"Traffic violation court's kind of boring, kind of routine," the Spanish interpreter Noemi Marquez muttered to me. She was an older, handsome woman with sharp features, but unassuming hair, make-up, and clothing. Her job is, after all, to look professional and blend in with her bland surroundings. The idea is that you--especially if you are the jury--will remember the defendant, not her. Whether that defendant is accused of shoplifting or murder, Marquez does and must not alter her purpose: to help a native Spanish speaker fully participate in his or her trial, as if that person spoke fluent English.

Nearly whispering, Marquez asked "¿Quién necesita intérprete?" and several people raised their hands. She grabbed their paperwork and then disappeared into another room. Thanks to my Spanish interpretation class, I realized that she must have been studying their cases and thumbing through a dictionary in case she stumbled across an unknown term. She came back out a few minutes later, when I approached her. I needed to know her full name and how many cases she would be interpreting that day so I could include the information in my Spanish paper.

Soon after our brief chat, the judge asked all the policemen to take an oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, yadda yadda. A few English-only cases took place until Marquez was finally needed. Like the policemen, she took an oath to faithfully interpret everything and anything the defendant said. She did precisely that. If somebody said "Um..." in one language, she included it in the other. She seemed to speak every single moment, too. Her mouth moved whether someone spoke English or Spanish. Both parties had to fully comprehend each other.

It is not enough for a Spanish interpreter to be fluent in Spanish and English. The interpreter's first objective is to remain objective. That means, to the best of her ability, she must orally translate the defendant's tone, register of language, and, of course, his testimony. A poor, uneducated farmer's testimony, then, should not sound the same as a doctor's or lawyer's. The testimony must be interpreted in the first person ("I") and include every minute detail provided in the original language. Gist interpretations ("I was wearing jeans" vs. "I was wearing Tommy Hilfiger jeans with a torn pocket") do not pass because it means the defendant is not using their full voice.

Eventually the cases all merged together in my mind. Having heard enough about people driving without their licenses, I quietly slipped out of the courtroom. But even though the super-speedy trials were not exactly TV-worthy, Marquez helped at least a handful of people receive a proper trial that day. While it is frightening to be in a country where everyone speaks a language you barely understand, it is ten times more frightening to feel mute when facing possible punishment. Thanks to Marquez, those people have a voice... and that means far more than making good drama.