Based on a double ethnographic survey by observation and interview in French Guiana and French Polynesia, this article focuses on interpretation in local languages in court. Analysing institutional arrangements and ordinary interpretation practices, the article aims to understand how the judicial institution adapts to the pluricultural and plurilingual contexts of the two territories. The language dimension of the mediation work of state judicial institutions with Amerindian, Maroon (or Businenge) and Polynesian litigants also makes it possible to question the relations of domination in the judicial arena. Judicial domination in fact intersects the social and linguistic distances specific to these post-colonial territories. The processes of interpretation of the French language and the legal language into local languages are heuristic in order to grasp the asymmetry of judicial encounters. \textcopyright 2020 Societe Francaise d'Histoire d'Outre Mer. All rights reserved.