Muhammad Gamal - Humanities

659many Latin American jokes depend on horrified reactions to a word thatis innocent in one place but shocking in another.Exposure to such linguistic phenomenon, and indeed interest in pursuingsuch linguistic differences would be the sine qua non for interpreters wishing toexert an extra effort to learn how to interpret for other speakers of Arabic whocome from far afield.ACCREDITED BUT NOT EXPERIENCEDThe above example shows how an accredited interpreter may not bequalified to work on a court case or in a police operation where not only theliberty of someone is at stake but also the resources and success of an entireoperation hinges on the interpreter’s ability to convey information both correctlyand accurately (Gamal: 2011).Yet, in Australia, neither the courts nor the police have their owninterpreters. One reason that explains this professional anomaly is the fact thatinterpreters are provided by the state (Bird: 1995) and therefore since the statepays for the services neither the courts nor the police would contemplateinvesting in such service. And this is wrong.Numerous court cases have been aborted or adjourned due to inadequateinterpreting stemming from the fact that the interpreter did not speak the samedialect of the defendant. The Begum case (1985) in the UK is a vivid exampleof a defendant who did not understand a word said by the interpreternotwithstanding her level of education. Moreover, the free-lance nature ofcommunity interpreting in Australia forces interpreters to accept assignmentswithout prior knowledge or experience of the context. Learning on the job is a