Mandarin in the Legal Arena

Judith Shapiro

I have been a legal interpreter of Mandarin Chinese since the early 1980's, when I returned from three years' teaching in China. Before then, I had studied the language at the undergraduate and graduate levels for seven years. My first husband was Chinese and he spoke little English, so I often found myself in informal interpreting situations, which I discovered I greatly enjoyed. After several interpreting stints with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and International Visitors' Program, I was invited to work in federal court in Manhattan, where a senior interpreter listened to the quality and accuracy of my courtroom interpretation through headphones. Eventually I left New York, but the high stakes, slice-of-life dramas, gratitude of the person needing the interpreter, and my fascination with cultural and linguistic differences have kept me working in the courtroom year after year. Many times I have appeared in court prepared to interpret, only to discover that a different dialect or even language was actually required. Although the various dialects share a written language, Mandarin (also called standard Chinese), Cantonese, and Fujianese (sometimes called Fukienese, Fuchow, or Fuzhou, after the dialect spoken in Fuzhou city, the provincial capital) are mutually unintelligible. Shanghainese, or Shanghai dialect, is also entirely distinctive, but most people from Shanghai speak excellent Mandarin, so it is not normally a problem to find a suitable interpreter. Incidentally, the word "Mandarin" is a Western term that Chinese speakers of English have adopted. In Chinese, the word for the dialect is guoyu, which means "national language."

Few interpreters are equally comfortable in more than one dialect, and more than one interpreting assignment has not gone forward because the attorney or clerk neglected to ascertain which dialect was needed, or because the person requiring the interpreter was unable to communicate his or her needs. Ever since I was called on a job that required Thai because the contractor had confused Thailand and Taiwan, I have learned to ask them to double-check that the language required is indeed Mandarin.

Fujian province, on China's southern coast, is the source of much of the immigrant-smuggling activity that eventually ends up in the courts, but there are exceedingly few qualified interpreters of the region's dialects. Since all mainland Chinese are technically required to learn Mandarin in school, Mandarin is a lingua franca, and sometimes Mandarin is the next best choice for those from the Fujian area. However, if the defendant or witness is poorly educated, a very challenging situation arises, where communication may be effective in one direction only. That person may easily understand the interpreter's Mandarin, but his own Mandarin may be so heavily accented that the interpreter will have trouble deciphering it. In such instances, the case has to be continued until an appropriate interpreter can be located.

Another set of language issues arises when Taiwan is involved. The dominant language of Taiwan is Mandarin (brought over from the mainland when the Kuomintang retreated to the island in 1949), although the accent is slightly different. Taiwanese is the local dialect, again unintelligible with Mandarin. However, when court personnel request a Taiwanese interpreter, they usually mean a Mandarin interpreter (almost all Taiwanese have learned Mandarin in school). While a person born in Taiwan may not speak Mandarin well and may actually require a Taiwanese interpreter, sometimes court personnel request Taiwanese simply because they assume that is the name of the language spoken in Taiwan.

What is often more problematic than finding the right dialect, however, especially for a Mandarin interpreter whose experience is primarily from one or the other side of the Taiwan Straits, are the usage differences which have evolved with the political and cultural separation of China and Taiwan. These are analogous to the differences between British and American English, although with the increased interaction across the Straits and the rapid economic development of the mainland, these usage differences are diminishing. When I was first working as an interpreter in the early 1980's, it was still common for mainland Chinese to refer to their spouses as their airen ["love-person"], a gender-neutral phrase favored by the communists. For a person from Taiwan, however, the phrase evoked an illicit relationship and was usually greeted with embarrassment or hilarity. Now words meaning "husband" and "wife" are the norm in the People's Republic of China. (Once, an attorney referred to the PRC as the "Republic of China"^× a political gaffe to mainland ears, for it seems to legitimize the government of Taiwan.)

Romanization of Chinese names poses particular challenges in the legal context, often even more for court personnel than for the interpreter. There are several commonly used romanization systems for Mandarin, and a Chinese-speaker can usually tell whether someone is from Taiwan (where apostrophes and hyphens are commonly used) or the mainland (where x, q, and z first letters are common). For example, a Chinese name could be romanized as differently as Chang Ts'ui-hsin or Zhang Cuixin. The interpreter would read them as the same name, but even so might not be certain how they are pronounced or written, since the tones are not indicated in either romanization system. (Even if the tones were known, more than one written character may be indicated.) It is clear, however, that the first name is a Taiwan name, the second a mainland name. Speakers of Cantonese and other dialects use different romanization systems, and one clue for the interpreter as to whether Mandarin is really the best choice lies in how the name is spelled. For this reason, court personnel would be well advised to spell the defendant's name for the interpreter over the telephone when contracting for the assignment.

In some cases, the person in question may never have chosen a romanized name. The romanization used on the docket sheet may have been provided by an arresting officer, court official, attorney, or interpreter. Sometimes the Chinese name doesn't seem to follow any accepted romanization system at all. An interpreter may be better versed in romanization than the person providing his or her name. As a final complication, some Chinese reverse the order of their names when they move to the U.S., changing the family name, which in Chinese comes first, to the U.S. order by placing it after the given name. In our example, the name would become Ts'ui-hsin Chang or Cuixin Zhang. With all possible spellings and word orders, court records often become confused. Even if court personnel get the right name, they usually don't pronounce it in a way that the person whose name is being called can understand it. Once, I was asked to sort out which of five Chinese men in the holding area was the man with the court date, since the guards had simply rounded up all the Chinese in the cell block and brought them to the courtroom.

As a highly context-specific language, Chinese poses special challenges for any interpreter. When the stakes are as high as they can be in the legal arena, linguistic issues are particularly vexing, often requiring the interpreter to ask for clarification or to correct the interpretation on the record. For the interpreter to understand the context from the beginning of the assignment, it is important, if at all possible, to learn the broad outlines of the case and the likely content of that day's interpretation.

For example, the huge number of homonyms in Chinese can be quite a problem. There are a relatively small total number of sounds in the language, with many possibilities of how to write the characters and many possible meanings attached to them. An interpreter may need to ask for clarification, especially if the defendant or witness has given a very short answer and the interpreter does not know the background or context of the case. This exercise becomes even more complicated if the defendant or witness does not speak standard Chinese. Regional accents affect pronunciation, including the tones, which provide crucial linguistic differences in meaning. Time frames, too, pose special challenges. Often, words denoting future and past tenses are omitted, so it is not clear when something has already happened, is happening now, or may happen some time in the future.

Perhaps most consistently vexing is the matter of pronouns. In Chinese, the pronouns meaning "he," "she" and "it" (and "him" and "her") are all pronounced identically as ta (first tone), while written differently. If the interpreter does not know the sex of the person mentioned, the only way to interpret the sentence is to use the phrase "he or she" or "him or her." Similarly, English words, particularly for family relations, may be too general: the word "sister," for example, has two possible interpretations in Chinese, one of which means "older sister," the other, "younger sister." Words for brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles, are similarly specific. There is no neutral choice. Before rendering the interpretation, the interpreter must ask permission to find out more about the family's birth order and kinship details.

Certain legal phrases are quite confusing for speakers of Chinese, particularly that opener much favored by attorneys, "Isn't it the case that^Å" I have found that the best way to interpret such sentences is to make an affirmative statement, and tag the end, "Yes or no?" [shi bu shi?] If the question is interpreted literally, the witness or defendant may become confused and even answer in a manner quite opposite to that intended.

Another common problem for interpreters is finding the correct register for idioms. In one federal case, a defendant said, wo hui dasi ni [lit: "I will beat to death you"]. In Chinese, this common phrase is analogous to "I'll beat the living daylights out of you," rather than "I'll kill you." At stake was the matter of whether a "lethal threat" was made. If so, the defendant stood to receive a significantly heavier sentence.

An interpreter of Chinese often sees cultural differences and misunderstandings poignantly demonstrated. Many cases would not end up in the courtroom were it not for such miscommunications. Sometimes it is a matter of the defendant misunderstanding the arresting officer, as when an officer asks a sidewalk vendor to move along and the vendor fails to understand. Or it can be a matter of the defendant's lack of understanding of the U.S. cultural and political context, as when a young man with a learner's permit practiced his driving skills by driving around the Pentagon parking lot, thinking it a nice quiet place to practice turning, backing up and stopping, but ending up in traffic court.

A deeper cultural difference is sometimes displayed when a defendant who believes, rightly or wrongly, that he or she is innocent is offered a plea bargain. Culturally, the admission of guilt implies a loss of face wholly unacceptable to a defendant who holds fast to the rightness of his or her own view. Such a person may be willing to undergo great inconvenience, with repeated court appearances and substantial expense, rather than acknowledge a misdemeanor, pay a small fine, and get the case over with as a Western defendant might agree to do.

Another such difference has to do with levels of trust among Chinese friends and relatives, a difference that often leads to incredulity from attorneys, judges, and juries, and sometimes to unwarranted suspicions that the defendant or witness is not revealing all that he knows. For example, a Chinese person might do a favor for an associate without questioning why the favor was being asked or seeking to learn about the circumstances surrounding it. Such a favor might seem, in the Western context, to be huge, such as an out-of-the-blue request to drop everything and come to a certain place to do something, no questions asked, or to write out a check in a certain way, or to lend a large sum of money. It is not uncommon for a Chinese person to hold large amounts of cash, to lend that money to a friend without asking for a receipt, sometimes without even asking why the money is needed. I have often encountered the skepticism of an attorney or judge who cannot believe that the Chinese person would be so generous or unquestioning in providing help to someone else.

People always ask me about the response I get when, as a Caucasian, I introduce myself as a Chinese interpreter. Those needing interpretation generally react with delight that help has arrived from such an unexpected quarter. There may even be an advantage in not appearing to belong to a Chinese community, as people perceive that I am unlikely to be politically involved or to embarrass them by knowing their associates.