The role of interpreters in adjudicating blame: An examination of clitics and active-passive voice in a Spanish-English bilingual criminal trial

This paper provides a linguistic analysis of the interpreter’s role in shaping the discursive reality of the Spanish-English bilingual courtroom. The paper examines the interpreter’s rendition of morphosyntactic features, specifically clitic pronouns and active-passive voice using excerpts from an actual jury trial. The aim of the study is to show how the interpreter’s treatment of linguistic features in exchanges between attorneys and witnesses may attribute agency to the defendant, and possibly suggest a relationship between the defendant and his alleged associates or victims that is not intended in the original utterance. The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the field of courtroom interpreting by providing further insight into the relationship between an interpreter’s rendition of morphosyntactic features in attorney-witness exchanges and the attorney’s and witness’s ability to convey meaning and intent in a bilingual courtroom.