During a 3:05 p.m. plea colloquy in Dept. 12, I rendered the oath and the witness’s emphatic expansion of “the whole truth” elicited a chuckle from counsel. I maintained register and impartiality for the record, but how do you de-escalate those moments when a classifier suddenly reads like a closing argument?
And when ‘the whole truth’ gets theatrically big, I take a one‑beat pause before voicing and flatten prosody/NMMs so it lands neutral without changing content. Curious if Dept. 12 would tolerate a brief ‘Interpreter requests repetition for clarity’ if the tone keeps escalating.
At 3:05 in Dept. 12, I reframe classifiers with reporting verbs — “indicates,” “traces” — to neutralize voicing while preserving content.
I do a tiny physical reset — half‑step back and shrink to “blueprint mode” — so the classifier reads as diagram, not a soliloquy; if a mic locks me in place, I compress to midline and keep voicing steady, @jmason36. Ever try that?