English-Spanish Consecutive Practice for the State Court Interpreter Oral Exam
Channel: Texan Translation
Date: 2022-10-12

This is a dramatic reading of a script from https://www.ncsc.org/education-and-careers/state-interpreter-certification, featuring an English-speaking attorney and a Spanish-speaking witness at a criminal trial. Ms. Mendoza's car was broken into and something was stolen, but she was quick to call the sheriff and can now identify the defendant in court with no trouble!
This video is intended as a practice exam for Spanish interpreters 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 consecutive portion of the exam (as well as the sight and simultaneous portions) to pass. In other words, your target-language rendering of at least 63 of the 90 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 Spanish, will probably be acceptable to the graders as long as the level of register (formality) is maintained. For example, when the speaker uses "the slammer" as slang for jail, the interpreter should try to choose comparable slang in the other language.
The voices are Marco Hanson and Carmen Cristina Mundaray, Texas Master Licensed Court Interpreters for Spanish. As in any direct examination of a witness in the courtroom, there is 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