ABSTRACT
Legal interpreting takes place in legal and judicial settings, including courts and tribunals, police interviews, asylum hearings and settings where lawyer-client interaction is conducted. In contrast to other types of community interpreting, however, legal interpreting is often subject to explicit interpreting norms that are codified in legislation or institutional guidelines. Legal interpreting occurs in multilingual contexts where individuals lack proficiency in the working languages of institutions of law and law enforcement. Scholars of legal interpreting have largely joined professional organizations in emphasizing the need for specialized training and accreditation procedures, especially for court interpreting. Legal interpreting is often perceived as putting speakers of non-official languages on an equal footing with those who speak the language of the institution. The cost of publicly funded legal interpreting services has become a contentious issue in countries like the United Kingdom, where the Ministry of Justice began in 2012 to outsource the provision of court interpreting to a private company.
