[livius]

Interestingly, one terrorism trial judge (in the Kenya bombing trial) insisted on having the Alfonso X "3 translators" system. Furthermore, the judge insisted on literal translations.

The judge in the WTC trial (Leonard Sands, I believe) did not, and let this one Egyptian translator do it all, unsupervised.

There can be gross mistranslations, and there can be very subtle ones. The sheik was apparently in the habit of answering his phone with the phrase "Victory to the armies of Allah." The translator translated this as "Good morning," because according to him, it was just a greeting.

However, in reality, it would be the difference between an Austrian saying "Grüss Gott," and an Austrian saying "Heil Hitler."

Personally, I think we should recruit Israeli translators. Would we we have to watch for biased mistranslations? Of course.

Do we have to do so now? Of course. But we aren't.