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912 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIESTABLE 1:GENDERGender Frequency PercentageMale 8 80%Female 2 20%Total 10 100%Age: 60% of the interpreters who participated in the study were aged between 30 and 35 and they were the majority.A total of 30% were in their twenties. The data also showed that the youngest interpreter was 27 and the oldest was 45years. This information is shown in Table 2.TABLE 2:AGEAge Frequency Percentage27 1 11%29 2 22%30 2 22%32 2 22%34 1 11%35 1 11%45 1 11%Total 10 100%Mother-tongue: A hundred percent (100%) of the respondents indicated that their mother-tongue was Dholuo. Thisis accounted for by the fact that the respondents were purposively sampled for in the study and the region of the study ispredominantly inhabited by speakers of Dholuo. This is shown in Table 3.TABLE 3:MOTHER-TONGUEMother-tongue Frequency PercentageDholuo 10 100%Total 10 100%Other languages spoken: The interpreters were asked to indicate other languages that they spoke. The idea of otherlanguages implies the other languages that interpreters spoke in addition to mother tongue. All of them cited Englishand Kiswahili as the other language that they spoke. The fact that all the interpreters cited English and Kiswahilipointed towards the fact that the language policy in the subordinate courts required the use of either English andKiswahili as alternative languages. In addition, English and Kiswahili are taught in schools it therefore follows thatsince these interpreters were educated at least up to form 4 level they must have been exposed to English and Kiswahili.This is shown in Table 4.TABLE 4:OTHER LANGUAGES SPOKENLanguage Frequency PercentEnglish 10 100%Kiswahili 10 100%Education Level: All the interpreters in this study had attained form four level of education. This was a veryimportant variable because for one to be employed as interpreter one must have at least form four level of education.Out of the interpreters who answered the questionnaire 60% reported that they had attended post-secondary schoolcolleges. The reported college level education courses were courses that were not relevant to their work as interpreters.This information is shown in Table 5.TABLE 5:EDUCATION LEVELLevel Frequency PercentSecondary 4 40%College 6 60%Total 10 100%Length of service as an interpreter: As shown in Table 6 the interpreters had varied number of years in theirservice as interpreters. The interpreter with the shortest service period was 1 year and the interpreter with the longestservice period was 9 years. The others ranged from 4 years to 8 years of service.© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES 913TABLE 6:LENGTH OF SERVICEYears Frequency Percentage1 1 10%4 1 10%5 2 20%6 2 20%7 1 10%8 1 10%9 1 10%Missing value 1 10%Total 10 100%Formal interpreter training: In order to establish whether the interpreters had received formal training ininterpretation, the interpreters were asked whether they had undergone any formal training as interpreters. 10% reportedthat they had been trained, 80% reported that they had not been trained while 10% did not answer this item. In terms oftraining even the 10% who reported that they had been trained placed a rider that the training was not court interpretertraining but sign-language interpreter training.The lack of training of the court interpreters is an indication that many litigants who come to court use the services ofuntrained interpreters. This further indicates the need for training of the court interpreters. One means of addressing thebarriers facing people who do not understand the language of the court in participating in the justice system is toprovide professional development for the court interpreters. This is shown in Table 7.TABLE 7:FORMAL INTERPRETER TRAININGResponse Frequency PercentageYes 1 10%No 8 80%Missing Value 1 10%Total 10 100%Based on the background information presented in Tables 1-7, some conclusions can be arrived at about theinterpreters. Firstly, all the interpreters are multilingual. This is due to the fact that they speak Dholuo as their mothertongueas well as English and Kiswahili being languages that they learned at school. These three languages are also theworking languages in the subordinate court where the data was collected. The second conclusion one can arrive at isthat all the interpreters have had a minimum of 12 years of education. This is based on the statistics derived from Table5 which indicates that all of the interpreters have had secondary education with 60% of them furthering their educationup to college level. The third conclusion is that the interpreters reported that they have had no formal training ininterpretation and thus there is a need for interpreter training programme. It is important at this point to note that theresearch did not delve into actual interpreter training but dealt with issues of training as reported by the interpreters.The previous section has dealt with the background of the interpreters. This section deals with language related issuesin court. Specifically, it deals with individual language proficiency rating of the interpreters, language combinationproficiency rating, languages frequently used in court by the interpreters, languages frequently used by litigants andlanguages the interpreters use with legal professionals in court.The interpreters were asked to state their proficiency in the use of Kiswahili, English and Dholuo as individuallanguages. The notion of proficiency was pre-coded on the questionnaire under four categories namely: EXCELLENT,GOOD, AVERAGE, and POOR. Table 8 shows the self-rated proficiency of the interpreters.TABLE 8:RATE OF PROFICIENCY IN INDIVIDUAL LANGUAGESRatingExcellent Good Average PoorLanguage Freq Per Freq Per Freq Per Freq PerEnglish - - 8 80% 2 20% - -Kiswahili 1 10% 6 60% 3 30% - -Dholuo 4 40% 6 60% - - - -As can be observed in Table 8, most of the interpreters felt that their proficiency in Kiswahili was GOOD andEXCELLENT. Out of the interpreters who participated in the study, 60% of the interpreters felt that their Kiswahiliwas GOOD while 10% rated their Kiswahili as EXCELLENT. However, a small number 30% felt that they wereaverage in Kiswahili.All the interpreters rated their proficiency in Dholuo as GOOD and EXCELLENT. This rating was also expectedsince they had earlier stated that their mother-tongue was Dholuo in Table 3. It could therefore be inconceivable forthem to report that they were not GOOD or EXCELLENT speakers of their mother-tongue. The fact that 40% reportedthat they were EXCELLENT and 60% reported that they were GOOD indicates that they have a very vibrant mothertongueuse. The high proficiency of Dholuo among court interpreters could be attributed to the fact that the regions© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
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(Contents Continued from Back Cover
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