Court is in session: Spanish alum interprets for Racine County

“Do you understand that you have waived your right to a trial?” the Racine County Court judge asks from his bench.

At the table for the defense, Vicki Bermudez leans in close to the defendant, a Hispanic man accused of driving without a license. Quietly, she speaks rapid-fire Spanish into his ear, translating everything the judge says almost as he says it.

The defendant nods along and answers, si. “Yes,” Bermudez clarifies for the courtroom. Later today, she will be asked to interpret for a crime victim, and after that, for a mother attending her son’s hearing in juvenile court.

“There’s no day that’s the same,” Bermudez says with a smile as she retreats to her office between cases.

Bermudez is a certified court interpreter, and she’s one of just three full-time county-employed court interpreters in the state - there’s one in Milwaukee and two in Madison who share one full-time position. Even so, these interpreters can’t handle every case, so the counties, and all other county courts in Wisconsin, rely on freelance interpreters to translate for defendants, victims, and other non-English speakers.

When they’re translating for court or at conferences, interpreters use simultaneous interpreting, meaning they orally interpret languages almost as soon as their clients hear or speak the words. In medical and community interpreting, they rely on consecutive interpreting, where one party speaks and the interpreter listens, then interprets the entire thought.

Vicki Bermudez stands on the steps of the Racine County Courthouse, where she works as a Spanish language court interpreter. Photo by Sarah Vickery.

Legal interpretation

Interpreting is just as much an art as it is a science. Bermudez has to hear words in English, process their meaning, determine the corresponding words in Spanish, and speak them to her client, all at the same time. To make things more difficult, language isn’t a wordfor-word exchange. Some phrases don’t have a direct translation between English and Spanish, so Bermudez has to convey the meaning however she can.

And she has to translate every word faithfully - no matter what it is.

“In one case, there was a temporary restraining order in place, and a request was made to turn it into a four-year injunction. … The ex-husband had sworn at the ex-wife a bunch of times, and (the file) was just full of the stuff he had said,” Bermudez recalled. “I don’t even swear in English, so it’s one of the areas where my terminology is weak. I had to go online, find a dictionary of swear words, and print it out so that I could be prepared for whatever was coming, because I knew the commissioner would ask for the specific words that were used.”

The majority of her work involves defendants who are charged with driving without a license or with DUIs, but Bermudez has been called to interpret in all kinds of cases. She recalls one contested custody hearing where everyone unexpectedly but amicably settled their dispute moments before she walked into the courtroom. The kicker was that she’d spent the majority of their previous hearing simultaneously interpreting for both the father suing for custody and his children’s guardian.

“I was the only one scheduled to interpret for what was supposed to be a 15-minute hearing for one of the parties. It last 90 minutes - and still had to be continued later that afternoon!”

A full life

Unlike many of the certified court interpreters, Bermudez did not grow up in a bilingual family.

“At one point, my grandfather taught me the numbers one through six, and I remember having this great desire to know the rest of the numbers through ten,” said Bermudez, laughing.

And learn she did. She took Spanish classes in junior high and high school and became fluent when she studied abroad in Argentina. After she earned her associate’s degree from what was then UW-Waukesha (now UWM at Waukesha), Bermudez and a girlfriend traveled to Spain hoping to find jobs and live abroad. Bermudez did - and then she found a husband too.

They relocated to the United States. Bermudez put her career on hold as they raised a family, but she always wanted to finish her degree. One day, she learned about court interpreting.

“It my first inkling that there was anything besides teaching or business that you could do with Spanish,” she said. “So I went to the first court interpreter orientation, and that was the first of many steps to becoming a certified interpreter.”

After passing several written and oral exams in English and Spanish covering both simultaneous and consecutive interpreting, Bermudez was certified to work in Wisconsin courts. A year later, she graduated from UWM with a B.A., finally earning the degree that she had wanted for years. She majored in Spanish and graduated in 2008, just one year after her daughter earned her bachelor’s.

Bermudez worked as a freelance interpreter before joining the Racine County Court system last year when the county created the staff interpreter position.

A little advice

Bermudez loves her job, and the court system will continue to need certified interpreters as the country’s demographics shift. Even so, she warned, becoming certified, either for medical or legal work, is a long, hard, expensive process. She and other interpreters have some advice: Be honest with yourself.

“Make sure you are fully bilingual and be honest in your ability. Are you willing to learn and put the effort into it? Are you willing to work hard?” she asked. And, she added, students who are bilingual should make an effort to volunteer their skills – both for practice and to give back to the community.

Finally, “Keep in mind that language acquisition helps you see things in different perspectives,” Bermudez said. “You learn to think outside the box. I think it helps you understand people and cultures and all kinds of ways. In other words, embrace learning a language, because there are many rewards.”

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science