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MEDIA ARTICLES
JUSTICE BEING LOST IN TRANSLATION IN SA When a Cape Town taxi driver was fined R500 for contempt of court after telling the magistrate he had missed an earlier court date because he was "ekhayeni" (at home), Xhosa speakers were outraged. The driver meant he had been at his Eastern Cape home, not in Khayelitsha, but this had not been made clear to the Wynberg magistrate. The terminology "ekhayeni", mainly used by migrant workers, is "vague" and could mean either home. Misunderstandings with serious consequences result from poor interpretation and translation in a country with 11 official languages. This and other problems facing translators and interpreters were the main discussion issues as international academics converged on the University of the Western Cape for the second Conference of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) two weeks ago. Speakers included Basil Hatim of the United Arab Emirates, Rita Kothari of India, China's Yameng Liu, Carol Maier of the United States, Belgian Jef Verschueren and Rosemary Moeketsi of Cape Town. Conference chairwoman Charlyn Dyers said one problem was that the written translation of indigenous languages was not always able to convey all the nuances of the spoken language. There was often distortion and sometimes one culture was imposed upon another. Dyers said governments in many countries did not take the profession seriously, and that interpreters and translators were poorly paid. This was despite the fact that some interpreters' lives were at risk - several have been abducted and killed in Iraq, for example. A number of interpreters in the Cape Town Magistrate's Court and Cape High Court agreed with her. They told the Weekend Argus this week that they were treated with "hostility" and were just the "Cinderellas" of the court. Their problems include low salaries, not enough time to read and translate complicated statements, lack of training and development. The interpreters, who asked to remain anonymous as they may not speak to the media without permission, said one of the problems they faced was that some legal and scientific terms they had to interpret had no direct translations in Xhosa. This was compounded by the fact that in some cases different groups within the Xhosa-speaking community use different terms. For example, the general term for throwing a stone at someone is "ukugibisela" while Port Elizabeth speakers use the term "ukugqaya". And gangsters, who exist as a discrete subculture have a language all of their own. "To be able to interpret correctly we have to mix ourselves with different cultures and languages. To be an interpreter one has to be wise and inquisitive ... We are walking dictionaries," one said. But the justice system was failing and interpreters were often blamed for poor delivery. "We do not have the training to provide what is expected of us," another added. |