Verbatim Interpretation
Definition
Reproducing the source utterance word for word or as close to it as the target language permits, preserving hedges, qualifications, and false starts. The standard courts usually claim to require.
- Contrast
- Sense-for-sense interpretation, which paraphrases meaning instead
- Preserves
- Hedges, qualifiers, false starts, and self-corrections
- Setting
- Police interviews and courtroom testimony
- Known limit
- Literal rendering can sound unnatural or ambiguous in the target language
Common questions
Why do courts favour verbatim interpretation over a smoothed rendering?+
A paraphrase can silently drop hedges or qualifiers that matter to how credible or certain a statement sounds, so courts treat close, word-level rendering as the safer default even though it is harder to produce.
What is a common practical failure of this standard?+
Interpreters under time pressure often unconsciously tidy disfluent speech into cleaner sentences, which can make a witness sound more confident or coherent than they actually were.
Related terms
- Consecutive Interpretation
- The interpreter waits for the speaker to complete a stretch of speech, then renders it into the target language. Common in witness...
- Hedge
- A lexical or grammatical signal of uncertainty, approximation, or qualification: 'I think', 'about', 'maybe', 'something like that'. Omitting hedges makes tentative statements...
- Lacuna
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- Register
- The variety of language associated with a particular situation, task, or relationship. Register varies along dimensions of formality, technicality, and interactional mode....
- Simultaneous Interpretation
- The interpreter renders speech in real time as it is produced, typically used in international tribunal settings. Cognitively demanding and more prone...