A Witness Interview Revisited
Crown Counsel’s (Crown Attorney) office in Canada
Our primary focus is on the certified translation of Korean documents. We have a number of trusted partners across Canada and the United States that we refer interpreting requests to. However, we often receive requests to translate Korean audio and video files into English. One recent case we received was from a Crown Counsel’s (Crown Attorney) office in Canada. A police detective interviewed a Korean witness regarding a particular criminal investigation in a Canadian province. To communicate with the witness, a Korean interpreter had to be arranged.
Although it was challenging to find an available interpreter, eventually they lined one up. Everything seemed to be going smoothly at the beginning. However, it quickly became apparent that the interaction with the witness was going to be a challenge. This particular interpreter had never interpreted in a police or legal setting before and was not very familiar with relevant words such as “arrest,” “detain,” “charge,” and so forth.
Throughout the interview, the interpreter did not fully understand what the detective was saying in English, and instead of asking for clarification, they tried to guess at the meaning. On a few occasions the witness spoke for 40-50 seconds or even longer than a minute at a time. However, the English interpreting for those parts was only about 5-6 seconds. The detective, although not knowledgeable of the Korean language, thought that something seemed off.
On other occasions, the interpreter and witness had long exchanges of conversations without any of it being interpreted into English for the detective. The detective became increasingly uncomfortable and began to lose focus. Later, it was discovered that the interpreter was having trouble with the longer and more complex sentences. As a result, the witness tried to simplify their account of the events to make it easier on the interpreter. Even though the witness was not a proficient English speaker they tried to bypass the interpreter and say a few things in English. This mean that, in the end, a very simplified account of the events was communicated to the detective, rather than a detailed, full account.
It was not possible to replace the interpreter during the interview, so the detective did their best up until the end. Later, we were contacted by the Crown Counsel office for a consultation on the quality and accuracy of the interpreting. As you can imagine, a great deal of what was spoken in Korean was missed. Some parts were completely misinterpreted. Some were not even interpreted at all. In the end, they decided to have us review the audio and video and then transcribe and translate the Korean into a written English document.
After receiving our translation of the witness interview the Crown Counsel office could finally understand all the details the witness was trying to communicate. They were able to identify what went wrong in the interpreting process and determined that they would need to overhaul interpreter recruiting and training processes. We continue to help this office with the transcription and translation of Korean audio and video recordings. We regularly help them catch any details that were missed during the interpreting and assist with the voices of Korean people in Canada being heard and acknowledged as they engage with the criminal justice system. No one should be left out just because of a language barrier.
Please contact us if you believe that your current Korean interpreting solution is not getting you the accurate results you had hoped for. We are happy to review your audio and video recording and provide a consultation, helping you to know what your next step should be.