The Cross-Examination

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 13: The Cross-Examination

Henri Laporte stood. He buttoned his jacket — a single button, the left hand performing the buttoning while the right hand held a notepad, the notepad small, leather-bound, the kind of notepad that European lawyers carried, the notepad a prop as much as a tool, the carrying of the notepad signaling preparation, thoroughness, the particular readiness that cross-examination required. Laporte was small, precise, his movements economical, his face arranged in the expression of respectful concern that defense counsel adopted when addressing witnesses — the expression that said I do not doubt your suffering, I doubt specific aspects of your account, and the distinction between the suffering and the account was the distinction that the cross-examination would explore, the exploration the defense counsel's obligation, the obligation to test the prosecution's evidence, to probe its weaknesses, to ensure that the court's verdict was based on evidence that had been challenged and that had survived the challenge.

Amara watched through the glass. She watched Laporte button his jacket and hold his notepad and turn to face the witness. She watched the geometry of the courtroom shift — during the prosecution's examination, the geometry had been simple, a straight line between the prosecution table and the witness box, the questions traveling in one direction, the answers traveling in the other, the exchange a conversation, almost, the prosecution and the witness allied in the project of telling the story. The cross-examination changed the geometry. The defense table was on the opposite side of the courtroom from the prosecution table, and the witness box was between them, and the new geometry was triangular — the defense on one side, the witness on another, the judges at the apex, the triangle the shape of contestation, of challenge, the witness no longer telling a story but defending a story, the story under examination.

Laporte spoke French. His French was the French of the Parisian bar — precise, formal, the syntax controlled, the vocabulary specific, every word chosen with the care of a lawyer who understood that words were his tools and that the tools must be calibrated for the task. His questions would be in French, translated into Lingala for the witness by the French booth's Lingala interpreter, and the witness's answers would be in Lingala, translated into English by Amara. The relay was different from the prosecution's examination — during the prosecution's examination, Devaux had also spoken French, but the questions had been collaborative, designed to help the witness tell her story, and the translation of collaborative questions was straightforward, the questions' purpose clear, the purpose to elicit testimony. The defense's questions had a different purpose. The purpose was to challenge, to question, to probe, and the translation of challenging questions required a different skill — the skill of carrying the challenge without amplifying it.

This was the particular difficulty of translating cross-examination. The defense counsel's questions were designed to create doubt. The questions were crafted — the word choice, the phrasing, the emphasis, the rhythm — to introduce uncertainty into the witness's account, to highlight inconsistencies, to suggest alternative explanations, to perform the adversarial function that the law required, the adversarial function the mechanism through which the truth was tested, the testing not hostile but rigorous, the rigor the court's standard, the standard applied equally to prosecution and defense.

Amara's obligation was to translate the questions faithfully. Faithfully meant without amplification — without making the questions more aggressive than they were, without adding emphasis that the questioner did not add, without sharpening the challenge beyond the sharpness the questioner intended. Faithfully also meant without softening — without reducing the challenge, without smoothing the edges, without protecting the witness from the cross-examination's rigor by moderating the language in translation. The interpreter was the window. The interpreter was the conduit. The interpreter transmitted the challenge exactly as the challenger delivered it, and the exactly was the professional standard, and the professional standard was the ethical standard, and the ethical standard was the court's requirement.

But the exactly was complicated by the languages. French and Lingala were different architectures. A question that was sharp in French might be sharper or softer in Lingala, depending on the translation, depending on the specific words chosen, depending on the register, depending on the interpreter's judgment about equivalence. The judgment was the interpreter's — the interpreter decided which Lingala word best corresponded to the French word, which Lingala syntax best preserved the French syntax's sharpness, which Lingala register best matched the French register. The decisions were made in fractions of seconds, the decisions invisible, the decisions constituting the translation, the translation the product of hundreds of micro-decisions accumulated over the duration of the question.

Amara was not translating Laporte's French into Lingala — that was the French booth's Lingala interpreter's work. Amara was translating the witness's Lingala answers into English. But the witness's answers were responses to Laporte's questions, and the answers were shaped by the questions, and the shape of the answers carried the shape of the questions inside them, and Amara, translating the answers, was also carrying the questions, the questions present in the answers the way a mold was present in the object it shaped.

Laporte began. He began, as cross-examining lawyers often began, with neutral questions — questions about background, about the witness's daily life before the attack, questions designed to establish rapport or at least to establish the rhythm of question and answer before the questions became more pointed. The neutral questions were easy to translate — straightforward, factual, the answers short, the translation mechanical.

Then Laporte asked about the morning of the attack. He asked the witness to describe, again, the sequence of events. The asking-again was a cross-examination technique — the witness had already described the sequence during the prosecution's examination, and the asking-again was designed to test the consistency of the account, to see whether the witness described the events in the same way a second time or whether the description changed, the changes potential evidence of unreliability, of confusion, of the particular imprecision that traumatic memory introduced into narrative.

The witness described the sequence again. She described the washing, the gunshots, the running, the ditch, the hiding, the prayer. The description was consistent with her earlier testimony — the same events in the same order, the same details, the same pauses. The consistency was not surprising — the witness had told this story many times, to ICC investigators, to the victims' legal representative, to the prosecution during preparation, the repetition having fixed the narrative in her memory, the narrative a structure built through retelling, each retelling reinforcing the structure, the way each coat of paint reinforced a surface.

Laporte listened. He listened and he wrote in his notepad. Then he asked the first pointed question.

He asked about the number of soldiers. The witness had testified that she saw soldiers entering the village. Laporte asked: how many soldiers did she see. The question was specific — not how many soldiers were there, which was a question about the total number, but how many did she see, which was a question about the witness's visual field, about what was visible from the drainage ditch behind the church, about the limit of the witness's perception.

The witness answered. She said she saw many soldiers. She said she could not count them. She said the smoke and the distance and the fear made counting impossible.

Laporte asked: could she estimate. The witness said she could not. Laporte asked: was it more than ten. The witness said yes. Laporte asked: was it more than fifty. The witness paused. The pause was three seconds. She said she did not know. Laporte asked: was it more than a hundred. The witness said she did not know.

Amara translated each question and each answer. She translated the progression — from "how many" to "more than ten" to "more than fifty" to "more than a hundred" — the progression a narrowing, a funneling, the defense counsel attempting to establish the limits of the witness's knowledge, the limits relevant because the prosecution had alleged that approximately one hundred and twenty fighters participated in the attack, and if the witness could not confirm the number, the inability was a fact the defense could use, a fact that introduced uncertainty into the prosecution's narrative.

The translation of the progression required care. Laporte's questions escalated in specificity, and the escalation was a rhetorical strategy, and the strategy had a rhythm, and the rhythm was part of the strategy's effectiveness, and the translation had to preserve the rhythm without amplifying it. Amara translated the numbers — ten, fifty, a hundred — and the numbers were the same in every language, the numbers the fixed points, the anchors, and the numbers carried the escalation without Amara needing to add emphasis, the numbers doing the work of the cross-examination by their progression, the progression speaking for itself.

Laporte moved to the timeline. He asked the witness about the duration of the hiding. The witness had testified that she hid for approximately forty minutes, measured by two recitations of a prayer. Laporte asked about the prayer. He asked how long the prayer took. The witness said approximately twenty minutes per recitation. Laporte asked how she knew the prayer took twenty minutes. The witness said she did not know exactly — she estimated, based on having recited the prayer many times in her life, the estimation a subjective judgment, the judgment not based on a clock or a watch but on the body's sense of time.

Laporte asked: was it possible that the prayer took fifteen minutes rather than twenty. The witness said it was possible. Laporte asked: was it possible that the prayer took ten minutes. The witness said she did not think so, but she could not be certain. Laporte asked: so the duration of the hiding could have been as short as twenty minutes rather than forty. The witness said she did not believe it was twenty minutes. Laporte said: but you cannot be certain. The witness said: I cannot be certain of the minutes. I am certain of the prayer.

Amara translated this exchange. She translated it with the precision the exchange required — the precision of Laporte's questions, which were designed to introduce numerical uncertainty, and the precision of the witness's answers, which acknowledged the numerical uncertainty while insisting on the experiential certainty, the certainty of the prayer, the prayer the witness's clock, the prayer the measure of time that the witness trusted, the trust not in minutes but in the body's knowledge of its own rhythms.

The translation of "I am certain of the prayer" was, Amara thought, one of the most important translations she had made during the trial. The sentence was simple in Lingala — a short declarative, subject-verb-object, the syntax basic, the vocabulary common. The sentence was simple in English — "I am certain of the prayer" — the translation direct, one-to-one, the correspondence exact. But the sentence carried something that the simplicity belied — the sentence carried the witness's entire system of knowing, the system in which time was measured not by clocks but by prayers, not by numbers but by rituals, the system that the cross-examination was challenging by introducing the numerical framework, the framework of minutes and uncertainty.

Amara translated the sentence. She translated it faithfully, without emphasis, without editorializing, the sentence arriving in the English channel with the same weight it had in the Lingala, the weight the witness's weight, the weight not added by the interpreter. The sentence arrived and the judges heard it and the judges received it and the sentence became part of the record, part of the evidence, part of the accumulation of language upon which the verdict would be built.

Laporte moved to identification. He asked the witness whether she could identify the accused. He asked whether she had seen the accused in the village on the morning of the attack. The witness said she had not seen the accused. She had not seen any specific individual she could identify as the commander. She had seen soldiers. She had seen uniforms. She had seen weapons. She had not seen faces — the faces obscured by the distance, the smoke, the chaos, the particular conditions of an attack that produced confusion rather than clarity, the confusion the environment in which the witness had experienced the events and the clarity the environment in which the court required her to describe them.

Laporte noted this for the record. The witness could not identify the accused. The inability was significant — the prosecution's case rested not on the witness's identification of Mukiza but on the chain of command, on the intercepted communications, on the evidence that Mukiza had ordered the attacks, the ordering the crime, the crime not requiring the accused's physical presence at the scene. But the inability to identify was nonetheless a fact that the defense would use, a fact that the cross-examination had established, a fact that the translation had carried.

The cross-examination continued. Laporte asked about the church. He asked about what the witness had seen inside the church. He asked the question carefully — the question not designed to force the witness to repeat the three sentences from the earlier testimony but designed to test the specificity of the earlier testimony, to probe the details, to determine whether the witness's account of what she saw inside the church was consistent and specific enough to support the prosecution's charges.

The witness answered. She answered in short sentences, the sentences the same short sentences she had used when she first described the church, the syntax reduced, the language stripped, the economy of language the testimony's register for this particular subject, the register maintained across both the prosecution's examination and the defense's cross-examination, the register not changing because the subject did not change, the subject the thing inside the church, the thing that produced the five-minute pause, the thing that compressed the witness's language to its minimum.

Amara translated the short sentences. She translated them with the same fidelity she had translated them the first time — the same English words, the same English syntax, the consistency of the translation reflecting the consistency of the testimony, the consistency itself evidence, the consistency telling the court that the witness's account was stable, was not changing under cross-examination, was surviving the defense's challenge.

Laporte finished. He sat down. He had conducted the cross-examination for two hours. The cross-examination had established certain facts — the witness could not count the soldiers, could not specify the exact duration of the hiding, could not identify the accused. These facts were relevant. These facts would be used by the defense in its closing argument. These facts were part of the record.

But the cross-examination had also established other facts — the witness's consistency, the witness's certainty about the prayer, the witness's detailed and specific account of events that survived the defense's challenge. These facts were also relevant. These facts would be used by the prosecution. These facts were also part of the record.

The record was the translation's product. The record was Amara's product — the English rendering of the Lingala testimony, the English rendering of the French questions, the English the language in which the record existed for the English-speaking world, the English the bridge's output, the output that the court would use, would weigh, would base its verdict upon.

Judge Okonjo asked the witness whether she wished to add anything. The witness said no. The judge thanked her. He said the court appreciated her courage, her willingness to testify, her contribution to the proceedings. The thanks were formal, ritualistic, the judge's thanks delivered to every witness at the conclusion of their testimony, the ritual the court's acknowledgment that the testifying was difficult and that the difficulty was recognized and that the recognition was part of the court's humanity, the humanity that coexisted with the court's procedure, the two — humanity and procedure — not in conflict but in partnership, the partnership the court's particular achievement.

Amara translated the thanks. She translated "courage" — the English word, the same word in the judge's English and in the translation's English, the word not needing translation because the judge had spoken in English. She sat with the word. Courage. The word described the witness's act — the act of traveling from the DRC to The Hague, the act of sitting in the witness box, the act of speaking into the microphone, the act of describing what had happened in the village and in the church, the act of enduring the cross-examination, the act of answering questions designed to challenge her account.

Courage described the witness. Did courage describe the interpreter? Amara did not know. The interpreter's work was not courageous in the way the witness's work was courageous — the interpreter did not face the accused, did not sit exposed in the witness box, did not submit to cross-examination, did not risk retaliation, did not travel from a war zone to a courtroom. The interpreter sat behind glass. The interpreter was invisible. The interpreter's risk was not physical but psychological, not external but internal, not the risk of harm but the risk of absorption, the risk of the sponge.

Was absorption a form of courage? Or was it a form of exposure? Or was it simply a form of work — the work's consequence, the work's cost, the cost not chosen but incurred, the incurring automatic, the automation the mechanism, the mechanism the booth?

The witness stood. She left the courtroom. She walked past the booth one last time. Amara watched her walk — the small body, the blue head wrap, the hands at the sides, the walk slow, the walk the walk of a person who had finished something enormous and who did not yet know what the finishing meant, because the finishing of the testimony was not the finishing of the experience, the testimony the telling and the experience the living, and the telling could be finished but the living continued.

The witness walked past the glass. She did not look up. She disappeared through the door.

Amara sat in the booth. The cross-examination was over. The testimony was over. The witness was gone.

The translation remained. The words remained. The record remained. The three sentences remained. The pause remained. The certainty of the prayer remained. Everything remained, in the record and in the sponge, in the court's files and in the interpreter's body, the two repositories holding the same material in different forms, the record holding the words and the sponge holding the weight, the words and the weight inseparable in the testimony and separated in the aftermath, the separation the translator's work, the work of carrying the weight so that the court could receive the words.

She removed her headphones. She stood. She left. The door clicked. The corridor. The lobby. The exit. The air.

The cross-examination was over. The translation was over. The carrying continued.