3 October 2014 by Eduardo Reyes
Translation on
trial
The
professionalism of the Nuremberg translators highlights shortcomings in today’s
interpreting standards.
The
Nuremberg trials that followed the second world war have cast a long shadow.
For jurists and lawyers, journalists and, of course, translators the trials set
or established an incredible range of standards.
No
surprise then that for an event featuring Siegfried Ramler – one of those
providing the groundbreaking four-way simultaneous translation at the trials –
every seat was taken.
Organised
by the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC), what came
across from Ramler’s account, and speeches from lawyers and translators still
working in international criminal trials, was the total co-dependence of translators,
lawyers and the court.
The
translation itself becomes evidence – a status that at modern tribunals is
fully recognised. Working in demanding conditions, beyond recommended modern
time limits, the translations and resulting transcript were, as Ramler put it,
‘not polished – but strong enough, because this was a trial with a death
sentence’.
There
was no ‘code’ for translators as AIIC now has, but the fundamental standards
were the same – with independence and accuracy at their heart. Asked repeatedly
by barrister Philippe Sands QC about the place personal feelings played in a
translator’s performance, Ramler presented a solid wall of professionalism.
A
teenage witness of the Anschluss and Kristallnacht, saved by the
Kindertransport, Ramler was ‘preoccupied with doing a good job’ – and looking
back clearly more interested in the challenges of the four-way simultaneous
translation than the drama of the consecutive translation he provided for the
pre-trial interrogation of Hans Frank (‘Butcher of Poland’).
Without
that sort of commitment, these would have been different trials with poorer
credibility. I came away with the clear sense that a lapse in translator
professionalism would have mattered as much as Justice Jackson’s botched
cross-examination of Goering.
Huge
respect to translators, then – an intimidatingly proficient group of
professionals.
And
so, interestingly, to the present day and the UK. AIIC campaigns for the safety
and welfare of translators, as well as accrediting their standards and
promoting codes relating to translators’ professionalism and treatment.
The
plight of court translators here has caught the attention of AIIC, and
president Linda Fitchett used her own speech to criticise the dramatic cuts to
interpreters’ fees for UK court work and the disruptive award of the courts
interpreter contract to Capita.
Keeping
in mind the point that a translation is itself evidence, this would seem to say
something disturbing about the tangible damage done to the rule of law by the
way services were outsourced.
Viewed
through the prism of the Nuremberg trials, it’s a serious point.
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