A judge in the high-profile anti-doping case involving Chinese Olympic swimmer Sun Yang has apologized for the translation services that rendered much of Sun's opening testimony unintelligible.
The case involving Sun Yang and the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, opened at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, or CAS, in Montreux, Switzerland, on Friday morning, and was immediately thrown in to disarray due to the inept translation service on hand.
The court — which is often referred to as the Supreme Court for sports — is overseeing the case following an appeal from WADA regarding a drug test carried out on Sept 4, 2018.
Olympic gold medallist Sun could face a lifetime ban if the court rules in WADA's favor. The stakes are also high for anti-doping authorities and the wider sporting community, as the outcome of the case may influence future regulations regarding liability rules and the rights of athletes.
The hearing opened with testimony from Sun, who fielded questions from the three judges arbitrating the case, as well as from his own counsel and that of WADA. Sun spoke in Chinese, which was then translated into English by a simultaneous translator. Questions were delivered in English, and translated into Chinese for Sun.
Sun's counsel Ian Meakin was the first to make reference to the poor translation, apologizing to the judges for repeatedly reframing the same question.
'I'm sorry for leading but the translation is so bad,' said Meakin.
Later in the testimony, WADA's counsel asked Sun the question: 'You have given approximately 200 samples, are you saying today that after all the times that you have been tested, that you are not aware of the legal consequences for refusing to provide a sample?'
During Sun's response, Meakin interrupted after being told by a colleague — a lawyer from Beijing Lanpeng Law Firm — that the question was not translated properly.
'Sorry, for the record, there is a problem with the translation, you asked that he's been tested 200 times, and that was translated into Chinese as 200 millilitres of blood,' said Meakin. 'If you want him to answer your question, the translation must be correct.'
Frequently, the translation was so fragmented it became nonsensical. On a few occasions when Sun was asked a question, his answers made no direct reference to the point at hand. It was unclear if Sun was being evasive, or if he simply had not received the original question.
Following Sun's testimony, Judge Franco Frattini issued an apology.
'We have to apologize for the quality of the interpretation,' said Frattini.
'We have had a number of problems with the interpretation. It was a technical problem of preparing and arranging the Chinese-English interpretation, and maybe we will try to do some technical arrangement to do better.'
It is understood that Sun Yang's team provided the translators, which were also agreed to by WADA. It seems neither WADA nor the CAS arranged their own international-standard translation services.
Following a lunch break, the hearing resumed, and the translation service was replaced with an individual agreed upon by both sides.
The hearing was concluded in Montreux at 8:30 pm local time on Friday, and CAS will deliver its decision at a later date.
记者：Angus McNeice
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