Modern-day Babel is a trial for court interpreters
By Victoria Kim
Los Angeles Times
Posted Feb 21, 2009 @ 08:02 PM
LOS ANGELES — The international phone line connecting a downtown Los Angeles courtroom to a cell phone 1,500 miles away in Texcoco, Mexico, was repeatedly disconnected and difficult to hear at times.
But on that line hung the constitutional rights of Candido Ortiz, accused of drunkenly stabbing a man with a broken beer bottle and charged with attempted murder. Ortiz, 20, spoke only a variant of Mixe, a language used by some 7,000 people in the mountains of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
In a case unusual even for Los Angeles, a place some call the mecca of court interpreters, court officials were unable to find anyone in the United States who could translate for Ortiz. A three-month long search eventually led officials to Eduardo Diaz, a university student in Mexico.
Read the full article on www.cantonrep.com
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