Everyday problem solving for US court interpreters and the role of research

: This article examines the problem-solving strategies and resources that professional court interpreters in the United States use to address challenges in their daily work, with the goal of investigating the current influence of research on professional practice. The authors report on the first stage of a bipartite study consisting of focus groups conducted in California, New York, and Texas in the spring of 2018, the results of which directly shaped the development of a survey launched at the national level. Participants included a combination of junior and senior interpreters, staff and freelancers, and certified court interpreters with varying degrees of formal interpreter training and education. The anonymized transcripts of these groups were analyzed qualitatively following the principles of thematic analysis and a mixed top-down and bottom-up coding process. The results obtained interrogate the purported divide between theory and practice and reveal valuable information about the areas of professional practice that present challenges for court interpreters, the human and written (scholarly and/or professional) resources that court interpreters use to improve their professional practice and, most germanely, court interpreters’ needs and expectations about scholarly research. Ultimately, the study aims to inform future practice-based research and to improve interpreters’ performance through data-driven suggestions stemming from that research.


Introduction: A first look at problem solving for US court interpreters
This article examines the problem-solving strategies and resources that professional court interpreters in the United States use to address challenges in their daily work, with the goal of investigating the current influence of research on professional practice.The authors report on the first stage of a bipartite study consisting of focus groups conducted in three US states, the results of which directly shaped the development of a national survey which will further elucidate these questions in the project's second phase (Martínez-Gómez & Wallace, under review).In this first stage, three focus groups were conducted in California, New York, and Texas in the spring of 2018.Participants included a combination of junior and senior interpreters, staff and freelancers, and certified court interpreters with varying degrees of formal interpreter training and education.The anonymized transcripts of these groups were analyzed qualitatively following the principles of thematic analysis and a mixed top-down and bottom-up coding process.The results obtained interrogate the purported divide between theory and practice and reveal valuable information about: 1.The areas of professional practice that present challenges for court interpreters along with the human and written (scholarly and/or professional) resources that court interpreters use to improve their professional practice; 2. Court interpreters' needs and expectations about research; and 3. Court interpreters' perspectives on the contribution of research to the improvement of their professional practice and to problem solving.
The project's point of departure is an acknowledgement that, historically, the academic and professional branches of court interpreting have followed separate paths, leading to a profession built on skills-based self-training that has rarely been exposed to theoretical underpinnings and which rarely employs empirical research to inform practice (Angelelli, 2020).Researchers, on the other hand, in an attempt to explore some of the challenges of professional practice, have drawn inspiration from courtroom interactions, actual interpreter performance, and stakeholders' views to constitute the foci of their inquiries.Academic research has traditionally connected with the profession for fieldwork by situating professionals as study subjects, but a productive dialogue between academia and the profession seems to have been minimal in terms of developing research questions and disseminating results, despite recent efforts in areas such as certification (Giambruno, 2014;Hlavac, 2013;Wallace, 2012) or working conditions (Hale & Napier, 2016), amongst other questions that directly impact the practice of court interpreting.
This study explicitly addresses the purported divide between theory and practice.It aims to analyze the main issues and difficulties that professional legal interpreters face in their daily work and the methods and resources that they use to improve their practice throughout their careers.Inasmuch as the analysis of issues may inform future avenues of research, the exploration of problem-solving methods and resources will also shed light on the current relationship that these professionals hold with scholarly research.and on suggestions to strengthen that relationship.

Contextualization, rationale, and hypotheses: What about the gap between theory and practice?
The purported divide between theory and practice is the motor that drives the research questions laid out in both phases of the current study and, indeed, the authors believe fervently that links between research, realities of the profession, and training bear a good deal of scrutiny.As educators and scholars we agree that "… the question is whether we as researchers and teachers of translation are sufficiently aware of the norms and expectations that prevail on the translation market to, on the one hand, describe it adequately in research and, on the other, to prepare our graduates to enter it after graduation" (Jääskeläinen, Kujamäki & Mäkisalo, 2011, p. 150).We locate ourselves as practisearchers who strive to avoid isolation from "the world that translates" (Pym, 2009) and to continue to explore how academics and boots-on-the-ground court and legal interpreters can work together to advance the profession.Unfortunately, although some researchers posit that legal interpreting research enjoys increasing collaboration between scholars and practitioners (see Monteoliva-García, 2018), we embarked upon this bipartite study with more than a few doubts.In that spirit, we approached this project with the following hypotheses: 1. Court and legal interpreters have a minimal relationship with academic research, which they find inaccessible and rarely applicable to their daily practice; 2. Interpreters resort to informal colleagues' support and short continuing education courses and/or professional conferences to improve their practice; 3. Legal interpreters would welcome research that provides explicit recommendations about how to deal with specific difficulties that they encounter daily; 4. Interpreters would welcome research that is disseminated in a "popularscience" manner, in open-access publications, and in shorter form than traditional journal articles; and 5. Court and legal interpreters are more concerned with practical problemsolving solutions and behaviors in opposition to more complex theoretical or historical analyses of interpreting issues.

Objectives
While the results of the national survey (the second phase of the study) will ultimately help to crystalize practitioners' attitudes towards and perceptions of scholarly research, the first phase -the focus groups -was a necessary step aimed at helping us to ask the right questions.Ultimately, the key concepts gleaned from the three focus groups allowed us to generate unbiased survey constructs based on reflections and opinions which came straight from the mouths of the interpreters themselves.Our objectives were fourfold: 1. To learn how practitioners solve problems by relying on human and written sources; 2. To articulate how practicing court interpreters define and perceive research and to what extent they use it; 3. To discover potential problems of access and dissemination; and 4. To discover common ground and potential opportunities for working together.
In other words, where do practitioners look for research?How are research findings most commonly made available to them?What are the barriers to access?How do they believe dissemination of research findings would be useful to them?

Research design and methodology
In order to undertake an environmental scan of how interpreters solve problems in their daily practice, especially as regards the use (or not) of scholarly research, the authors sought and obtained institutional review board (IRB) approval from their respective institutions to conduct focus groups with practicing court interpreters in the US states of Texas, New York, and California.As previously mentioned, the focus group phase stands in contrast to the online survey phase in that its purpose was to reduce researcher bias and inform the constructs of the national survey, which was conducted in 2019.While the focus groups were more limited in terms of geography and number of participants than the ensuing online survey, their qualitative approach, characterized by top-down and bottom-up thematic coding in order to identify patterns and themes amongst the participants, was key in producing a national survey that would be relevant, representative, revealing, useful, and as free from researcher bias as possible.Table 1 offers a contrasting overview of the overarching characteristics of each phase of the study.

Recruitment, selection, and profile of focus group participants
In the case of Texas and New York interpreters, potential participants were contacted via email with information about the focus groups, inviting them to respond indicating interest and availability.For those based in New York, the authors were assisted by the Office of Language Access of the New York State Unified Court System, who sent an invitational email to their court interpreters on our behalf as their contact information is not publicly available.For the Texas focus group, the research team used the contact information publicly available on the Judicial Branch Certification Commission's roster of certified (called "licensed" in Texas) court interpreters in order to invite potential email participants via email.These initial contact messages with New York and Texas interpreters asked potential participants to respond with an expression of interest in which they stipulated desired focus group location, contact information, working languages, their degree of professional experience, and the type of interpreter training they had had, if any.
As for recruiting participants for the California focus group, the authors made use of the conference-specific app designed for the 39 th Annual Conference of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT), held in San Francisco in June of 2018.The app allowed us to directly contact every single California-based conference attendee with any working languages, utilizing the same initial contact message as used for Texas and New York.
Our intention in all cases, if the number of individuals who sent an expression of interest was greater than 8 -10 participants per location, was to select the combination of participants which brought the highest degree of diversity to the group in terms of working languages, professional experience, and interpreter training.In the end, no willing participants were excluded on any grounds.Inclusion criteria were the same for all three states: participants had to be practicing court/legal interpreters with any level of experience, any language pair, and any level of time commitment to professional legal interpreting practice (part-time or full-time).Participants had to be able to commit to attending in person, implying geographical proximity to the focus groups as a requirement given that the research team was unable to pay for travel expenses.Translators (working with written texts) or interpreters in other fields were not selected for the study as they did not represent the population under examination.Likewise, interpreters not currently practicing the profession were excluded, as we deemed it possible that they may not be aware of recent strategies or resources to improve professional practice.Table 2 details the demographic profile of the 15 focus group participants from New York, Texas, and California.As detailed in Table 2, focus group participants were quite evenly distributed across all three focus group sites, with, at 80%, a significantly higher representation by female interpreters.Interpreters averaged an age of 55.6 years, which harmonizes with the way most of them self-identified in terms of years of experience, having been given the following parameters within which to selfidentify: • Experienced.You work regularly and/or frequently in legal settings.You have interpreted full time or nearly full time for ten years or more, or the equivalent of that amount of time doing part-time work.Under the above categories, 93.3% of focus group participants identified as "early career to experienced" or "experienced."Participants were also highly credentialed: to wit, 10 of the 15 were state certified and a full third of them were both state and federally certified 1 .80% of participants were independent contractors as opposed to staff interpreters, and the overwhelming majority, at 86.6%, identified Spanish or Spanish and French as their primary non-English working languages.Finally, in terms of educational attainment, over 86% of participants held higher education degrees, with seven holding a bachelor's, five a master's, and one a doctorate.It is uncertain whether or not this level of educational attainment is representative of practicing court interpreters at large given the fact that in the United States there is no minimum level of educational attainment required to sit for state-or federal-level court interpreter certification exams.

Focus group protocols
Focus groups in all three states were moderated by one of the co-PIs with support from a research assistant.The co-PI explained the purpose of the study, the rules for the focus group discussion, and then proceeded to ask questions aimed at prompting discussion about target issues as per scripts previously approved by the institutional review boards corresponding with each author's institution of affiliation.Co-PIs also actively redirected the focus of the groups' discussions when necessary.
The instruments used for data collection included a self-administered intake form which consisted of nine close-ended and two open-ended questions related to sociodemographic characteristics, legal interpreting experience, and legal interpreting training.The focus groups interview script consisted of 20 open-ended questions divided into four thematic sections, the basis of which would serve to aid the research team in their efforts to devise relevant content for the phase two survey.The four thematic sections focused discussion around issues related to the following: 1. Problems and difficulties identified in daily legal interpreting practice; 2. Collaborative methods for problem solving (including discussion of different types of collaboration formats with colleagues or other stakeholders); 3. Individual methods for problem solving (focusing mainly on written sources); and 1 State-level certification implies that the participant has successfully passed one of the oral exams sanctioned by the National Center for State Courts or by one of the few US states that produces its own exams, New York state being one example.The NCSC is not a credentialing body; rather they develop exams and examination protocols for a bank of tests shared by all participating US states and territories.Federal certification is currently available only in Spanish, and the exams are considered to be substantially more difficult than those developed by the NCSC.
4. Suggestions for how research should evolve towards meeting interpreters' needs in the future.

Coding and analysis of results
All focus group proceedings were recorded with participants' consent and were later transcribed and anonymized.A system of identifying codes was developed in order to anonymously distinguish each individual participant.Subsequently, transcripts were analyzed qualitatively following a mixed top-down/bottom-up cluster coding process using qualitative analysis software (Dedoose, 2018).

Results
Careful scrutiny of the broad topics that arose from the coding process garnered fruitful and varied results.For the purposes of this article, the authors chose to specifically examine results related to the definition of research; human, scholarly and professional sources leveraged for problem solving; motivations to consult scholarly research; factors reducing practitioners' ability to use research; areas of interest related to research; and desired formats for research.

Definition of research and human, scholarly and professional sources leveraged for problem solving
Defining research within focus groups was challenging across all three groups.Our initial question inquired about both written sources and scholarly research sources that practitioners made use of in order to improve their skills or solve problems in their daily practice, but the latter was often systematically ignored, revealing that the activity of academic research as perceived by our participants was conceived of almost exclusively in regard to reference works such as dictionaries and online resources to solve primarily terminological problems.As we led participants away from the idea of terminology sleuthing as "research", the co-PIs needed to resort in all cases to explicit prompts specifically about academic research.Upon analyzing the transcribed focus groups, it became clear that participants evidenced a lack of awareness of research activity, of researchers outside of practice, and certainly of descriptive empirical studies versus prescriptive personal experience analyses.Indeed, the one isolated comment about scholarly research in interpreting and translation studies was directly related to conference / simultaneous interpreting.While preparation and problem-solving strategies for simultaneous and conference interpreting has been explored in the literature (see Chang et al., 2018;Díaz-Galaz, Padilla & Bajo, 2015;and Jiang, 2013), Nicodemus, Liu and McClure (2021) have, to our knowledge, conducted the only other study to date which specifically examines the reading strategies leveraged by professional interpreters in the realms of both conference interpreting and, to perhaps a lesser extent, public service interpreting 2 .While the aforementioned study revealed that just over half of the signed language interpreters in the study (at 51.51%) reported reading research studies (p.10), the co-PIs in the present study found that it was markedly more fruitful to elicit examples of problem-solving materials when they were labelled "written materials" or "professional sources."Several participants made mention of position papers produced by NAJIT (the National Association for Judiciary Interpreters and Translators) and other professional associations and, in fact, the potential importance of professional conferences, such as those held by NAJIT and ATA (the American Translators Association) became salient.Professional associations are also considered valuable to court interpreting practitioners not only for their conferences and position papers but also for their newsletters (with ATA's Chronicle and NAJIT's Proteus receiving specific mentions), listservs, email blasts, chat lists, blogs, and social media outputs.Professional reference books were also mentioned, especially the ACEBO materials produced by Holly Mikkelson and colleagues, and the well-known Fundamentals of Court Interpretation by González et al (2012).

Motivations to consult research and factors reducing ability to use it
In the instances that focus group participants identified specific motivations for accessing or attempting to access academic research, one of the primary purposes cited was to use it as a way to support demands for better working conditions, or to "convince someone that they should go my way."Similarly, one participant specifically mentioned relying on written resources when asked to do something she considered to be borderline unethical or something ill-considered in light of best professional practices, emphasizing that extracting quotes to make her point about why she is or is not amenable to doing something lends her credibility.In other words, such sources can be leveraged in order to provide guidance about how to act or to justify one's adherence to the court interpreter's code of ethics.Similarly, when interpreters also hold interpreting services coordinator positions, they may feel compelled to rely on research such as in the case of a former state-level language access coordinator, who explained, The only time I've gone looking for academic research for interpreting was when I was writing a policy proposal as part of a committee and we had to support our propositions which were tied to a grant or a budget and I had to cite academic authorities for the policy we were promoting.
Compounding the previously discussed lack of awareness regarding scholarly output, a common reaction to our questions about research access was one of incredulity about its relevance to the daily work of court interpreters as well as ignorance of its mere existence.Practitioners made patent their own perceived disconnect between research and actual court interpreting practice, with one participant remarking: "There is a gap that needs to be bridged for them [researchers] to be able to assess effectively the court system here […] for them to actually be able to say things that really make sense about where we work."Even more troubling was the comment by one participant, who asked "Is there research out there?How do you go about finding it?"In fact, this latter point was also raised by others, who expressed having had difficulty in trying to locate targeted work that could answer their specific doubts, lamenting that "In research, half the effort is to figure out what you need." Availability and accessibility also represented mentionable barriers, much like those identified by participants in the study conducted by Nicodemus, Liu, and McClure (2021).Participants noted the lack of access to academic databases and journal subscriptions for anyone not affiliated with a government entity or institution of higher education, noting that general press or professional publications were entirely more accessible and weren't locked behind a paywall.Financial factors troubled several participants, and even several who had access to resources on the job felt that their access was often poor.Time constraints were also mentioned: not only is the length of scholarly outputs off-putting and impracticable for in-time problem solving, but the reality of life as an independent contractor, as were 80% of our participants, is often punctuated by competing personal and professional responsibilities that make the leisurely perusing of a relevant journal article all but impossible.One participant eloquently describes this sentiment: For researchers who have never been self-employed freelancers it might be hard to put yourselves in our heads, scrambling from job to job, desperate to get our next assignment.It would be a luxury to sit down and read a book about how to do our jobs.I'm running from one job to the next trying to pay the bills.

Areas of interest for research and desired formats
When queried about areas of interest that practitioners would like to see examined by researchers, four areas emerged.As related to the interpreter's knowledge base, participants expressed interest in deepening their understanding of comparative legal systems, legal procedures, and of course, specialized terminology.They showed marked interest in and solidarity towards new interpreters who often enter the profession with little to no training, sensitive to the challenges that they face.More specifically, they mentioned quality training aimed at getting new recruits successfully started so that they could thrive on the job as well as research that could support everyone's demands for better working conditions.This sensitivity to the needs and exigencies of other stakeholders extended to the impact or effect of their practice on other parties involved in interpreter-mediated legal and judiciary proceedings.In particular, they demonstrated concern over their clients and their ability to understand their standing in the court system.Finally, two areas of specific skills development were mentioned: cognitive aspects, such as memory training, and technical aspects, such as those associated with remote interpreting.
Focus group participants provided rich and extensive feedback about the desired formats in which they would like to "receive" scholarly research.They find value in workshops and seminars not only by academics but also by experienced senior colleagues.Regarding written materials, participating interpreters clearly expressed a desire to have research findings curated by other academics or trainers who could serve as filters or finders, effectively counteracting in this way the difficulty that many of them had experienced in finding what they were looking for on their own3 .One participant remarked, I would say that the gap between theoretical research and practical application is filled by the trainer, and it's the cohort of trainers who are experienced interpreters in the field that need to digest the research and pull out the really practical tips… on the frontline we don't care about theory so much… we need the answer right now.We need someone who can give us marching orders and the big picture is not real pertinent to our day-to-day work.
In a similar vein, participants expressed a desire for the courts to be engaged in helping to provide these written materials, citing their own financial constraints.Finally, interpreters showed marked interest in digital vehicles for receiving information such as webinars, podcasts, and e-books.

Discussion and conclusions
The feedback received from the fifteen focus group participants across three US states yielded valuable information to test the original hypotheses about the relationship between practitioner problem solving and academic research.Our results revealed that, indeed, court and legal interpreters have enjoyed extremely limited contact with academic research, finding it inaccessible and largely inapplicable to their daily work realities.They showed significantly more concern with practical problem-solving solutions and behaviors than in approaching preparation and problem solving with a more complex theoretical or historical analysis of interpreting issues, expressing broad consensus about the desire for research findings to be filtered, selected and presented by others.In this vein, special mention was made of their desire to receive explicit recommendations about how to deal with the specific difficulties that they encounter on a daily basis.Finally, focus group participants also indicated that they turn to colleagues and the offerings of professional associations, such as continuing education sessions, and that they find value in the professional publications of such associations, citing position papers, newsletters, listservs, blog posts, and social media outputs, especially in light of time constraints and the density and inaccessibility of academic research.
These responses provided useful and actionable input which was key to the elaboration of the constructs undergirding the second phase of this study, a national survey with a significantly broader and more diverse pool of participants.It Beyond the development of the national survey, the results of these preliminary focus groups led us to revisit one of our underlying questions (and motivations for carrying out this study): does research really matter?Many academics who dedicate their research efforts to the arena of court and legal interpreting believe that training, study, and critical examination of scholarly output all contribute to practitioners' arsenal of problem-solving tools.Nonetheless, the focus group results discussed above highlight a troubling lack of awareness of research activity and foci, necessitating reflection for us, as researchers and educators, on two important questions.On the one hand, the role of trainers seems crucial, given that, as expressed by our participants, they occupy a decidedly central channeling position in the transfer of knowledge from academia to practice.What do they think of research, particularly those who do not engage in research as part of their professional activities?Do they expose their students to research, explicitly or implicitly?Why or why not?On the other hand, it behooves us to reflect deeply on the correlation between the matters that concern practitioners and areas of research being conducted.Are new trends in research outputs responding to the disquietudes of interpreters on the ground?A recent environmental scan of areas of scholarly output published throughout the last decade identified focal points such as the interpreter's role in legal settings; quality issues; guidelines for interpreting users; training, certification and professionalization; atypical interpreting formats; adversarial interpreting; stand-by interpreting; and the role of specific participants, such as victims of gender violence, in interpreter-mediated encounters (Monteoliva-García, 2018, pp. 48-55).Superficially, at least, there are clear correlations between the topics that concern court and legal interpreters and the subjects of recent research.What, then, do practitioners want from theorists?What can theorists do for practitioners?Chesterman and Wagner (2015) describe the gulf that has fed into the ubiquitous perceived gap between research and practice, positing that, theorists are somehow seen to be 'up there', like teachers, in possession of knowledge to hand down, or at least with the duty of finding out such information; and we translators are 'down here' (underground?):just tell us what to do, tell us how to do it better, please….(p.2).
They go on to encapsulate a sentiment robustly expressed in all three focus groups: that "Most translators… would be happy to have some concrete advice and guidelines, even doctrines, as long as they are practical and realistic" (p.4).Perhaps the most important challenge facing researchers at the present moment is that of effectively observing practice, analyzing it, and using what is learnt to provide clear guidance in accessible formats to boots-on-the-ground practitioners, leveraging new media and public-facing scholarship (such as that which can be found in blogs, listservs, webinars, and on social media) as well as producing more hybrid references such as Fundamentals of Court Interpretation, a work produced by practisearchers who have incorporated evidence-driven guidance and which gives practical advice and immediately usable information.In sum, theory should lead to better prescriptions based on better descriptions, and the mode of delivery must begin to more actively transcend traditional outputs for academic research.
Implications for possible collaboration between research and practice transcend mere format issues, however.Focus groups reveal a clear desire for researchers and educators to act as filters of reference materials along with a concomitant improvement of research-based training that responds to actual job requirements.As one participant remarked, "Our feedback is useful to the professors to make changes in their curricula to better prepare students for the courtroom."This kind of collaboration must also be used to educate court actors to the benefit of all stakeholders and, in fact, conversations with court interpreters have generated some clear avenues for further research, such as experimental studies on the impact of research on actual court interpreting practice, the impact of curating research on court interpreters' use of research sources, and action research projects focused on research training for interpreters as well as collaborative approaches to educating bench and bar.Listening to interpreters articulate and co-construct their needs and their experiences has proven invaluable as a first step in exploring problem solving, skills building, and the role of research at the service of the profession.
discussed in this study as well as for transcribing the proceedings.Additionally, we thank the organizers of NAJIT's 37 th annual conference in San Francisco for helping us to secure space for the California focus group and for their enthusiasm in helping to make the study a success.
included 28 questions: 25 closed-ended questions (multiple-choice or Likert scale) and three open-ended questions.They were divided into seven sections: (1) Difficulties and problems in legal interpreting, (2) Approaches to problem-solving and skill building, (3) Use of academic research for problem-solving and skill building, (4) Goals and expectations regarding academic research, (5) The role of stakeholders in creating and disseminating research, (6) Overall thoughts and further comments, and (7) Demographic information.The survey was disseminated as a self-administered, online-based questionnaire through the survey platform Qualtrics, made available between May and June of 2019.It captured the responses of 281 practicing court/legal interpreters across the United States (See Martínez-Gómez & Wallace, under review).

Table 1 :
Overview of characteristics of the focus group and online survey stages of the study

Table 2 :
Demographic profile of focus group participants

•
Early career to experienced.You work fairly regularly and/or frequently in legal settings and have interpreted full time or nearly full time for at least five years, or for the equivalent of that amount of time doing parttime work.You may interpret regularly and/or frequently or not.You have interpreted full time or nearly full time for at least a year, or for the equivalent of a year doing part-time work.•Novice.You may interpret regularly and/or frequently or not.You have not interpreted full time or nearly full time for at least a year, or for the equivalent of a year doing part-time work.