On the Profession of Court Interpreter in Russia

УДК 81.25, ББК 81.1

Abstract

In this article court interpreting is considered as the provision of court interpreting services from Russian or any other language of legal proceedings of the republics of the Russian Federation, into indigenous languages, as well as from  indigenous languages – into the languages of legal proceedings of the Russian Federation, performed on indemnity basis by a private entity, duly included in the Unified Federal Register of Court Interpreters, to courts, law enforcement agencies and other persons involved in the process, in order to secure the constitutional right of an individual and a citizen of the Russian Federation to use their mother tongue or freely choose a language of communication in court. The authors emphasize that the profession of "court interpreter" is not enshrined in law, and there is no institution of special sworn interpreters. The performance in court is carried out by  polymath linguists who know special terminology and technologies of text processing in oral and written forms, including interlingual interpreting. At the same time, there is no unified certification system to verify professional skills. There is no unified federal register of court interpreters, the project has not been fulfilled yet. Any text processed in accordance with the current norms and used for legal ruling passes not only the phase of translation, but also of unified registration and subsequent legalization. In this regard, the problem of insufficient legal framework in judicial translation has been raised. The article discusses professional requirements for legal interpreters along with quality requirements and the scope of their professional training in the Russian Federation.