Question about Interpreter who talks in third person

[Tina MacKellar]

Hi. I have an interpreter who spent a lot of the depo answering in the third person such as instead of "I work at Sams Club," he says, "He works at Sams Club." Because he cleans up his act in the second half, on the answers in the third person, I've been using collequey. Any advice about this?

[Starr A. Wilson]

Unfortunately, you had an inexperienced and probably untrained interpreter.  You were right in putting in colloquy.  It gets harder when you have simultaneous interpretation, especially when the interpreter is very fast and you're trying to write him as well as having to listen to two people speaking at the same time.  We had highly trained technical interpreters at our agency and attorneys could tell the difference in trained and nontrained interpreters.  Sadly, as most of us know, family members or someone who happens to speak X language is hired and brought in and we are the ones who must write what we hear.  Hopefully, we're able to understand the interpreter as I've had that problem, too, of barely being able to understand and having to ask for repeats.  You never know what is going to happen until it happens.