Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Duch’s trial: François Roux demands for “competent” translators

22 April 2009
By Leang Delux
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the article in French


On Wednesday 22 April, at the ECCC, Duch’s defense lawyer estimated that he lost “50%” of the content of the hearing because of translation problems.

François Roux sharply criticized the translators of the KR Tribunal for the translation delay during the previous days of the hearing. Meanwhile, the hearing was going on about the M-13 prison camp.

“I ask the chamber president to use his power and to take measures to find competent translators,” he launched while estimating that he lost about “50%” of the content of the translated information.

“You also, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen who are judges, you lose a certain percentage of what I said,” he said. “I cannot fathom the fact that your decision could be deformed because of translation problems.”

“There are enough competent people, and it is abnormal that this problem persists for several weeks,” François Roux indicated while giving out as an example the fact that the day before, his discussions about the “pits” in which the prisoners at M-13 were held, was translated using the word “prisons” instead.

Duch who spoke in Khmer while listening to the French translation using his earphones, had to provide corrections to the interpretation his talks on several occasions.

The hearing, which according the schedule should now be turned to S-21, remained on the M-13 issue and the pertinence of Chun Sothy’s testimonial which was obtained by DC-Cam, and to which the defense team contested its validity.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with Mr Francois Roux the translators at the court do not have enough ability to do the job. We can judge from the youtube videos.

Anonymous said...

I agree also to this comments by following the hearing in youtube. Some words was missing during translation.

Anonymous said...

Yes I agree with Mr. François Roux. The translators speak very bad accent in English. There are a lot of Khmers who speak very good English. Why they are not picked as translators? Only Sok An would answer this question.