Judicial Training in Language/Translation/Interpretation Awareness
Faculty Member's Name: Agnes Whitfield
Faculty Member's Email Address: agnesw@yorku.ca
Department/School: Department of English
Project Title: Judicial Training in Language/Translation/Interpretation Awareness
Description of Research Project
Building on acknowledged social justice impacts arising from the design and judicial enactment of language rights, including linguistic minority rights, in the Canadian justice system, this project takes a transnational approach to explore how these impacts could be mitigated through improved judicial training. As minority language rights come under increasing attack in Canada and across the globe and international movements of populations bring speakers of a wider range of languages into contact with local justice systems, research and advocacy in legal translation-interpretation and language rights have become particularly pressing. Understanding how language legislation is designed and especially how it is enacted by the different agents operating within the justice system can lead to innovative public, transdisciplinary, and transnational actions to ensure that those who do not speak the majority language, including minoritized language litigants, immigrants and refugees, can be heard fully and equitably.
In most democracies, including Canada, the judiciary occupies a key position in the justice system, given its responsibilities for determining litigants’ access to minority-language rights, assessing witness statements and other evidence mediated through translation or interpretation, managing language and interpretation questions in the courtroom, and training and regulating its members. As recent research in Translation Studies has shown, how judges carry out these functions, the degree to which they understand or not minority language rights and the complexities of language, translation and interpretation, whether they are conscious or not of stereotypes and myths about language usage, can enhance or reduce in very real ways the degree to which litigants can fully exercise their language rights. Nonetheless, neither Translation Studies research on legal translation and interpretation or legal research on language rights have yet addressed this critical question of the training judges receive in translation-interpretation and minority language rights, and how this judicial training could be enhanced. This is the gap, due in large part to discipline and national compartmentalization, that this project is seeking to fill.
More granularly, the goals of the project are as follows: 1) to compile a general bibliography of research across relevant disciplines on judicial training on language rights and legal translation and interpretation, with a focus on Canada, the United States, Great Britain and the European Community and studies published since 2000; 2) to identify through web searches the key national or international institutions involved in judicial training in these countries and the training they provide on language rights and legal translation and interpretation; 3) to establish a contacts list for these institutions; and 4) to follow up by email with these institutions as need be to complete the information on what language rights and legal translation and interpretation training they provide.
Undergraduate Student Responsibilities
Qualifications Required
Interested in this project posting?
Submit your resumé and unique cover letter for this projects to the faculty supervisor. Deadline: February 6, 2026 by 4 p.m.