From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Jul 17 2009 - 07:15:00 EDT
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/sfl-ethiopian-dialect-interpreter-b071609,0,2134135.story
South
Florida Sun-Sentinel.com African language gap bridged in Broward murder
trial
By Tonya Alanez
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
7:26 PM EDT, July 16, 2009
FORT LAUDERDALE
*Tif Ategna.*
Guilty.
*Hiwotka Bmuluu ab bet maiserti.*
Life in prison.
The trial of Mesfin Tesfamariam was one in which witness testimony, legal
arguments and due process of law had to be interpreted into a language of
herdsmen and farmers from the Horn of Africa.
Tigrinya: the official language of Eritrea which, prior to 1991, was a part
of Ethiopia, and is the defendant's homeland.
But in many ways, the trial in Room No. 6810 of the main Broward County
courthouse was like so many others.
The crime was murder, the stabbing of a loved one in an argument over money.
The victim, a beloved mother and wife.
The defendant, a shackled man who said at sentencing that he felt "shameful
and saddened" and asked the judge for "a pardon."
A Broward County jury on Wednesday convicted Tesfamariam, 58, of fatally
stabbing his sister in front of her four children at their Miramar home.
On Thursday, Circuit Judge Michele Towbin Singer sentenced him to life in
prison for the July 25, 2007 slaying of Alganesh Yohannes, 45.
In a dark suit, his posture erect, Tekeste Bereket sat beside Tesfamariam
throughout the three-day trial, translating the legal proceedings into their
native tongue. When the defendant voiced his shame to the judge, it was the
interpreter who put his words into English.
Bereket, 56, came to Broward County from New Jersey to perform the highly
focused, exhausting task.
"You must move with the pace of the court," Bereket said. "You have to say
everything that's being said by the counsel, by the judge, by the defendant,
by the prosecutor. So, you're speaking the most of anybody else in the
court."
Tigrinya is an Ethio-Semitic language with many words in common with Hebrew.
It is spoken by 10 million people in Eritrea and Ethiopia and hundreds of
thousands more in the United States, Bereket said.
"There are some legal terms that you cannot translate in one word," Bereket
said. "Some, you have to explain in sentences."
That's where experience counts, he said, allowing "your mind to process the
words that you want" in a moment.
"There is no room for relaxing until the case is over," he said.
Ramon Grau, supervisor for the Broward court interpreters, knew he had a
challenge on his hands when the call went out for a Tingrinya interpreter to
translate for a murder defendant who had been in the United States for only
about a year prior to his arrest in July 2007.
With Spanish-, Haitian- and Portuguese-speaking interpreters on staff, Grau
had to sift through local contacts to eventually track down Bereket.
"This doesn't happen very often," Grau said. "Sometimes interpreters have to
come from Palm Beach or Miami, but never New York or New Jersey, and not
this type of language or dialect."
Money from the state court's revenue trust fund paid Bereket's $600 daily
fee, airfare, lodging and meals.
Interpreting in U.S. courts for the last 10 years, Bereket worked five years
as an interpreter for the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia before
moving to the United States in 1998.
This was Bereket's first murder trial.
Next week, his work will take him to courtrooms in Philadelphia, Trenton,
N.J. and Boston.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tealanez@SunSentinel.com or 954-356-4542.
Copyright © 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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