The Linguist

FEATURES ('My daughter fell in the playera at the mall'). Here we have two instances of Spanglish: playera and mall. One is obvious, as almost all Spanish speakers in the US use the English word 'mall' in their speech. Playera is funny because it means 't-shirt' in Mexico, but contextually that does not make sense. With the 'mall' clue in mind, I would say to the provider, "The interpreter needs to clarify a term" and then ask the mother, in Spanish, "Ma'am, do you mean that your daughter fell in the play area?" It turns out that playera is the 'play area', but the fact that the word exists with a separate meaning in standard Spanish caused that split second of confusion. Legal matters My strategy for legal interpreting is different. Because a verbatim record is kept, a back- and-forth dialogue of clarification between me and the Spanish-speaking witness can elicit additional statements from that witness, who may not realise that I need to decipher a single word, render the statement containing that word, and move on. In such a case, these additional statements also need to be interpreted, causing an intrusive interruption in which the whole courtroom is waiting to hear what is happening. Instead, with indecipherable place names, if I am not completely sure of the English- language version, I maintain the Spanish pronunciation when I render the phrase in English. Let's say that the respondent states "llegué a járlinchon el tres de octubre" ('I arrived in járlinchon on 3 October'). I haven't the slightest clue what or where járlinchon is, so I say: "I arrived in járlinchon on 3 October". Most often, the judge and attorneys are experienced enough to know that járlinchon is Harlingen, a border city in Texas. By keeping the Spanish-language pronunciation, the responsibility is shifted to the court to clarify, on the record, what was said. This avoids a potentially lengthy exchange between me and the Spanish speaker that must then be interpreted for the record. Beyond place names, when I encounter Spanglishisms that I cannot immediately discern from context, I go with a similar approach of shifting responsibility to the legal team by letting them know what is happening. I find this especially helpful in depositions, where I hear all sorts of vocabulary relating to construction, car repair, plumbing and restaurant work. A witness in a recent deposition stated that he used to be employed as a paifíder. Based on the witness's decades of residence in the States, I knew he was saying a word in English, not in Spanish. But without additional context, it was impossible to know what he meant. After hearing the statement, I said to the attorneys (in third person, as is protocol), "This is a comment from the interpreter. The witness is saying his profession in English and not in Spanish, and the interpreter is unable to make out the name of the profession." Of course, at first the attorneys had no idea what paifíder could be either. They started to ask him questions about what he did on the job. It turns out he installed piping systems on ships. One of the attorneys with experience in maritime law caught on and exclaimed "Pipe fitter! He's saying 'pipe fitter'." Everyone in the room, witness included, chuckled at the lightbulb moment. As you can see, there is seldom a dull moment in my work. Hearing Spanglish keeps me on my toes, forces me to think outside the box, and constantly expands my personal lexicon. Thank you for joining me in these musings, and if you have any of your own stories to share, please join me on Twitter @abanion. There are often "Spanglish-of-the- day" tweets for colleagues to guess – Wordle for interpreters if you will.

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