The following item from the Hirondelle News Agency was seen on AllAfrica.com at http://allafrica.com/stories/200601300222.html . It's too bad that either the proceedings could not be done in Kinyarwanda or the judges given a crash course in some basic concepts in the Kinyarwanda language. In any event, far from being a mere "headache," it seems that the effort made for translations could actually prove useful for development of terminologies etc. in Kinyarwanda (and the closely related & interintelligible Kirundi language). Hopefully good transcripts in Kinyarwanda are being kept. Maybe a step towards enhancing the language's use in the legal system generally (since everyone speaks it). DZO
Kinyarwanda Translation Causes Big Headache to Tribunal Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne) http://www.hirondelle.org/ January 27, 2006 Posted to the web January 30, 2006 Arusha Even though both English and French are the official languages of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Kinyarwanda - the mostly widely spoken language in the country where the 1994 genocide took place and the preferred language of most witnesses - is giving sleepless nights to interpreters of ICTR. The majority of the over 1,500 witnesses who have so far testified at the tribunal came from Rwanda or are Rwandans and spoke in their mother tongue which was then interpreted into both English and French. The ICTR employs over fifty translators and interpreters. Rwandan language expert Mathias Ruzindana told Hirondelle News Agency that the most difficult task for the interpreters is translating a concept or idea from Kinyarwanda - which is an African Bantu language- into English or French, two languages from another continent. "There exist many cultural and social differences. Cultures do not look at the real world with the same lens nor do they interpret them the same way", explained Ruzindana who holds a doctorate in linguistics and has already testified as an expert witness at the ICTR. According to him, the differences in perception and descriptions in a language usually lead to misunderstandings between witnesses and lawyers in the courtroom especially bearing in mind that judges rely on the testimonies of witnesses to make their conclusions. To understand the scope of the difficulties met by translators during trials, Ruzindana points out two concepts: time and space, which are usually the sources of misunderstandings in court. "Most Rwandans do not own watches, so they usually measure time by the movement of the sun or their routine activities to express time (e.g. grazing cattle)", he said. "Expressions like "umuseke" (dawn), igitondo (morning), umugoroba (evening), etc, exist but they are not precise and do not tally with the precision needed in judicial matters", explained the Rwandan expert. He went on to say that Rwandans usually shade these expressions by adding words such as "very early, at about, etc" without giving exact details. "They cannot for example distinguish between 10:15 and 11: 45, yet an hour or half-an-hour would be enough to establish an alibi", Ruzindana pointed out adding that it was not uncommon to hear a witness say that "a short moment" passed between two events without even being able to estimate the time. This kind of exchange is very common and might go on for minutes without the lawyer getting a precise answer. The defence usually ends up getting angry and abandons the line of questioning saying that the witness had refused to answer. Yet in reality one man's ignorance leads to another person's lack of understanding. The problem of space usually poses the same problems as those of time. For the uneducated witnesses, estimation will be approximate. It would be difficult for example, for a witness to estimate in court the distance between his house and the local administrator's office. "The lawyer will be guided by the time it takes someone to cover the distance on foot. Unfortunately, estimating time when one does not and has never owned a watch is not an easy thing", Ruzindana underscored. Fabien Segatwa, a Burundian lawyer made the same remarks. The translations by most Rwandans of notions of time and space "are only rough estimates". Segatwa is the only Burundian defence lawyer at the ICTR and possibly the only one capable of understanding Kinyarwanda, a language spoken by most witnesses. Kinyarwanda and Kirundi (spoken in Burundi) are close languages. "Unfortunately it is not me who will judge", Segatwa said, adding that his understanding can not be transposed into the minds of the judges. "In most cases, when the judges are faced with witnesses who are incapable of giving a correct indication of time, they do not know what to do. Yet our clients are facing very serious charges", said the lawyer bitterly. Examples are many and vary from one witness to the next, from one courtroom to the other. It is common to find that problems emanating from translating from Kinyarwanda trigger debates in court. In the ongoing trial of former politician Mathieu Ngirumpatse, the Prosecutor opposed a document which had been translated by defence investigators be admitted as evidence, arguing that it was an "unofficial" translation. Ngirumpatse's lawyer, Frederic Weil from France, replied that two professional translators of the tribunal had given two differing translations of the same Kinyarwanda expression, yet the defence had not made it an issue in court. The two contentious expressions were 'exterminate' and 'massacre'. According to language expert Ruzindana, the word 'exterminate' in Kinyarwanda would be 'kurimbura' or 'gutsemba' but that 'massacre' was "quasi nonexistent in our culture". "There is no one single word that describes the concept", he stated adding that one attempt would be to use 'kwica imbaga', which, according to the expert, would mean killing many people - yet the word massacre can be used to express the killing of ten or less people. Thus translating from Kinyarwanda has been one of the major challenges faced by both translators and interpreters who have the onus of shedding light on the thoughts and ideas of witnesses for the benefit of the judges. Yahoo! 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