Program
background
The FCICE program was created and implemented in direct response to the
Court Interpreters Act of 1978. Since
1980, the mission of the Federal Court Interpreter Certification
Examination program (FCICE) has been to define criteria for certifying
interpreters qualified to interpret in federal courts and to assist the
Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) in
maintaining a list of federally certified court interpreters.
The
FCICE program is administered under contract from the AO with the
National Center for State Courts,
300 Newport Avenue,
Williamsburg, Virginia 23185 for Spanish-English language interpreters.
For
more information on interpreting for the federal courts, please consult
the AO Web site at www.uscourts.gov/interpretprog/interp_prog/html.Program
administration
The FCICE is a two-phase process, involving a Spanish-English Written
Examination (Phase One) and an Oral Examination (Phase Two) administered
on a biennial basis with Phase One and Phase Two occurring in alternating
years. Interpreters must pass the
Written Examination with a score of 75 percent or higher in order to be eligible
to sit for the Oral Examination.
Written Examination
The Phase One
Written Examination serves primarily as a screening test for linguistic
competence in English and Spanish and is a prerequisite for the Phase Two
Oral Examination. The Written
Examination is a four-option, multiple choice examination of job-relevant
language ability in English and Spanish. In 2008, and possibly in the future, there will be 100 items in the English section and 100 items in the Spanish section of the test. When that happens, additional time will be provided for the candidates to take this longer, 200 item test. Each section consist of five parts, and each part involves a task that is considered to be relevant for a court interpreter. The Written Examination tests
comprehension of written text, knowledge of vocabulary, idioms, and
grammatically correct expression, and the ability to select an appropriate
target language rendering of source language text.
The English and Spanish sections of the examination are scored separately
and the criterion to pass is 75 percent correct answers on each section of the test.
Oral Examination
The Phase
Two Oral Examination directly measures interpreting skills.
Because it fulfills the legal mandate for a “criterion-referenced
performance examination” the Oral Examination is the basis for
certification to interpret in the federal courts.
The Oral Exam assesses the ability of the interpreter to adequately
perform the kinds of interpretation discourse that reflects both form and
content pertinent to authentic interpreter functions encountered in the
federal courts. It consists of five
parts: Interpreting in the consecutive mode; interpreting a monologue in the simultaneous mode;
interpreting a witness examination in the simultaneous mode; sight
translation of a document from English into Spanish; and sight translation
of a document from Spanish into English. All five parts are simulations of what interpreters do in court.
The
language used in the examinations varies widely across speech registers
and vocabulary range. Test items include both formal and informal/colloquial language, technical and legal
terminology, and other specialized language that is part of the active
vocabulary of a highly articulate speaker, both in English and in Spanish.
Overall, there are 220 scored items in the test and the examinee
must render 80 percent of them correctly to pass the test.
In addition, the examinee’s performance is scored holistically on
three skills, including interpreting skills, English skills, and Spanish
skills.
