When interpreters translate their speech to English from Dholuo, it is evident that they all have a difficulty when trying to convey the message from the judge and still retain the felicity conditions that are necessary to make speech acts felicitous. Austin (1962) in explaining performatives says that for them to be meaningful there have to be certain felicity conditions and he identifies three:
1. Conventional procedure
2. Appropriate circumstances and persons 3. Correct execution of the procedure
In the courtroom discourse, the judge is the only person who has the right conditions to either free a defendant or send them to prison. They also set the cash bail and the bond terms.
In order for the judge to successfully execute a performative for instance of setting free an accused person, there has to be the felicity condition of conventional procedure. This in the courtroom situation can be considered as the judgement procedure. The circumstances and the persons also have to be appropriate so that it is only the judge who can by speaking, set free a suspect. There also has to be adherence to the correct execution of the procedure and in the courtroom; this is set out by the law. If any of these felicity conditions are not met, then the utterance made may just be considered mere words with no power to be performatives.
According to Thomas (1995) however, there are other forms of evidence that can be used to identify performatives. These include:
1. The perlocutionary effect of an utterance on a hearer 2. Explicit commentary by the speaker
3. Explicit commentary by someone other than the speaker 4. Subsequent discourse (Thomas, 1995, P.204-5)
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These forms of evidence as set out by Thomas are useful in identifying other perfomatives that are not acquittals and convictions. In the courtroom set-up, there is a set way for the judge to acquit and convict accused persons and this is what I examine in this section of the thesis.
The Dholuo-English interpreters working in the Kenyan courtroom find it difficult to speak as the mouthpiece of the judge; mainly because they are employees of the courtroom as clerks and are directly under the supervision of the judge thus power relations come into play.
Even though Goffman (1981) and Thomas (1986) clearly distinguish between the discourse roles of author vs. animator or author vs. mouthpiece, the courtroom interpreters in Kenya confuse the roles and, in instances exemplified elsewhere in this thesis, sometimes take up the author role by producing utterances of their own which they then attribute to the author of the utterance. The discoursal constraints of the courtroom are hierarchically marked in the sense that lawyers acknowledge their subordination to judges whereas laypeople are subordinate to both the lawyers and the judges. This subordination conveys hierarchical power, authority and credibility to the opposing sides, and to their clients. Atkinson (1992) contends that judges on one hand must convey dominance and control while at the same time appear neutral and objective.
What is apparent in my findings is that whereas there are instances when in presenting the defendants and witnesses discourse the interpreters use DS retaining the first person voice, there are no instances when the interpreters use first person voice presentation for the magistrate. All the interpreters in my study use the third person point of view when presenting speech by the magistrate especially when magistrates are making judgements. The magistrate has authority in the court of law to determine the outcome of a case whereas the interpreter has no such authority. In the Kenyan courtroom, since the interpreter is also a courtroom employee, he/she is well aware of his/her subordination in terms of the ability to decide the outcome of cases and I find it impacts on how they present the speech of the judge as is shown in the examples of this section. This is so even though it is advocated by researchers such as Moeketsi that the first person point of view is the best in interpretation as the interpreter is just a mouthpiece/animator of the person they are reporting thus should retain the first person (Moeketsi 2008). However, there are instances where faithfulness to the ST is at odds with the performative nature of some utterances. Discussed below are some examples that help explain this finding.
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Example 4.1.a (see Judgement 3)
This example is from a court case where the accused person is charged with obtaining money under false pretence.
Mag: I find that the court is expected to determine
Int: Koro kot neno ni kot eeh ohh onego n’gad bura ni ka n’giyo
RT: Now the court sees that the court eeeh oohh should determine this case looking at…
In this example, the interpreter is presenting what the magistrate has said to the defendant who does not speak English. The category of reporting speech that she uses is free indirect speech (FIS). Also, when the magistrate uses the first person singular “I” the interpreter decides to replace that with the third person “the court”. This is because firstly, the interpreter recognises that she has no authority to determine the case; that is the jurisdiction of the judge alone. This is because it is only the judge who can determine the outcome of a case in the courtroom. The felicity conditions adhered to here are that the circumstances are right i.e. the courtroom and the person is also the right one i.e. the magistrate.
Secondly, in the Kenyan courtroom, the interpreter is an employee of the courtroom under the direct supervision of the magistrate. Due to this, the power relations in the courtroom are real for them and they find that they too show their subordination to the judge which influences the way they interpret. So even though the magistrate does not say “the court should determine”, the interpreter chooses to use “the court” which is in the third person as opposed to the first person “I” so as not to break the felicity conditions necessary for the utterance to be a performative. If the interpreter had retained the first person narration, then she would have flouted the felicity conditions that require the circumstances, the procedure, and the person to be right in order for the performative to be felicitous. This is only so because the Dholuo interpreter has not been sensitized to the fact that his/her discourse role in the courtroom is only that of animator as opposed to that of author.
Example 4.1.b. (see Judgement 2)
This is an example drawn from a case where a man is accused of negligence of duty as a conductor in a public service vehicle.
Mag: And I have gone through the whole evidence Int: Kot ose n’giyo kaka ne ji owuoyo te
RT: The court has looked at how everyone talked
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Mag: Regarding counts one that alleged that the accused person was regarded to have acted in uncivil and disorderly manner
Int: Kaluwore gi ketho mokwongo miwacho ni in ne itimori e yo ma ok ni kare e ketho mokwongo
RT: In relation to the first offence where it is said that you behaved in a manner that is not right in the first offence
Example 4.1.b also does what was evident in example 4.1.a. by first making use of FIS. The interpreter changes the first person singular pronoun “I” to the third person noun phrase “the court” in order to take care that the felicity conditions are adhered to. This is in recognition of the fact that as the court clerk, the interpreter has no power to go through any evidence that is given in the court in order to make a decision about the case. Knowing this, the interpreter finds it difficult to use the first person narration to present what the magistrate says. This is however in contrast to when the interpreters are presenting what witnesses say where they have no problem using the first person narration.
Example 4.1.c (See Judgement 1)
In this case, the accused person was charged with breaking into a store and stealing some goods.
Mag: And the accused is acquitted under section 215 of the CPC Int: Kendo court oweyi e buo chik mia ariyo gapar ga bich
RT: And the court has freed you under the law number two hundred and fifteen
Example 4.1.c makes use of Narrator’s Presentation of Speech Act (NPSA). This she uses by identifying the speech act, that is, that the court has freed the accused person. In this example, the magistrate uses the passive voice in making an acquittal of the accused person. Even though there is no Actor, it is implied that the person who has acquitted the defendant is the magistrate who is reading the judgement. In so making this utterance, there has been the performative of acquitting the accused person and absolving him of the crime he was accused of having committed. This is possible by the powers given to the magistrate by the laws of the land. The interpreter on the other hand has no such powers and therefore in reporting what was said by the magistrate, introduces an Actor into the utterance thus changing it from the passive voice to the active voice. The Actor introduced was, “the court”. This enables the interpreter to convey that it is the judge who had acquitted the accused person and not the interpreter.
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Example 4.1.d (See Judgement 3)
Mag: I find that it was the evidence of the complainant Int: Iyudo ni en neno mar jadonjo
RT: It is found that it was the evidence of the complainant Mag: That on the twenty sixth of December twenty twelve
Example 4.1.d also makes use of FIS with retention of the tense which is only possible because the utterance is made in the active voice in the original form and is changed to the passive in the TT. When it comes to choosing the subject in the first part of the utterance, the interpreter does not use the first person singular pronoun “I”. Even though this conforms to the rules of presenting other people’s utterances, the main idea for the interpreter here is to retain the felicity conditions.
In this example, the interpreter does not choose to use the third person pronoun and instead interestingly, uses the passive in the way that Dholuo uses the passive in reporting speech made by a person in authority. This is identified in this study as one of the main differences between reporting in Dholuo and reporting in English. Dholuo uses the passive to show that the speech is made by a person higher in rank than both the speaker and the addressee. (The use of the passive is discussed more extensively in section 4.4 of this thesis)
Example 4.1.ei. (See Judgement 2)
Mag: I find that the complainant who testified as PW1 narrated how she boarded the matatu Int: No yud ni jadonjo mane owuoyo kaka janeno mokwongo nolero kaka noidho gari
RT: It was found that the complainant who spoke as the first witness explained how she boarded the vehicle
Example 4.1.ei. also uses FIS. The tense of the utterance changes from the present to the past in the new utterance. The person also changes from the first person to the third person but in the reported utterance, the voice also changes from the active to the passive voice. This happens because the interpreter introduces the verb “to be” in the presented utterance thus passivizing the utterance.
All the examples used in section 4.1 that introduce the passive also show a pattern in Dholuo which is not evident in English. That is that Dholuo often uses the passive as a form of
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reporting speech made by a senior person to a junior person mainly in age but also in rank as well. This is further illustrated in example 4.1.eii below:
Example 4.1.eii. (Plea 1)
Mag: A plea of not guilty is entered Int: Owach ni ukwedo ketho no
RT: It has been said that you have refused the offence
In this example, there is use of NPSA where the speech act presented is that the accused persons have refused the offence. In so doing, again there is an introduction of passivization.
This type of passivization in Dholuo is often evident when children are reporting to their siblings what their parents have said especially if it is a warning over an impending punishment e.g. “it has been said that you should stop making noise or you will be punished”. Passivization of this nature usually has the effect of showing that the message should be treated seriously as it has come from a person of rank in relation to both the speaker and the addressee.
Section 4.1 examined the way in which Dholuo interpreters modified their interpretations so as to fit in the felicity conditions required for performatives to hold. I illustrated how the interpreters often changed the first person pronoun from “I” to the third person “the court”.
At other times, the Dholuo interpreter also made active utterances passive in order to show that they were reporting the speech of a person senior in rank and that should be taken seriously as is the norm in the Dholuo language. This kind of change of the voice and person was only evident when the magistrate was making a judgement ruling and the interpreters did not do the same when reporting utterances from witnesses. This drove me to the conclusion that the fact that the interpreter is also an employee of the court and subordinate to the magistrate contributed to the way they presented the speech of the judge whom they acknowledged to be their direct boss. Also I showed that because the interpreters had not been sensitized to their role as the animators, they tended to alternate between being the author and the animator of the utterance in the course of translation.
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