Court Interpreting in Denmark - the role of court interpreters in Danish courtrooms

Court interpreters in Denmark are expected to follow the guidelines laid down in the document Instructions for Interpreters, which was published in 1994, and which deals with four principal areas: accuracy and completeness, impartiality, confidentiality and conflict of interest. This paper contends that Danish court interpreters regularly fail to adhere to one of the rules stipulated under accuracy and completeness: the rule regarding additions. The contention is one of the hypotheses of a recently undertaken PhD project which aims at demonstrating the presence of additions in interpreter renditions and at explaining motivations for including them.