From the September 6, 2002 print edition

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Region's legal community adapting to language needs

The legal community speaks a language that regularly confounds the general population. But when "legalese" speakers try to work with clients from other cultures, especially those who speak little or no English, communication can suffer.

It's an escalating issue for the Middle Tennessee legal community. Metro Social Services estimates the county's international population is nearly 100,000, a sizable chunk of the 565,352 people in Metro-Davidson County recorded by the 2001 Census.

"As Nashville becomes more cosmopolitan, working with people who speak little or no English has become more of a challenge," says Ross Alderman, Metro Davidson County public defender. His office has four attorneys and an investigator who are fluent in Spanish and is looking for a second Spanish-speaking investigator.

Alderman says his department could benefit from staff that also speak Laotian and a range of African languages. In the meantime, his group is bridging the gap with conference calls involving Language Line, a California company that provides interpreters in 140 languages.

"Often, the problem is as much cultural as it is language," says Alderman. "There are concepts in the law that don't translate well, such as proof beyond a reasonable doubt. You can string the words together, but they don't really reflect the concept."

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With a $10,000 grant from the National Center for State Courts, the state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) and Scene III Productions have produced three videos – on parental rights, basic rights and responsibilities of a criminal defendant and order of protection – in English, Spanish, Kurdish, Vietnamese, Laotian, Arabic and Russian. The videos are available to the justice system and on the AOC's Web site at http://www.tsc.state.tn.us./

AOC also has worked with the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute (TFLI) to translate some publications and legal forms into other languages. Accurately translating legal documents requires finesse, says AOC Deputy Director Libby Sykes, describing a form she saw that was inexpertly translated. In English, it addressed the application of an enhanced – meaning stiffer – sentence for a defendant's crime. The translator had converted "enhanced" into a word meaning "better."

TFLI, which supplies both formal and informal interpreters in a host of languages to law offices and other businesses, also is helping prepare a pool of registered court interpreters. According to Hope Collins, TFLI's assistant director of interpretation and translation services, about 30 aspiring interpreters took a Spanish exam in the spring. Eight passed.

"In addition to a working knowledge of the language, you have to be able to think quickly, come up with alternate words, all the while being a language bridge," says Collins. "An interpreter is not an advocate."

Even as local attorneys and the court system seek solutions, the challenges continue to mount, says Charla Haas, an attorney with Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine, a Memphis-based immigration firm with an office in Nashville. Some of her non-English-speaking clients have sought legal advice from notary publics under the mistaken impression they are lawyers. In other cases, some asylum clients are so traumatized by abuse and war in their home countries that they are unable to articulate their cases in any language. Haas typically depends on clients to bring a family member or friend with them to interpret. She also has a Spanish-speaking paralegal on staff.

Many urban myths about immigration law – such as the one about being entitled to U.S. citizenship if you have a baby in the United States – still abound, causing more potential problems.

"Helping clients who don't speak English is difficult," says Haas. "But the greater difficulty is people who come here but don't have a lot of education, so it's difficult for them to understand (U.S.) legal concepts. That's as much of a barrier as language."

Mardy Fones is a Nashville-area freelance writer.

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