Teething problems? Chinese student interpreters’ performance when interpreting authentic (cross-) examination questions in the legal interpreting classroom

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it aims to introduce new assessment criteria to test the quality of interpreted renditions, based on functionalist approaches to translation theory. Secondly, it aims to test these criteria by analysing the English to Chinese interpreted renditions of authentic legal language undertaken by a small number of student interpreters in an undergraduate legal interpreting course at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. The analysis will test student interpreter performance using the criteria outlined, and will focus on two very common syntactical constructions in Chinese which were used to interpret polar interrogatives and positive/negative declaratives with tag questions. The findings suggest that some of the Chinese constructions used by student interpreters resulted in interpretations which significantly deviated from the original involving loss of illocutionary intent.