May 24, 2011
By Andrew Seymour
Ottawa Citizen (Ontario, Canada)
If you need a fully accredited Cambodian interpreter in an Ontario courtroom, you won’t find one.
The reason is that no one has passed the province’s stringent new testing system — a testing system that a conditionally accredited Cambodian interpreter told an Ottawa court Tuesday was flawed because portions of the Cambodian language test simply didn’t make sense.
The revelations emerged during a hearing to determine whether there was an interpreter qualified to assist Ottawa man Sovann Phan during what is expected to be a weeklong trial on allegations that he sexually assaulted a severely developmentally delayed teenager at the long-term care home where he worked in June 2009.
Canada’s Constitution provides that anyone in a court has the right to an interpreter if the person does not speak the language being used. The court has a duty to make sure the interpreters provided meet accepted standards under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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