ABSTRACT

Legal and court interpreters require advanced professional skills to perform their demanding tasks. How well does Australia prepare interpreters to fulfil the linguistic needs of its numerous communities, including ‘established’ migrant, indigenous, ‘new and emerging’ and deaf, in a variety of legal settings? Based on the online data and interviews with educators, this study provides an overview of formal legal interpreter training offered by two types of educational institutions, academic and vocational. The survey of the existing courses, curricula, aims and outcomes, content and settings, teaching methods and assessment, identifies the characteristics of these two approaches, considers advantages and disadvantages of each system, and questions their effectiveness for preparing competent graduates for legal settings. Relying on the educators’ opinions, we consider what roadblocks Australian educational institutions encounter in meeting the requirements of the legal system and satisfying the needs of communities where qualified legal interpreters are particularly lacking.

摘要

法律和法庭口译人员需要高级专业技能才能完成其艰巨的任务。澳大利亚在各种法律环境中如何做好口译员的准备，以满足其众多社区的语言需求，包括“既定”移民，土著，“新兴”和聋哑人？根据在线数据和对教育工作者的访谈，本研究概述了由学术和职业两种教育机构提供的正规法律口译员培训。对现有课程，课程，目标和结果，内容和设置，教学方法和评估的调查，确定了这两种方法的特征，考虑了每种系统的优缺点，并质疑了它们为合格的毕业生准备法律设置的有效性。