Adrian Humphreys, a senior investigative reporter at National Post, wrote the following article. He explains why words in some languages do not necessarily have an exact translation into English and the frightening consequences this can have. Excel Translations does not endorse, recommend, or make representations with respect to the following content.
“The inability of an interpreter at a refugee hearing to precisely translate the medical term for a part of the female anatomy almost had serious repercussions for an Iranian woman claiming asylum.
Nastran Yeganeh was a licensed midwife for 25 years in Iran who said she performed “virginity restoration surgery” by stitching together a membrane that partially closes the opening of the vagina, which has traditionally been taken as a mark of virginity. After conducting the taboo surgery in 2016, her work was discovered by one patient’s family, bringing death threats from an irate brother, she said.
Allegedly facing the death penalty after the patient’s family complained to authorities, she sought refugee protection in Canada.
An adjudicator with the Immigration and Refugee Board, in an attempt to gauge her credibility, asked at her hearing what the “technical, anatomical term” for the membrane was, looking for her to identify it as the hymen.
Testifying in Farsi through an interpreter, the word “hymen” was not spoken. Instead, according to a transcript of the hearing, the interpreter used the words “virginity curtain” and “virginity tissue.”
The IRB rejected Yeganeh’s claim for refugee protection, saying her inability to name the hymen was evidence her entire story was fabricated.
Ali Ghanbarpour-Dizboni, an associate professor at the Royal Military College of Canada who specializes in Middle East politics and who is fluent in Farsi, told the National Post that “virginity curtain” is simply a literal translation of the Farsi words for the hymen.
Had the IRB’s decision stood, the claimant and her daughter would have been sent back to Iran. Her appeal to the Federal Court of Canada, however, overturned the decision and sends her back for a new refugee hearing.
What’s known as hymenoplasty in English is considered a clandestine procedure in sexually conservative Iran. Yeganeh said she only did the surgery twice. During her second operation, in 2016, her patient said she was nervous and Yeganeh, who secretly considered herself a Christian, calmed her with a parable from the Bible.
After surgery, the patient called Yeganeh, warning her that her family discovered what she had done. The brother of the patient went to her clinic and told staff he wanted to kill Yeganeh, the IRB heard. The brother then went to her home and confronted her husband.
After she left for Canada, Yeganeh said, her husband was summoned to a courthouse in Tehran where he was met by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an ideological security force, who demanded to know where his wife was. Her husband asked what she was accused of and was told she had converted to Christianity, proselytized and was facing a death penalty.
Because of the translator at the IRB hearing not naming “the relevant anatomy,” the IRB adjudicator ruled she “has never performed a hymenoplasty.”
According to the IRB member, that meant the woman didn’t use Bible passages to comfort her patient, there was no angry family member seeking retribution and, hence, she was not facing persecution, prosecution or the death penalty in Iran.
The woman appealed the decision to the Federal Court of Canada.
Justice E. Susan Elliott found the IRB member was unreasonably hung up on the word “hymen.”
The transcript of the hearing shows Yeganeh, through the translator, describing it without using the word.
“It’s like a curtain that is coming at the entrance of the vagina, under minor labia … And that virginity tissue is around the wall of the vagina, the two side… And then we use the thread for the stitches. And … and then we try to put together the tissues that’s been already damaged and fall apart,” the midwife said.
Elliott found that clear enough.
“In my view, that language is more descriptive than the technical English language term ‘hymen,’ which conveys no information as to the location of the body part in question or its function,” Elliott wrote in her decision, published this week.
“The (IRB) implicitly assumed that the word ‘hymen’ exists in Farsi and that the interpreter should have provided ‘hymen’ in the English translation of what the applicant said.
“The (IRB) should have realized that translating medical terms from Farsi to English was an imprecise exercise. Under those conditions, it was not reasonable for the (IRB) to determine that the applicant could not name the body part or describe the procedure. It appears that she was able to do both in her native language.”
Hart Kaminker, who represented Yeganeh at the hearing, said the IRB’s decision was “a cautionary tale” for a system that deals with refugee claimants from around the world.
“Words in different languages don’t necessarily have an exact translation into English,” Kaminker said in an interview. “I think what transpired here is the interpreter took the literal words and made that translation without using the anatomical term in question. There may be a way that it’s expressed in another language. The fact that the member didn’t see that was mind-boggling to me.”
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