A Consecutive Interpreting Report On The Police Interrogation Of The Anti-smuggling Bureau Under Guangzhou Customs

The question/answer sequence is a main communication method in the interrogative and inquiry stage of a criminal case. With the purpose of improving the interrogation efficiency and saving the judicial resource, the party which is vested with more power is likely to control answers so as to fulfill the preset objective of questioning. However, in the interpreting process of some foreign-related cases and owing to cognitive load, psychological pressure and lack of interrogative knowledge etc, the court interpreter may exert an impact on questioning control due to his/her independence of the questioner’s will.This report describes two consecutive interpreting tasks which the author conducted for the Anti-Smuggling Bureau under Guangzhou Customs. It intends to probe into how the interpreter influences question control from the perspectives of primary control and process control.This report elaborates on the author’s pre-task preparation, the whole process of the interpreting task as well as post-task summary. It also analyzes the difficulties which the author encountered in this task. This report also illustrates the notion of question control with some examples and further makes an analysis of the author’s treatment of question control. Based on the analysis of the cases, the author proposes some coping tactics such as considering interpreting users’ educational level, using some specific words, managing to get speakers’ intention etc. Then the author concludes the limitation of this report and suggestions for future report. The author hopes that this report can help other interpreter better understand question control and offer references to other interpreters.