Ger­ard Best

Un­der­ly­ing so­cial ten­sions sur­faced quick­ly in the ear­ly re­pons­es to the fa­tal shoot­ing of the 35-year-old Chi­nese busi­ness­man Hi Hong Huang, who died on April 7 af­ter an al­leged rob­bery in front of his Hap­pi­ness Su­per­mar­ket, off South­ern Main Road, Curepe. Af­flu­ent mem­bers of the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty raised con­cern that they were be­ing tar­get­ed by lo­cal crim­i­nals.

But Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Carl Al­fon­so, who met April 9 with a del­e­ga­tion that in­clud­ed Chi­nese Am­bas­sador Xingyan Huang, said he did not be­lieve that Huang's at­tack was tar­get­ed specif­i­cal­ly at the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty.

Along­side race, is­sues of lan­guage al­so emerged, as Chi­nese in­ter­preters were re­cruit­ed by the po­lice to help with wit­ness state­ments. The vic­tim's par­ents, Chuang Ji Huang and Feng Ling Lei, who ar­rived in the coun­try mid-April to as­sist with in­ves­ti­ga­tions and fi­nalise fu­ner­al arrange­ments, speak lit­tle Eng­lish.

Mr Huang's par­ents are part of a di­verse com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple re­quir­ing lan­guage in­ter­pre­ta­tion in the pur­suit of jus­tice. For the non Eng­lish-speak­er, in­ter­act­ing with the Po­lice and Courts can be very dif­fi­cult, says Dr Ben Braith­waite, a Lec­tur­er in Lin­guis­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine.

Braith­waite, who co­or­di­nates UWI's un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate Lin­guis­tics pro­grammes, point­ed to the de­tainees at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo as an­oth­er com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple some­times need­ing lan­guage in­ter­pre­ta­tion in or­der to ac­cess le­gal and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices.

Talk­ing Hands

The same is true for those with no spo­ken lan­guage, theDeaf­com­mu­ni­ty, said Braith­waite, who is al­so in­volved in the uni­ver­si­ty's Diplo­ma in Caribbean Sign Lan­guage In­ter­pret­ing. He has a par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in the lan­guage sit­u­a­tion of theDeaf com­mu­ni­ty in T&T, and gave sev­er­al lo­cal ex­am­ples of chal­lenges faced by folks with that par­tic­u­lar dis­abil­i­ty.

A 32-year-old­Deaf­man ap­pear­ing in court on May 9 2008charged with in­de­cent as­sault and as­sault oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm, had to have his broth­er use sign lan­guage for him to un­der­stand the charge as it was read to him by the mag­is­trate, as the Court had not at that time se­curedth­e­as­sis­tance of a sign lan­gauge in­ter­preter.

On Oc­to­ber 11, 2010, a mag­is­trate­was forced to post­ponethe hear­ing of a traf­fic mat­ter be­cause the ac­cused man, who was­deaf, was un­able to un­der­stand the pro­ceed­ings. The mag­is­trate then or­dered that the ac­cused be brought clos­er to her so that he could have un­der­stood what was go­ing on. Stand­ing less then a foot away from the mag­is­trate, he was still un­able to hear all the words from her. The ac­cused then ex­plained that his hear­ing aid was un­der re­pair, so he was with­out it in the court­room.

"If you have adeaf per­son go­ing to court in Trinidad or To­ba­go, they'll need an in­ter­preter be­cause they need to un­der­stand what's go­ing on. And if they're an old­er per­son, they have dif­fer­ent in­ter­pret­ing needs com­pared to a younger per­son."

Younger peo­ple tend to use­Am­er­i­can Sign Lan­guage(ASL),which was in­tro­duced in­to the coun­try in the 1970s,while old­er folks typ­i­cal­ly useT&TSign Lan­guage (TTSL), Brath­waite said. Sign­ing dif­fer­ences can be cru­cial, as was demon­strat­ed bya near-cost­ly mix-up be­tween aDeaf mur­der-ac­cused and a Court-ap­point­ed in­ter­preteron Ju­ly 8, 2003.

The mix-up re­sult­ed in a guilty plea wrong­ly be­ing record­ed as com­ing from the ac­cused. The plea had to be re­scind­ed, and was at­trib­uted to a very ba­sic mis­un­der­stand­ing in com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The in­ter­preter re­port­ed­ly­failed to ac­cu­rate­ly com­mu­ni­cate with the ac­cused,who was us­ing a com­bi­na­tion ofTTS­Lan­dASL. The mag­is­trate agreed that the Court would re­voke the in­ter­preter's ap­point­ment, and find an­oth­er in­ter­preter.

This kind ofmisun­der­standingis not ex­treme, in fact it's de­press­ing­ly com­mon, Braith­waite said. He gave the ex­am­ple of a Deaf man­tak­en to court on­Jan­u­ary 16for al­leged­ly steal­ing $21 worth of items from Re­pub­lic Bank. The court heard that the ac­cused was un­able to un­der­stand of­fi­cial sign lan­guage,since hehadreceived­no for­mal school­ing and there were no rel­a­tives in court to as­sist. Be­cause the ac­cused was un­fa­mil­iar with both­ASL and TTSL, it was not suf­fi­cient to sim­ply get a dif­fer­ent in­ter­preter. The mag­is­trate in­stead sug­gest­ed a fam­i­ly mem­ber who would un­der­stand the ac­cused's form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be present.

Again, on­April 4, 2013, aDeaf man charged with break­ing in­to the house of a woman in San Juan and in­de­cent­ly as­sault­ing her ap­peared be­fore the court and was asked if he was com­ply­ing with his court-or­dered bail­con­di­tions. The ac­cused had been grant­ed bail on con­di­tion that when­ev­er he left his home, he would be ac­com­pa­nied by his grand­moth­er. The pros­e­cu­tor said that the ac­cused had been seen lim­ing in the Crois�e with­out his grand­moth­er. His at­tor­ney in­formed the mag­is­trate that there was a dif­fi­cul­ty in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with him as he was­Deaf. The at­tor­ney even­tu­al­ly re­quest­ed that a sign lan­guagein­ter­preterbe present at the next hear­ing.

"In some cas­es, the most ef­fec­tive way of en­sur­ing ac­cu­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion may be to em­ploy Deaf in­ter­preters, skilled in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with peo­ple who have nev­er been to school, and who re­ly on home-based ges­tur­al sys­tems. These Deaf in­ter­preters must of course be prop­er­ly paid, in line with their hear­ing col­leagues," Braith­waite said.

He added, "TheDeaf com­mu­ni­ty doesn't on­ly need ac­cess to sign lan­guage in­ter­pre­ta­tion. They need ac­cess to a par­tic­u­lar kind of sign lan­guage in­ter­pre­ta­tion, one that they can ac­tu­al­ly un­der­stand."