Full Description
Police interviews with suspects and witnesses provide some of the most significant evidence in criminal investigations. Frequently challenging, they require special training and skills. This interaction process is further complicated when the suspect or witness does not speak the same language as the interviewer. A professional reference that can be used in police training or in any venue where an interpreter is used, Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting: Context, Challenges, and Strategies provides solutions for the range of interview demands found in today's multilingual environments.
Topics include:
What interpreting is, the skills required, and the role of interpreters in any job context
Investigative interviewing in law enforcement
Concerns about interpreter intervention and its impact on interview outcomes
The value of word-based over meaning-based interpretation in police and legal contexts
Nonlinguistic factors that can have an impact on the interpreting process
The book explores the multi-faceted dynamics of conducting investigative interviews via interpreters and examines current investigative interviewing paradigms. It offers strategies to help interpreters and law enforcement officers and provides examples of interpreted interview excerpts to enable understanding. Although the subject matter and the examples in this book are largely limited to police interview settings, the underlying rationale applies to other professional areas that rely on interviews to collect information, including customs procedures, employer-employee interviews, and insurance claim investigations.
This book is part of the CRC Press Advances in Police Theory and Practice Series.
Contents
The Interpreting Profession. What Is Interpreting? The Interpreting Process. Skills Required for Interpreting. Modes of Interpreting. The Professional Role of Interpreters in Legal Settings. Investigative Interviewing. The Significance of Investigative Interviews. Main Features of Police Discourse. Two Major Police Interview Models. Overview of Interpreting Challenges and Interpreter Conduct Issues. Overview of Interpreter Intervention. The Role of Professional Interpreters. Conduct Issues of Professional Interpreters. Linguistic Transfer Issues in Police. Interpreting and Recommended Strategies. Style of Interpreting: Free versus Literal. The Law and Words. The Power of Words. Handling Interviewer's Rapport-Building Strategies. Misinterpreting Lexical Items/Collocations. Misinterpreting Grammatical Structures/Units. Personality and Linguistic Skills: Author Profiling. Managing Speech Styles of Speakers. Other Linguistic Related and Nonlinguistic Issues in Police. Interpreting and Recommended Strategies. Managing Turn-Taking. Managing Overlapping Turns in Police Interviews. Managing Deliberate Attempts to Undermine Communication. Dealing With Nonfluency and Paralinguistic Features. Maintaining "Hedges". Strengthening/Clarifying Answers. Hyperformality. Managing Multicomponent Questions and Answers: "Chunking" Issues. Managing Clarification. Conclusion. References. Index.
