Lost in Translation

Franklin County is a very cosmopolitan place with a diverse population. This can present issues in Domestic Relations Court as well as other courts when people with little or no mastery of English appear before the bench. As a result, the courts often find the need to avail themselves of the services of translators/interpreters who can assure that everyone knows what is going on and that information is appropriately communicated.

Normally, this does not present any real difficulties, since interpreters are readily available for commonly encountered languages such as Spanish, French, and even many African languages. On one occasion, however, I did have a real problem of translation to solve.

The Hmong people, native to mountainous regions of Vietnam and Laos, were heavily recruited by various nations' military during the wars in Southeast Asia, including the United States military, to assist in the wars conducted in that region during the 20^th Century. In the late '70s, many Hmong refugees settled in the United States.

According to a Hmong Culture website, the Hmong language is linguistically unrelated to any other spoken or written language on Earth. Only about 4 million people speak the language, and only about 200,000 live in the United States, most of those in Minnesota, California, and Wisconsin.

It is not, therefore, difficult to understand the problem we encountered when a Hmong couple was scheduled to appear in my courtroom for the final hearing of their Petition for Dissolution of their marriage. A lawyer came to talk to me about the case a few days before the hearing was scheduled to occur. Although the documents they had filed were in English and had been prepared by the lawyer who was employed by a clinic at a local law school, the attorney informed me that he was very uncomfortable because he did not believe that the parties had really understood what was going on and what the documents said and meant. He said most of their communication with the husband, his client, had been a mixture of sign language with very few English phrases thrown in.

He also told me that he had been unable to locate a member of the Hmong community who was fluent enough in English to provide reliable interpretation for the parties at the hearing. He had, however, located a member of the community who spoke both Hmong and limited French, as well as an interpreter who could translate French to English. "Could we," he asked, "conduct the hearing by translating from English to French to Hmong and back again?" I saw no reason why not. At least we could try.

So, we had the hearing. I conducted the inquiry trying to ascertain that the parties understood that the proceedings would end their marriage and that they understood the nature, content, and import of the documents they had signed. I would ask a question, it would be translated from English to French, and then from French to Hmong. The parties would answer and the process would reverse. Of course, no one in the courtroom could really ascertain the accuracy of this chain of interpretation. I was reminded of the childhood game of "Telephone" and remembered just how garbled the message entered at one end of the chain came out at the other.

Finally, we finished the hearing. The parties were granted the dissolution they apparently sought. Everyone smiled and shook hands. The assemblage exited the courtroom, leaving my bailiff and me alone, hoping that some sort of multilingual justice had been served.