Acting Judge notches up a Chinese first for court

WERNER MENGES ONE of the latest temporary additions to the High Court bench, Acting Judge Raymond Heathcote, made legal history for Namibia within his first week in office, by handing down a judgement in not just English, but Mandarin*, too.

As far as is known, the judgement that Acting Judge Heathcote delivered in the High Court in Windhoek last Friday – a swift three days after he had heard arguments in the matter – is the first in Namibia that includes parts written in Chinese. Acting Judge Heathcote turned innovative in order to sort out a financial dispute between two Chinese nationals when their quarrel over debt landed before the High Court.Two crucial pieces of evidence in the case between Jiansheng Zhou, who approached the court in an effort to recover to money owed to him, and Shen Hong, who had borrowed the money, were two hand-written acknowledgements of debt.Both documents were written in the Chinese Mandarin language, and had supposedly been translated into English by a sworn Chinese-English translator in South Africa.Shen’s lawyer, Dirk Conradie, however objected to applications for a provisional sentence against his client that Jiansheng’s lawyers, Jesse Schickerling and Basil Bloch, took to court.Conradie argued that the court should not admit any of the documents — most of them in Chinese — that had been attached to the summonses for provisional sentences against his client.One of his objections was that, while a High Court rule states that all documents on which a claim is founded must be annexed to a summons setting the claim in motion, one of the copies of Chinese documents that was attached to the two summonses before the court was not part of a bundle of original documents that had been handed to the court.It was on that score that Acting Judge Heathcote threw some sections of Chinese into his judgement to show that, in fact, the correct documentation to support the application for a provisional sentence for the repayments of the debts was before the court.The Acting Judge included copies of both acknowledgements of debt in Mandarin in his judgement.He compared these to copies of Chinese-language documents that had also been attached to the two provisional sentence summonses that the court was dealing with.He came to the conclusion that copies of the original acknowledgements of debt were before court, and where Conradie had complained that other copies of a Chinese document that had been attached to the summonses were not part of the bundle of original documents, these were merely repeated, combined copies of the original acknowledgements of debt.For the first time, as far as could be established, a Namibian Judge had included parts written in the world’s most widely spoken language, Mandarin, in a judgement.Acting Judge Heathcote’s judgement does not only have novelty value, though.By interpreting and ruling on some technical points in High Court rules on the translation and authentication of documents, his decision should also have lasting value for other lawyers presented with the sort of situation that confronted Conradie, Schickerling, Bloch and their clients.In the end, Acting Judge Heathcote ordered Shen to pay 244 000 renminbi (the Chinese currency also known as the Chinese yuan) to Jiansheng.That is the equivalent of about N$203 000.* Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world; the approximate number of speakers is 874 000 000.Acting Judge Heathcote turned innovative in order to sort out a financial dispute between two Chinese nationals when their quarrel over debt landed before the High Court.Two crucial pieces of evidence in the case between Jiansheng Zhou, who approached the court in an effort to recover to money owed to him, and Shen Hong, who had borrowed the money, were two hand-written acknowledgements of debt.Both documents were written in the Chinese Mandarin language, and had supposedly been translated into English by a sworn Chinese-English translator in South Africa.Shen’s lawyer, Dirk Conradie, however objected to applications for a provisional sentence against his client that Jiansheng’s lawyers, Jesse Schickerling and Basil Bloch, took to court.Conradie argued that the court should not admit any of the documents — most of them in Chinese — that had been attached to the summonses for provisional sentences against his client.One of his objections was that, while a High Court rule states that all documents on which a claim is founded must be annexed to a summons setting the claim in motion, one of the copies of Chinese documents that was attached to the two summonses before the court was not part of a bundle of original documents that had been handed to the court.It was on that score that Acting Judge Heathcote threw some sections of Chinese into his judgement to show that, in fact, the correct documentation to support the application for a provisional sentence for the repayments of the debts was before the court.The Acting Judge included copies of both acknowledgements of debt in Mandarin in his judgement.He compared these to copies of Chinese-language documents that had also been attached to the two provisional sentence summonses that the court was dealing with.He came to the conclusion that copies of the original acknowledgements of debt were before court, and where Conradie had complained that other copies of a Chinese document that had been attached to the summonses were not part of the bundle of original documents, these were merely repeated, combined copies of the original acknowledgements of debt.For the first time, as far as could be established, a Namibian Judge had included parts written in the world’s most widely spoken language, Mandarin, in a judgement.Acting Judge Heathcote’s judgement does not only have novelty value, though.By interpreting and ruling on some technical points in High Court rules on the translation and authentication of documents, his decision should also have lasting value for other lawyers presented with the sort of situation that confronted Conradie, Schickerling, Bloch and their clients.In the end, Acting Judge Heathcote ordered Shen to pay 244 000 renminbi (the Chinese currency also known as the Chinese yuan) to Jiansheng.That is the equivalent of about N$203 000.* Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world; the approximate number of speakers is 874 000 000.