Google translate used by court to explain to defendant what's happening
A court has used Google Translate to tell a defendant convicted of three charges of sexual assault that his case had been adjourned.
Qais Al-Aswad, 26, appeared at Guildford Magistrates’ Court where he was set to be sentenced for the charges against three women.
After District Judge Julie Cooper, who was attending the hearing by videolink, was told by a probation officer, who also appeared by video, that a colleague had been unable to interview the defendant in prison for a pre-sentence report, the judge decided to adjourn the case.
But as the defendant was being brought up from the cells, the court was told that there was no Arabic interpreter available for the defendant.
Instructing the court clerk to use Google Translate, the judge said: “Can you type in ‘probation need extra time to prepare your report, your case is being adjourned to October 22 when you will be produced at court and an interpreter will be present’?”
The defendant, wearing a grey sweatshirt as he was flanked by a prison officer in the dock, was asked for his name, which he replied to. But when he was asked for his date of birth, he repeated his name.
The clerk then played the Google Translate text to the defendant before asking the prison officer to inform the prison holding Al-Aswad of the change in circumstances and to repeat the information again using Google Translate.
The court heard that the case would next be heard at Staines Magistrates’ Court on October 22. Al-Aswad previously lived at a hotel in Horley, Surrey, which has seen protests about asylum-seekers being housed there.
It comes after a man was arrested on suspicion of killing his wife who disappeared eight years ago after he made a mistake when allegedly sending a text from the missing woman's phone using Google Translate.
60-year-old Allen Gould has been arrested for allegedly murdering his wife, Anna Maciejewska, a Polish native, after she disappeared in 2017. Gould, from Pennsylvania, was charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and other charges. Anna moved to the US from Poland in 1997, and married Gould in 2006. The 43-year-old mother of a son who was just four-years-old at the time of her disappearance, was reported missing on April 11, 2017 by a co-worker and friend.
The next day, Gould also reported her missing, according to the Chester County District Attorney's Office. However, evidence including phone records, financial records and witness accounts indicate that Anna's usual routine stopped on March 29, with prosecutors saying the last time she was seen or heard from was March 28 - two weeks before Gould reported her missing.
