Effective cooperation between court interpreters and judicial authorities

Court interpreters enable and ensure mutual communication between judicial bodies and members of various language groups in judicial, administrative and other public proceedings. The quality of their work is a direct guarantee of the greater protection of the rights of multilingual parties in proceedings before ju­dicial authorities. Through their work, court interpreters effectively contribute to the protection of human rights and the implementation of the principle of justice in court proceedings. The more successful and effective their cooperation with a court interpreter, the greater the level of justice provided for people who do not understand the language of the proceedings. If a court interpreter is to be successful and carry out high-quality work, then the following competencies are necessary:

1. linguistic competence, or a high level of competence in the mother tongue (source) and in the fore­ign (target) language;
2. comparative law-based competence, or an adequate degree in knowledge of law and legal terminology;
   3. communication-translational competence, or mastering the rules of communication between the court interpreter and other stakeholders in the institutional environment, with translational compe­tence also including interpreting techniques;
   4. cultural-sociological competence, or the ability to consider and manage culturally conditioned dif­ferences, specifics, customs, norms, and conventions, as well as sociologically conditioned language variants, level of education, register and elements of non-verbal communication;
   5. ethical competence, or the obligation to respect certain standards of practice, including correctness and fidelity of the translation, confidentiality, and impartiality.

In this article, I argue why it would be necessary to upgrade the competency profile of a court interpreter with the appropriate co-operational competence, and at the same time ensure effective mutual informati­on and coordinated education and awareness of both target groups. Such a competency profile of a court interpreter meets the requirements of the users of the services of court interpreters to the greatest extent possible and takes into account the requirements regarding their qualifications, as prescribed by relevant legislation and the guidelines of various national and international professional associations.