No Translation No Justice
The denial of adequate translation and interpretation is a denial of fundamental rights. In a series of actions, we exposed the everyday reality in courtrooms, police stations and public authorities.
It is a fundamental right of every defendant to participate effectively in their own legal proceedings. This right is routinely undermined by the authorities, from the first contact with the police through to prosecutors and judges.
These unfair conditions affect all defendants who do not speak the language of the proceedings, including us, the Iuventa crew. But they hit hardest those who lack the socio-economic resources, social connections or solidarity networks needed to defend their rights.
Every day in Italy's courtrooms, defendants are put on trial without understanding the charges against them
Less than 3 percent of the entire case file was translated into our mother tongue. Nevertheless, the judge maintained that the "essential information" was available to us as defendants.
What counts as "essential" is regrettably left largely to the EU member states, and ultimately to the discretion of national prosecutors and judges. But what is essential for an effective defence?
For Nicola Canestrini, the answer is clear: "This should be determined by putting the rights of the defendant front and centre of every decision."
10.02.2023 – Day 10 of the hearings
Judges in Italy have a wide margin of discretion in determining what counts as "essential content" that a defendant must understand in order to effectively exercise their defence rights. The term is not further defined in Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings. For this reason, Nicola Canestrini had requested that the judge refer the question to the European Court of Justice for clarification. The judge ruled this option out.
Interpretation during interrogations
In our proceedings, the first three interrogations failed for lack of qualified interpretation. The court-appointed experts tasked with assessing the quality of the interpretation during the interrogations were categorical: the interpreters provided by the authorities were not adequate, and essential parts remained incomprehensible to the accused.
Interpretation during the hearings
From the first hearing to the last, it was impossible for us as defendants to adequately follow the proceedings. The court-appointed interpreters were neither trained simultaneous interpreters, nor did they find any kind of technical equipment in place that would have allowed them to perform this demanding work at all.
According to EULITA, the European Legal Interpreters and Translators Association, this is a Europe-wide problem: "Ridiculous remuneration keeps qualified interpreters far away from courtrooms, with the consequence that hearings have to be suspended, time is wasted and costs ramp up."
We have looked everywhere but have not found anyone who wants to do this job, the pay is simply too bad.
As Iuventa defendants, we were in the privileged position of having strong legal support and the financial means to organise translation and interpretation ourselves at the decisive moments:
- our own interpreters at our side in the courtroom whenever every word mattered
- translations of parts of the case file, commissioned and paid for by us
- technical equipment (headphones, microphones) that made it possible for the court-appointed interpreters to do their work properly in the first place, and which also benefited the international trial observers, who could follow the hearings much better as a result.
Only after our intervention did the court finally provide such equipment itself, for the first time in the history of the court of Trapani.
For the majority of foreign-language defendants, none of this applies. If no qualified interpretation can be found for an EU language like German, the situation is far worse for defendants who speak a non-European language. Migrants in particular have been convicted in their thousands in Italy in recent years for "facilitating unauthorised entry", on the basis of witness statements, signed documents and hearings where adequate translation and interpretation were systematically not provided.
This cannot be called a fair trial! We understand the systematic failure to provide adequate translation as another facet of Fortress Europe, designed for people to fail.