#Interpreter Diary 21/22 July
I probably shouldnât be writing right now, because Iâve been at work since 22.30 yesterday and itâs now FIVE THIRTY AM IN THE MORNING, LIKE, THE NEXT DAY, but fuck it. Iâm done making sense anyway. Tried shorter sentences, didnât work - Iâm done.
So tonight I had a job at the police station, to interpret for a suspect during âprocessingâ (when they get the personâs details and ask medical questions, ostensibly so they can take care of them while in custody but actually to cover their own asses in case something bad happens), formal detention/arrest procedures (two different things in the UK, ENGLISH LANGUAGE I <3 U) and interview. It took a while til we were done, although not the longest job Iâve ever had for the police (14 hours, holla) still rather on the long side. Most are up to 2-3 hours, although some may feel longer because thereâs more talking - this one was lots of sitting and waiting around. Mostly because the suspect had an intellectual disability. Suspect also had documents to show various stays in hospital and diagnoses, including a word for learning disability that I honestly thought was a slur and not a medical diagnosis anymore. I had to Google it. Apparently itâs a legit word that can appear on formal documents and shit. Anyway.Â
It wasnât the most difficult job Iâve ever had, to be honest, I was expecting much worse - Iâd say it was about 5 or 6 on a scale of 1-to-10? - but there are a couple of things that stand out. One of them was that even though to me it was obvious almost from the get go that there was something up with Suspect (the way they were speaking, mostly, the quality of certain consonants which reminded me of childrenâs speech or drunk/sleepy speech, and some vocabulary items, like obviously memorized medical terms alongside very colloquial idioms like âwrong in the headâ) but it took me forEVER to realise this was not visible to the officers in the slightest. I still wonder how they would have behaved towards the suspect had they been able to hear what I was hearing.Â
(And so Iâve identified a huge limitation in interpreting: that no matter how good the interpreter is I donât think they can be so good as to reliably relay the image of a disabled person (!). A point is always made about how a good interpreter also has to âtranslateâ paralinguistics features (intonation, repetition, hesitation etc.) because otherwise it changes the way the speaker appears &the impression they make on the audience, and I think thatâs a very worthy standard for a very good reason. HOWEVER, I donât think this particular impasse can be got over. How can you make the disabled person that youâre interpreting for sound disabled (eugh, as an able bodied person just writing this makes me feel like a total dick) in the target language? You just canât.)Â
Anyway. However much this might or might not have been a factor, the officers uhmâed and ahâed for ages before deciding to (1) have the suspect examined by the psychiatric nurse before interview (youâd think that after hearing a suspect say they have this and that illness this wouldnât have even been a question, but okay: I have to remember that they didnât hear what I was hearing and to them it might have looked far more likely like the suspect was faking it) and (2) have an Appropriate Adult (pdf) called to sit in during the interview. One of the officers told me at some point that *I* could be considered an appropriate adult! Like, what, no dude, I canât be considered one any more that you, or the nurse, or the cleaner can! Ugh I canât believe I didnât just glare at them when they suggested this and actually considered it for a while (and felt guilty thinking that by saying no I was prolonging the whole thing (comes with the territory I guess when your job is seen as the worldâs most unnecessary inconvenience and you get paid by the hour)).
Another thing that happens before the interview is the suspect has a chance to talk to a lawyer, whose job is to get the suspect to respect their right to silence (which in Scotland cannot be used to infer guilt) and not answer any interview questions. I donât know how this conversation usually goes when they both speak the same language but in my experience, when the interpreter is there, itâs anything but straightforward. I suspect some lack of shared knowledge about, well, life, (b/c cultural differences maybe?) and OH DID I MENTION all of this happens on the phone? As in, me and Suspect are in a room and the lawyerâs on the phone (to me, but actually to the suspect, who canât see or hear them, who already thinks itâs me the interpreter theyâre talking to) and the lawyerâs tryna take them through this whole imaginary future process,with quotations and reported speech and roleplaying, and the whole fucking meta of it is just too much for anything to make sense. Just a guess. Anyway.Â
With THIS suspect it took a pretty long time before the solicitor was convinced her client had understood her advice on how to properly aver themself of the right to silence. And props to her, she did a great job of being straightforward but clear and having a pretty good insight into how what she was saying could sound like to a person who doesnât have a clue (and adding necessary info that to you or me could just be implied, no need to be stated). At the end of the whoooole thing, after the interview, after the suspect was arrested and charged, we were again filling in some paperwork and the subject of talking to the suspectâs solicitor comes up. The officers are talking to one another and Iâm not really paying very much attention at this point, when I hear one of them say something about âa veeeeery long phone-call [between suspect and solicitor]â.Â
This was after yet another job where officers demonstrated very little, if at all, knowledge of what the process is supposed to work with an interpreter. MOTHERFUCKER of COURSE it took a long time - in fact it probably took TWICE AS LONG as it usually does! Because Everything Has To Be Said Twice! Sometimes More Than Twice because we have to repeat ourselves because we are in separate rooms with a glass panel without a working microphone and one of us - but not the one whoâs really talking - is on the phone and invisible, while the one who IS visible is trying very hard to be INvisible because thatâs what the rules tell her to do! AND YOUR SUSPECTâS GOT A LEARNING DISABILITY. So none of your snarky chat. Ugh. Wish Iâd said something.
Anyway, thatâs it! And I should really just blog about these damn things when they happen. It would save me so much unproductive rage (and my friendsâ ears from bleeding).Â
