Thousands of court cases adjourned due to failures in interpreting services

Ministry of Justice figures show that more than 2,600 court cases have been affected over five years, as Capita withdraws from bidding for contract.

More than 2,600 court cases have been adjourned over the past five years because of failures in the interpreting service, according to figures released by the Ministry of Justice.

The extent of the problem was confirmed as doubts emerged about the viability of the troubled contract for interpreting services after the outsourcing firm Capitadeclined to bid for its renewal in October.

A war crimes trial at the Old Bailey collapsed last year and has had to be rescheduled because of problems over the quality of interpreting offered to the defendant, a Nepalese army officer.

The figures for the number of cases rescheduled since 2011, when the new contract paying lower rates came into effect, have been provided by the justice minister Lord Faulks.

In the magistrates courts, 2,524 trials have had to be adjourned because of the lack of an interpreter over the past five years. In the crown court, where costs are far greater, 137 trials have had to be adjourned because of interpreter difficulties. The cumulative expense of the adjournments was not recorded. 

Commenting on the failures, the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokesman, Lord Marks QC, said: “It goes without saying that every time an interpreter fails to turn up, either injustice is done, because the case goes on without one, or the case has to be adjourned, leading to delays and a waste of everyone’s time and costs.

“Even with improvement against targets, the number of court cases adjourned owing to the lack of interpreters has remained stubbornly high. As one judge put it, the only just target is 100% attendance. With the next contract the government must ensure effective and efficient attendance of high-quality interpreters at court to enable justice to be delivered.” 

Capita, which has held the contract to provide interpreters in England and Wales for the past four years, has been heavily criticised in the past. 

Last year it was ordered to pay £16,000 by the most senior judge in the family courts for its “lamentable” failure to provide interpreters seven times in the course of a single adoption case. In 2013, the justice select committee described the manner in which the court interpreting service was privatised as shambolic.

Asked why it had decided not to bid for the main contract after being shortlisted, a Capita spokesperson said: “We took the decision to bid solely for Lot 2 [the more predictable ‘written translation and transcription’ service]. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.” 

Geoffrey Buckingham, an executive member of the European Legal Interpreters and Translators Association, said: “The available pool of interpreters is already limited, and the word is that many now have enough experience to move on to better-paid work. If borne out, then quality will continue to fall.

“The MoJ has not learned any lessons. The team names have changed, but the process is so flawed that one of those shortlisted in December has walked away. Capita Translation and Interpreting recently wrote to their interpreters saying they had taken the ‘strategic decision’ to withdraw from the procurement [process].”

Following Capita’s withdrawal, the two remaining bidders for the main contract are the Leeds-based translation company thebigword and the US firm TransPerfect. Earlier this week, thebigword won a £15m contract to provide telephone and face-to-face interpreting and translation services to UK central government organisations.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We are absolutely committed to improving performance and ensuring the highest standard of language services for those who need them.

“Our latest figures show a 98% success rate in 2015 – the highest since the interpreting contract began – with complaints about the service at a record low, down 30% on last year. Since this contract was introduced, we have also spent £38m less on language service fees.”

Interpreters are self-employed and under no obligation to accept job requests. A boycott by interpreters three years ago, in protest at low pay rates, failed to persuade the government to abandon the contract. 

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http://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/may/04/thousands-of-court-cases-adjourned-due-to-failures-in-interpreting-services

Legal Terminology or Jargon in Contracts

Nowadays more and more lawyers use plain English in contracts, although there are some who still insist on using legalese. At worst this can mean that some contracts are impossible for non-lawyers to read, and is not helped by the fact that the law uses a number of Latin terms. These two elements can make reading contracts a baffling experience for the rest of us! Below are some of the most commonly used legal words and phrases and their explanations:

Best Endeavours

Contracts will often bind one or more parties to using ‘reasonable’ or ‘best’ endeavours to do something. There is no solid definition as to what this actually means, and lawyers have argued whether there is in fact a distinction between ‘reasonable’ and ‘best’ in this context. Broadly speaking, however, it places a burden on a party to a contract to ‘try their best’, or do all that can reasonably be expected of them in the circumstances.

Bona Fide

Bona fide literally means ‘in good faith’. In the context of agreements, this is used to describe the intentions of the parties. In other words, a ‘bona fide agreement’ is one which is entered into honestly and without an intention to defraud. The opposite of ‘bona fide’ is ‘mala fides’ which means ‘in bad faith.’

Dissolution

This refers to the act of bringing an agreement to an end. If an agreement is dissolved, either between the parties or by a court, both parties will be restored to their original positions (as they were before they entered into the contract.) This term is also used in relation to marriages and corporate partnerships, amongst other things.

Force Majeure

This provides a ‘get out clause’ for parties to a contract in the event that an unforeseen event, that was not within their control, prevents them from carrying out their obligations under the contract.

Implied Terms

These are terms that form part of the contract even though they are not expressly included in the text of the contract. Perhaps the most common are those provided in contracts for the sale and/or supply of goods. As an example: if A sells merchandise to B, B would be entitled to assume that A had the legal right to sell him the merchandise – even though this right may not be explicitly spelt out on the contract.

Infringement

This relates to trademarks, which are a form of intellectual property. A trademark is infringed if an unauthorised person has used it, or a very similar trademark, for their own gain.

Inter alia

This is a latin term that means ‘amongst other things.’ For example, the judge went on to say, inter alia, that the contract was unenforceable.

Passing Off

This is a tort in common law that protects the rights of someone who has an unregistered trademark. For example, if Y misleads members of the public into thinking that they are dealing with X trader (when in fact it is Y) in order for Y to make a profit for themselves, X will sue under this tort.

Preamble

A preamble is found at the start of a commercial agreement. There should be no legally binding terms in this part of the contract. It is simply used to provide an introduction by way of background to the agreement, or the nature of the parties to the contract (e.g. X is a manufacturer of goods supplying to Y, a seller of goods.)

Privity Of Contract

This rule forbids third parties from being able to sue or be sued under a contract to which they are not a signatory. It means that only the parties to a contract can sue or be sued under it.

Recitals

The recitals are very similar to the preamble and are situated at the beginning of the contract. The recitals often start with the word ‘Whereas’ and are also known as the ‘whereas clauses.’ This part of the contract should not contain rights or obligations of the parties, but is merely there to explain or introduce the nature of or background to the contractual relationship.

Restrictive Covenant

A restrictive covenant is most often seen in contracts relating to land and employment contracts. In the case of land, it restricts the land from being used or developed in certain ways. In the case of employment contracts, it restricts an employee from doing certain things at the end of his or her employment. This may include not competing with their former employer, not dealing with former clients, not ‘poaching’ former colleagues and not using the former employer’s confidential information for any purpose.

Undertaking

An undertaking is a promise to do, or not to do, something. It is commonly used between lawyers to prove their good intentions. For example, if an original document needed to be served by 4pm, a solicitor could fax it and provide an undertaking that the original would be posted first class that evening.

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http://www.contractsandagreements.co.uk/legal-terminology-jargon-contracts.html

La traduzione giuridica

Il termine linguaggio giuridico indica diversi generi legati strettamente allo scopo comunicativo, al contesto in cui sono utilizzati, agli eventi comunicativi o attività ad esse associate, oltre alle relazioni sociali o professionali che fanno da sfondo a questo contesto, vale a dire il tipo di relazione professionale che esiste tra i partecipanti che ne prendono parte.

In genere il linguaggio giuridico è noto per le sue caratteristiche di linguaggio ostico. Il diritto regola ogni manifestazione della vita sociale, perciò confluiscono nella terminologia giuridica termini creati dal legislatore, parole del linguaggio comune utilizzate in accezione tecnica e così via.

Espressioni “oscure”, sintassi sinuosa, arcaismi, ripetizioni, tortuosi labirinti linguistici: i traduttori non solo devono essere competenti nell’ambito del corretto utilizzo di termini del linguaggio tecnico specifico, ma occorre anche una buona conoscenza dei diversi ordinamenti giuridici. 

Quanto alle caratteristi del linguaggio giuridico, quest’ultimo si presenta per la sua nota caratteristica di essere un linguaggio impersonale, decontestualizzato, impone obblighi, conferisce diritti, permessi, proibizioni, ma il quadro è ancor più complicato se aggiungiamo che ogni paese ha un sistema normativo diverso, i cui effetti si producono non solo dal punto di vista linguistico ma anche culturale. 

Prendiamo ad esempio il linguaggio giuridico inglese. Alcune difficoltà traduttive dall’inglese all’italiano riguardano:

1)    La lunghezza delle frasi

2)    Il carattere nominale

3)    L’utilizzo di complesse locuzioni preposizionali

4)   Espressioni in sequenza di più parole o frasi appartenenti alla                                                                  stessa  categoria   grammaticale, legate dal punto di vista   semantico  e tra loro collegate con              congiunzioni

5)    Discontinuità nella frase

6)    Stile del testo proposto

7)    Terminologia 

Non dobbiamo inoltre trascurare il fatto che il Codice Civile italiano, di eredità Napoleonica, è dal punto di vista formale e del contenuto difficilmente comparabile a quello Britannico. Si sostiene infatti che, il nostro Codice Civile sia noto, se paragonato a quello Britannico, per la semplicità delle espressioni, a spese della “chiarezza”. Invece il sistema Britannico, Common Law, è generalmente privo di codificazione. Non esistendo quindi un vero e proprio compendio di leggi, il principio è il “precedente”: il giudice dovrà conformarsi alla decisione adottata in una precedente sentenza nel caso in cui quest’ultima sia identica a quella trattata nel caso già deciso.

Molto spesso, per un traduttore si fa avanti la necessità di far fronte alla nozione di equivalenza funzionale tra concetti appartenenti ai diversi ordinamenti giuridici, vale a dire un’equivalenza basata sul confronto di  due termini, in base alla realtà giuridica di appartenenza.

Vediamo qualche esempio in lingua francese:

Procuratore reggente     Procureur principal

Reo confessore              Coupable

Disastro doloso              Désastre criminel

Sezione penale              Chambre pénale

Inoltre, con l'affermarsi dell’ordinamento comunitario, sono evidenti le problematiche che scaturiscono dalle differenze e dalle distanze tra i sistemi giuridici e gli apparati linguistici comunitari.

Infatti di base, non si dispone di una comune terminologia giuridica, ma nella fase di elaborazione normativa, si è imposta all'interno delle  istituzioni comunitarie la prassi secondo la quale la bozza preliminare del documento normativo viene realizzata utilizzando le tre principali lingue di lavoro (inglese, francese e a volte il tedesco). Pertanto, i documenti non sono pensati multilingue, e solo successivamente sono tradotti nelle diverse lingue ufficiali, cioè  nella fase finale della redazione.

Ulteriori problematiche riguardano il difficile rapporto tra la legislazione comunitaria e quella dei singoli Stati Membri. Gli atti comunitari sono difficilmente armonizzabili nei diversi contesti nazionali, sia perché la normativa richiede l'inserimento di concetti giuridici molto sono spesso sconosciuti agli assetti Nazionali stessi, e sia perché le difformità di recepimento da un ordinamento all'altro tendono a inficiare l'uniformità giuridica dell'Unione Europea.

Infine, è opportuno anche mettere in luce l’aspetto dell’intraducibilità dei concetti. Il traduttore giuridico si trova davanti alla necessità di lavorare in una costante attività di comparazione giuridica, verificare il significato esatto del concetto tradotto cercando nella lingua di arrivo un concetto con un significato paragonabile.

Quanto al genere testuale, dobbiamo anche considerare che la traduzione giuridica è un territorio molto vasto, tra generi testuali più disparati, a rimandi degli stessi ad altre realtà extratestuali in ambito giuridico, che fa sì che il lavoro del traduttore sia davvero quello di un esperto in legge a tutti gli effetti.

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http://www.torkanweb.com/#!LA-TRADUZIONE-GIURIDCA/c1jsz/ily3stoi21

The Magic Number is EUR 0.15: Translator Rate Survey Released in Germany

Germany’s Federal Association of Interpreters and Translators [Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer e.V. (BDÜ)] published the fifth edition of its rate survey in January 2016. The survey is based on pricing information collected from almost 1,100 translators and interpreters and covers 35 language pairs.

According to André Lindemann, association president, the survey is meant to provide guidance to new translators and inexperienced buyers in this “fragmented and often opaque market,” but should also be of value to many other market participants. The authors of the study stress, however, that the survey in no way represents any kind of official pricing guideline by the Association as this would be against Germany’s anti-trust laws.

Germany’s market for translation and interpretation services is still extremely fragmented, per the survey. Pricing pressure continues unabated and, according to feedback the association received from translators and interpreters, has actually increased in recent years. The survey was conducted in August and September 2015 and asked for 2014 pricing data from participants.

Slator has reviewed the 60-plus-page German-language survey and highlights some of the key points. The survey presents detailed pricing tables segmented according to a number of variables, such as client group, pricing metric (lowest, highest, most frequently mentioned), and pricing standard (per word, line, hour, day, etc.). In terms of client groups, the survey asked for the rates charged to direct clients in government departments, colleagues, private clients, and direct clients in the private sector.

The rates listed below are based on those given for the category “direct clients in the private sector,” which typically received the most number of responses. For a number of language combinations the survey only collected data on “per line” pricing, which is still very common in Germany and Switzerland.

However, Slator decided to focus only on the combinations where a price-per-word was available.

As a result, the summary below does not represent the full set of data collected by the BDÜ but still provides a useful snapshot of market conditions for German-based freelance linguists.

The following rates are based on what the survey calls the “median price,” (i.e., the figure in the middle of a range of rates arranged from lowest to highest), which cancels out extremes at both ends. All prices are in EUR.

German -English	0.16	English – German	0.15
German – French	0.16	French – German	0.15
German – Greek	0.18	Italian – German	0.15
German – Italian	0.15	Dutch – German	0.15
English – French	0.15	Spanish – German	0.14

In addition, the survey also asked how Translation Memory matches are discounted. Again, Slator is using the median values.

Repetitions	70% discount
100% matches	70% discount
95-99% matches	50% discount
85-94% matches	40% discount
75-84% matches	20% discount
50-74% matches	No discount
No Match	No discount

Furthermore, the survey included a list of hourly rates (in EUR) charged for proofreading services.

German	50
English	50
French	45
Italian	45
Russian	50
Spanish	50

Finally, the survey asked for interpretation rates. The rates below are full-day rates in EUR.

	Consecutive	Simultaneous (Conference)
German ↔ English	710	750
German ↔ French	625	727.50
German ↔ Italian	600	750
German ↔ Japanese	700	N/A
German ↔ Polish	600	725
German ↔ Russian	640	725
German ↔ Spanish	625	750

Overall, the pricing for both translation and interpretation services shows a remarkable consistency across language combinations. For translation services the magic number seems to be around EUR 0.15—still a fairly solid price point considering that many global agencies now offer end-clients a lower price while still promising all the QA bells and whistles.

Despite the buzz around machine translation post-editing, the survey did not collect data on post-editing services, which will doubtless be increasingly common going forward.

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http://slator.com/industry-news/the-magic-number-is-eur-0-15-translator-rate-survey-released-in-germany/

Interpreters, the voice of the law courts

Their task is to translate for foreigners who are involved in legal proceedings. It doesn’t matter if the foreigner is accused of murder, rape, robbery with violence or drug trafficking. They go to the cells to offer interpreting services, something to which anybody from any other country who is involved in a judicial process in Spain is entitled, free of charge, in accordance with the Universal Charter of Human Rights.

They work with people who are charged with an offence, whether guilty or innocent, and also with victims. This is difficult work, which is part of their lives for 24 hours a day and is often also a type of psychological assistance. Crime doesn’t stick to office hours and the interpreters, like judges and police officers, are always on call.

Frédérique Robert, whose father is French and who was educated in Switzerland, is one of the most veteran court interpreters in Malaga province. She has seen the situation change from the good times, when the service was directly contracted by the Junta de Andalucía in 1998, to the present; in 2002 the service was taken over by the Offilingua company in Granada and all the interpreters are self-employed.

“The salaries have changed a great deal, but the work is the same. You have to go rushing off to places all over the province. I even carried on working when, during the change of company, we were told that we wouldn’t be paid”, explains Frédériqueover a coffee in Estepona, the town where she, like most of the interpreters in the province, chooses to live because it is strategically placed to reach many different places easily.

She has seen just about everything and her knowledge of four languages has resulted in her attending suspected French, English and German offenders all over Malaga province. She complements this work with assisting foreigners in communities of residents all over the province. Her most regular client in the courts, she says, is not a person.

“Alcohol. That is my best client in the courts. Without alcohol, many of these people would not have committed an offence. They would not have done what they have done. And there are also victims who, if they had not been drinking, would not have become victims. So in the majority of cases my work has also been to console the victim and the suspect in their own language”, she says.

One of the most recent services that Frédérique provided as an interpreter was to translate for a suspected British paedophile who was wanted in his own country. “I’m very friendly to everybody. You can’t think about what they have done. We cannot judge them. In this specific case, my work also included ringing a taxi to take him home, because he was released on bail. I offered him my services if he needed an interpreter in the future”, explains this multilingual interpreter, who says she is good at calming people down in extreme situations.

“I have nerves of steel. A short while ago I was interpreting for a couple who had been involved in an incident of domestic violence, and I managed to calm them down”, she explains. She has noticed a drop in the number of offences committed by foreigners whose language she speaks. “Many foreigners have gone home: there are fewer British and German people now, and most of the offences they commit involve violence in the home environment”, she says.

Mantener el tipo

Claudia Ion is Rumanian and one of the youngest interpreters in the province. She says the most usual offences in her language are related to drug trafficking. In her own country, she was a journalist and this new work has led her back to university: she is now studying Law.

“I still remember my first day at work. I cried all evening. I arrived at the courts and the police officer told me to accompany him to the cell. When I saw that man, staring me fixedly in the eyes, hanging on to the bars of the cell, I nearly collapsed. I said to my husband: “I can’t do this”. And that was six years ago”, she says.

“I have often cried, too”, says Said Sadki, who is from Casablanca (Morocco), and who works as an interpreter in Arabic at courts and police stations. He has worked at Offilingua since 2006 and he will never forget the sight of young Moroccans who had arrived in Spain hidden in lorries, frightened and alone.

“A good interpreter needs to be able to speak the language very well, act as a pyschologist, and not put themselves on the defensive with the people for whom they have to interpret. Sometimes they become tense or aggressive, and the lawyers have often asked me to talk to these people because they see that I can calm the situation down”, says Claudia, and Said says the same.

“Sometimes they become very defensive. You have to stay very calm, be very transparent, because you sometimes find that people who are interpreting are trying to impose their own criteria. You have to leave your personal critera to one side, and also affection.This work is very delicate. You have to transmit word by word exactly what the person has said, so you don’t jeopardise their situation”, he explains, recalling the best advice that can be given to the suspects: “Always tell the judge the truth”. “It is very important that you don’t look at them as if they are guilty”, adds Claudia.

“With the crisis”, says Said, “people’s rights to a professional interpreter are not always being granted. Recently, we have seen that they are using someone from the street, or a friend of the accused who can get by in Spanish, and they shouldn’t do that”.

In the courts in Malaga province, about 60 interpreters have attended 18,000 foreigners this year. Seprotec, the company that provides the service to police stations, has received requests for assistance with languages such as Tamil, Nepalese and Punjabi.

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http://www.surinenglish.com/20140107/news/costasol-malaga/interpreters-voice-courts-201401071114.html

Commission warns on new legal translation law

EU citizens who are arrested or accused of a crime have the right to interpretation in their own language in all courts in the union after a new directive came into force last week.

The deadline for EU member states to implement the law – the union’s first on rights of suspects in criminal procedures – passed last week. The new right applies throughout criminal proceedings, including when receiving legal advice.

The law was proposed by the European Commission in 2010 and adopted by theEuropean Parliament and Council of Ministers in a record time of just nine months.

“This can be an historic moment for justice in Europe: the first ever law on fair-trial rights for citizens will become a concrete reality if member states live up to their legal obligations,” said Viviane Reding, the EU’s Justice Commissioner.

She added that the Commission would “not shy away from naming and shaming” states that did not implement the new directive, which she said went to the heart of citizens’ rights.

The directive guarantees the right of EU citizens to be interviewed, to take part in hearings and to receive legal advice in their own language during any part of a criminal proceeding, in all courts in the union. It was introduced in order to ensure full compliance with the standards provided by the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, as well as with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Translation and interpretation costs will have to be met by the member state, not by the suspect.

In a statement announcing the passing of the implementation deadline, the Commission said that without minimum standards to ensure fair proceedings, judicial authorities would be reluctant to send someone to face trial in another country. As a result, EU measures to fight crime, such as the European arrest warrant, would not be fully applied.

It said the right to translation and interpretation was the first in a series of fair trial measures to set common EU standards in criminal cases. The law was followed by a second directive on the right to information in criminal proceedings, adopted in 2012, and the right to access to a lawyer, adopted earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the Law Society has urged the Government to move quickly to establish the new Court of Appeal without “stinting on resources”. The new court will sit between theHigh Court and the Supreme Court, and is aimed at reducing delays at the latter court.

The path was cleared for the new institution to be set up when the proposal was comfortably passed with a majority of 65 per cent in a referendum last month.

Referring to the referendum outcome, Law Society director general Ken Murphy said: “There is nothing for which the Government has a stronger, clearer, more direct mandate from the people of Ireland than this. It must proceed immediately to put in place a Court of Appeal as a new and necessary piece of infrastructure in our justice system.” Mr Murphy said this should happen without delay “and without stinting on the resources necessary to make it effective”.

Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, who led the campaign for a Yes vote in the referendum, has said he hopes the new court will begin hearing appeals next autumn.

It is expected that 10 new judges will be appointed to the court, which will hear both civil and criminal appeals and leave the Supreme Court free to focus on cases of major significance. It will cost an estimated €2.5-€3 million per year, according to the Department of Justice.

The salary and other conditions for judges in the new court have not yet been announced, but pay is expected to be set between that of a High Court judge (€172,710) and a member of the Supreme Court (€182,895).

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/commission-warns-on-new-legal-translation-law-1.1580638#.UndjhBqgw-k.twitter

Rights of suspect and accused

The EU works towards achieving common minimum standards of procedural rights in criminal proceedings to ensure that the basic rights of suspects and accused persons are protected sufficiently.

Common minimum standards are necessary for judicial decisions taken by one EU country to be recognised by the others, according to the principle of mutual recognition.

For mutual recognition to operate well there must be measures promoting mutual trust.

To achieve such standards and create the basis for mutual trust, aRoadmap on procedural rights was adopted in 2009 by the Justice Council proposing five legislative measures on a 'step by step' basis:

• the right to interpretation and translation ;
• the right to information about rights (Letter of Rights);
• the right to legal advice, before and at trial ;
• the right for a detained person to communicate with family members, employers and consular authorities ;
• the right to protection for vulnerable suspects ;
• a Green Paper on pre-trial detention.

The Commission works together with the Council and the European Parliament to implement the roadmap. Much progress has been made to date. Directives on interpretation and translation  and on the right to information in criminal proceedings  were adopted on 20 October 2010 and on 22 May 2012 respectively. The Commission has made a proposal on a Directive on the right of access to a lawyer  in criminal proceedings and on the right to communicate upon arrest  which is currently being discussed in the Council and the European Parliament.

A Green Paper  on the application of EU criminal justice legislation in the field of detention was launched in June 2011. The Commission has received many replies to this green paper from Member States, authorities and many organisations.

Initiatives on the presumption of innocence, legal aid and special safeguards for vulnerable suspects and accused persons are planned for 2013.

When designing and implementing measures in this field, it is important for the EU to get the balance right between measures that protect such rights and those that facilitate the investigation and prosecution of crime.

Background

European measures such as the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant have generated a demand for the EU to consider fundamental rights, especially the rights of the defence, in a more concrete way.

The Commission originally proposed a draft Framework Decision which covered five basic rights in 2004, but six EU countries did not support it.

The subject however remains a priority: many EU countries, the European Parliament as well as practitioners and other experts strongly support it. The need for a measure of this sort was confirmed in the 2008 Université Libre de Bruxelles report on mutual recognition(973 KB) .

The case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) shows that violations of defence rights, as set out in Articles 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) do occur.

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/criminal/criminal-rights/index_en.htm

HC rejects convicts’ plea for Hindi translation of documents

The Delhi High Court on Monday rejected a plea of two death row convicts in the December 16 gangrape case for Hindi translation of certain documents including the trial court’s conviction and sentence orders in the case, saying they are adopting delaying tactics.

A bench of justices Reva Khetrapal and Pratibha Rani rejected the arguments of M.L. Sharma, counsel for convicts Pawan and Mukesh, that they do not understand English as they are illiterate and they should be supplied with Hindi translated copy of the documents.

“It seems the application is only a methodology adopted to protract the hearing of the appeal.

“No efforts have been made to remove the objections raised by the Registry in their appeal (provisional) although ample time was given to them,” the bench said and directed the Registry to list their appeal before it on November 1.

“If you go on like this, a feeling will come to the mind of the court that you want to delay the case. Do you want that feeling to come to the court’s mind?” the bench said.

The bench is hearing the trial court’s reference for confirming their death sentence.

The court wanted to know from the counsel if there was any judgement which can substantiate his claim for translated version for the documents.

It recorded the arguments of convicts’ counsel that CrPC has the provision under which the accused are entitled for translated copy of the FIR, charge sheet, evidence and the trial court judgement.

“It is the court’s duty to direct the prosecution to provide them the Hindi copies of such documents,” Mr. Sharma said.

The court also recorded the arguments of Special Public Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan that the trial court had supplied the translated copy of the charge sheet to the accused persons in April this year and another similar plea of the convicts was rejected by the single bench of this very court.

The prosecutor referred to provisions of the Constitution according to which the official language of the Supreme Court and the High Court is English and the accused are not entitled for the translated copy of the documents.

Earlier, the counsel for the two convicts had informed the bench saying the provisional appeal has been filed but they are under objection by the Registry as certain documents are yet to be annexed.

Mr. Sharma had moved the application seeking Hindi version of the FIR, charge sheet, evidence, judgement and sentence order of the trial court in the case.

Two other convicts in the case, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur, had on October 7 filed their joint appeal against the trial court’s conviction and sentencing orders of September 10 and 13, respectively.

All four of them were convicted and awarded death penalty for raping the 23-year-old girl in a moving bus in south Delhi on the night of December 16 last year.

The trial court, while awarding capital punishment to the convicts, had observed the case falls in the rarest of rare category as the crime was committed against the “defenceless” girl in a “beastly” and “hair-raising” manner and referred the case to high court for confirmation of the sentence.

The trial court has to refer each death penalty case to the high court for confirmation of the punishment.

Prime accused Ram Singh (34) was found dead in his cell in Tihar Jail in March and proceedings against him were abated.

On August 31, the juvenile accused in the case was convicted and sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reformation home.

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