Interpreting inexplicit language during courtroom examination

Court interpreters are required to provide accurate renditions of witnesses’ utterances during courtroom examinations, but the accuracy of interpreting may be compromised for a number of reasons, among which is the effect on interpretation of the limited contextual information available to court inter-preters. Based on the analysis of the discourse of Korean–English interpreting in Australian courtrooms, this article examines how inexplicit language used by Korean-speaking witnesses affects the accuracy of court interpreting. Such use of inexplicit language is a consequence of differences between the lexico-grammatical system of the witnesses ’ language (Korean) and that of the court (English), as well as being due to the witnesses ’ lack of familiarity with the courtroom discourse. This study demonstrates that the way the court inter-preters cope with inexplicit language may result in inaccurate rendition of the evidence, and thus have legal implications for court proceedings