English Simultaneous Practice for the State Court Interpreter Oral Exam
Channel: Texan Translation
Date: 2022-10-17

This is a dramatic reading of a script from https://www.ncsc.org/education-and-careers/state-interpreter-certification, featuring an English-speaking prosecutor making his opening statement to the jury at a criminal trial. The drug deal at O'Hara's saloon turned into a fight and a chase when the buyer wasn't who he seemed!
This video is intended as a practice exam for interpreters of any spoken language who are preparing to take one of the state-level oral exams to become licensed, certified or registered judiciary interpreters. The audio is played twice, the first time with a black screen and the second time with a script displayed and scoring units (key terms) underlined. In most states, you must score at least 70% on the simultaneous portion of the exam (as well as the sight and consecutive portions) to pass. In other words, your target-language rendering of at least 53 of the 75 scoring units must be reasonably accurate.
We recommend that you play the audio through headphones to avoid interference as you record your rendition on a second device, like a smartphone with a voice recorder app. Then, check your interpretation against the script and give yourself one point for each scoring unit you got right. Any synonym of the term shown, in any dialect of your target language, will probably be acceptable to the graders as long as the level of register (formality) is maintained. For example, when the speaker uses "burden of proof" as a legal term of art, the interpreter should try to choose a comparably formal term in the other language.
The voice is Marco Hanson, a Texas Master Licensed Court Interpreter for Spanish. As in any direct examination of a witness in the courtroom, there may be some variation in word choice, false starts, verbal hedges and other paralinguistic features. 
Official oral exam handbook: 
https://www.ncsc.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/82289/Oral-Examination-Overview-for-Candidates-5-22-20.pdf