Court Interpreters Speak Language of Law

Day after day, they have to tell the grisliest details of homicides, pose embarrassing questions to rape victims and utter the vilest of obscenities.

And when a guilty verdict is announced after a lengthy murder trial, they have to look into the defendant’s hopeful eyes and whisper: “Culpable.”

“We cannot internalize or let our emotions get in the way of doing our job,” said Elynor Whitaker, one of 22 Spanish-language interpreters working in the Ventura County courts.

“Sometimes, when you’re working with children in a molestation case, you think, ‘How terrible.’ But you have to get hold of yourself. The jury is counting on us.”

And so are the courts in Ventura County, where 26% of the population is Latino and thousands of cases involve defendants or witnesses who speak only Spanish. In those cases, the interpreters’ abilities can be as crucial to the outcome as anything the judge or attorneys do, officials say.

“When you have an incompetent interpreter . . . that poor defendant sitting there is not getting a clue as to what’s going on,” said Victoria Norman, the state’s supervisor of court interpreter certification. “Conversely, on the witness stand, you can have a crime victim whose story is not being accurately told.”

Although interpreters work for the court and not the defense or prosecution, attorneys say their presence often lends moral support to defendants and witnesses.

“There have been times when I felt the defendants relied more on the interpreter than on me,” Deputy Public Defender Susan R. Olson said. “They can talk to her directly at least. I think it’s a great help in having them reassured in what’s going on. They understand what’s happening.”

But under the law, interpreters must guard against becoming advocates.

“You cannot express any kind of opinion,” interpreter Yolanda Moreno-Patterson said. “Sometimes defendants ask the interpreter, ‘What do I do? What’s best? Should I plead guilty?’ You have to tell them, ‘I’m sorry, you must ask your attorney.’ ”

Cecilia Isaac, who coordinates the county’s interpreters, described the job as “constant pressure.”

“We have to always be studying, comparing notes, learning the latest expressions, preparing for a trial,” she said. Before a complex trial, she said, the interpreter will often read the transcript of the preliminary hearing to get an idea of the testimony to expect.

And as both the law and the language become more complex, the county’s interpreters spend a lot of time keeping abreast of the changes.

On April 29, for example, they will spend the evening learning about evidence in homicide cases. Last month, they spent part of a weekend at a seminar on legal motions. In the past year, they have attended workshops on ethics, sobriety testing, small claims court, drunk-driving programs and family law.

“The more they know, the more able they are to put into context what is being said,” said Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr., who led the seminar on drunk-driving law. “In some areas like DUI, the law is constantly changing. So they try to keep up on that.”

By law, Spanish-language interpreters must be certified by the state, and they must have extensive knowledge of legal and technical terminology to pass the exam. Only 3% to 4% of those who take the test pass, according to state records.

“You can’t just grab the janitor down the hall to interpret,” said Whitaker, an 11-year veteran of the county’s interpreter corps. “It’s a lot more than knowing two languages.”

In Ventura County, Spanish-language interpreters are assigned daily to criminal court, small claims, mediation conferences, juvenile court and conservatorship proceedings. Interpreters fluent in other languages and signing for the deaf are brought in as needed.

Last year, more than 450 cases required experts in what the courts term “exotic” languages, ranging from Arabic to Vietnamese.

Only three interpreters are county employees. The rest are contract workers who earn $165 per day, although speakers of exotic languages often earn more.

“We had to raise it three years ago because Los Angeles was luring away all our interpreters,” Isaac said.

Interpreting services have cost the county about $500,000 per year for the last three years.

Each day, Isaac gets a printout listing the next day’s cases that need interpreters. From that, she gauges how many to call.

At 8 a.m. one day last week, nine interpreters were crowded into Isaac’s tiny office in the Hall of Justice, waiting to be deployed. A small blackboard listed their assignments: Mora Knowles and Linda Evans were bound for Small Claims Court; George Serros would be in Traffic Court; Whitaker would be interpreting at a cocaine trial; others would staff arraignments and other criminal proceedings.

Arriving at small claims, Knowles asked in Spanish whether anyone needed an interpreter. Daniel Z. Mesa raised his hand. So did the man who was suing him, Jose Mendoza.

When Municipal Judge Art Gutierrez took the bench, Knowles interpreted as the two young Oxnard men detailed their dispute.

Mesa admitted damaging Mendoza’s truck but wanted time to make the repairs himself. Mendoza was tired of waiting and wanted Gutierrez to order Mesa to pay him $795, which the judge did.

But Mendoza looked puzzled as Knowles translated the judge’s explanation of the difference between winning a judgment and collecting the money.

“I can’t put him in jail,” the judge said.

After hearing the translation, Mendoza spoke in Spanish to Knowles, who turned to the judge and asked, “Can you give him a deadline?”

“No,” the judge replied, adding that the court clerk’s office had a process to help the two men agree on a payment schedule.

Knowles walked out of the courtroom with Mendoza and Mesa, elaborating on the judge’s comments and explaining how to get help at the clerk’s office.

“It’s nice they have someone to interpret for us,” Mendoza said.

In another courtroom, Serros sat across from Roberto Ronquillo of Oxnard, playing a Spanish-language tape that explained the consequences of pleading guilty to drunk driving. At times, Serros stopped the tape to answer questions.

Ronquillo, 22, said he was happy with the interpreter’s work. “I understand,” he said. “I’m very pleased with the way it was explained to me.”

Meanwhile, in Judge Allan L. Steele’s courtroom, Whitaker’s vocabulary was getting a workout as she interpreted defense attorney Steven D. Powell’s opening statement in a cocaine trial.

“This is a case, Your Honor, that will make the Battle of Runnymede in 1215 and the issuance of the Magna Carta and the development of the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt fall squarely within the crucible of this court’s decision,” Powell proclaimed.

The judge suppressed a smile at Powell’s grandiloquent historical allusions, but Whitaker whispered a literal translation to the two Spanish-speaking defendants.

“If he’s using flowery language, then we have to use the same flowery language in Spanish,” Whitaker said later. “I cannot say, ‘Well, maybe they don’t understand and I should say it this way with easier words.’ That’s not our job. We are here to interpret . . . at the same level of formality as the speaker.

“That’s why I like to say I’m the parrot. It’s like you play back the tape, except it’s in a different language.”

Sometimes, that tape is a little raunchy. But in courtroom interpretations, no expletives are deleted.

“If the person on the witness stand says such and such, we have to find an equivalent term,” said Isaac, who attended a seminar two years ago to enhance her command of profane, vulgar and obscene terms.

“I never knew how many combinations of the F-word there are,” she said. “I’m not from Mexico, so I had to learn the Mexican words for insulting people.”

Isaac is from Colombia, while Whitaker is a New York native who grew up in Guatemala. The other interpreters have various national backgrounds. Knowles, for example, is from Argentina, as is Graciela Lessing. Alicia Luper-Gallont was born in El Salvador, while Maria Bowen, Gloria Kubilos and Evans come from Mexico. Moreno-Patterson was a lawyer in Spain before immigrating to the United States. Several interpreters, like Serros, were born in the United States.

The interpreters consult one another on regional differences in the language, Lessing said, and the differences can be significant.

In Mexico, for example, the word chino means curly-haired, she said. In Colombia, the same word refers to a young boy, while in her native Argentina, it would mean someone from China.

Before a trial, jurors who understand Spanish are instructed to consider only the English interpretation. “But in the event they hear something different than what is being interpreted, they are instructed to bring that to the judge’s attention,” Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones said. “This has happened, but only rarely.”

On the other hand, the interpreters sometimes uncover serious mistakes by others.

Olson recalled a case in which a Spanish-speaking man was cited for driving without a license. The police officer testified that the man did so even after the officer had told him, in Spanish, not to drive his car on the streets of California.

The officer was asked to repeat what he had told the man. Then the court interpreter was asked to translate.

As Olson remembers it, the interpreter replied: “He told the defendant: ‘Do not tighten your car on the streets of California.’ ”

Talking in Tongues Spanish-speaking interpreters are in such high demand by Ventura County courts that officials don’t keep track of how often they are used. But last year, more than 450 cases required experts to translate other languages. Here is a list of the languages used and the number of cases:

Sign language 106 Vietnamese 82 Tagalog 37 Korean 36 Armenian 26 Farsi 18 Japanese 12 Ilocano (Indonesian) 11 Arabic 10 Mandarin 9 Persian 9 Italian 7 Laotian 5 Chinese 4 Filipino 4 German 4 Polish 4 Afghani 3 Cambodian 3 French 3 Hindi 3 Romanian 3 Cantonese 2 Greek 1 Hebrew 1 Samoan 1 Tongan 1

Source: Interpreter Services, Ventura County Superior and Municipal Courts