ABSTRACT
Translating interrogations is considered a challenging task, because the translator is not only attempting to produce a translated text that bridges the gap between two languages (Alwanza, 2016), but he/she also needs to be aware of the different social and political layers that the record went through that have led to it be in the current format. Exploring interpretation in interrogations has been widely researched in the past few decades (Taibi & Martin, 2012); however, researchers in these studies have mainly focused on the presence of interpreters with suspects and witnesses in the interrogation room or the courtroom. They have tackled issues such as suspects’ rights and their understanding of their caution or Miranda rights (Hale & Gibbons, 1999; Nakane, 2007). This chapter, however, focuses on the challenges of translating the actual interrogation record in Egypt which are three-tiered. The first challenge is the translation of a legal text which researchers have agreed is not a straightforward task and could even be seen as deceptively simple (Ainsworth, 2014). According to El Farahaty (2015, 2016), a translator faces many problems that are linguistic-based, culture-specific and system-based. The second challenge is that we are dealing with a written record which is made by a clerk who takes verbatim notes of whatever goes on in the interrogation. Therefore, translators need to be aware of how transcripts and records play an important role in the legal system. He/she also has to think of what was included in the record and what might have been left out? Why? What is the context? What transformations did the record go through? The third and final challenge is that of semantic and lexical problems in the Arabic text such as register shift, punctuation and the use of archaic words. The chapter will discuss these three different challenges and then will discuss the strategies that can be used to overcome such challenges of translation.
