A Historical Review of Court Interpreting in Hong Kong

Abstract

Court interpreting in Hong Kong has a history of over 170 years and was necessitated as a result of the British colonisation of Hong Kong in 1843. In the early colonial days, bilinguals competent in both Cantonese and English were a rare species, let alone professionally trained court interpreters. Therefore, during the first twenty years of the British administration, the question of interpretation caused the greatest embarrassment to the colonial government. Very often courts either could not sit because no interpreters were available or had to adjourn because of problematic interpretation. Yet in those days, the interpreter, competent or not, was usually the only bilingual in court and as the court record was kept only in English, it was difficult to verify the accuracy of the interpretation or to substantiate any claim about an interpretation mistake. This is in stark contrast with the status quo in the present-day Hong Kong courts, where interpreters, more often than not, have to work with other court actors who share their bilingual knowledge. Besides, court proceedings at all court levels are nowadays all audio recorded. Any mistakes allegedly made by the interpreter can be either challenged by bilingual participants in court or subsequently verified against the recordings or the transcripts. Moreover, with the increasing use of Chinse in court in recent years, court interpreting is no longer an indispensable service in some trials, especially in lower courts. In the High Court, however, English retains a highly significant role to this day, and court interpreters continue to play a vital role in bridging the communication gap between English-speaking legal professionals and Cantonese-speaking lay participants. This paper presents a historical review of the practice of court interpreting in Hong Kong from the early colonial times to the present days. It illustrates with authentic court data the challenges presented to interpreters in the present-day Hong Kong courts and discusses their implications for the role of the court interpreter.