The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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10 The Linguist Vol/59 No/3 2020 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES there was no insurance.) Seven months after her death, Mr Chow was arrested for murder. The police found that his statement consisted of a detailed confession. The first issue I looked into was the language spoken during this encounter. The police officer who originally spoke to Mr Chow addressed him in English, then in Toisonese, then in Cantonese. Mr Chow answered in what sounded like Mandarin, and this was confirmed when the officer asked 'Putonghua?' and Mr Chow nodded. The officer's initial impression was that he could not communicate with Mr Chow. He should have called for a Mandarin-speaking officer. Instead, when asked to interpret for the paramedics, he did so. This same Toisonese/Cantonese-speaking officer also served as interpreter to take his statement. I tested Mr Chow's ability to speak Cantonese with the Cantonese Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), and I asked him the meaning of 23 simple Cantonese words. He understood and could properly say only seven. This confirmed and quantified the OPI rating, which was that Mr Chow could not speak Cantonese. Family members and restaurant workers agreed that he could only speak selected words in Cantonese, such as greetings. If Mr Chow could not speak Cantonese, how could he have confessed in Cantonese? I found that almost everything in his confession was known to – or supposed by – the police, or could have come from hospital records. Perhaps the officer had just asked if these things were true and Mr Chow said 'yes'. There was a single item that only Mr Chow could have known and that was their intended destination: they were going to pick up a sign for the restaurant. I had the case investigator do interviews and check the records on this. The sign had, in fact, been collected the day earlier. The Chows were actually on their way to the restaurant to pay a waitress. I asked Mr Chow how the police knew about a sign and he told me that it had been in the van. The one thing that only Mr Chow could have known was wrong. He was not the source of his own confession. After I testified in court, the statement of Mr Chow was suppressed. He was later found Not Guilty. What went wrong in this case was that, even in a town with many Chinese inhabitants, the police did not switch to Mandarin when addressing a Mandarin speaker. An English-speaking officer testified that he "believed Chow spoke and understood Cantonese perfectly". How would he know? As is often the case when police speak to immigrants, the Cantonese-speaking officer presumably did all the talking, and Mr Chow listened and nodded or said 'yes'. Westerners who visit China have noticed that this small word, 'yes', can cause problems. Saying 'yes' does not necessarily mean agreement in China. It can also mean 'I am listening' or 'go on'. A company that advises on international trade highlights this issue in its advice on doing business with China: "Context is important, because when a Chinese person says 'yes' it can mean any number of things. Several Asian cultural practices come into play with the word 'yes'." 1 As this case illustrates, immigrant suspects must be allowed to speak. Yes/no questions, especially 'Do you understand?', can yield false positives. Despite the right to remain silent, police – and lawyers – should never do all the talking. Let us at least determine proficiency in the language before proceeding further. Notes 1 Doing Business in China, www.wadetrade.com/free6.html WHOSE WORDS? Expert witnesses can identify when defendants have signed statements they could not fully understand because they don't have sufficient knowledge of the language © SHUTTERSTOCK