Part 2: The Stories of a legal interpreter, meet 'Smoky'

Thanks to the responses we've had from part 1 of this series of interviews I have conducted with my friend Peter who was a legal interpreter for many years, here is part 2 as promised.

Limpeh: So Peter, tell me, how did you start work as an interpreter?

Peter: I was roped in as a last minute replacement for a friend, back when I was at university. It started as a lucrative part time job at university and it morphed into a full time job upon graduation. Whilst my peers were sending off applications, going for interviews and internships, I was already working full time. My parents are from Taiwan, I was brought up here in England so I am effectively bilingual in Mandarin and English. It started when I was at university - you know, there was a part of me that wanted to do law but I failed to get the grades at A levels to do law. So I thought, yeah this is sort of legal work - but I was fooling myself. It was regular work, decent money, I didn't have to think or work very hard, but it was not quite what I had in mind for myself as a career. As an interpreter, you are invisible. You allow the two people to talk to each other as if you weren't there, you cannot load anything into what they say - you just have to translate it as accurately as possible. There were times when I felt frustrated, like when I thought the lawyer wasn't asking the right questions or when I knew the other party was lying - but it was not for me to say anything or contribute to the conversation. And that was why I eventually left that job.

Peter left his job as he felt very frustrated.

Limpeh: It must be a shame to give up a job - there are young people out there who can't find jobs and you chose to give one up, where you were putting your language skills to good use...

Peter: It's more than that - sometimes the agency can take forever to pay and I hate doing that whole credit control thing. I do my job, I should be paid on time and in most cases, I do - but sometimes they let a job slip through the net and I have to chase for payment. That's not right, is it? There's also little career progression - there's no career ladder to climb. The hourly rate is set, I want more money I have to work more hours - it's not like I can get a pay rise. Also, it got depressing at times. You're hanging around people who are in trouble, who are miserable, in pretty desperate situations and there's a part of me that wished I could do more than just translate.

Limpeh: Can you give me an example of that please Peter?

Peter: Okay, well there was this young guy, who was picked up by the authorities for working illegally on the streets, selling contraband cigarettes. Let's call him "Smoky" for this story, okay?

Limpeh: Actually that's fairly common in Chinatown. There are these women with big handbags and they will approach me and ask, "小弟买烟 吗?" They would never approach a white person and certainly when police appear, they look like a couple of old Chinese ladies, old friends meeting up - they know exactly how to fly under the radar.

Peter: Well this kid was too aggressive. He was standing outside Leicester Square tube station, trying to sell his contraband cigarettes to anyone and everyone coming out of the station.

Limpeh: Ah. No way.

Peter: Anyway, when he was arrested, Smoky claimed he was 16 years old. He was an illegal immigrant who was smuggled here, the smugglers had taken away all his personal documents so he literally had nothing to prove his identity. No passport, no photo ID, nothing. No prove of his date of birth. It was important to establish his age as at 16, he would be treated as a minor. If he was 18, he could go to an adult prison. Minors of 16 and 17 years old would go to a Young Offenders Institute (YOI) - where it is a lot less harsh than an adult prison. It really makes a huge difference. When it comes to illegal immigrants, children and minors are treated a lot better than adults, with a lot more... mercy.

Limpeh: How did a minor like Smoky get to the UK in the first place then?

Peter: Simple. He was booked on a package tour, came on a tourist visa. Overstayed as an illegal immigrant.

Limpeh: Did he travel with his parents?

Peter: No. They're still in China. They paid a lot of money for Smoky to be smuggled to the UK, for a better future.

Limpeh: How could the authorities grant a minor a visa to come to the UK without his parents, even for a holiday?

Were the authorities wrong to grant Smoky a visa in the first place?

Peter: Simple. Smoky had a very common Chinese surname - there was an adult in the group, presumably one of the smugglers who had the same surname. When they applied for the visa, they claimed to be father and son. It seemed plausible enough - father and son, same surname, same address: nobody asked to see a birth certificate for something like a tourist visa. They probably used fake IDs to get that visa anyway, these people smugglers in China often use a lot of fake documents. When they got Smoky into the UK, he was handed over to a local gang of Chinese mafia and told to sell contraband cigarettes. The more he sold, the more money he could send back to his family in China and he got careless, he got caught. Poor kid. Don't forget, he's just a child, really.

Limpeh: Well how did the authorities ascertain Smoky's age then?

Peter: The police arranged for him to be seen by medical professionals trained to deal with this - they measured his height, looked at every physical detail down to his hands, fingernails, Adam's apple, voice pitch, teeth, eyesight, hearing, his toenails, pubic hair, chest hair, armpit hair, measured everything there was to measure to ascertain his physical development. Then there was the psychological assessment - and I was there at the interview as his interpreter: they asked him all kinds of questions. Some seemed relevant, others were bizarre - like, "tell us about your earliest memory" or "tell us about your relationship with your parents". Some questions were designed to catch him out, like they would get him to talk about something when he was 5 or 6 years old and then ask him, "so what year was that?" I was highly cynical anyway as I felt that Smoky was lying - he was telling them what they wanted to hear to convince them that he was 16 rather than being truthful. But I couldn't get involved - I don't know if the experts could detect as much as I could because of the language barrier. For example, Smoky would ramble and be incoherent, repeat himself, but I would often summarize what he say in a far more cogent manner.

There were also times that I felt sorry for him. Like when they picked up on his clothes and dress sense and concluded that he dressed like an adult rather than a child. So he was interrogated about his choice of clothes and he simply said, "I have no money, I didn't buy these clothes, these clothes were given to me by one of the smugglers who brought me over here. I am wearing his old clothes, it is not like I have money to go shopping at the mall, to buy nice new clothes to wear. I wear what I am given." He was definitely telling the truth about the clothes. Still, the psychologist used his dress sense to build a picture that Smoky could be an adult, now I felt that was somewhat unfair, really.

Limpeh: So, in your opinion, was Smoky under 18 or over 18? Child or adult? What did you think?

Peter: (Long pause) A minor, but only just. Probably around 17, or 17 and a half at the time of the interview... But that's just my opinion. It doesn't count for anything in the court of law - only the experts' opinion counts in this case.

Limpeh: Perhaps there is a Western bias here - in rich countries, we expect 16 or 17 year olds to be students, living at home with their parents, studying hard at school. But in China because of the poverty, a 16 year old could already have a job, be working hard to support his family like this kid. So, what did these "experts" conclude?

Peter: The doctors and psychologists concluded that he was between 17 and 19 years old - which didn't help the police one bit because that fell exactly between the two gaps: he was either an adult (over 18) or a child (under 18). He was sent to the lawyer's office after the examination, where we explained the report to him: whilst we translated every word of that report to him, the clerk at the officer was on the phone to the police station who claimed that they were no longer responsible for Smoky: he was to be sent to either a YOI or an adult prison to be held in remand and that the case had been passed to another department. Nobody knew what to do, nobody wanted to take responsibility for Smoky as they didn't know whether to process him as a minor or an adult.

So after the interview was concluded, the clerk called the police station again. Another person picked up the phone and said that the officer that the clerk had talked to previously had gone home and this new person had no idea what the case was about but said, "I'll look into it and get back to you. Please wait." We waited till 7 pm and the lawyer said, "we've waited hours and I have to go home, it's late, we can't wait here all night! What if they don't do anything now until tomorrow? This is ridiculous I swear. I'm so hungry, it's dinner time. Are you guys hungry? We have to eat."

The lawyer was hungry for some Chinese food.

The lawyer offered to take us both out for dinner as there was a nice Chinese restaurant around the corner from the office. When we got there and sat down, Smoky said he needed to go to the toilet. So as the lawyer and I were looking at the menu, a waitress came up to us and informed us rather awkwardly that Smoky had just climbed out of the kitchen window. The lawyer apologized and asked if he had caused any damage. "No, he was very polite. He said excuse me, sorry and then climbed onto the counter, opened the window and climbed out."

Limpeh: Please tell me you were on the ground floor.

Peter. Yes, we were. Ground floor, street level. No danger! We went into the kitchen with the waitress and there was this open window which led into a small car park, beyond that was the main road. Traffic lights.. plenty of busy traffic, no sign of Smoky. I guess he didn't want to go back to a police cell that night and then go to jail. The lawyer said, "Oh he could've at least done that after we have fed him a good meal. He's so thin."

Limpeh: Another one that fell through the net.

Peter: Yes. It happens. I know it doesn't give a good impression of the UK law enforcement agencies - but they are overworked, underpaid, overstretched... as a result, mistakes like that are made.

Limpeh: It seems you have a pretty good relationship with these lawyers you work with, they sound like good people who are willing to take on such cases rather than just work on big corporate accounts for the money. 

Peter: In most cases, yes. But there was this black lawyer who was really, really nasty to me. I asked her a question - something technical about the case and she thought I was being too inquisitive, she put me down, put me in my place, told me that I was nothing more than an interpreter and that I had no right to ask her about the case. I argued that I need to know all the technical words the case involves, so I can have a few moments to look up the dictionary in case it is a technical term I can't readily or easily translate into Mandarin. And she smirked and said, "I thought you were fluent in Mandarin. If you can't speak Mandarin fluently, then we can't use you. Why would you claim to speak Mandarin fluently and try to do this job when you need a dictionary? That's stupid." And she was just nasty. I grew up speaking Mandarin at home with my parents but take words like arbitration, affidavit or circumstantial evidence - these are concepts that are not easy to convey accurately in Mandarin and I needed my dictionary to help me with those.

Limpeh: Sounds like she took offence to you personally and was just trying her best to be difficult with you. Or perhaps she was just having a very bad day, she was angry already and was just taking it all out on you.

Peter had to deal with a very angry lawyer who hated him.

Peter: Oh that's an understatement! There were some lawyers I got along well with and they know how good I am and I know I work well with them, so they call up the agency and request for me. And then there are the cases where I walk into the room, meet this crazy bitch from hell who gives me so much attitude for asking her a simple question. I had to tell the agency that I never wanted to work with her ever again, as it was just torture working with her. She hated me for some reason and I just couldn't figure out what I had done to offend her - like was it something I said? Something I did? Was it my face? Something I was wearing? Like what? Did I have bad breath?

Limpeh: I can assure you that you don't.

Peter: Thank you! Anyway, it's thanks to her that I decided that enough is enough - this is not the career I want, I must start looking for another job, this is not what I want to do with my life. 

That's it for today's installment of Peter's stories. Look out for part 3 soon. Thanks for reading.