A Murder Conviction Overturned Because the Interpreter Spoke the Wrong Chinese

In March 2025, the Ontario Court of Appeal set aside a second-degree murder conviction and ordered a new trial in R. v. Chen, 2025 ONCA 168. The court found that the defendant’s constitutional right to an interpreter, the right to the same opportunity to understand and be understood as a fluent speaker, had been breached. The reason: the interpreter provided for the first half of his trial spoke Cantonese, and the defendant spoke Taishanese. For a monolingual speaker of one, the other is not intelligible.

What Happened

Chen had immigrated to Canada from a rural village in Guangdong province in 2000. He spoke Taishanese and nothing else: no English, no Cantonese beyond the most basic phrases, and he was functionally illiterate in any language. In 2014, he stabbed a 63-year-old woman he knew and she died. He had no history of violence and claimed that ghosts had directed him. He was charged with second-degree murder.

A Taishanese interpreter was specifically requested for his trial. The court provided one: Ms. Auyang, who held conditional accreditation as a Taishanese interpreter. The problem was that her accreditation had been issued based on a test of her English proficiency, not her Taishanese ability. She had never been assessed in Taishanese. She had actually failed the Cantonese accreditation exam but held Cantonese accreditation through the Immigration and Refugee Board. Cantonese was her first language, the language of her Hong Kong upbringing. She believed, genuinely, that Taishanese was a dialect of Cantonese and that speakers of one could follow the other.

She was wrong. Across eight days of trial, Chen sat in a courtroom listening to the Crown’s opening statement and the testimony of twelve witnesses against him, interpreted in a language he could not follow. At one point during the proceedings he told Ms. Auyang he could not hear what was happening. She mistranslated his complaint as confirmation that everything was fine. The trial continued.

The warning had been visible earlier. At the police station after his arrest, when the first Taishanese-speaking interpreter finally met him, Chen told her he was very happy to see someone who could speak his dialect. He said he did not know what had been happening because the officer speaking to him spoke Cantonese, and he did not understand Cantonese. The detective later acknowledged that Chen had likely not understood the questions being put to him during the police interview. The system missed the signal at every stage.

In April 2019, the jury convicted him. He went to prison.

How It Came to Light

On appeal, the Crown’s own Ministry of the Attorney General commissioned two independent auditors from its Court Interpretation Unit to review audio recordings of the trial. Both found that Ms. Auyang’s interpretation was 100 percent Cantonese. Ms. Chong, the Taishanese interpreter who had worked the second half of the trial without incident, reviewed the same recordings and confirmed that Ms. Auyang had interpreted in standard Cantonese throughout, and that Chen spoke a regionally distinct form of Taishanese very different from what Ms. Auyang had been speaking.

The conclusion was unambiguous: a man who could not understand Cantonese had sat through eight days of trial in Cantonese, unable to follow the case being made against him.

Why This Matters in U.S. Courts

The Canadian Charter right at issue has a direct counterpart in U.S. law. The Federal Court Interpreters Act requires certified or qualified interpreters for defendants who speak primarily a language other than English. The Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses and the due process right to be present at trial both require that a defendant actually understand what is happening in their own proceeding. A defendant interpreted in the wrong language cannot advise their attorney on cross-examination, cannot catch a factual error in testimony, and cannot participate in their own defense. They are physically present and functionally absent, and that problem may not surface until the appeal, long after the conviction is on record.

Nobody in this case acted in bad faith. Ms. Auyang believed she could interpret Taishanese. The court believed she could. The accreditation system issued the credential without ever testing that claim. But good faith is not the same as due diligence, and the negligence here was correctable at every stage if someone had asked the right questions.

What to Ask Before Booking

What language do they speak at home?

What language are they most comfortable using to discuss something complicated?

What region are they from specifically, and what variety of that language do they speak?

Once the interpreter arrives, have them speak directly with the client before the proceeding begins and confirm on the record that they understand each other.

Making sure the interpreter’s accreditation actually covers the right dialect, and not just their English proficiency, is important but not something most attorneys have the time or tools to sort out in private practice. That is what a professional interpretation agency is for. Working with the right agency means the dialect is confirmed, the accreditation is verified, and the interpreter who shows up is the right one for the room.

Kaplan Interpreting Services sources court-certified and professionally qualified interpreters by language and variety, including Taishanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Hokkien, for depositions, hearings, and in-person legal proceedings nationwide. Contact us with the client’s region of origin, the language and variety you believe is needed, the proceeding type, and the date, and we will confirm coverage before it becomes a scheduling problem.

Not legal advice. R. v. Chen is a Canadian decision and is not binding in United States courts. Standards vary by jurisdiction.