Difficulties of sight interpreting of Islamic court texts from Arabic into English

الملخص EN

Sight Interpreting (SI) as well as Courtroom Interpreting (CI)-interviews in immigration authorities, customs' offices, lawyers' offices, and police departmentsoccupies these days higher position than other types of legal interpreting.

The present paper attempts to substantiate the argument that student interpreters need special training in legal-religious terminology before they are expected to produce working SI of Arabic-Islamic documents.

The results are based on a study that used students of the University of Jordan (JU) enrolling in MA translation program during the first semester of 2004/2005.

The subjects demonstrated a low standard of competence in translating Arabic–Islamic legal terms, a fact that stresses the importance of introducing training in various fields of oral interpreting.

Further, the study argues that technical training should be firmly based on the availability of a workable general language competence in candidates.

It also shows that the more technical and register–specific the term is, the more problematic it would be, and vice versa.

In particular, special attention should be paid to the translatability of Arabic culture-bound religious terms and the various procedures that should be considered when translating such terms into English.

The study arrives at the conclusion that the subjects do not have enough experience in interpreting court documents.

As a result, it recommends that the Department of English at JU should include CI and SI as separate courses in the translation programmes.

It is hoped that the present study would help student interpreters to improve their performance and make them familiar with different problems which affect the CI and SI and how they should be dealt with.