Licensed Court Interpreters
Exam Resources
Written Examination
- Enroll in university level courses in a country where the language is spoken;
- Read widely, using a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words;
- Read any of the following: ◦Major newspaper editorials and articles, as well as news items related to legal matters and law enforcement,
- Laws, codes, international treaties and conventions, contracts, and other legal writings,
- U.S. court documents such as indictments, sentences, probation and police reports,
- Notarized documents such as wills, contracts, powers-of-attorney, birth and death certificates,
- Practice translating texts related to legal matters,
- Brush up on grammar,
- Expand your vocabulary,
- Become familiar with court proceedings,
- Take a court interpreting course.
Oral Examination
Reading Aloud
Stand in front of a mirror and read passages aloud from any book, newspaper, or magazine. A legal textbook, code book, or other legal text is useful for familiarizing yourself with legal language. Record or videotape yourself and analyze the outcome critically. Pay attention to your voice, pitch, tone, hesitations, signs, projection, enunciation, and posture.
Controlling Emotions
Practice controlling your emotions while reading aloud texts with high emotional content, such as fear, anger, humor, etc. Make sure you convey the author's intended emotions and not your personal reaction to the subject matter.
Public Speaking
Practice speaking before a group of people at every opportunity. People you know will constitute a less threatening audience and will allow you to ease your way into public speaking and build your confidence. Court interpreting is an ongoing exercise in public speaking.
Extensive Reading
Build up your reading speed and your vocabulary by reading as much as possible in many different fields.
Analyzing
Analyze the content of each text and practice picking out the subject and verb to determine the core meaning.
Example: Although less influential than in Argentina, migration from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries affected the development of Chilean political culture. Subject: migration; Verb: affected.
Simultaneous Skills
The following exercises are designed specifically to build the dual tasking skills involved in simultaneous interpreting. They should be practiced daily for about a half hour at a time. Simultaneous interpreting skills must be acquired over time to allow for maximum familiarity.
First
Have someone record passages from magazines or newspapers on tape, or record radio or television talk shows or interview programs (news broadcasts are not suitable for these exercises because the pace is too fast and the content is too dense). The subject matter of these passages is irrelevant, but it should not be too technical or contain too many statistics and proper names. Essays and opinion columns are good sources of texts for recording. As you play back the tape, "shadow" the speaker: repeat everything the speaker says verbatim. Try to stay further and further behind the speaker, until you are lagging at least one unit of meaning behind.
Second
Once you feel comfortable talking and listening at the same time and are not leaving out too much, begin performing other tasks while shadowing. First, write the numerals 1 to 100 on a piece of paper as you repeat what the speaker says (make sure you are writing and speaking at the same time, not just writing during pauses). When you are able to do that, write the numerals in reverse order, from 100 to 1. Then write them counting by 5s, by 3s, and so on. Note what happens whenever numbers are mentioned in the text you are shadowing.
Third
When you are able to do exercise 2 with minimal errors, begin writing out words while shadowing. Begin with your name and address, written repeatedly. Then move on to a favorite poem or a passage such as the preamble to the U.S. Constitution (always choose a passage in the same language as that which you are shadowing). When writing this text, you should copy from a piece of paper placed in front of you. Do not try to write the passage from memory while shadowing the tape.
Fourth
While shadowing the tape as in the previous exercises, write down all the numbers and proper names you hear. Then play the tape back and check to see if you wrote them correctly.