Muhammad Y GamalUniversity of Canberra

Arabic Forensic Linguistics: Interpreting for theAustralian police

Introduction

Arabic is one of the major community languages in Australia and is therefore one of the frequently interpreted languages within the law enforcement context. Contrary to common belief,spoken Arabic in Australia is far from being a monolithic structure as it comes in a wide variety of dialects and regional variations reflecting an extensive range of cultures:academic, professional, social and epistemological. In the context of police interpreting, the interpreter is always the same: a community interpreter in Arabic with generalist background training and no specialist training in law or police matters. The paper looks at the context of interpretingfor the police in Australia and the challenges facing Arabic interpreters.

Key words: Arabic, court interpreting, forensic examination, police interpreting, NAATI.

Theoretical background

Community interpreting (Wadensjo: 2008) and translating is oneof the hallmarks of multiculturalism in Australia (Lee and Buzo: 2009). As a country with over 200 languages spoken (DFAT: 2012), community interpreting service is considered oneof the largest in the world. The establishment of the community interpreting and translation service in 1973 has been hailed in several other countries that borrowed the Australian accreditation system, modelled its service alongside the Australian model or simply look up to Australia for initiatives and solutions (Martin et al: 1991).

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The right to an interpreter in criminal trials (Kirby: 1994) has been endorsed in Australia by common law cases and almost enshrined in the Australian legal culture that advocates a fair trial (Robinson: 1994). The court assigns a defendant in criminal cases a free interpreter (Kirby: 1991) during, and sometimes prior to, the trial. Likewise, the Australian policeoffer the service of an interpreter to persons who are interviewed, arrested or charged at no cost to the person (Einfeld: 1991). However, neither the court nor the police have a say in the accreditation, training or even the selection of professional interpreters to work on police matters, investigations or police operations. They call the government interpreting service that sends an interpreter at the date and time requested.

While some purists would argue that such anonymous interpreterservice would be conducive to transparency in the service and would ensure confidentiality, practitioners and some researchers disagree (Gamal: 2010). They believe that, the user (police and the courts) should have a professional input into the accreditation and training of police interpreters. And, for the quality and integrity of the interpreting profession the user should be able to select their own interpreters.

Interpreter and translator accreditation:

In Australia, interpreters gain their accreditation to practice through three options: recognition of overseas interpreting qualifications, a completion of an approved interpreting course in Australia or the successful completion of an interpreting examination conducted by the National Accreditation Authority of Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) which is the only government institution in charge of the professional accreditation of interpreters and translators. However, NAATI accreditation is akin to licensingand not a registration board. Once the NAATI accreditation hasbeen obtained, the interpreter is on their own: they can

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choose which area to work in and can decide on professional development the way they see fit. Likewise, NAATI has very little authority over accredited interpreters. In the essentially free-lance, ad hoc practice of community interpreting, some interpreters specialize in an area they like (i.e. school meetings) or in an area that provides more work (social security). Naturally, there are several other equally valid factors that impact on work choices and practices such as: registration with big translation agencies,life experience, academic qualifications, the suitability of afreelance style of employment, professional development and Arabic language skills. The latter is a significant factor!

Although the accreditation says “Arabic Interpreter” in reality the interpreter may be an Egyptian who is more comfortable interpreting only for Egyptian-Arabic speakers andno other dialects of Arabic particularly those distant from Egypt such as Iraq or Algeria. In this respect Gulf and North African varieties of Arabic bear distinct differences from Egyptian Arabic. Although Egyptian-Arabic speaking interpreters may find it easier to interpret for speakers of neighbouring regional varieties such as Sudan, Libya, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, it is possible, with practice and study, to interpret for speakers of other dialects of Arabic. This is an area that has attracted very little attention, if at all, by course designers in Australia:dialects in community interpreting. Consequently, very little research has been conducted in this area.

Interest in dialects depends on the interpreter’s exposure to the phenomenon and the complexity of the variation. For instance, in Egypt, the southern dialect is very distinct and carries semantic, phonetic and syntactic differences from the northern dialects of Cairo, Alexandria and the Delta. The variation also reflects sociolinguistic values. Likewise, in Lebanon, and despite the much smaller distances between linguistic communities the semantic, syntactic and phonetic differences are so marked that one virtually announces his

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place of birth and education when opening his mouth. This phenomenon applies to other languages as well. Edwards (1995:100) explains

Regional speech can vary. There are variations in accent as well as vocabulary. Some words have different meaning in different places, and many Latin American jokes dependon horrified reactions to a word that is innocent in one place but shocking in another.

Exposure to such linguistic phenomenon, and indeed interest inpursuing such linguistic differences would be the sine qua non for interpreters wishing to exert an extra effort to learn howto interpret for other speakers of Arabic who come from far afield.

Accredited but not qualified interpreters

The above example shows , clearly, how an accredited interpreter may not be qualified to work on a court case or a police operation where not only the liberty of someone is at stake but also the resources and success of an entire operation hinges on the interpreter’s ability to convey information both correctly and accurately (Gamal: 2011a).

Yet, in Australia, neither the courts nor the police have their own interpreters. One reason that explains this professional anomaly is the fact that interpreters are provided by the state (Bird: 1995) and therefore since the state pays for the services they would not bother investing insuch service. And this is wrong. Numerous court cases have been aborted or adjourned due to inadequate interpreting stemming from the fact that the interpreter did not speak the same dialect of the defendant. The Begum case (1985) in the UKis a vivid example of a defendant who did not understand a word said by the interpreter notwithstanding her level of education. Moreover, the free-lance nature of community interpreting in Australia forces interpreters to accept

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assignments without prior knowledge or experience of the context. Learning on the job is a common part of professional practice and is seen by some practitioners as “professional development” (Edwards: 1995). In the absence of a registrationsystem for police or court interpreters it is hardly surprising to see an interpreter appearing in court to interpret in a trial for the first time. Likewise, an interpreter who has had little experience outside the Social Security office may be contacted to accompany police to do a house search. In both cases, the inexperienced interpreter could easily impede the course of justice and undermine policework.

When availability is the overriding qualification

The police’s decision not to develop their own panel of professional interpreters lest they have to allocate time, resources and effort in developing it is a case of false economy. It would be unfathomable to have a police team well-trained, equipped and funded to bust a drug gang only to have an inept and inexperienced interpreter who actually lets the whole team down. Police reports and interpreter experience show that invariably the police are busy and only realize the need for an interpreter at the last minute and only then they call for help. The government agency scrambles to provide the linguistic service and rushes the first “available” interpreter to the police. The government interpreting agencyhas thus discharged its duty of supplying an accredited interpreter to the law enforcement sector and the police believe they have discharged their duty of providing/having a qualified interpreter for their operation. On paper it seems fine but in reality it is not (Gonzalez et al: 1991).

The first available interpreter is not necessarily the most experienced, let alone the best qualified.

The nature of police interpreting

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Contrary to public opinion interpreting for the police is not always an exciting activity. It certainly lacks the thrills ofJames Bond and the detective tenacity of Lieutenant Columbo. Although (Federal) police interpreters do not do all their work at the police station many hours are spent listening to ‘foreign product’ recorded from telephone conversations between Arabic-speaking persons. The conversations, in different dialects and reflecting a wide variety of registers and at times bursting with terminology, real and made-up, are required to be listened to and analysed for valuable information in accordance with a list of indicators set out bythe police. In ‘live operations’ where timing is crucial, verylittle is transcribed as the interpreter is required to do on-the -spot analysis and sift for the required and vital information. A great deal of which must be discarded but accounted for. This is a skill that is gained over many operations and after hundreds of hours listening and learning how to draw a visual map of the entire context covered in and referred to in the recorded conversations. Thus the involvement of the interpreter, ab initio, in any such operation is not only significant but crucial to the chronology and integrity of the operation.

In reality, however, this is not always possible as the police, quite often; realize the need for an interpreter afterthe operation has begun. With no interpreter in house, no panel of experienced interpreters, the police contact a government agency who endeavours to get the “first available Arabic interpreter”. The agency contracts only NAATI-accredited interpreters and in this it covers itself: all the interpreters on their books are qualified and ‘licensed to practice’. There could be nothing wrong with the agency. Yet, the agency is not doing a great service to the police despite their belief otherwise. Their success in locating an interpreter to be at the address within the shortest time possible does not necessarily reflect high professional standards, quality, or best practice. The first available

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interpreter for a crucial drug-busting, high-tech, internationally-connected criminal network may turn out to be an interpreter who in the tough freelance translation market is forced to moonlight in order to make both ends meet. The interpreter may have just finished his night shift working as a security guard!

The fact that the police called for an interpreter after an operation has commenced means that they are a step or two behind the criminals and they are playing catch-up. This is a serious professional error that the police make, and under thepresent arrangements, continue to make.

The history and integrity of an operation must be followed andmaintained from the start and experience shows that the same interpreter(s) must be retained. Changing interpreters in mid-stream undermines the integrity of the operation. This happensall the time because the agency has its own system of allocating jobs to interpreters who, inter alia, work solely for the agency, are in good terms with the management, or are simply available on the day. Freelance interpreters, as the term suggests, work for a wide a variety of agencies and accept various assignments from different agencies all the time and may find it difficult to make themselves available for the needs of police.

Translating meaning and interpreting culture

Accreditation in community interpreting in Australia, whether through recognition of overseas qualifications, university/vocational study or examination, does not reflect any specialisation (Gamal: 1998). The accreditation is in the language and does not stipulate specialization in any field orcontext. Professional and academic debate over the generalist vs specialist accreditation occupied Australian academia in the first part of the 1990s but abated as most universities were channelling their efforts into offering Master programs which became fashionable after the recession of the early 1990s.

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Yet, the fact remains, today as it was twenty years ago that community interpreters are generalists with little or no training in police interpreting. Even the training they receive in legal interpreting courses is limited to lists of vocabulary which is no substitute for the rigorous study of legal discourse and its translation. As field work and practicums are very costly, labour-intensive and time consuming it is often left to the student to organize their own field work but they have to account for “observations” on their own time.

The point here is that the interpreter who shows up for policeinterpreting may have never been into a police station, a court house or dealt with the law previously. The fact that the free-lance interpreter context in Australia relies on learning on the job is a very serious situation that attractedlittle attention neither be academia nor by the police. Edwards point out to the “rich potential for error in court interpreting” and explains that language, the legal system andthe process of court interpreting is fraught with challenges (1995: 100). An Arabic-speaking interpreter who is engaged by the police for executing a search warrant or a raid on a factory or even assisting Australian customs at the airport may find it too difficult to deal with the socio-linguistic aspects of interpreting: going into a stranger’s home with thepolice and meeting persons who are older than you poses a serious challenge to the Arabic-speaking interpreter. The samething applies when females are the majority in the house as well as when young children are about. Furthermore, without experience in working under pressure, an inexperienced Arabic community interpreter may fail to maintain integrity while interpreting under the power and authority enjoyed and exercised by the police. Again, this is another problematic issue that attracted little attention by forensic linguists and defence attorneys alike. Police, like any profession, do make some comments in the course of their work and such comments should be taken in their context and interpreted as such.

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Failure to see them in this light would confuse the inexperienced interpreter and may make him/her lose focus on the task at hand. The interpreter’s ability to communicate with those who are in power and those who are being interviewed or investigated (the powerless) is an invaluable skill. Equally significant is training in “frontline policing”which may vary from police on the beat or at crime scene, safehouse or joint operations with other intelligence gathering organisations. Unless community and particularly ‘police interpreters’ are trained in its techniques, the quality of their work and the success of their task remain doubtful. It must be remembered that what makes a good police interpreter is not knowledge of police procedure, legal terminology or even interpreting experience but communication skills and the ability to discharge the communication responsibility successfully and seamlessly (Valero-Garces and Martin: 2008).

The relevance of culture, legal culture:

One of the main objectives of community interpreting in multilingual societies is to facilitate the process of settlement by migrants who have little command of the languageand no understanding of the local culture (Eades: 1995). Naturally some contexts are easier than others although each context has various levels of complexity. For instance, in Australia it is virtually impossible to buy prescription drugsover the counter without a doctor’s prescription where as it is a routine purchase in many parts of the Arab world. Similarly, obeying traffic rules is strictly adhered to in Australia than in most other countries. Likewise, the experience of going to court in Australia does not have the same negative connotations it has in Arab culture. Gonzalez etal (1991:221) concur that the court experience is equally shattering for migrants in the United States legal system:

More often than not the defendant or witness entering thecourt system for the first time is confused and perhaps even frightened. This is particularly true of limited- or

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non-English speakers. Their lack of English is compoundedby an equal, if not greater, lack of familiarity with thecourtroom itself as well as the United States system of justice.

In Australia, going to court is part and parcel of the local culture and this is seen as confidence in the justice system and that the system actually works. This cannot be said of thejustice system in other countries. Many Arabic-speaking migrants tend to have a negative feeling about resorting to court even when they are claimants or defendants and more so when they are the victims. Adjusting to a new culture implies understanding and appreciation of its systems and rules and this tends to be easier for the more educated, well-travelled and language-speaking migrant, although higher education and crime are not mutually exclusive.

Throughout the work of community interpreting , and especiallyin the legal context, interpreters come across complex situations that could only be defused through better understanding of the legal culture in Arabic. For example, in a domestic violence situation, when a female calls the police to report violence by a male the situation could easily be emotionally charged. An interpreter who is required to interpret police questions to the male should be aware of the legal-cultural background to the situation. Such understandingwould manifest itself clearly in court when the female, usually advised by the Australian police, to take out an AVO (Apprehended Violence Order) against the male perpetrator. There is no doubt that appreciating the patriarchal nature of Arab culture and the negative connotation of a female reporting a male to the police, involving the government (police) in matrimonial (family) relation and getting a court order (government) against the male complicates matters and the professional conduct of the interpreter in these situations by adopting an appropriate tone of voice, repetition of legal concepts, asking for confirmation that themale understands would help. Experience also shows that most

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males do not appreciate the meaning of an AVO and quite often they oppose it where an acceptance of it would indicate good intention, the will to cooperate with the court and may improve matters.

Training legal interpreters in Australia tends to focus primarily on legal terminology and how the legal system works but pays little attention to legal culture and specifically inmigrant cultures. This is a significant area that deserves more attention by forensic linguists and legal interpreting researchers.

To illustrate this point further, let’s take television drama as an example. Since the inception of television Australian viewers grew up with detective drama from the days of Perry Mason in the late fifties to the detective pathologist Quincy,Lieutenant Columbo and to Boston Legal, NYDP and the like. Such medium has had a tremendous impact on the proliferation of police, detective and legal culture in addition to detective literature and the all too powerful Hollywood productions where law and the court have provided the setting for many successful feature films. Against this legal culture,an Arabic interpreter would find it necessary to explain some mundane legal concepts to their clients who did not grow up with a similar dose of police or legal shows on TV. In most Arab televisions, the detective style drama does not exist andthis is not surprising since “police novels” don’t really havea detective element but the simplistic good vs. evil struggle (Bahgat: 2011).

Interpreting in live operations

In the frequent occasions when the interpreter is required to accompany police on a live operation, he/she are usually briefed last (if at all). Depending on the interpreter’s experience, security clearance and relation with the police team, the interpreter may be involved in the briefing ab initio. The rules on how to use the interpreter in live operations have not been written yet and are ad hoc left to the discretion

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of the commander or team leader conducting the operation. It is appreciated that the police is not interested in examining the use of interpreters in live operations as they have a lot of tasks on their hands. However, the issue is of great significance to legal defence although this is also an area that the law has not been paid attention to. Basically in live operations, the interpreter becomes part of the police, and is engaged to get a certain task done. When it goes successfully and smoothly there is little concern and it is seen as an ordinary community interpreting task. It is however, when it does not go successfully and smoothly that complications start and questions are raised. One such complication is when resistance or violence occurs and the interpreter becomes involved directly or indirectly. In a house raid with old people, females, young children, several other persons present communications may break down and violence occurs. Very little information is known on the position of the interpreter. Quite often, the question that springs to student’s minds is: what if the interpreter is hurt? Still, there is no solid information. The more vexing question however is: to what extent can the interpreter help the police? For example: is it still within the interpreter’s brief to carry the police’s recording device to be used in theinterview? Can the interpreter touch and handle exhibits seized at the house? What does the law say about the interpreter assisting the police by shifting the police car outside the house where the search warrant is executed? Policeprotocol, the interpreting literature and forensic linguistic research are all vague on the position, legal and ethical responsibilities and the professional conditions of interpreting in live police operations.

Generally speaking, police do not like to have interpreters onlive operations. There are several reasons for that chief among which are: safety of the interpreter, exposure, securityclearance and the risk of turning the interpreter into an agentprovocateur. The latter, even by police admission, is a grey

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matter that needs more examination as well as real-life examples to develop further. Ironically, in a multicultural community with the police using many interpreters in their daily work, Australian defence attorneys have shown little interest in exploring this area. In deed the bar association may wish to explore the various aspects of interpreter participation in live operations particularly when a seizure of goods or an arrest is made. It remains an open legal question on whether the yell by an interpreter during a house raid to alert a policeman of the sudden appearance of a personon the premises is interpreting or police work?

The interpreter as an expert witness

Interpreting for the police (and particularly for the Australian Federal Police) entails giving evidence in court when the matter is prosecuted and goes to a hearing. The experience should be fairly simple and straight forward as theCrown (Public Prosecutor) asks the interpreter about their qualifications, experience and whether the translation, interpreting or transcription task was carried out by them. There may be some other relevant questions the Crown may wish to underscore or clarify such as the dialect the interpreter speaks or their experience in a particular area. On some occasions, the interpreter is summoned to give evidence as an expert witness in an area of linguistic nature and thus their linguistic evidence becomes forensic evidence in court.

More often than not, the police prepare a statement on behalf of the interpreter (Interpreter’s statement) stating the relevant facts which is given to the interpreter who reads it and if comfortable with its content endorses the entire statement by signing each page. The relevant facts here refer to the engagement of the interpreter by the police, brief description of the interpreter’s experience and the work carried out. Then the statement is added to the police brief (case file) and presented to the court. The defence attorney gets a copy of the brief to prepare its representation. Quite

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often, the defence may wish to cross-examine the interpreter on issues mentioned in the Interpreter’s statement.

For community interpreters in general and court interpreters in particular, becoming an expert witness is not unusual for they are ipso facto experts in their field of cultural negotiations and linguistic transfer and translation (Levi: 1994). However, the experience of giving evidence in court andbeing cross examined by the defence could be shattering for some court interpreters who fail to see the distinction between being a professional practitioner and being asked about the work they have carried out. Essentially, the defencewould try to discredit the evidence and the experience of the interpreter in order to render the prosecution’s case weak andto show that the prosecution would not be able to prove its case “beyond reasonable doubt”. It must be conceded that some defence lawyers employ unnerving techniques to unsettle even the most confident interpreter. Quite often, the interpreter is uncertain about the purpose and consequences of their opinion: on the one hand they cannot contradict what they havetranslated and on the other, they fear conceding to the defence attorney may not only undermine the police’s case but also jeopardise their professional relation with the police.

Forensic linguistics for barristers

Many court interpreters dread being called as witness experts for they fear the assault on their professional reputation particularly in a tight and tough freelance market. This is understandable as it also applies to other professionals giving expert witness most notably members of the medical profession (Gray: 2010). However, interpreters and specifically court interpreters are never trained in the area of defending their translation, describing their work let alone being cross-examined in a court of law. As we have seen above, the lack of a strong legal culture in Arabic negativelyimpacts on Arabic-speaking litigants. Now, the day has come for the Arabic interpreter to be in court and they too would

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feel apprehensive, if not estranged, by the same two legal cultures that they have been negotiating in their daily work. Naturally, when cross-examined most feel attacked, discriminated and discredited where in fact it is only the opinion of one person: the defence lawyer who when moving intolinguistics, more often than not, becomes dangerously out of his depth.

Throughout the world linguistic evidence is tendered in court and in its simplest examples it may take the form of a verbal threat, a disputed clause in a contract or a recorded conversation the meaning of which is debated in court which (usually) speaks and understands the same language of the evidence. In multilingual communities, an interpreter is used to render the foreign meaning into the language of the court and thus the interpreter becomes an expert who might be calledto give professional advice to the court on matters of language and linguistics.

Defense lawyers attempt to cross that bridge and they do so with under-developed understanding of how linguistic evidence is structured, how interpreters work or indeed the conditions under which interpreters work. Familiarity with these issues would be a great help to defence lawyers yet as experience shows their forays into discrediting the police interpreter are usually short-lived and prove to be much ado about nothing. Justice Peter Gray (2010:202), of the Federal Court of Australia, sheds light on the problem:

“Some lawyers do acquire substantial expertise in specific areas. I have known lawyers specializing in personal injuries cases whose experience has taught them a great deal about medicine. Similarly, there are specialist building and construction lawyers whose breadth and depth of engineering knowledge is very impressive. Confront any of these lawyers with a technical issue involving economics, anthropology, botany

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or linguistics and they will be likely to flounder like the rest of us.”

Lawyers, even bilingual lawyers, do not receive training in cross-examining linguists and their efforts appear to rely solely on common knowledge or secondary opinion. In one case, at the Australian Supreme court a defence lawyer who was trying to discredit the interpreter’s translation of a poorly recorded telephone conversation attempted to give the impression that communication on the phone is never as good aswhen it is done in person:

Barrister: The recording is of poor quality, is it not?

Interpreter: Yes it is.

Barrister: You would agree that people make better sense when they speak to each other face to face than on the phone, wouldyou not?

Interpreter: No, I wouldn’t.

Barrister: Why is that?

Interpreter: First, people have been using the phone for generations now. Second, face to face communication is no guarantee that misunderstanding would not occur.

It is insightful to observe that when the argument does not gothe defence’s way the idea is dropped and a second line of questioning begins. Experience shows, that better cross-examining techniques of interpreters could be shaped and sharpened by better understanding of the interpreter’s road tobecoming a court interpreter and with a focus on their ‘conditions of work’. So far the Australian judiciary and defence barristers have shown little interest in the conditions under which interpreters work and a little interestin this area may yield some very illuminating results which may lead to a revision of the way police employ interpreters and expects them ‘assist’ in police work (Gamal: 2011). There

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is no shortage of experience in Australia and there are enoughcontexts to provide case studies from fraud to drugs, domesticviolence, people smuggling, money laundering and terrorism.

Linguistics and terrorism

Terrorism has been with civilisation since biblical times and the nationality and language of terrorism changed over time. Since 9/11, however, terrorism has been closely and almost solely linked to Islam and Arabic and indeed the phenomenon became a growth industry with academia capitalizing on the interest offering degrees on terrorism studies (Lentini: 2010). Yet, despite the increase in counter-terrorism efforts at the state, federal, national levels as well as inter-nationallevel, very little attention has been established between terrorism and linguistics. For example, none of the MA programs in terrorism studies at Monash, Monterrey (MIIS) or Manchester (Salford) universities have established the link orexplored the role of translation which is indispensable at alllevels from surveillance to sentencing.

When the Australian Federal Police (AFP) decided to make public the execution of Operation Pendennis in November 2005 declaring it to be Australia’s largest and longest counter-terrorism case, it was an operation that went on for at least eighteen months prior. Before any arrest was made the entire operation hinged on translation and analysis. The amount of translation carried out from Arabic into English for OperationPendennis overshadowed all translation work carried out in Australia in all other languages for the previous decade. An Australian newspaper (The Age: 2008) reported that “The AFP intercepted 97,480 calls and held 16,400 hours of listening material relating to the case”.

The question these statistics raise is a significant one as itrelates to the very success of counter-terrorism activities. What is the yardstick used to address terrorism when the culture, language and religion was foreign? Apart from security clearance what were the overriding factors for

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selecting linguists or is the dictum ‘a linguist is a linguist’ valid here? And, apart from national security, is terrorism a specialisation that any police force would expect generalist interpreters and translators to be familiar with let alone expert in? Furthermore, given the wide variety of dialects in Arabic in Australia, political sophistication of certain Arab systems and the main distinctions between religious sects in Islam would the selection of Arabic language linguists be the same process like the one used for the Sydney Olympics for example? The last few questions point to the significance of training but more so the overriding importance of developing an independent panel of police interpreters where training programs are specifically designedfor interpreters wishing to work in this field. Gamal (2012) argues that a stand-alone ‘Diploma in in Police Interpreting’ does appear to be a sound investment that wold certainly benefit both the interpreting profession and the police service.

Conclusion

In legal interpreting a great deal of work is carried out withand for the police yet for too long police interpreting has been overshadowed by court interpreting. Throughout this paper, the focus has been on the significance of specialisation in this area of forensic linguistics. It has taken the less-examined area of Arabic interpreting for the police as its main focus. In calling for training and specialisation in forensic linguistics, the paper has been forthright in casting light on some of the inadequacies of thecurrent system of testing, teaching and training generalist interpreters. Interpreting for the police should be seen as anarea sui generis that requires closer academic examination and research.

While the professional and cultural foci have been based on the Arabic-speaking community, the same applies to all other

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communities and irrespective of their language, culture or levels of democracy and political sophistication.

The specialisation in police interpreting is likely to become more evident not only in migrant communities but throughout the world as Human Rights Organisations and the World Trade Organisation streamline existing national laws and introduce newer legislation that would facilitate the mobility of peopleand particularly workers. This can already be seen in places such as the European Union, the United Kingdom, South East Asia and Dubai.

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Lentini, P. (2010) “If they Know Who Put the Sugar it Means They Know Everything”: Understanding Terrorist Activity Using Operation Pendennis Wiretap (Listening Device and Telephone Intercept) Transcripts. Paper available at : http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/radicalisation/conferences-and-events/conference-2010/--downloads/know-sugar-know-everything-pl.pdf

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Radio interview:

Gamal, M (2011a) Radio interview on the ABC Law Report on “Court Interpreting” with Damian Carrick:

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http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lawreport/courtroom-interpreters/3713316

Web sites consulted

The Australian Federal Policewww.afp.gov.au

The Age Newspaper, Melbourne, Victoria dated 7 September 2008http://www.theage.com.au/national/tipoff-led-to-intense-16month-investigation-20080916-4hxp.html (Site accessed on 06/03/2012)

National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI)www.naati.com.au (Site accessed on 06/03/2012)

MA in Security, Terrorism and Insurgency (Leeds University)http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/postgraduates/taught-postgraduates/ma-terrorism-security-insurgency/ (Site accessedon 08/03/2012)

Master of Counter-Terrorism Studies (Monash university)http://monash.edu/study/coursefinder/course/3758/ (Site accessed on 08/03/2012)

MA in Non-proliferation and Terrorism Studies (Monterrey Institute of International Studies)http://www.miis.edu/academics/programs/npts (Site accessed on08/03/2012)

MA in Terrorism and Security (Salford university, Manchester)http://www.salford.ac.uk/courses/terrorism-and-security (Siteaccessed on 08/03/2012)

Cases cited:

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Iqbal Begum (1985):webdb.lse.ac.uk/gender/Casefinaldetail.asp?id=86&pageno=7C

Biographical Note:

Muhammad Y Gamal is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Arabic translation studies at the faculty of Law, University of Canberra. As a senior forensic linguist Muhammad worked for the Australian Federal Police for over two decades interpreting and translating in a wide range of contexts varying from the forensic linguistic examination of asylum seekers nationalities to being the chief linguist in Australia’s largest ever terrorism case. Gamal contributed an entry on Court Interpreting to the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies (1988 and 2008), publishes on forensic linguistics and court interpreting. He is a member of IAFL since 1995.

Email: muhammad.gamal@uc.edu.au

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