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Civil Procedure – costs — interpreters

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//May 21, 2012//

Civil Procedure – costs — interpreters

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//May 21, 2012//

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U.S. Supreme Court

Civil

Civil Procedure – costs — interpreters

Because the ordinary meaning of “interpreter” is someone who translates orally from one language to another, the category “compensation of interpreters” in 28 U.S.C. 1920(6) does not include the cost of document translation.

Because the term “interpreter” is not defined in the Court Interpreters Act or in any other relevant statutory provision, it must be given its ordinary meaning. Asgrow Seed Co. v. Winterboer, 513 U. S. 179. When Congress passed that Act in 1978, many dictionaries defined “interpreter” as one who translates spoken, as opposed to written, language. Pre-1978 legal dictionaries also generally defined “interpreter” and “interpret” in terms of oral translation. Respondent relies almost exclusively on a version of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary that defined “interpreter” as “one that translates; esp: a person who translates orally for parties conversing in different tongues.” Although the sense divider esp (for especially) indicates that the most common meaning of the term is one “who translates orally,” that meaning is subsumed within the more general definition “one that translates.” That a definition is broad enough to encompass one sense of a word does not establish, however, that the word is ordinarily understood in that sense. See Mallard v. United States Dist. Court for Southern Dist. of Iowa, 490 U. S. 296. Although all relevant dictionaries defined “interpreter” at the time of the statute’s enactment as including persons who translate orally, only a handful defined the word broadly enough to encompass translators of written materials. Notably, the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the most authoritative, recognized that “interpreter” can mean one who translates writings, but it expressly designated that meaning as obsolete. Any definition of a word that is absent from many dictionaries and is deemed obsolete in others is hardly a common or ordinary meaning. Given this survey of relevant dictionaries, the ordinary meaning of “interpreter” does not include those who translate writings. Nothing in the Court Interpreters Act or in §1920 hints that Congress intended to go beyond this ordinary meaning. If anything, the statutory context suggests that “interpreter” includes only those who translate orally. See 28 U. S. C. §1827. Moreover, Congress’ use of technical terminology reflects the distinction in relevant professional literature between interpreters, who are used for oral conversations, and translators, who are used for written communications.

633 F. 3d 1218, vacated and remanded.

10-1472 Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd.

Alito, J.; Ginsburg, J., dissenting.

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