Lawyering Across Languages by Han Xu

Lawyering Across Languages by Han Xu

This book offers a holistic view of the complex dynamics of interpreter-facilitated legal interviews, elucidating insights into challenges and opportunities for effective communication in legal settings in today’s multilingual world.

The volume sheds light on an underexplored area of research at the intersection of language and the law in its focus on legal interviews, a key dimension of legal communication. Xu adopts an ethnographic approach to data from authentic interviews at several legal aid institutions in Australia, supported by survey data with lawyers and interpreters from across Australia. Drawing on these different data sources, Xu explores the ethical, technological, and communicative challenges in interpreter-mediated legal interviews, from deviations in ethical standards by untrained interpreters to the difficulties of remote interpreting. In so doing, the volume puts in starker relief the importance of professional training, ethical practices, and proactive approaches in facilitating effective communication and access to justice for all clients in multilingual legal settings.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in translation and interpreting studies and language and the law, as well as related areas such as legal studies and immigration studies.

Dr Han Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research lies at the intersection of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Computational Linguistics, and the broader fields of Applied Linguistics and Digital Humanities, with a particular interest in the interface between language, technology, and professional practice. Her recent work examines the integration of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) into translation and interpreting workflows.