Interpreters’ Emotions Are Inadmissible

For more than two weeks, Arabic interpreter Esma Younis sat hunched next to an elderly immigrant and narrated the daily play-by-play of the judicial process that would determine whether he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Younis has been interpreting for Fadel Tawil, 65, more than two years, beginning in jail after he was arrested for allegedly murdering and dismembering a nephew.

Tawil came to ask for Younis specifically -- trusting her ability, among those of other interpreters, to omit nothing as she bridged two languages.

But in all that time, they never chatted. Despite being tied by a common language and the numerous contacts Younis had with Tawil -- and even his family -- during the course of her job as a court interpreter, she and the defendant never spoke about their families, never talked about the weather.

To be an interpreter, in a sense, Younis said, is to be a machine, to steer clear of even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

“When you work with a person from Day 1 and you know their future depends on a trial -- we are human beings, we have hearts, we have brains, we have feelings,” said the 65-year-old Lebanese American. “I’d be lying if I said I had no feelings. But my feelings don’t make any difference. I’m out of it. You can’t cross a certain line.”

Such is the paradoxical duty of the state’s 1,600 court interpreters: to be deeply involved in -- and aloof from -- the machinery of justice.

An interpreter is also a person who must understand the subtleties of language and yet not stray too far into shades of meaning by turning into an amateur psychologist.

When a boy on the stand says he told his mother and brother, “Badi ektilak,” in Arabic, does he mean that he wants to kill them or hit them? When a woman testifying in Spanish suddenly says, “Miento, miento,” does she mean she just lied or that she was mistaken in what she just said?

A slip in interpretation could unfairly alter a jury’s perception of testimony.

No place in the nation is believed to employ as many court interpreters and no courtrooms are thought to hear as many languages as in Los Angeles County.

“When you’re talking about L.A., you’re talking about the big boys on the block of the legal system,” said Arturo Casarez, president of the California Court Interpreters Assn., based in Encinitas, north of San Diego.

In any given year, more than 100 languages -- from Albanian to American Sign Language to Zapoteco -- send Los Angeles County court officials looking for interpreters. The state spends about $55 million on court interpreters, with the county using about $26 million of that, said Gregory Drapac, head of the county’s court interpreter services.

The county’s Superior Court system routinely uses the services of about 750 interpreters; 357 are permanent employees, Drapac said. About 85% of the interpreting in the county’s courts is in Spanish. The job pays $265 for a full day and $147 for half a day.

“On any given day, we have approximately 425 interpreters working for us,” Drapac said.

Eight languages are certified by the state -- meaning that would-be interpreters must pass a test both in English and the other language. Those languages are Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

Certification tests are being prepared in five other languages: Armenian, Khmer, Mandarin, Punjabi and Russian. In all other languages, interpreters need only pass an English proficiency examination.

If an interpreter can’t be found immediately, officials scour consulates, the United Nations, Web sites, Berlitz, other states and universities. The county flew in a specialist from England once to interpret English Sign Language.

Defendants have a constitutional right to an interpreter, so if the court can’t find one -- even for the most obscure language -- a mistrial could be declared.

Yet California faces a shortage of 1,000 court interpreters. Los Angeles County has shortages of up to 30 every day, said Alexander Rainof, an associate professor of Spanish at Cal State Long Beach.

Two years ago at the university, he started the nation’s only bachelor’s degree program devoted to interpretation and translation. He also created a certification program for UCLA Extension.

“The state has a shortage of 1,000 interpreters, and that’s just for the courts,” Rainof said. “That’s not to mention hospitals and other venues. The problem is worse in the medical field.”

Interpreting is a difficult job, with standards set high particularly for those who want to interpret in the state’s eight certified languages, Drapac said. About 91% of the people who take the certification test fail, he said.

The toughest job is to interpret for those who have virtually no communication ability. Most often those are deaf people with only rudimentary sign language skills, if any. They communicate through gestures.

Born deaf like her parents, Linda Bove is a deaf intermediary interpreter. In court, she tries to discern what people with very few communication skills are trying to say, as a certified American Sign Language interpreter interprets Bove’s signing to the court.

Being able to toggle between the small deaf community and the hearing world, Bove said through ASL interpreter and friend Paul Raci, gives her insight into behavioral patterns of people with little ability to communicate.

“Getting the full picture from” someone with such extreme limitations -- “you can’t do it,” Bove said. “It’s not our responsibility to fill gaps.”

She recalls a mother who saw gang members kill her son in front of her. The woman was deaf and struggled mightily to communicate what had happened. “That was very difficult,” Bove said.

Raci said: “It’s not our job to figure out how their mind is working. We’re not evaluators -- we’re interpreters.”

But it’s tempting to transmit what she thinks a person means, Bove said.

For Younis, the job of interpreting for the man accused of murdering his nephew has not ended. His case concluded in a mistrial. If there is another trial, Younis will probably be his interpreter once again.