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INTEGRATION

Swedish justice: A matter of interpretation

As a growing array of languages jostle for position in the towns and suburbs of Sweden, Faisal Enayat Khan examines some linguistic shortcomings in the country's legal system.

In a multicultural society such as Sweden’s, the role of interpreters is vital for the smooth functioning of the justice system.

But despite the fact that the agency responsible for issuing licences to interpreters has received just one formal complaint, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that linguistic mix-ups have in many cases denied non-Swedish speakers of a fair trial.

Alla N Lindqvist, an authorized interpreter and former lecturer at Stockholm University, tells The Local that serious translation errors are commonplace in Swedish courtrooms.

Though proficient in five languages, Lindqvist stresses that she will only translate into and from the languages she masters perfectly.

“This is no joke. We are talking about people’s lives and their destiny here,” she says.

But not all interpreters are as cautious with the lives of others.

Take the case of Aaliyah (not her real name), who claims to have been the victim of repeated mental and physical abuse at the hands of her partner.

The Local was in attendance at Solna District Court when Aaliyah explained her situation to the court in Arabic.

“He made me abort several pregnancies. He beat me, and he also threatened to expose a nude picture he had secretly taken of me during our four-year relationship,” she said.

The judge however heard only a fragment of Aaliyah’s story as the interpreter condensed her account into a mere three words: “He abused me.”

When the defence attorney asked the victim why she had not come forward during all the years the defendant was abusing her, she said that it would have raised too many questions within her community.

“Everybody would have asked me about the nature of my relationship with him and I did not have any answer,” she said.

“In my culture it is not socially accepted to have a lover. Even my own family, my own sisters would have cast me out of their social lives,” she said as she broke down in tears.

Again, however, the court heard only part of Aaliyah’s story as the interpreter neglected to mention the cultural stigma attached to her romantic involvement.

Christina Voigt, the prosecutor in the case, is less than surprised when told that the interpreter shortened the victim’s statement. “It happens,” she tells The Local.

“Sometimes, for example, we are very surprised when a long statement is translated as a simple yes or no,” she adds.

Such inconsistencies can result in major discrepancies between the police files on which prosecutors build their cases and the statements made in court.

“Different interpreters translate differently and the real words get lost on the way,” says Voigt.

Maria Andersson, a spokesperson for the Swedish Migration Board, says all official bodies aspire only to hire authorized interpreters, but for some languages there are either too few to go round or none at all. Out of a total of 1,646 active interpreters, only 935 have received official authorization.

The fact that there are too few authorized interpreters to meet demand could go some way towards explaining why Kammarkollegiet, the agency that issues interpreters licences, has received so few complaints.

“We only file complaints against authorized interpreters,” agency official Leena Carlstedt explains.

“Another reason could be that it never comes to anyone’s attention that the interpreter has made a mistake.”

The list of people who have suffered at the hands of interpreter who don’t take their jobs seriously is never-ending. Almost everybody who has ever used their services has a story to tell.

An Afghan reporter who recently applied for asylum in Sweden said he was threatened by radical Islamists in Afghanistan for writing opinion columns about Pedram, a controversial communist politician.

“The interpreter hired through the Migration Board translated Pedram, which is a last name in Afghanistan, to Pedaram which means ‘my father’ in Iran,” he tells The Local.

Consequently, according to the Afghan reporter, his asylum application was rejected by the Migration Board. In its decision the board stated that there were discrepancies in statements made by the reporter in the course of the asylum procedure.

“Just because of a simple mistake I have to wait at least another six months,” he says with a long sigh.

In one way, the Afghan asylum seeker can count himself lucky that he was not exposed to a more sinister fate. In 2003, freelance journalist Nuri Kino exposed an Iraqi espionage cell that had spied on people fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime. One of the spies had worked as an interpreter.

Joakim Von Braun, a former advisor to the Swedish Security Service (Säpo), believes there are still espionage cells working in sensitive government offices and as interpreters who are actively spying on defectors and asylum seekers.

“Asylum seekers have been subjected to asylum espionage several times,” he tells The Local.

“There has been asylum espionage in the Chinese, Iranian and Iraqi communities.”

While secret agents posing as interpreters may represent an extreme example, prosecutor Annika Turndal admits she is concerned about the role played by the values of each individual interpreter.

”It is very hard to say whether court sessions are translated in a neutral manner,” she says.

”We can never be sure that what is said in court is not being contaminated by the translator’s own ideas,” she tells The Local.

As for minimizing the problem, Leena Carlstedt from the licensing agency highlights the importance of official authorization. But not everyone is prepared to be put through their paces by taking the notoriously difficult licence exam.

The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has come up with one potential solution.

“For every trial there is more than one interpreter. It really works: if one misses something the other one picks it up and there is no chance of deliberate mistranslation,” says a court clerk at the tribunal.

But while everyone in the Swedish justice system is aware of the importance of interpreters, nobody has yet proved equal to the task of developing an effective solution.

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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