Tales from Madrid

Daniel Sherr

There had been a sweep and some 20 Africans were in the holding cells, requiring English and French interpreters. Since the English staff interpreter was on vacation, I accompanied the French interpreter down to the pens (calabozos). None of the detainees spoke French; all spoke some variant of English, so in the end I was pressed into service.

The official in charge of the pens read out a name. One of the doors opened and an African woman stepped forward. “Tell her her rights,” he said. I looked at him aghast. “No, you tell her her rights; I’ll translate what you say.” The official produced a piece of paper that the arrestees were to sign; the rights included the right to remain silent, the right against self-incrimination, the right to hire a lawyer, the right to notify family members and friends of one’s arrest, and the right to be examined by a court doctor (médico forense). I started to translate sentence by sentence, but the official grew impatient. “This way, we’ll never finish,” he said, and began to read the women their rights in groups. None were native English speakers and I don’t believe they understood everything being said. According to the official, the most important thing was whether they needed medical attention; but none of them did. When asked to sign a statement indicating that they had read and understood their rights, some refused. Many said that they didn’t want to sign anything until a lawyer was present.

A few hours later, the women were presented one by one before the examining magistrate (juez instructor). The judge asked a series of questions and they answered. Each woman stated she was a “hairweaver” (which I translated as tejedora de cabellos) who braided women’s hair for a fee of about $70 in a process lasting several hours. The judge informed the women that the crime being investigated was one of proxenetismo or tercería (pandering). “Under Spanish law,” she explained, “it is no crime for a woman to have sex with a man for money. Nor is it a crime for the man to have sex with you. But if a man forces you to have sex with other men, that is a crime. You can tell us if someone else is forcing you to have sex.” But all the women steadfastly maintained they worked only as hairweavers. After each interview, the judge summarized the defendants’ statements, dictated them to a stenographer, had the summary read back to the defendant, asked the defendant if she had anything to add, and then asked her to sign it. I noticed that the judge stopped using tejedora and starting saying de profesión trenzadora de cabellos, a far more elegant rendering.

More face-to-face interviews followed into the evening. In one interview I observed, the woman burst out to the interpreter, a Scotsman, “I don’t understand a word you’re saying! You speak such complicated English!” she said, flaying her arms in frustration. When it was all over, the magistrate (in Spain, a magistrate has a higher rank than a judge) decided to detain all the women, except one, who was to be sent to a center for eventual deportation to her country of origin -- Rwanda. With over 100 courtrooms, the Juzgado de la Plaza de Castilla gives any aspiring interpreter a great opportunity to sharpen skills and ... realize the extent of his ignorance.

INTERPRETER JAILED

Sali was directed to interpret for a North African detainee. When it was ascertained that the defendant spoke only Berber, Sali refused to interpret, on the grounds that his contract stipulated he was to interpret Arabic and French. It was not that Sali was incapable of interpreting Berber, which, it turned out, was his native language. However, with a monthly salary of only 110,000 pesetas a month ($917), he and his colleague, Hassan Saharaui, believe they should receive extra pay for interpreting in languages not stipulated in their contract.

On a previous occasion when Sali refused to interpret, the judge had ordered that administrative proceedings (un expediente) be initiated against him. This time, the magistrate was of a different mind. He ordered Sali placed in the pens, where he spent five hours before being released. “My mind went blank”, Sali told the Spanish daily El País later. “When I was handcuffed, I felt totally powerless.”

Sali and Saharaui’s problems do not only arise with Berber, which some judges have argued is a dialect of Arabic and thus part of the interpreters’ official duties. The two frequently interpret in other Arabic dialects as well, none of which are included in their job description.

Sali, born in the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla, and Saharaui, a native of Tetuan, Morocco, both passed civil service exams for their positions. They were tested on their knowledge of modern standard Arabic, which the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls “a Pan-Arabic language ... native to no one and studied at school, based on the liturgical language of the Koran.” A Ministry report further states, “ Pan-Arabic is the language of modern literature, the press, the radio and the university... although in day-to-day life, different dialects having varying degrees of divergence are used... Therefore, with regard to oral interpretation, one can quite correctly speak of Moroccan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, etc.”

Both interpreters, instructed to interpret into modern standard Arabic, have often found that defendants cannot understand them. They feel they deserve extra compensation for their knowledge of Maghrebi and Eastern Arabic dialects.

Saharaui has won a court decision stating that when he interprets in Arabic dialects, he is performing services beyond the scope of his contract. The decision affirms his right to extra pay for such work. “The only problem,” he points out, “is that the administrative office of the courts has failed to pay me anything extra.” He awaits a court decision on how to respond the next time he is called upon to interpret in dialect -- whether to comply, or simply refuse. As for Sali, he continues to work in the courts while a lawyer represents him in the administrative proceedings. And he has one dubious consolation: his photo made it into four newspapers.

The author, when not traveling somewhere, resides in New York City. He works in French, Spanish, Catalán and Portuguese.

© 1996 by NAJIT