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Haytham, I
am easier to reach on my cell at 443 610 7190 or my home phone at 410 243 2707. Re: evaluation of translation in
deposition of Ahmad Hashim in the case of United States v. SO2 McCabe After comparing the transcript
of the deposition with the audio I find that while the translation was not good
and led to frustrating confusion, the translation did convey the essential
meanings of the questions and the answers. As evidenced by the question and
answer series in the opening voir dire of the translator, the
translator’s stronger language is clearly Arabic. He created
confusion in the voir dire by giving incomplete and confusing answers to
questions, forcing counsel to ask additional questions in order to
clarify. The translator also clearly lacks experience in interpretation
as he said at the beginning when he offered that he had not worked in a formal
setting such as a court and that his primary work was in document
translation. His lack of formal interpretation experience showed when he
could not maintain the first person in his translation of the detainee’s
responses, even when asked to do so by counsel. His translation of
counsel’s questions in Arabic to the detainee did maintain the first
person. The translator’s
inexperience and his challenges with English were largely overcome, though, by
his asking counsel for clarification repeatedly throughout the
deposition. When the translator did not understand, he stopped and asked
for clarification. He did this on both sides of the translation, though
much more frequently on the English side. While the translator’s
hesitations and indirect requests for clarification were frustrating, they were
far better than the alternative of misunderstanding a question and translating
something different than was asked. The fact that he asked for
clarification is an indication that he knew when he understood and when he did
not and he stopped when he did not understand. The translator also occasionally
did not understand or retain the response of Mr. Hashim. This seems to
have been partially a result of poor acoustics in the room that the translator
complained about in the beginning and partially a result of Mr. Hashim’s
occasional poor enunciation in Arabic. (I sometimes had difficulty
following Mr. Hashim’s responses on the audio. There were places
where I replayed the audio many times and still could not make out his exact
words.) As a result, the translator asked Mr. Hashim for clarification in
the middle of the translator’s English rendition of Mr. Hashim’s
responses. This appears to the non Arabic speaker as additional
questioning on the translator’s part, but in reality the translator was
simply checking to assure that he was correctly translating what he has already
heard. There were a few times when the translator simply did not
understand Mr. Hashim and then the translator would ask Mr. Hashim what he
meant. I did notice that the translator appeared to tire towards the end
of the deposition and as a result he had to ask more often for clarification. ************************* Charles Schmitz 40 Linthicum (410) 704-2966 |