Translating Evidence And Interpreting Testimony At A War Crimes Tribunal

How can defendants be tried if they cannot understand the charges being raised against them? Can a witness testify if the judges and attorneys cannot understand what the witness is saying? Can a judge decide whether to convict or acquit if she or he cannot read the documentary evidence? The very viability of international criminal prosecution and adjudication hinges on the massive amounts of translation and interpreting that are required in order to run these lengthy, complex trials, and the procedures for handling the demands facing language services. This book explores the dynamic courtroom interactions in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in which witnesses testify through an interpreter about translations, attorneys argue through an interpreter about translations and the interpreting, and judges adjudicate on the interpreted testimony and translated evidence.

How can defendants be tried if they cannot understand the charges being raised against them? Can a witness testify if the judges and attorneys cannot understand what the witness is saying? Can a judge decide whether to convict or acquit if she or he cannot read the documentary evidence? The very viability of international criminal prosecution and adjudication hinges on the massive amounts of translation and interpreting that are required in order to run these lengthy, complex trials, and the procedures for handling the demands facing language services. This book explores the dynamic courtroom interactions in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in which witnesses testify through an interpreter about translations, attorneys argue through an interpreter about translations and the interpreting, and judges adjudicate on the interpreted testimony and translated evidence.

This edited book provides a multi-disciplinary approach to the topics of translation and cross-cultural communication in times of war and conflict. It examines the historical and contemporary experiences of interpreters in war and in war crimes trials, as well as considering policy issues in communication difficulties in war-related contexts. The range of perspectives incorporated in this volume will appeal to scholars, practitioners and policy-makers, particularly in the fields of translating and interpreting, conflict and war studies, and military history.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book raises new questions and provides different perspectives on the roles, responsibilities, ethics and protection of interpreters in war while investigating the substance and agents of Japanese war crimes and legal aspects of interpreters’ taking part in war crimes. Informed by studies on interpreter ethics in conflict, historical studies of Japanese war crimes and legal discussion on individual liability in war crimes, Takeda provides a detailed description and analysis of the 39 interpreter defendants and interpreters as witnesses of war crimes at British military trials against the Japanese in the aftermath of the Pacific War, and tackles ethical and legal issues of various risks faced by interpreters in violent conflict. The book first discusses the backgrounds, recruitment and wartime activities of the accused interpreters at British military trials in addition to the charges they faced, the defence arguments and the verdicts they received at the trials, with attention to why so many of the accused were Taiwanese and foreign-born Japanese. Takeda provides a contextualized discussion, focusing on the Japanese military’s specific linguistic needs in its occupied areas in Southeast Asia and the attributes of interpreters who could meet such needs. In the theoretical examination of the issues that emerge, the focus is placed on interpreters’ proximity to danger, visibility and perceived authorship of speech, legal responsibility in war crimes and ethical issues in testifying as eyewitnesses of criminal acts in violent hostilities. Takeda critically examines prior literature on the roles of interpreters in conflict and ethical concerns such as interpreter neutrality and confidentiality, drawing on legal discussion of the ineffectiveness of the superior orders defence and modes of individual liability in war crimes. The book seeks to promote intersectoral discussion on how interpreters can be protected from exposure to manifestly unlawful acts such as torture.

In order to ensure its absolute authority, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (1946–1948), the Japanese counterpart of the Nuremberg Trial, adopted a three-tier structure for its interpreting: Japanese nationals interpreted the proceedings, second-generation Japanese-Americans monitored the interpreting, and Caucasian U.S. military officers arbitrated the disputes. The first extensive study on the subject in English, this book explores the historical and political contexts of the trial as well as the social and cultural backgrounds of the linguists through trial transcripts in English and Japanese, archival documents and recordings, and interviews with those who were involved in the interpreting. In addition to a detailed account of the interpreting, the book examines the reasons for the three-tier system, how the interpreting procedures were established over the course of the trial, and the unique difficulties faced by the Japanese-American monitors. This original case study of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal illuminates how complex issues such as trust, power, control and race affect interpreting at international tribunals in times of conflict.

First published as a Special Issue of Interpreting (10:1, 2008) and complemented with two articles published in Interpreting (12:1, 2010), this volume provides a panoramic view of the complex and uniquely constrained practice of court interpreting. In an array of empirical papers, the nine authors explore the potential of court interpreters to make or break the proceedings, from the perspectives of the minority language speaker and of the other participants. The volume offers thoughtful overviews of the tensions and conflicts typically associated with the practice of court interpreting. It looks at the attitudes of judicial authorities towards interpreting, and of interpreters towards the concept of a code of ethics. With further themes such as the interplay of different groups of "linguists" at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and the language rights of indigenous communities, it opens novel perspectives on the study of interpreting at the interface between the letter of the law and its implementation.

Introduction: Legacy as Dialogue: Reflecting on the ICTY Experience / Carsten Stahn. - PART I OPENING REFLECTIONS. - 1 The Last Testament of the ICTY / Carmel Agius. - 2 Making Complementarity a Reality: The Experiences of the ICTY and IRMCT Office of the Prosecutor / Serge Brammertz. - 3 The ICTY and the Defence Legacy: The Association of Counsel Practising Before the ICTY / Colleen Rohan. - 4 The Moral Legacy of the ICTY, Miguel de Serpa Soares. - PART II LEGACY LENSES, THEORIZATIONS, AND NARRATIVES. - 5 The ICTY is Dead! Long Live the ICTY!: ICTY Legacies in Perspective / Carsten Stahn. - 6 Legacies in the Making at the ICTY / Viviane E. Dittrich. - 7 The Narrative Legacies of Exceptional Crime: The Prosecutor as a Peacebuilder / Simone Gigliotti and Amber Pierce. - 8 Meandering Jurisprudence and Unanticipated Legacies: The ICTY's Reach into Domestic Civil Litigation / Mark Drumbl, - PART III EXPRESSIVE PRACTICES, JUDICIAL RECORD, HISTORY, AND TRUTH. - 9 Symbolic Expression at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia / Marina Aksenova. - 10 A Partial View of History: ICTY Judgments as 'Judicial Truths' / Luigi Prosperi and Aldo Zammit Borda . - 11 Handle with Care: ICTY, Juridical By-products, and Criminological Analyses / Andy Aydin-Aitchiso. - PART IV EVIDENCE, WITNESS TESTIMONY, AND WITNESS EXPERIENCES. - 12 Lessons Learned from the Use of DNA Evidence in Srebrenica-related Trials at the ICTY / Kweku Vanderpuye and Christopher Mitchell, - 13 Whither Thou Truth and Justice: Witness Perceptions About their Contributions to the ICTY / Kimi Lynn King and James Meernik. - PART V CRIMINAL PROCEDURE, COURT MANAGEMENT, AND OUTREACH. - 14 Defence Investigative Ethics: Practical Lessons from the ICTY's Legacy for Counsel Practising in the Region / Michael G. Karnavas. - 15 Judgments and Judgment Drafting, / Thomas Wayde Pittman and Marko Divac Öberg. - 16 Muzzling the Press: When Does the Law Justify Reporting Restrictions? Contempt Cases Against Journalists at the ICTY and Beyond / Audrey Fino and Sandra Sahyouni. - 17 Translating and Interpreting at the ICTY: Lessons Learned / Ellen Elias-Bursać. - 18 Was it Worth it? A Look into the Results of the ICTY's Outreach Programme / Petar Finci. - 19 The Legacy of Youth Outreach at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia / Adrian Plevin. - PART VI PUNISHMENT, SENTENCING, AND BEYOND. - 20 Punishing for Humanity: The Sentencing Legacy of the ICTY / Margaret M. deGuzman. - 21Vertical Inconsistency of International Sentencing? The ICTY and Domestic Courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Barbora Holá. - 22 When Justice is Done: The ICTY and the Post-trial Phase / Joris van Wijk and Barbora Holá . - PART VII IMPACT ON DOMESTIC LEGAL SYSTEMS. - 23 Narratives of Justice and War in Croatia / Ivor Sokolić. - 24 The Legacy of the ICTY: The Three-tiered Approach to Justice in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Benchmarks for Measuring Success / Jennifer Trahan and Iva Vukušić. - 25 Cooperation between Serbia and the ICTY for the Investigation and Prosecution of Violations of International Humanitarian Law / Tatjana Dawson and Ljiljana Hellman. - 26 'We Learnt that from The Hague': How the ICTY Influenced the Fairness of Criminal Trials in the Former Yugoslavia / Kei Hannah Brodersen. - PART VIII SOCIETAL IMPACT, RECEPTION, AND GAPS. - 27 The Peace versus Justice Debate Revisited: The ICTY's Impact on the Bosnian Peace Process / Jacqueline R. McAllister. - 28 Croatia's Homeland War, the Battles Over Victor's Justice, and the Legacy of the ICTY / Victor Peskin. - 29 The (Lack of) Impact of the ICTY on the Public Memory of the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc. - 30 The Broken Path to Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Field Study of Memories / Rosa Aloisi. - 31 The ICTY, Truth, and Reconciliation: A Meta Reconceptualization / Janine Natalya Clark.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics presents the first comprehensive, state of the art overview of the multiple ways in which ‘politics’ and ‘translation’ interact. Divided into four sections with thirty-three chapters written by a roster of international scholars, this handbook covers the translation of political ideas, the effects of political structures on translation and interpreting, the politics of translation and an array of case studies that range from the Classical Mediterranean to contemporary China. Considering established topics such as censorship, gender, translation under fascism, translators and interpreters at war, as well as emerging topics such as translation and development, the politics of localization, translation and interpreting in democratic movements, and the politics of translating popular music, the handbook offers a global and interdisciplinary introduction to the intersections between translation and interpreting studies and politics. With a substantial introduction and extensive bibliographies, this handbook is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of translation theory, politics and related areas.