Doris Zörweg, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
This paper focuses on the depiction of court interpreters in newspaper articles published in the ten Spanish newspapers with the highest daily circulation. Based on Freidson’s theory of internal stratification, the analysis showed that traductores-intérpretes jurados (sworn interpreters) are competing and cooperating with other groups (universities, the Oficina de Interpretación de Lenguas, non-professional interpreters and employees or civil servants of the judicial administration) in their struggle to gain exclusive jurisdiction over court interpreting. Starting from the hypothesis that in Spanish newspaper articles no distinction is made between the different competing groups, this paper aims at examining whether the struggle for jurisdiction is represented in the media and, if so, how the groups (or ‘interpretation’) are depicted. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on a corpus of 216 articles from 10 Spanish daily newspapers. The results showed that, in 78% of the articles, no distinction was made between the different competing groups (TI jurados, TI judiciales, non-professional interpreters). The study also showed that court interpreting was the main topic in only a fifth of the articles, while the rest of the articles mentioned court interpreting as a secondary or marginal topic. Negative remarks were twice as likely to be made as positive or neutral ones. The hypothesis was therefore verified.
Keywords: court interpreting; sworn interpreters; non-professional interpreters; jurisdictional struggle