Translating atrocity at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal – New Mandala

In August 2015, roughly one yr into the most important trial within the Extraordinary Chambers within the Courts of Cambodia (in any other case referred to as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal), a 61-year-old rice farmer named Chhum Seng took the stand. He was there to testify about life in the course of the Democratic Kampuchea interval (1975–1979) when Cambodia was dominated by the Communist Celebration of Kampuchea (CPK), higher referred to as the Khmer Rouge.

Throughout his testimony, Chhum Seng was questioned by the Cambodian and UN-appointed legal professionals, enabled by simultaneous interpretation between the Court docket’s three working languages: English, French, and Khmer. At one level, the change turned to the destiny of two males who had held management roles in the course of the regime.

« Est-ce qu’il est arrivé quelque selected à Ta Maong, le chef de district de Preah Netr Preah, ainsi qu’à Ta Hat, chef de district de Phnum Srok, pendant que vous étiez sur le barrage de Trapeang Thma? » requested the French-speaking prosecutor, Vincent de Wilde. “Did one thing occur to Ta Moang, the pinnacle of Preah Netr Preah district, in addition to to Ta Hat, the Phnum Srok district chief, whilst you had been on the Trapeang Thma Dam web site?”, repeated an interpreter for the good thing about the Anglophone decide, legal professionals, and court-watchers, whereas one other relayed the query to the witness in Khmer.

His reply was interpreted again to the Court docket as « À cette époque, c’est le second où les cadres du Sud-Ouest sont arrivés. Ils ont tous été convoqués à une séance d’étude, mais je ne sais pas ce qui s’est passé par la suite » (“At the moment, it was the time when the Southwest cadres arrived, after which they had been all summoned to attend the schooling periods. However what occurred afterwards, I didn’t know.”)

« Est-ce que vous saviez ce que ça voulait dire être convoqué à une séance d’étude à l’époque? Est-ce que vous aviez compris ce que cela voulait dire?’, queried Mr de Wilde: “Do you know what being summoned to a research assembly meant again then? Did you perceive what that meant?”.

« Lorsque l’Angkar les convoquait à une séance d’étude, cela voulait certainement dire qu’ils allaient être executes »—“The time when Angkar summoned them for an academic research session, that meant they had been taken for execution for certain”, was the interpreted reply.  That the witness’s reference to étude or “research” connoted homicide was not instantly apparent, on condition that obligatory research periods within the regime’s ultra-communist ideology had been frequent in the course of the Khmer Rouge years. However as Chhum Seng defined, the Khmer phrase yok tov rean (take away for research or studying) was additionally extensively used as a euphemism to imply execution.

On this change, excerpted from our forthcoming article within the Cambridge Journal of Worldwide Regulation, we see among the linguistic and culturally-specific communication challenges that characterised the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s three trials. At each stage of the method (the investigations, the preparation of indictments, trials, sentencing, reparations awards, and appeals), communication was mediated by language professionals (i.e., translators and interpreters). Communication challenges arose throughout all phases of this course of: generally triggered by the designated language of a world prison tribunal, generally triggered by victims and witnesses’ use of euphemisms, idioms, and context-specific sayings, and generally by the inherent challenges related to rendering phrases intelligible throughout languages.

A multilingual courtroom

Linguistic challenges are, after all, not distinctive to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. There’s a massive physique of educational scholarship that explores challenges of translation and deciphering in authorized proceedings, with work particularly contemplating language challenges within the context of prosecutions for worldwide crimes: conflict crimes, crimes towards humanity and genocide.

For instance, challenges regarding culture-specific references have been documented in different worldwide prison trials, starting with the Worldwide Navy Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945–46) the place the accuracy of interpretation of Nazi euphemistic jargon was debated, and not too long ago, within the Worldwide Legal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY); Worldwide Legal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and Worldwide Legal Court docket (ICC).

Inside home jurisdictions, communication challenges of an identical nature have been noticed. Examples arose within the South Australian Supreme Court docket in 1992–1993 when Russian and Ukrainian witnesses gave proof within the Australian conflict crimes proceedings towards alleged Nazi collaborators accused of WWII-era atrocities within the former USSR. Witnesses, largely from rural areas, supplied culture-specific references embedded within the time and places of occasions that passed off 50 years prior and that appeared unclear within the trendy Australian proceedings. When requested in regards to the time of the day or the month of occasions, they referred to the place of the solar, the church providers or the state of the crops within the area.

These are every examples of what one in every of us has termed “intercultural communication” gaps, that means gaps that aren’t solely attributable to lexical and grammatical variations. These gaps come up as a result of audio system of various languages typically make use of vastly totally different communication kinds (e.g., roughly euphemistic, roughly literal, roughly concise).

Whereas these challenges are frequent, there are options of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal that make it a very fascinating instance of a multilingual and multicultural courtroom. Not like the beforehand talked about ICTY, ICTR and ICC, the Tribunal sat within the nation the place the crimes occurred, and roughly half its authorized workers (and a majority of judges) are from that nation additionally.  Its use of Cambodian and worldwide legislation and process, and its use of three working languages and two totally different scripts (the Latin alphabet and Âksâr Khmêr) have every formed processes of translation and deciphering throughout languages and cultures.

These challenges had been exacerbated by the enormity of proof—excess of is typical of an extraordinary prison case, and enormous in comparison with many ICTY, ICTR or ICC trials additionally. For instance, 108 people (each civil events and witnesses) testified in courtroom within the Tribunal’s largest trial, and there have been over ten thousand objects of documentary proof. The majority of this proof was expressed in Khmer, making it understandable to the Cambodian investigators, judges, and legal professionals, however solely accessible to their worldwide counterparts with the help of translators and interpreters. The converse was true of most knowledgeable witnesses, who had been predominantly worldwide and gave testimony in English and French.

These institutional realities, mixed with the challenges of translation and deciphering which have been documented in different conflict crimes tribunals, created a tough surroundings for cross-linguistic and intercultural communication, elevating questions round accuracy and equity within the context of a posh worldwide prison course of.

These questions kind the premise for preliminary analysis being carried out by the authors—a bunch of Australia-based linguistic, deciphering, and authorized researchers with a shared curiosity within the position of language professionals in authorized proceedings. Right here we share some preliminary observations on the linguistic and intercultural communication challenges that arose over the course of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s lifecycle, earlier than flagging some points we hope to discover in higher element sooner or later.

Making authorized terminology legible

Decoding and translating authorized terminology is a well-established problem: ideas developed in a single jurisdiction could don’t have any apparent equal in one other. This has been famous in a wide range of contexts: on the ICTY, for instance, translators and interpreters struggled to seek out French and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian equivalents to a variety of English-language ideas. ICTY interpreters are identified to have used a wide range of frequent deciphering/translation methods, from mortgage phrases to paraphrase and explicitation to cultural equivalents, with out an institutional norm having been established.

Constructing on the teachings of ICTY, the ICC used a terminology unit consisting of legal professionals, linguists, and interpreters in African vernacular languages to coin new authorized phrases, together with courtroom phrases and inventory phrases utilized in worldwide legislation to beat a scarcity of equivalents.

Comparable challenges arose in Cambodia. Whereas Khmer–English authorized dictionaries have existed for the reason that Nineties, the authorized terminology related to worldwide prison legislation and worldwide truthful trial requirements raised new translation challenges. The fledgling state of Cambodia’s post-Khmer Rouge authorized system seemingly exacerbated this problem. As former Tribunal interpreter/translator Kok-Thay Eng has noticed:

Within the Khmer language, there isn’t any consensus on authorized terminology. I imagine that in English, there may be such consensus since trendy legal guidelines have been extensively practiced and ideas are written, mentioned and utilized in many codecs time and again. Subsequently, deciphering authorized speech from Khmer to English may be daunting as a result of the unique language won’t be clear sufficient.

The necessity for accuracy in a authorized course of implies that translators and interpreters could require extra coaching and assets to help authorized professionals. On the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, consciousness of this want resulted within the creation of a Tribunal-specific glossary. That is described on the Tribunal’s web site, the place it’s freely accessible, as reflecting “the Interpretation and Translation Unit’s assortment, refinement, and standardisation of authorized and non-legal terminology in Khmer, English, and French throughout courtroom proceedings and investigations.”

The glossary comprises over 12,000 phrases, phrases, and names to be used in each written translation and oral interpretation. That is no small job. As famous in different contexts above, discovering consensus round terminology goes past linguistic translation, requiring interrogation of phrases and ideas’ numerous meanings and grappling with the truth that a literal translation doesn’t at all times convey the identical that means within the different language. As Kok-Thay Eng described:

Interpretation from English to Khmer will also be tough as a result of the listeners in Khmer won’t perceive interpreted authorized ideas. In fact, there are legislation dictionaries however in particular instances, confusion can occur.

One instance of a time period that posed challenges of translation was “genocide”. As we now have explored in higher element elsewhere, the Khmer time period for genocide utilized by the ECCC, prolai pouch-sas (ប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍), seems to align with the worldwide definition of “genocide” as contained inside the Genocide Conference. It may be translated as “to eradicate the lineage of a individuals or a nation”, “to eradicate the race (or the seed) of the nation”, and to “destroy from the foundation” or “kill the seed of the race”.

But in follow, prolai pouch-sas has traditionally been understood in a lot broader phrases in Cambodia. Whereas the Genocide Conference’s framing of genocide encompasses the focusing on of explicit nationwide, ethnic, racial or spiritual teams with the particular intent of eliminating these teams, in Cambodia the time period was and is used to explain crimes perpetrated, for any variety of causes, towards the broader inhabitants. Whereas the Khmer Rouge Tribunal finally stayed near the Genocide Conference’s definition, dissenting views continued to be voiced all through the Tribunal’s operation.

Translating euphemism

A second problem arose across the frequent use of euphemism throughout investigations and trials. Partially, it is a relic of Khmer Rouge occasions, throughout which violence was typically described in veiled phrases. A transparent instance may be seen in witness Chhum Seng’s use of the phrase “research” for “killing”, as described firstly of this put up.

However witnesses and civil events didn’t solely use euphemisms to replicate speech patterns in Khmer Rouge occasions. In addition they reverted to euphemisms when it was tough to talk straight about sure kinds of violence. For instance, when speaking about sexual violence, witnesses would use the phrase chab (ចាប់), which interprets actually as “to catch, maintain, contact, or arrest”, however which, for these aware of the cultural context, implies pressured intercourse or rape.

This tendency to make use of oblique language when describing sexual crimes shouldn’t be distinctive to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal; it is not uncommon to many societies and cultures. Worldwide research scholar Narelle Fletcher factors to such a phenomenon within the context of Rwanda genocide atrocities, the place, within the gentle of the dearth of equal for “rape” in Kinyarwanda, victims and witnesses used euphemistic paraphrases comparable to gusambanya (“to convey [a person] to commit adultery or fornication”) and kuryamana (“to share a mattress” or “to have sexual activity”, and the French mortgage phrase viol [rape]).

On the ICC, Sango interpreters, when deciphering testimonies of sexual violence within the Central African Republic, confronted the dearth of anatomical equivalents for genitals, with expletives being the one accessible equivalents. As one in every of us has explored, interpreters defined their option to paraphrase and euphemise the legal professionals’ use of anatomical phrases in English or French (mon corps d’homme for penis, and mon corps de femme for vagina) by the worry that utilizing expletives in Sango would discredit the lawyer within the eyes of the witnesses and make them lose religion within the legal professionals’ professionalism.

For translators and interpreters, it’s clear that euphemisms for killing, rape, and different acts of violence necessitate a tough resolution. To match, so far as doable, the paradox and oblique expression utilized by the witness? Or to substitute the witness’s phrase for one thing unambiguous? In our preliminary analysis with legal professionals on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, some expressed a choice that interpreters keep as shut as doable to the witness’s phrase alternative. That is seen as essential from a authorized perspective, as a result of if the defendant is to be convicted primarily based largely on witness testimony, it’s crucial that the courtroom is aware of exactly what these witnesses stated, with minimal distortion, embellishment, or well-intended “clarification” from the interpreters.

In a really perfect situation, this might not end in that means being misplaced in translation, supplied that investigators, legal professionals and judges are resourced with obligatory coaching, and carefully do the work, to amass the cultural and contextual information that might immediate them to ask follow-up inquiries to the witness.

Our early analysis means that translators and interpreters on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal adopted totally different approaches when confronted with this situation, and that investigators didn’t at all times know when to probe deeper. The implications of this are doubtlessly critical: it might be that the omission of expenses for sexual violence within the early phases of the investigation occurred partially as a result of the English and French-speaking investigators weren’t as alert to euphemisms as they may have been, and subsequently didn’t at all times ask questions that might have led to related proof. Nevertheless, the very nature of miscommunication means it’s unimaginable to know the way frequent or influential these miscommunications had been.

Khmer Rouge jargon and forgotten histories

The ultimate problem we recognized was deciphering and translating phrases that may solely be understood of their cultural and historic context. There are quite a few phrases and phrases whose that means was altered as a result of method they had been used in the course of the Khmer Rouge regime, and that retain that that means to victims and witnesses.

For instance, there are a number of phrases related to Marxist thought, which had been included into the Khmer Rouge’s parlance from different political actions. The Khmer time period sate-arem (សតិអារម្មណ៍), derived from Vietnamese tư tưởng/Chinese language 思, for instance, usually means one thing like “emotions, understanding, notion, reminiscence”, however had the politically particular that means of “ideology” in the course of the Khmer Rouge regime.

For language professionals, these frequent encounters with Marxist–Leninist–Stalinist terminology necessitated a alternative: whether or not to pick out English and French vocabulary that mirrored the “Communist” that means of the phrase, or whether or not to as an alternative use phrases that mirrored how the time period would sometimes be understood by Khmer audio system as we speak. With lots of the language professionals missing a background in Communist terminology, our analysis means that inconsistency arose round how key phrases had been translated.

Different examples arose in instances the place phrases had very traditionally particular meanings. Neak 17 Mesa (មនុស្ស ១៧ មេសា) or “17 April particular person(s)”, for instance, was a standard method of referring to somebody who had been a part of the pressured evacuation of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. Nevertheless, for youthful language professionals, that that means won’t initially develop into clear. This lack of information is comprehensible amongst youthful language professionals: in a 2009 survey, the Human Rights Heart on the College of Berkeley discovered that:

Almost thirty years after the top of the Khmer Rouge regime, two-thirds of the inhabitants of Cambodia by no means straight skilled the violence and abuses of that interval: 68 % of the inhabitants is 29 years previous or youthful. Eighty-one % of respondents in our survey who didn’t reside below the Khmer Rouge regime described their information of that interval as poor or very poor.

In such instances, it once more turns into necessary that professionals engaged in investigations, whether or not authorized or language-focused, have the type of contextual information required to have the ability to determine the place extra particular questioning as to that means is perhaps required. As one in every of us has argued, challenges are handled extra successfully in worldwide courts and tribunals the place legal professionals and judges turned aware of the defendants’ and witnesses’ cultures.

Kok-Thay made an identical argument in his article in regards to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, observing that transcripts of victims typically appeared incomplete or unclear, and “solely people who find themselves aware of their tales can comply with.” He recommended that interpreters:

ought to research the speech patterns of people that communicate typically on the ECCC. They need to additionally research these individuals’s views, positions, and their ceaselessly used terminologies. For instance, they need to research Duch’s case file, his biography, the best way he speaks, the jail system and associated authorized terminologies for his explicit case.

These strategies, nonetheless, should be thought of rigorously, bearing in mind the predominantly non-affiliated standing of interpreters, a doable lack of entry to related assets and the chance of insufficient institutional assist for interpreters when it comes to pre-trial preparations.

Regardless, the discussions right here spotlight the necessity for worldwide prison establishments to know translation and deciphering as processes that go far past the straightforward conversion of phrases, and to contemplate the extra time and assets required to keep away from vital info being misplaced in translation. Some useful classes may be discovered from the expertise of worldwide prison courts and tribunals, such because the ICTY and the ICC, in addition to from home prosecutions of atrocity crimes.

Questions for additional analysis

There may be a lot nonetheless to be taught in regards to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s expertise of translation and deciphering. As a hybrid courtroom working throughout a number of authorized and social cultures in addition to three working languages, it provides a wealthy case research of how translation and deciphering “shapes” proceedings.

Over the course of our analysis, we hope to be taught extra in regards to the results of mistranslation and miscommunication on proof, the method of deciphering euphemism and metaphor, the ideas that guided translators and interpreters, the interactions between interpreters, translators and authorized officers, how deciphering experiences of atrocity impacted these concerned, and importantly, the teachings future multilingual courts, each home and worldwide, may be taught from the Tribunal’s experiences, and what the Tribunal provides to the rising wealthy literature on the position of language professionals in atrocity trials.