On the language rights issue, she is a person who was educated in French in her country of origin. She speaks a couple of African languages as well, but French was her functional language. When she approached the system here, she was presented with an English-speaking lawyer. To be accommodating--because you're asking for help, and this is a lawyer provided by legal aid--you don't question. You try to be accommodating, but being accommodating sometimes is to your own detriment.
Her ability to understand the questions and to respond through an interpreter was.... It's fudgy. I was brought up in French and English, but not all of us have that benefit. It led to misunderstandings, led to errors in translation, which we were able to verify, because we looked at the transcripts. That kind of process jeopardizes people's ability to receive justice.
I'm not concerned only about the French and English. I look at some of the languages that are particular to very specific regions, and that's all some of these people can speak. Where do we get the translators?
Some of them are picked up, former immigrants who have very little training in translating and probably don't have the command of the English language that they need to understand our own societal systems, and they make mistakes, so whenever you're dealing with translations, you need to have a very broad perspective and go beyond the meaning of just one word when you're assessing a situation.