by Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Nov 24/97) - For translators forced to work in their second language, finding the words in the Northern court continues to be a hazardous job.

A NWT Court of Appeal decision last month to retry an Igloolik man on a charge of sexual assault is the most recent example of how controversial English-Inuktitut translating is.

The man was found not guilty of sexual assault but the Crown successfully appealed the verdict and a new trial was ordered.

The North's top Crown prosecutor, Pierre Rousseau, said last week that it's the first time he has heard of such an appeal winning.

The Crown said the judge's instructions to the jury were not clearly translated for the one juror who spoke only Inuktitut. But it's not the first time a translation has been thrown into a judicial struggle.

"I had to interpret in territorial court for a man charged with molesting his kids," translator Jennifer Tilden said. "His lawyer lost the case and tried to appeal (on the same grounds)."

Tilden said she knew the man understood her. "He told me he understood every word."

In the successful appeal, translators were brought in to translate Inuktitut versions of the trial judge's instructions back into English.

Some passages turned out unintelligible.

Tilden suggested confusion in those back-translations could be the fault of the back-translator -- not the original interpreter -- casting doubt on the Crown's contention that the original interpretation was unsatisfactory.

Translators usually translate into their first language. But when reading the Inuktitut translation in the original trial, they were effectively working in reverse.

Inuktitut-speaking MLAs in the legislative assembly, for example, often sound less articulate when their comments are translated to English, she said.

Tilden is one of only a few translators in the North who are not only non-aboriginal but also have English as a first language. She learned both English and Inuktitut while growing up in Pond Inlet.

Two other Inuktitut-English translators, though they did not want to be named, agreed with many of Tilden's comments.

It is possible the back-translations failed to make correct grammatical moves, one translator said.

Translating from English to German to Dutch is much easier because all three languages share a common Germanic ancestry. Translating from English to Inuktitut involves other barriers, he said.

"English and Inuktitut are a world apart," he said. "(And) there's no real language dictionary. You end up with a language that's trying to catch up."

Compounding the problem are professions and industries like law, medicine and insurance that have their own obscure terminology.

Another translator said the concept of "reasonable doubt" is hard enough to explain in English let alone Inuktitut.

To improve the situation, "we have to consult with each other," she said.

"There has to be an association where translators can gather to compile all types of terms," she said.

The last interpreters word conference was held in 1987, she added.