The major objective of this paper is to redefine translational competence of court interpreters necessitated by the introduction of the Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010, which assures the right to translation and interpretation to the persons accused of committing a criminal offence and suspects, who do not understand the language of the investigative proceedings and court hearings so that they can exercise their right of defense, as well as the right to a fair trial. The implementation of the said Directive into the national law of each EU Member State seems to have outdated the definition of a competent court interpreter, who until the said Directive became effective on 13 October 2013, had mainly interpreted criminal trials within one legal system only and therefore was required to be fundamentally familiar with the procedures applied during the criminal trial within the legal system in which the criminal trial took place.
In this article we discuss how clients who have immigrated to Canada and
Canadian counsellors negotiate cross-cultural misunderstandings as opportunities to transcend
reified assumptions about cultures. Cultural differences as well as discrepancies in
translation need to be worked out for counsellors and clients to arrive at shared understandings
useful for clients. Arriving at shared understandings requires conversational
partners to recognize and overcome how cultural differences may influence personal interpretation
of each other’s actions. Misunderstandings, in this sense, highlight affiliative or
disaffiliative choices to speakers. We suggest that counsellors can benefit from inviting
clients’ initiatives and preferences to inform how relationships develop.
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