces in the Centre-Periphery Dynamic

Abstract

Community or public-service interpreting is often institutionally perceived by service providers as being based on an ideological framing of languages as monolingual bounded resources, and the interpreting act as a bridge between two centric and separate linguistic regimes (LB – LA). However, this monolingualism is an ideological construct rather than a linguistic reality, the product of an historic, one nation one language myth, that is increasingly challenged by post-modern, superdiverse societies and their consequent multilingual realities on the ground. In particular, in today’s world the superdiversity of people within nation states, with multiple linguistic resources, has given rise to the increasingly visible phenomenon of ‘translanguaging’, a creative, dynamic and fluid sourcing of diverse linguistic repertoires in synchronic discourse. What was once only considered to be at the periphery has begun to challenge monolingual hegemony and establish its own centrality in public and private speech. Translanguaging is ‘multilingualism from below’ (Pennycook & Otsuji 2015), coming as it almost inevitably always does from the peripheral end of the spectrum, typically in urban spaces where language practices are part and parcel of getting things done. But when this emerges in a legal context, in a court of law, how should legal interpreters respond? Drawing on preliminary research involving a cohort of court /legal interpreters in the UK[1], this article explores the problems this presents to monolingual bridging approaches and proposes potential future developments for the interpreting profession. A cohort of 6 professional public-service interpreters in the UK. The research drew on questionnaires and personal correspondence over a 6-month period.