60.
73
to
witness
A
buffle all the efforts -
of the Court Interpreter to render it into intelligible Chinese and the
has been that the
consequence tires misconceiving his me
cloning, Cave an answer which had the
Jave
contrary effect to what the witness
intended, had he understood the
original question. Secondly, The present Interpreter speaks a peculiar dialect, that is Macao or Sheung Shan patois, and he is therefore not readily
understood. During
an ordinary
conversation concerning common topics, it is not difficult to understand him; but his interpretations generally, and especially those in
a complicated case, are
scarcely
....
intelligible to the Chinese audience. An
instance has been brought to
my notice where a prisoner
was tried in the Criminal
Sessions, convicted and sentenced to a
long
term
of imprisonment, and when he was removed out of the dock, he did not know that the
Judge had passed
sentence on him, and
had to ask a bystander what the
sentence was.
I am
informed by
a
Gentleman who is a good authority on Interpretation and whose duties constantly take him to Courts that to test how much he could understand,
the Interpreter of the Supreme Court, he on more than one occasion that
his