Legal Interpreting Skill Development
Toolkit for Legal Interpreters
Legal Interpreting Skill Development
There are several activities presented below.
They are designed to improve and/or enhance legal specific skills of sign language interpreters
Activities:
- Case Study Analysis
- This guide offers a deeper exploration and analysis of a documented, real-life legal situation/scenario to help interpreters gain a deeper understanding of some aspect of the legal system and their work as interpreters within that system.
- It includes a structure for analyzing case studies. Cases can be found in Trial Transcripts.
- Comprehension of ASL Legal Texts
- This guide offers strategies to improve understanding of an ASL message.
- Videos of legal content in ASL can be found in Media – Legal Content.
- Interpreting of Lines of Legal Questioning
- This guide offers samples of the different kinds of legal questions and strategies to improve the interpretation of these lines of questions.
- It includes five different kinds of questions. Sample lines of questioning can be found in Trial Transcripts.
- Message Coherence Within Lines of Questioning
- This guide offers an approach to developing a more cohesive message during the interpretation of lines of questioning.
- It includes two sample transcripts.
- Reading & Understanding Court Decisions
- This guide offers multiple levels of inquiry to understand decisions made by the courts based on case law.
- It includes a process to assess court decisions. Decisions can be found in Court Decisions which also includes an ASL video on “How to Read a Case.”
- Semantic Awareness
- This guide offers practice to determine meaning of legal concepts in context and brainstorm possible interpretations of those concepts.
- Legal concepts can be found in Trial Transcripts and Jury Instructions.
- Sight Translation
- This guide offers guidelines for practicing sight translations of legal forms and documents.
- It includes nine exercises for practice. Sample printed English texts can be found in Forms & Documents.
- Text Analysis of Legal Texts
- This guide offers a multi-step approach based on discourse analysis to analyze legal texts.
- Videos of legal text in ASL and English can be found in Media – Legal Content.
FEELING READY TO INTERPRET LEGAL SPECIFIC CONTENT?
Videos are available in Mock Legal Scenarios and Media – Legal Content.
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The contents of the Project CLIMB website was developed under a grant (#H160D160001) from the Department of Education. The contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education. Do not assume endorsement by the Federal government.
As of December 31, 2021, this grant project is no longer active or soliciting applications.
This website will remain available as a resource.
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