A Sociological Study On The Role Of Court Interpreters In China

With the acceleration of economic globalization and social integration,exchanges of people from different languages and cultural backgrounds become increasingly free and frequent.At the same time,the number of foreigner-related disputes and cases are also on the rise,which leads to a higher demand for court interpreting services.However,as a critical link in the court practice,court interpreters are often misinterpreted,being regarded as a “translation machine” or a mere “verbatim transmitter”,which is not only harmful to the development of court interpreting,but also harmful to the guarantee of judicial justice.Compared with the development of court interpreting in western countries,China sees a rather late start in this field,and it is still at its early stage.Although some scholars have conducted researches to redefine the role of court interpreters in recent years,trying to challenge the traditional view on the function of court interpreters,there is no systematic fruits yet,not alone the abundant interdisciplinary studies on this topic.Therefore,in this paper,the author applies the core concepts of “field”,“capital” and “habitus” of the famous French sociologist Bourdieu to analyze the performance of court interpreters in bilingual courtroom,aiming to explore the role of court interpreters from the sociological perspective and shed some light on the further development of court interpreting in China.After detailed discussion and analysis,this paper reaches the conclusion that the court interpreter plays multiple roles in court interpreting practices.From the perspective of “field”,court interpreter is equipped with dual roles,working as a“court gatekeeper” and a “communication facilitator”;from the perspective of“capital”,court interpreter serves as a “cultural mediator”;from the perspective of“habitus”,court interpreter functions as a visible “social person” instead of an invisible and passive “translation machine”.