All of the jurors hear the same testimony. Each side could have their own translators at their tables & object to “inaccurate” translations.
The trial is slowed down for 1 witness, not the entire proceedings.
All of the jurors understand everything everyone else says in deliberations. When 3 people talk at once, there is no way a translator can keep up. The non-English-speaking person is perpetually at a disadvantage in stating their views due to the additional lag time caused by two-way translation.
I can, in my mind, justify accomodating a deaf person who wishes to participate as a juror, although I would question why they would want to, and to whether it is truly worth the extra effort & time required, and the higher risk of a trial’s verdict being overturned. Who is the trial for, after all?
I cannot, in my mind, justify the same accomodation for someone who has chosen not to learn English, and who can, if they are upset at not being eligible for jury duty, learn the language.
That being said, however, I acknowledge the unique situation in NM. [aside]How does someone with such a cloudy name as nebuli give such a clear post?[/aside] Would AZ be covered by the same treaty/laws? I suspect that in NM & AZ, at least, there would be enough bilingual people in the jury that there might well be no need for a translator during deliberations. In that circumstance, a juror speaking only Spanish might not be at such a disadvantage.
I do hope that this precedent, however, does apply only to Spanish speakers in NM ± AZ. A jury with 3 or more languages is too mind-boggling to comprehend.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Almost all of your objections to the practicalities of the translation can be solved by the use of headphones and simultaneous translation such as is used at such places as the United Nations. Trust me that the Security Council’s deliberations are not significantly hampered by the fact that at least 5 languages are spoken and listened to at a time!
I hate to say it, but most of the objections to this situations have at their foundation the belief that English is somehow the only language we ought to use in formal situations in this country. While I am not saying that I agree that a jury should include someone who is not an English speaking person, I do think it important not to approach the issue from an Anglo-centric standpoint, something that New Mexico’s courts and people apparently understand out of necessity. As an attorney in CA, I have worked with interpreters quite frequently, not only in Spanish, but also in Portuguese, two different Chinese languages, and such diverse other languages as Tagalog, Fijian-Hindi, Ilocano, and Turkic. I find that, if one gets quality interpreters, uses simultaneous translation, and pays attention, one finds little that is missing, conceding, of course, that there isn’t the same completeness as would exist between two speakers of the same language. Of course, I am not certain that I can make myself understood in Brooklyn, either.
Why do you hate to say it?English should be the language of commerce and this Government. English IS the foundation of our communication in this country. It is the glue that keeps us all together and understood, except for Brooklyn of course.
The truth is generally seen, rarely heard. Gracian.
That’s really not a good anology, D. The United Nations, being a diplomatic (in purpose, if not fact) entity, tends to have diplomatic discourse which is far off of what someone giving testimony in a trial would likely say.
As a customer of mine last year said, “Unlike Shakespeare who raised English to a fine art, Diplomats have lowered [language] to an abstract art.”
Professional simultaneous interpreters seem to do well enough at the U.N., for inter-governmental negotiations, and at international scientific and academic meetings, covering a wide range of types of discourse. I would imagine that a lot of routine trial testimony would present very little interpretation difficulty, whereas a smaller fraction would present greater challenges. Interpreters working on murder trials, for instance, would have to be trained to know specialized terminology for DNA evidence (but then again, this probably gets dumbed down for juries anyway, so the challenge might not be as great as all that). Interpreters for jurors would also have to be trained in courtroom protocol, and their role would have to be very strictly defined – they would have far less leeway than, say, interpreters working in int’l business negotiations.
Personally, I think that apart from sheer financial cost, the biggest problem of using simultaneous interpreters for non-English-speaking jurors would lie not with the interpretation process itself, but with reactions from English-speakers and the wider monolingualism-minded society. Deliberations would be difficult to pull of without cooperation from the rest of the jurors, and I have no illusions about how difficult it would be to elicit that cooperation. The other jurors would have to trouble themselves to take into account the special needs of the non-English-speaking juror, such as by pausing a few seconds after a long-winded argument so that the interpreter can catch up. People would, in short, have to consciously modify their own behavior for the sake of this other, linguistically “odd” person. It’s hard to imagine that happening.
