The original guilty verdict in HKSAR v. Moala Alipate (2019) was quashed on appeal before the High Court Justices in Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal. The success of the appeal was largely due to doubts over the interpreter’s inability to fully and accurately interpret the evidence to the Tongan defendant. In line with past precedents (Rex v Kwok Leung (1909), Rex v. Lee Kun (1961), Radhakrishnan Kunnath v The State (1993)), failure to provide adequate translation of the court proceedings provided sufficient grounds to invalidate the guilty verdict against Moala Alipate. While the linguistic and professional background of the particular interpreter in HKSAR v. Moala Alipate rendered him incapable of successfully carrying out the task at hand, nevertheless the excessive linguistic demands placed on the interpreter in this situation highlight significant issues which are bound to arise from an apparent disconnect between how language is actually used and the expectations for what language is to accomplish. The summary of evidence read by the judge in HKSAR v. Moala Alipate, given that he was reading from a written text, not unexpectedly carried a high information load (i.e. high lexical density), compounded not only by a substantial amount of technical jargon, but also complex grammatical constructions demanding considerable mental alertness and language proficiency in order to be processed and comprehended. Although informed by defendant’s counsel on second day of the judge’s summation of evidence that the interpreter was having difficulty keeping up with the judge’s pace of delivery, the judge’s delivery speed, instead of decreasing, became even faster. At one point, the court interpreter was being expected to perform at a rate 40 times faster than normal translating work. Moreover, the judge’s summation was characterized by the same linguistic features as identified by Charrow and Charrow (1979) as causing comprehension problems, including the use of passive constructions in subordinate clauses; the combination of many clauses within one sentence; and “Whiz” deletion, i.e. omitting the relative pronoun. When summarizing the evidence given by the defense’s expert witness concerning contamination of the evidence, the pace of delivery accelerated to 200 wpm, with several instances of lexical density exceeding 10 content/lexical (as opposed to grammatical) words per clause, or significantly higher than the usual lexical density for written language. Under such circumstances, even the performance of the best trained interpreter is likely to be diminished to the point where the defendant is no longer fully comprehending the proceedings. If a defendant needs an interpreter in order to understand the court proceedings, then it is imperative that not only a capable interpreter be provided, but also that the expectations for what the interpreter can feasibly provide should be given due consideration.

The Court Interpreter’s Impossible Task: From a Linguist’s Perspective

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发表日期：

2026年

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Jonathan Webster

摘要

The original guilty verdict in HKSAR v. Moala Alipate (2019) was quashed on appeal before the High Court Justices in Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal. The success of the appeal was largely due to doubts over the interpreter’s inability to fully and accurately interpret the evidence to the Tongan defendant. In line with past precedents (Rex v Kwok Leung (1909), Rex v. Lee Kun (1961), Radhakrishnan Kunnath v The State (1993)), failure to provide adequate translation of the court proceedings provided sufficient grounds to invalidate the guilty verdict against Moala Alipate. While the linguistic and professional background of the particular interpreter in HKSAR v. Moala Alipate rendered him incapable of successfully carrying out the task at hand, nevertheless the excessive linguistic demands placed on the interpreter in this situation highlight significant issues which are bound to arise from an apparent disconnect between how language is actually used and the expectations for what language is to accomplish. The summary of evidence read by the judge in HKSAR v. Moala Alipate, given that he was reading from a written text, not unexpectedly carried a high information load (i.e. high lexical density), compounded not only by a substantial amount of technical jargon, but also complex grammatical constructions demanding considerable mental alertness and language proficiency in order to be processed and comprehended. Although informed by defendant’s counsel on second day of the judge’s summation of evidence that the interpreter was having difficulty keeping up with the judge’s pace of delivery, the judge’s delivery speed, instead of decreasing, became even faster. At one point, the court interpreter was being expected to perform at a rate 40 times faster than normal translating work. Moreover, the judge’s summation was characterized by the same linguistic features as identified by Charrow and Charrow (1979) as causing comprehension problems, including the use of passive constructions in subordinate clauses; the combination of many clauses within one sentence; and “Whiz” deletion, i.e. omitting the relative pronoun. When summarizing the evidence given by the defense’s expert witness concerning contamination of the evidence, the pace of delivery accelerated to 200 wpm, with several instances of lexical density exceeding 10 content/lexical (as opposed to grammatical) words per clause, or significantly higher than the usual lexical density for written language. Under such circumstances, even the performance of the best trained interpreter is likely to be diminished to the point where the defendant is no longer fully comprehending the proceedings. If a defendant needs an interpreter in order to understand the court proceedings, then it is imperative that not only a capable interpreter be provided, but also that the expectations for what the interpreter can feasibly provide should be given due consideration.