Licensed Court Interpreters

The licensed court interpreter exam is not a practice exam. You must be fully prepared and practice extensively prior to registering to test.

Being Bilingual Is Not Enough to Pass the Oral Exam

• You must process linguistic information quickly and accurately in a judicial setting.
• You must possess a unique blend of linguistic, comprehension, and cognitive skills.
• You should extensively practice the skills needed for court interpreting as often as possible using multiple sources before applying for the oral exam. It is strongly recommended that candidates engage in frequent and sustained practice in each of the modes of interpretation (sight, consecutive, and simultaneous) after completing the orientation course.
  • A self-assessment and study tools for court interpreter candidates can be found on the NCSC web site. We highly recommend utilizing these free resources.
• It is also a very good idea to do court observation as a way to get a realistic view of what an interpreter does, which can help with testing.

• The oral exam consists of three parts (legs):
  • Sight Interpretation,
  • Consecutive Interpretation, and
  • Simultaneous Interpretation.
• The oral exam cannot be passed in legs.

Part 1 - Sight Interpretation

You will be given six minutes to review and interpret a typewritten page from English into the target language.

You will be given six minutes to review and interpret a typewritten page from the target language into English.

The exercises outlined below will help you develop skills in sight translation. Practice them in all your working languages.

Part 2 - Consecutive Interpretation

You will be given from 22 to 30 minutes to complete this portion of the exam (depending on the length of the recording). This part of the examination is administered as a role-play of the questioning of a witness by a lawyer.

The consecutive portion will simulate a trial setting in which an English-speaking attorney asks questions of a witness speaking in their targeted language. The candidate will be the interpreter from English to the targeted language and from the targeted language back to English. Parts of this portion of the examination always include examples of lower register speech, including profanity and idiomatic usage.

Consecutive interpreting requires intense listening of a few sentences followed by an accurate interpretation of what was said. The interpreter will often take notes to help in the interpreting process, especially if the utterances are long. Consecutive interpreting is usually bi-directional between two languages, for example interpreting Spanish to a listener in English and then interpreting the English reply back into Spanish.

Part 3 - Simultaneous interpretation

This part of the examination takes approximately 10 minutes, including instructions and preparation, and requires the candidate to listen to and simultaneously interpret a recorded speech of a lawyer. A brief section of colloquy by voices representing the judge, other attorneys, or a witness may be included. The candidate wears a set of headphones to listen to the recording and speaks aloud so that her or his performance can be recorded.

The speech is entirely in English, and the interpreter interprets into the target language as would be required to assist a defendant during a trial that only speaks the target language.