500
68
Speak fluently in Chinese. If tender into accurate, idiomatic English, just what he has heard, with all its shades of meaning, he is a more valuable interpreter than a Chinese man who both speaks and understands Chinese perfectly, but who has not a sufficient command of English to reproduce accurately what he has heard.
I should not like to see a Chinese interpreter, supervised and controlled by an English interpreter sitting by. The practical difficulties of conducting a case are great enough in all cases of interpretation, without having a person whose duty it would be to interrupt the interpreter when he saw occasion and correct him, and who would constantly be appealed to by Counsel to know if a question had been answered correctly.
But an Englishman interpreting, with his Chinese teacher beside him whom he might privately consult if he saw occasion, would be a far better plan.
I believe it to be a mistake to treat an interpreter as anything more than a scientific witness whose evidence, where needful, might be contradicted.
The Practice and Procedure of the Supreme Court must soon be largely amended. At present it is neither the one thing nor the other.