Read Gerard Best’s article “Talking hands and the long arm of the law” which interviews NODES committee member, Dr Ben Braithwaite.
Wed Apr 29 2015 Gerard Best
Published by Trinidad and Tobago Guardian
Underlying social tensions surfaced quickly in the early responses to the fatal shooting of the 35-year-old Chinese businessman Hi Hong Huang, who died on April 7 after an alleged robbery in front of his Happiness Supermarket, off Southern Main Road, Curepe. Affluent members of the Chinese community raised concern that they were being targeted by local criminals.
But National Security Minister Carl Alfonso, who met April 9 with a delegation that included Chinese Ambassador Xingyan Huang, said he did not believe that Huang’s attack was targeted specifically at the Chinese community.
Alongside race, issues of language also emerged, as Chinese interpreters were recruited by the police to help with witness statements. The victim’s parents, Chuang Ji Huang and Feng Ling Lei, who arrived in the country mid-April to assist with investigations and finalise funeral arrangements, speak little English.
Mr Huang’s parents are part of a diverse community of people requiring language interpretation in the pursuit of justice. For the non English-speaker, interacting with the Police and Courts can be very difficult, says Dr Ben Braithwaite, a Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine.
Braithwaite, who coordinates UWI’s undergraduate and postgraduate Linguistics programmes, pointed to the detainees at the Immigration Detention Centre in Aripo as another community of people sometimes needing language interpretation in order to access legal and other essential services.
Talking Hands
The same is true for those with no spoken language, the Deaf community, said Braithwaite, who is also involved in the university’s Diploma in Caribbean Sign Language Interpreting. He has a particular interest in the language situation of the Deaf community in T&T, and gave several local examples of challenges faced by folks with that particular disability.
A 32-year-old Deaf man appearing in court on May 9 2008 charged with indecent assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, had to have his brother use sign language for him to understand the charge as it was read to him by the magistrate, as the Court had not at that time secured the assistance of a sign language interpreter.
On October 11, 2010, a magistrate was forced to postpone the hearing of a traffic matter because the accused man, who was deaf, was unable to understand the proceedings. The magistrate then ordered that the accused be brought closer to her so that he could have understood what was going on. Standing less then a foot away from the magistrate, he was still unable to hear all the words from her. The accused then explained that his hearing aid was under repair, so he was without it in the courtroom.
“If you have a deaf person going to court in Trinidad or Tobago, they’ll need an interpreter because they need to understand what’s going on. And if they’re an older person, they have different interpreting needs compared to a younger person.”
Younger people tend to use American Sign Language (ASL),which was introduced into the country in the 1970s, while older folks typically use T&T Sign Language (TTSL), Brathwaite said. Signing differences can be crucial, as was demonstrated by a near-costly mix-up between a Deaf murder-accused and a Court-appointed interpreter on July 8, 2003.
The mix-up resulted in a guilty plea wrongly being recorded as coming from the accused. The plea had to be rescinded, and was attributed to a very basic misunderstanding in communication. The interpreter reportedly failed to accurately communicate with the accused, who was using a combination of TTSL and ASL. The magistrate agreed that the Court would revoke the interpreter’s appointment, and find another interpreter.
This kind of misunderstanding is not extreme, in fact it’s depressingly common, Braithwaite said. He gave the example of a Deaf man taken to court on January 16 for allegedly stealing $21 worth of items from Republic Bank. The court heard that the accused was unable to understand official sign language, since he had received no formal schooling and there were no relatives in court to assist. Because the accused was unfamiliar with both ASL and TTSL, it was not sufficient to simply get a different interpreter. The magistrate instead suggested a family member who would understand the accused’s form of communication be present.
Again, on April 4, 2013, a Deaf man charged with breaking into the house of a woman in San Juan and indecently assaulting her appeared before the court and was asked if he was complying with his court-ordered bail conditions. The accused had been granted bail on condition that whenever he left his home, he would be accompanied by his grandmother. The prosecutor said that the accused had been seen liming in the Croise without his grandmother. His attorney informed the magistrate that there was a difficulty in communicating with him as he was Deaf. The attorney eventually requested that a sign language interpreter be present at the next hearing.
“In some cases, the most effective way of ensuring accurate communication may be to employ Deaf interpreters, skilled in communicating with people who have never been to school, and who rely on home-based gestural systems. These Deaf interpreters must of course be properly paid, in line with their hearing colleagues,” Braithwaite said.
He added, “The Deaf community doesn’t only need access to sign language interpretation. They need access to a particular kind of sign language interpretation, one that they can actually understand.”