Patois and court woes
published: Thursday | January 30, 2003
THE EDITOR, Sir:
AS A court reporter, I read with interest James Martin's letter in The Gleaner of December 28, under the heading 'Patois as judicial problem'. Without discussing the merits or the points advanced in the letter, I can at least confirm, from my experience, that there could be communication problems between some Jamaican witnesses and American attorneys or court personnel.
Over the past 40 years I have taken depositions in Jamaica for use in U.S. courts, when Jamaican witnesses have been interrogated by American counsel. In one case involving a construction worker, at the end of the deposition, the American attorney stipulated: "Let the record show that counsel had difficulty in understanding the witness and the witness had difficulty in understanding counsel."
In another case, counsel sensed the communication problem after a few preliminary questions of the farm worker, so he asked the witness, "How far did you go in school?" The answer was, "Three miles". When asked, "What did you say to him?", counsel, despite asking the witness to repeat, he still could not understand, "Mi sey to 'im sey dats me nuh know a wah 'im dah taak 'bout", uttered with monosyllabic, staccato-like rapidity!
Some years ago, I was introducing a number of expert United States court reporters to proceedings in the Home Circuit Court in Kingston, where the accused was cross-examining the witness. After spending several minutes listening to the exchange, they asked me what language the accused and the witness were speaking. They could not understand how my brother, who was the reporter in court, was busy recording the evidence in shorthand, which they, despite their training and expertise, could not understand. (They considered hilarious, an article I wrote, with sample Q&A, which was published in their journal under the heading of 'Jamaica Jargon').
In conclusion, it does seem that in any case where the Jamaican accused's lingua franca is patois, they would be at a serious disadvantage in a United States court, in communicating and being communicated with, unless there was some competent interpretation.
