Courting Invisibility
Courting Invisibility will explore the relationship between social imperceptibility and professional ethics in court interpreting. Imperceptibility is a recurrent theme in translation theory, with the invisibility of a translation being a popular standard. This project will explore the conception of court interpreters as a conduit and empirically examine how court interpreters slip between positions of visibility and invisibility during courtroom interactions, and how such slippage becomes linked with professional ethics.
Simultaneous interpreters at the Nuremberg trial. Photo: National Archives, College Park, MD, USA