COURT INTERPRETERS WARNED AGAINST WRONG INTERPRETATION
He challenged Acholi people, who still know their mother tongue best, to document it so that the coming generation can use it.
By Christopher Nyeko
GULU: The Uganda Chief Justice, his worship Alfonse Owiny Dolo, has warned the court interpreters against wrong interpretation during court proceedings.
Owiny Dolo, who was speaking during the installation of a video conferencing system at the Gulu High Court Circuit in Gulu City, recently observed that many of the court interpreters are wrongly interpreting some words, which may lead to misrepresentation of facts by those who are not English speakers.
He alluded to the fact that he followed a court proceeding where an 18-year-old man was convicted of murder. Noticing that some of the Luo languages were wrongly translated into English
According to Owing Dolo, some court interpreters are prone to interpreting some vocabulary wrongly because of the extinction of the local language, which has been mostly influenced by adaptation into foreign languages.
Owiny Dolo commanded the vice to stop with immediate effect, directing that court interpreters be taken through an interpretation session to perfect their practices.
Prof. Charles Okumu, senior lecturer at the department of English literature at Gulu University and lead researcher in the book titled Song of Lawino, authored by Okot P’ Bitek, said Acholi is on the pathway to more grave extinctions,
He challenged Acholi people, who still know their mother tongue best, to document it so that the coming generation can use it.
A court interpreter is someone who works with the court system to provide language interpretation for those who do not speak the official language used in the court system of a given country. He or she must be fluent in both the source and target languages, which is usually recommended at equal standing.
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