Toronto: Lost in translation in the City of Babel

Sun Dec 9 17:01:24 UTC 2007

--
 Lost in translation in the City of Babel
  New census figures show almost half the GTA's population was born in
another country.

*Bridging Ontario's language gap**

The Ministry of the Attorney-General says the following steps have been
taken to improve the quality of court interpretation:*

A new, 180-hour certificate program began this fall at Seneca College in
Toronto and five other centres in Ontario, partly funded by a $208,000 grant
from the ministry of citizenship. The A-G's ministry has consulted with
jurisdictions in Canada and internationally to consider best practices.
Interpreter assignment procedures have been revised. New processes
implemented to ensure that complaints related to interpreter services in the
courts are handled promptly and effectively In the process of developing new
skills tests for court interpreters in 25 of the highest-demand languages,
as well as an English proficiency test. These tests will form the basis of a
new accreditation program.

New and current interpreters will be required to attend refresher training
on interpretation, the role of various court parties and professional
ethics. The Toronto area is proudly multilingual. But more than 145
languages can pose problems in our hospitals and courts, which too often
rely on unqualified interpreters

December 08, 2007
*Lynda Hurst
*feature writer

Linguistically, Toronto is less the tower than the entire city of Babel.
More than 145 languages are spoken here, and 100,000 new immigrants, more
than 40 per cent with little or no English, add more dialects and regional
variations to the mix every year. But in all the discussion about
multiculturalism in recent decades, the ramifications of *multilingualism *seem
to have fallen off the table – if, that is, they were ever on it. Nowhere
are the GTA's linguistic demographics more pronounced than in Peel Region's
Brampton courthouse. It's the most multilingual in Canada, using more
interpreters than any other, by far. At Brampton, almost 5,000 cases a year
require interpreting into Punjabi alone. But dozens of other tongues – from
Cantonese, Kurdish, Spanish and Polish to Somali, Tamil and Urdu – are
spoken by the witnesses and defendants who process through its courtrooms.

Section 14 of the Charter guarantees them the assistance of an interpreter,
but getting one fully capable of doing the job is a hit-or-miss affair. The
chaotic situation had been an open secret in legal circles for years when
Superior Court Justice Casey Hill publicly exposed it in November 2005.
After conducting his own inquiry, Hill blasted Brampton's routine use of
unqualified and unskilled legal interpreters, people who'd either failed or
never taken the Attorney-General's accreditation test, a supposed
requirement for employment. In some cases, they were merely giving the
"gist" of what was being said to, or by, the person they were working with.
One interpreter's cultural bias against women was so blatant, he would
interpret only what he chose to. As for the A-G's accreditation test, Hill
learned there is a 75- to 80-per-cent failure rate – on the English portion.
The would-be interpreter's second language isn't tested at all.

Veteran Brampton interpreter Shamin Jhooty told the judge that the A-G's
standards didn't "even meet the basics" of court interpreting. Many who'd
been accredited "would fail any test in legal terminology." She recalled one
accredited co-worker asking her, "When they say `the Crown is honest,' what
exactly do they mean?" Jhooty eventually established that "the Crown is
honest" was actually "the Crown's onus." Hill concluded that interpreter
incompetence constituted "a critical threat to justice." Two years on, has
the Brampton situation improved? Not so anyone has noticed.

Criminal lawyer Anthony Moustacalis says there has been a lot of chatter
about change, "but we've yet to see any concrete result." Just recently, he
asked an interpreter what the legal term *voir dire *(a hearing within a
hearing) meant. "To see and say?" she offered.

That exasperates him because, even before Hill, a 1994 Supreme Court
decision found that legal interpreters must be competent and impartial. He
insists on vetting the ones assigned to his clients.

"This is a no-brainer," he says. "Ontario knows what it's supposed to do but
isn't doing it."

A long-time court interpreter is more blunt: "We haven't moved an inch."

Last month, a coalition of interpreting organizations released a National
Standards Guide that for the first time sets out mandatory requirements for
"community interpreting."

This specialty is used in the legal system, health care and social services,
as opposed to business or conference interpreting. (Interpreters deal with
oral language; translators with written.)

The guide spells out how applicants should be assessed, trained, tested,
monitored and certified. It also details the ethical principles involved in
working with people in the most private areas of their lives.

"There is a huge difference between certified and accredited," says Lola
Bendana, a key force behind the guide and head of Multi-Languages Corp. The
province may have "accredited" 1,000 court interpreters, she says, but there
are only 20 "certified" ones in the whole province.

Yesterday, coalition members were to meet with Ruby Dhalla, Liberal MP for
Brampton-Springdale, in hope of getting Ottawa to take action on standards
and regulation.

Mere bilingualism is far from enough to be a competent court interpreter,
says Jhooty. She took a 10-month training course in B.C., the only province
that requires certification before someone can be employed by the courts.
(The gold standard is Australia, which requires a four-year program.)

"There is a notion out there that anyone who speaks a second language can
interpret," she says. "Not so."

The process is complex and consists of several components, such as active
listening and memory retention. Court interpreters must be able to do
simultaneous as well as consecutive interpreting (intervening every two or
three sentences). Accuracy is crucial.

But an understanding of the legal system is also a must. A court interpreter
may be on a drunk-driving trial one day, a robbery the next, credit-card
fraud the day after that. They must have the wherewithal to research and
comprehend expert testimony. Only with proper training can it be done, says
Jhooty.

"But it *has* to be done because the quality of interpretation directly
affects the administration of justice."

The current situation in health care and social services differs little.

Ideally, community interpreters should not only be fluently bilingual but
also know medical terminology and procedures, and the workings of the
health-care system. On top of that, they must be sensitive to the personal
privacy of the people they're working with.

Few have had the training it takes.

In a 2004 study, Toronto's Health Interpretation Network (HIN) found that
language barriers can lead to misdiagnosis, wrong referrals and wrong
treatment: "The error rate of untrained interpreters (including family and
friends) is sufficiently high as to make their use more dangerous in some
circumstances than having no interpreter at all."

In many cases, a patient's outcome depends on following the doctor's
instructions at home: "It goes without saying that if a patient doesn't
understand the instructions in the first place, he or she won't be able to
comply."

HIN was a major contributor to the new statement of community interpreting
standards, which its president, Axelle Janczur, argues should be implemented
as policy by the ministry of citizenship and immigration, and indeed the
provincial government as a whole.

"Where there's policy, money flows," she says.

At present, there is no funding for community interpretation other than a
ministry spousal-assault project.

With the focus still overwhelmingly on French-English bilingualism, the
demands of multilingualism get set aside, says Janczur. According to Ottawa,
newcomers should speak either official language. The fact is, she adds, the
primary immigrant, likely the husband, will, but the rest of his family will
not.

"The attitude seems to be, `They should learn English.' Yes, of course. But
that doesn't happen right away."

Diana Abraham, a former citizenship ministry program consultant, says that
"something has to be done before something drastic happens." As the Supreme
Court has deemed competent interpretation a constitutional right, at least
in court, she thinks it should be added to Ontario's Human Rights Code.

Working on the ministry's spousal-assault project, Abraham was stunned to
learn that women's shelters were calling on anyone they could find to
interpret. In one case, "the guy they used later called the husband. In
hospitals, you see women coming in with their abuser acting as interpreter."

Embarrassed or affronted, some patients flatly refuse to have a third party
interpret and insist on a family member, often a child. Though some
hospitals have hired certified interpreters, ongoing budget crunches mean
others resort to using passing staff who speak a second language, a risky
practice.

Despite the province's radically changed immigration patterns, the
multiple-language problem hasn't been met by Queen's Park, says Abraham:
"Now we're seeing the consequences. It's a big challenge for Ontario."

There are more than 51,000 people working in interpretation and translation
in Canada, but only 3,000 are community interpreters, says Gonzalo Peralta,
president of the Language Industry Association. At least another 1,000 are
urgently needed.

And their training and licensing should be national, not provincial: "We
don't want a patchwork approach. Ottawa should be stepping up to the plate,"
says Peralta.

"We're talking about people's lives here."

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/283656

**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its
members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or
sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree
with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20071209/52b6c358/attachment.htm>