Presenting Others’ Speech

The model I used in my analysis of data is the presenting of others’ speech as presented in Critical Stylistics. This is because the entire communication event of interpretation in the courtroom involves the presentation of others’ speech. The original speaker, that is the person who produces the Source Text, is considered in this study as the author of the message. This message has then to be relayed to others through the interpreter who is the animator (Goffman 1981) or the mouthpiece (Thomas 1986). The presentation of others’ speech in interpreted discourse is thus complex in that the author codes the message in one language and the animator/mouthpiece presents this in another language. The interpreter has to then keep fidelity to the message albeit in a different language when presenting the speech of another person to the hearer. It is important to analyse whether the interpreter maintains the faithfulness to the ST as is expected. It is obvious that there is always a gap between the ST and the TT but the extent of the gap in the courtroom can make a difference as to whether one is found guilty thus imprisoned or found not guilty and set free. It is with this in mind that I used the mentioned model to try and analyse the faithfulness of the interpreters to the ST.

The model of speech presentation used here follows the one developed by Short (2012) who presents the speech, writing and thought presentation scale from the most faithful to the least faithful to the original:

1. Direct Speech (DS)

2. Free Indirect Speech (FIS) 3. Indirect Speech (IS)

4. Narrators’ Presentation of Speech Act (NPSA) 5. Narrator’s Presentation of Voice (NPV)

These categories are presented in such a way that the most faithful to the original is placed as number one and the least faithful is number five. Jeffries (ibid) notes that

If we begin to depart from the verbatim text of someone’s speech in public texts where ideology is being reinforced, created or manipulated, we may more or less subtly misrepresent them with a range of consequences (Jeffries, 2010, P.133).

This turned out to be important to my analysis because I found that most of the utterances failed to adhere to fidelity. The interpreters only adhered to mentioning the source of the words by introducing the reporting clauses to show that it was the speech of another person. In instances where they used the first person narration to appear as the mouthpiece of the person for whom they were interpreting, they still failed to keep the words and the ideation as well as the pragmatic dynamics of the ST.

Also, there is often loss of meaning and at other times there is also change in ideation and change in the illocutionary force of the utterance. When the first person narration is used, the hearer expects to hear the exact words of the persons being interpreted. It is thus even more misleading as the markers indicate fidelity but the utterances do not follow the expected norm of faithfulness to the ST. The biggest disadvantage of this is the people for whom the interpretation is being carried out do not understand the ST language and assume that by using the first person narration, the interpreter is giving verbatim what has been said. An example of the presentation of others’ speech as taken from Judgement 3 is:

Example 3.10.1.a

Mag: I find that the complainant who testified as PW1 narrated how she boarded the matatu Int: No yud ni jadonjo mane owuoyo kaka janeno mokwongo nolero kaka noidho gari

RT: It was found that the complainant who spoke as the first witness explained how she boarded the vehicle

The magistrate used the first person to show one of her findings. This is because she is the one in whom is vested the authority to give findings in the courtroom and she is doing this in her capacity as the final decision maker in this case. The interpreter had the task of passing this message across in a different language maintaining the gist of the information. The first

thing the interpreter did was to change the voice of the ST from the active to the passive voice. She also used the narrator’s presentation of a speech act (NPSA) embedded in the utterance “the witness explained”. It is the change from active voice to passive voice that I find most significant in this example. In the recordings of all the judgement rulings, I found that the interpreters were very conscious of the fact that they have no authority to make any judgements in the courtroom. So whenever the judge used the first person to state a finding or make a judgement, the interpreters did not use the first person narration and instead opted to either introduce the noun phrase “the court found” or to use the passive voice as in example 3.10.1.a. above.

The reason for the failure to use the first person can be explained using the felicity conditions as expounded by Austin (1962). When a judge uses the “I” in a judgement, he/she is performing an act with his/her words. This he/she is only able to do in the right environment and in the right circumstances being the person he/she is in that particular role. The interpreter is therefore not able to use the same words for the same purpose. It is even made more pronounced by the fact that the interpreter serves directly under the judge as his/her subordinate. Therefore, in order to ensure that the performative is valid, the interpreters tend to paraphrase the magistrates’ words in such a way as to show that they are not the interpreters’ own thus retaining their weight; which is all important for performatives. The interpreters in this study failed to distinguish between the different discourse roles where they are only the animators of the message and not the authors as distinguished by Goffman (1981) and Thomas (1986).

As is shown in the example used in this section, Dholuo speakers also tend to change the voice in some type of reported speech to passive. This is a transfer from the Dholuo language which uses the passive to report speech from a person viewed to be holding a higher rank either by age or by protocol.