Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Professional Conduct for Court Interpreters—An Approach to the Principle of Fidelity
Court interpreting is an essential tool for litigants who do not understand the language of the courtroom to access to justice at trial.The code of ethics for court interpreters is a guarantee of the quality of the profession.This article introduces the pro-visions on fidelity in the codes of ethics for court interpreters and guidelines for professional conduct for interpreters in different na-tional contexts(the United States,the United Kingdom,Australia,Spain and Canada),and analyzes the meaning and specific require-ments of fidelity from the perspective of the interpreter's role.The paper explores the contradiction between the fidelity required by the codes of ethics and the complexity of professional practice,reveals the professional dilemma faced by court interpreters,and pro-poses specific recommendations for interpreters to safeguard fidelity:court interpreters are required to retain all the morphemes of the information in the source language and to understand the terminology and the proceedings;the code of ethics does not recommend that interpreters translate mechanically,so faithful translation should not be confused with verbatim translation;interpreters can flexi-bly implement the fidelity principle according to their professional experience.
Court interpretingInterpretersCode of ethicsFidelityProfessional dilemmaRole of interpreter
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