NINETY SECONDS OF HEDGING, AN AMBIGUOUS PRONOUN, AND A QUESTION AIMED AT YOU
Phase Two consecutive interpretation. At sentencing, the victim's mother testifies in Spanish for about ninety seconds without pausing. She hedges constantly - creo, me parece, quizás - and refers to él without a clear antecedent; in the preceding minute she has mentioned both her son and the defendant. She says: "Me quedó debiendo el dinero del pasaje." Then she turns to you directly and says: "Dígale al juez que él nunca pidió perdón, ¿verdad?" Defense counsel objects to the question's form. The judge overrules and says: "The interpreter will continue." Your notes are two columns and about twelve symbols, and the court reporter is waiting for a clean English record.
1. How do you handle "Dígale al juez que…, ¿verdad?"
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Interpret it as speech addressed to the judge, and do not answer it.
- Render the message, not the instruction to you. She is using you as a conduit; that is normal and not a violation of anything. What goes on the record is her statement in the first person: "Tell the judge that he never apologized." The dígale is not something to be paraphrased away, and not something to be obeyed as a separate act.
- The tag is the trap. "¿verdad?" seeks your agreement. You may not nod, may not say "yes," may not soften it. Zero response is the correct response. If she presses, tell her in Spanish, briefly and neutrally, what your role is: "Yo le transmito sus palabras al juez; no puedo responder por él."
- Do not editorialize after the fact - no "she is asking whether…" gloss that converts her testimony into your summary.
- Note the objection. The form objection was to the tag; the judge overruled and directed you to continue, so continue, but keep the record clean by rendering her words exactly as spoken rather than repairing the question into a well-formed one. Repairing testimony is the interpreter's most seductive error and the one most likely to draw a mistrial motion.
2. The pronoun él is ambiguous between her son and the defendant. What do you do?
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Preserve the ambiguity. Do not resolve it, and above all do not substitute a name.
- Render "he" and let the record carry the same indeterminacy the Spanish carried. If English genuinely cannot bear the ambiguity in that clause, render literally and accept slight awkwardness: awkwardness is a stylistic cost, while a substituted name is a factual error that counsel will build an argument on.
- Asking for clarification is permitted - asking for facts is not. Between segments, you may ask the speaker what a pronoun refers to, because that is a question about the source, not about the case. What you may not do is ask her who did it, or invite her to pick the answer that suits a theory.
- When you do ask, ask narrowly and in the record's hearing: "¿A quién se refiere con 'él'?" - and interpret her answer.
- The reason this matters: in a sentencing narrative, the antecedent determines whose conduct the court is weighing. An interpreter who guesses has effectively testified. If you never resolve it, counsel will - which is exactly where the decision belongs.
3. Render "Me quedó debiendo el dinero del pasaje" and defend the register you choose, plus the general rule for her hedging.
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A defensible rendering: "He still owes me the money for the bus ticket."
- Quedar debiendo = to remain owing, to have not paid back. Not "he remained owing me," which is a calque; not "he borrowed," which drops the nonpayment.
- Pasaje here is bus fare or a bus ticket - a concrete, purchasable item. Render the concrete thing; in a restitution or loss discussion, "the money for the trip" is vaguer than the source.
- Register: "he stiffed me for the bus fare" is too colloquial for a sentencing record; "he was indebted to me in the amount of the passage" is inflated and foreignizing. "He still owes me" sits where the source sits: plain, spoken, ordinary.
On the hedging - this is the part interpreters most often "improve" and should not:
- Keep creo, me parece, quizás as "I think," "it seems to me," "maybe." Her certainty is part of the evidence; a cleaned-up narrative with the hedges removed makes her sound more confident than she was, and defense counsel is entitled to the hesitation she actually showed.
- Do not carry hedges across clause boundaries. Attach each one to the proposition she attached it to; a creo migrated three clauses downstream changes which fact is uncertain.
- Two columns and twelve symbols is thin for ninety seconds. At the pause, deliver in complete English from your symbols, not from memory of her tone - and if a symbol no longer resolves, say so at the break rather than filling the gap with plausible narrative.