Sample Simultaneous Interpretation Lesson (from The Interpreter's Edge
Turbo Supplement
)

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Simultaneous Lesson 2 (Tape 1, Side A)

Text 1 (145 wpm)

Directions: 1) shadow, 2) paraphrase

Medidas de seguridad de la compañía de aviación AeroMar para vuelos trasatlánticos

Bienvenidos, señores pasajeros, al Vuelo 516 de la línea aérea AeroMar con destino al Aeropuerto José Martí de La Habana. Por favor abrocharse los cinturones de seguridad, enderezar el respaldo de sus asientos y verificar que la mesita de servicio esté asegurada. Sírvase acomodar todas sus pertenencias ya sea debajo del asiento delantero o en el compartimiento superior para equipaje.

Una vez alcanzada la altitud de crucero, la señal del cinturón de seguridad se apagará y los pasajeros podrán moverse con toda libertad por la cabina. La señal para abrocharse los cinturones se encenderá en caso de turbulencia y una vez que iniciemos el descenso final para aterrizar en el aeropuerto internacional de La Habana. A continuación, presentamos las normas de seguridad de nuestra línea aérea en caso de incidentes inesperados durante vuelos trasatlánticos.

Los pasajeros han de permanecer en sus asientos con los cinturones abrochados hasta nuevo aviso, y han de evacuar los pasillos y lavabos del avión. La sobrecargo transmitirá a los pasajeros todas las instrucciones procedentes de la cabina de mando a través del sistema de interfono del avión.

En caso de descompresión o de rápido descenso del avión, le rogamos ponerse la mascarilla de oxígeno que caerá del compartimiento delantero o superior a su asiento, tal como lo indica el video de demostración presentado al principio del vuelo. De haber necesidad de aterrizaje de emergencia o de amerizaje, de inmediato se encenderán las luces de emergencia situadas a lo largo del pasillo del avión para guiar a los pasajeros a la salida de emergencia más cercana. Rogamos mantengan la calma y sigan al pie de la letra las instrucciones del piloto o de los sobrecargos.

Text 2 (133 wpm)

Directions: Interpret into Spanish

Closing Argument

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we've all heard some rather remarkable testimony here in this courtroom over the last two weeks. I'd like to go back over some of that testimony with you this afternoon, to put it in perspective, to clear up some of the confusion, to tell you what we on the prosecution team believe it all adds up to.

First of all, let's look at some of the facts that cannot reasonably be disputed:

On the evening of October 29 of last year, at approximately 7:05 PM, Pacific Standard Time, Flight 613 left Portland, Oregon, bound for Anchorage, Alaska. Shortly after Flight 613 reached its full cruising altitude, a female passenger brandishing a hand gun and speaking in accented but fluent English commandeered the aircraft and enunciated a list of demands, backing those demands with some pretty gruesome threats as to what would happen if the demands were not met.

The hijacker and her two accomplices also ordered the aircraft's cabin crew to change course for Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. and demanded to speak to Vice President Gore on the radio.

Approximately one hour after the inception of the hijacking, an altercation took place between the gun-carrying hijacker and a male passenger. During that altercation, two shots were fired, one grievously wounding the male passenger, the other puncturing a cabin window. That second shot caused the rapid decompression of the cabin which resulted in senior flight attendant Beatrice Willoughby's being ejected from the aircraft at altitude and ultimately meeting her death in a hops field almost six miles below.

During the subsequent confusion and rapid aircraft descent, passenger Katrina Olegskiya, a recent emigre from the former Soviet Union, and herself a former KGB agent, disarmed the chief hijacker and thwarted the hijacking. During this same confusion, however, one of the hijacking suspects succeeded in taking her own life by opening her carotid artery with a sharpened nail file.

Flight 613 subsequently landed in Denver, Colorado without further incident.

On the ground in Denver, the defendant, Pascualina Gomez, and her surviving accomplice, Larry M. Curly, were taken into custody by local and federal law-enforcement officials.

OK. That much, I think, even the defense will allow me.

Now let's get into some of the relevant details. We have the testimony of several witnesses, including Mr. Curly, flight attendant Jeremy Bottoms, and others, that the chief hijacker, the one who brandished the gun and gave the orders was the defendant, Pascualina Gomez, the same Pascualina Gomez who sits there at this very moment looking so aloof and non-chalant.

We have agent La Guardia's report of his hospital interview with Mr. Stalwart regarding what took place on Flight 613. We could not have Mr. Stalwart's actual testimony, because Mr. Stalwart died of the wound inflicted upon him by the defendant.

We have Mr. Curly's testimony both as to the motivation behind the hijacking and the means by which the three conspirators planned to achieve their ends. We have Mr. Curly's testimony as to Ms. Gomez's obsessional devotion to the animal rights movement, a devotion which Mr. Curly shares. Mr. Curly has told us how he, Ms. Gomez, and Ms. Ardiente conspired to smuggle a disassembled Glock .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol aboard Flight 613 secreted among the cosmetics and cosmetics-related paraphernalia in Ms. Ardiente's carry-on cosmetics case. He has told us how the plan called for Ms. Ardiente to reassemble the pistol in one of the aircraft's lavatories and then covertly pass the pistol to Ms. Gomez, the leader of the team. Finally, we have Mr. Curly's testimony as to the principal aims of the hijackers: 1) to publicize the animal-rights cause; 2) if possible, to stop all animal testing in the United States; and 3) to extort money from major airlines to fund the animal-rights underground organization known as the Radical Animal-rights Brotherhood, International Division, or RABID. Mr. Curly, however, has denied any advance knowledge of the truly appalling threats the defendant would use in pursuing these goals.

For those threats, however, we have not only the testimony of numerous witnesses among the passengers and crew of Flight 613, we have the defendant's own voice recorded on the cockpit voice recorder when she used the aircraft's intercom to pass her demands and threats to the flight crew. She said... let me find the exact quote here... "If our just demands are not met by the time this aircraft touches down in Washington, D.C., we shall, in good conscience, have no choice but to begin trying and executing passengers guilty of speci-ism and genocide. Criminals selected for trial will include any passenger found to be in possession of animal products or products tested upon animals. We shall execute one criminal every 17 minutes and 20 seconds--one for every innocent animal victim of the genocidal animal-testing industrial colossus--until our demands are met or our supply of criminals exhausted." Not, as the defense would have you believe, ladies and gentlemen, the words of a woman merely thinking out loud, or speculating about hypothetical future possibilities. Not the words of an innocent woman whose unstable lover thrusts a gun into her hands and who takes that gun in complete surprise and without a preconceived plan of action for putting it to use. Not the words of a well-intentioned woman who then became the victim of a vicious attack by a drunken ex-logger motivated by hatred for the environmentalist movement in all its permutations.

And what of this supposed "attack" on the defendant by Mr. Buck Stalwart, a passenger on Flight 613? The defense would have you believe that Mr. Stalwart was motivated by blind hatred and a desire to avenge himself on Ms. Gomez for the recent loss of his logging job. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Stalwart's actions, ill-conceived though they may have been, were motivated by nothing other than a perfectly legitimate desire to defend himself, his pregnant young wife, and his fellow passengers from a vicious and bloodthirsty criminal bent on the destruction of innocent human life. We may quibble with Mr. Stalwart's judgment, but we cannot in justice impugn his motives. Nor can we ignore the horrible price he paid for his heroism--Mr. Stalwart's young wife is now a widow, and his posthumous infant daughter fatherless. And for that they can thank the defendant, the lovely and demure Ms. Pascualina Gomez.

Counsel for the defense, in his closing arguments, has attacked the credibility of both Mr. Curly and Mr. Stalwart.

Of Mr. Curly, defense counsel has said that he is motivated to testify against the defendant by a desire to mitigate his own punishment.

I am not here today to defend Mr. Curly's character. Mr. Curly is, after all, also a defendant in this case--I cannot and will not argue that his reputation is untarnished. Nor do I deny that Mr. Curly's cooperation has been obtained as part of a plea bargain.

In any case, it really doesn't matter what we think of Mr. Curly's character. His testimony is entirely plausible and entirely consistent with the testimony of other witnesses. Mr. Curly's testimony is helpful to the extent that it addresses the defendant's motives and the methodologies by which she came to be on Flight 613 and in possession of a loaded firearm. Yet we could throw Mr. Curly's testimony out entirely and still have a wealth of evidence to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that the woman who hijacked Flight 613, the woman who terrorized and threatened the lives of all her fellow passengers, the woman who mortally wounded Mr. Stalwart, the woman whose actions led to the grotesque death of Beatrice Willoughby ... that that woman is none other than the defendant, Pascualina Gomez.

As to Mr. Stalwart, the defense would have you believe 1) that Mr. Stalwart launched an unprovoked attack on the defendant and 2) that having been accidentally wounded during this unprovoked attack, Mr. Stalwart proceeded to shoot out a cabin window, resulting in the death of Ms. Willoughby. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, there is no doubt whatsoever that the defendant was engaged in an armed attack on all the passengers of Flight 613, including Mr. Stalwart. Mr. Stalwart therefore enjoyed the same right to self-defense that the law accords to any law-abiding citizen. When Mr. Stalwart attempted to disarm Ms. Gomez, he was not engaging in an unprovoked and criminal attack upon her person; rather, he was engaging in a legitimate act of self-defense. There is absolutely no evidence that Mr. Stalwart fired the shot that resulted in the death of Ms. Willoughby. And even assuming that Mr. Stalwart had inadvertently fired that shot while engaged in a legitimate act of self-defense, that hypothetical assumption would still leave the defendant guilty of the murders of both Ms. Willoughby and of Mr. Stalwart. Both those deaths occurred as the direct result of, and during the commission of, a felony inherently dangerous to human life. The defendant knowingly and premeditatedly engaged in the commission of that felony, knowing of and wantonly disregarding the danger posed to human life by that felony. And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes the defendant, Ms. Pascualina Gomez, a murderess, in addition to her many other distinctions.

The defendant is charged with conspiracy to commit air piracy, air piracy, extortion, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to find her guilty on all counts.

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