The Interpreter Interrupted the Deposition. That Is a Good Sign.

Halfway through a deposition, the interpreter raises a hand and says, “the interpreter needs a repetition.” A minute later, “the interpreter is having difficulty hearing the witness.” If your first reaction is that the interpreter is slowing you down, flip it. Those interruptions are the interpreter protecting your record in real time. A good interpreter is unobtrusive. Unobtrusive is not the same as silent.

Silence is the thing to worry about

An interpreter has one core duty: an accurate and complete record of everything said by and to the non-English speaker. A witness who mumbles, two people talking over an objection, a speaker going so fast the interpreter starts missing a word here and there, any of these, unflagged, becomes a hole in the record nobody sees until it matters. So the professional speaks up every time. An interpreter who never interrupts a fast or chaotic proceeding is not necessarily keeping up. They may just be dropping what they cannot catch.

Why the third person, and why nothing happens off the record

A good interpreter says “the interpreter needs a repetition,” not “I need a repetition.” Speaking in the third person keeps a clean record of who said what, so the transcript can tell the interpreter apart from the witness and counsel. And when a professional hits a word they need to check, they do not settle it in a whisper. They ask for a moment, look it up or ask the speaker, and report what they found on the record: “the interpreter checked with the witness on the word she used, and she indicated she meant her thigh, not her foot.” Their process is visible and reviewable. Compare that to a bilingual helper murmuring back and forth with a witness while the record captures none of it. One is defensible later. The other is a problem waiting to surface.

Fatigue is an accuracy issue, not a comfort issue

One interruption catches people off guard: the interpreter asks for a break. It sounds personal. It is record protection. Interpreting at full accuracy is intense cognitive work, and as fatigue sets in, an interpreter starts to summarize without meaning to. Worse, fatigue also dulls the interpreter’s own ability to notice they have started slipping. That is why long, dense proceedings are staffed with two interpreters who trade off. Team interpreting is not a padded invoice. It is how a firm keeps the last hour of a long deposition as accurate as the first.

What these interruptions protect

• “Slow down” or “one at a time” protects you from testimony lost in overlap or speed.
• “The interpreter needs a repetition” protects you from a guessed rendering.
• “A moment to check a term” keeps a wrong word out of the record.
• “Interpreter correction: not four, but fourteen” fixes an error before testimony builds on it.

Kaplan Interpreting Services staffs court-certified interpreters, including team interpreting for long matters. In-person interpreting · Contact us.

Not legal advice. Standards vary by jurisdiction.