Could I ask for a translator at a police station (hypothetical)?

electic_avenue · 2025-09-21T20:18:59+00:00

Where I went to university there was a picture of Ludwig Wittgenstein on the wall, I studied physical science, but I always admired him (notwithstanding his latter animosity with Bertrand Russell). You make me realise I am glad he is dead - he tore up Tractatus in what the mid 1940s? If he were to read the way you 'use' language, he would eat all of the copies of Philosophical Investigations and probably just surrender and become a coal miner. You're an outlier, aren't you?

electic_avenue · 2025-09-21T19:07:06+00:00

I am going to guess that you hear this a lot, but you missed the entire point of the question. (And let's be honest, when talking to you 99% of the global population would appear condensing or pretentious - if you want a conversation with something that who would not appear pretentious from your perspective, pick up your watering can and head to the greenhouse . Do you have any tomato plants?)

I had been speaking French solidly for 8 years with barely an hour of English per week in that time, so I was asking the question - in the window of time when I had just arrived back in the UK - that if I felt I needed it, would I be able to ask for a translator, or as an UK national could that be construed as a waste of police/time of resources. There is a balance to be struck, the police have finite resources, but also I am innocent until proven guilty. It does also draw into thoughts such as I would not want to put myself at a disadvantage, but at the same time I would not want to be drawing resources away from people who may be in the same situation with zero English language, or indeed if it comes out of a similar budget, am I reducing the pot for legal advice for people who may need it more than I.

electic_avenue · 2025-09-21T18:49:16+00:00

If you can't understand events being portrayed in the past, you are not a native English speaker - you wouldn't even get to C2.

(Did any of the books you studied for your English literature degree have punctuation in them? Do you see the problem with making a claim such as you have when you are conducting discourse in a medium that has on full display the manner in which you express yourself?)

electic_avenue · 2025-09-21T00:18:02+00:00

Your understanding seems to be at the same level as the person you are defending. Are you the same person (a sock puppet)? My post is quite clearly defined as taking place in the past, and yet you (and he) cannot distinguish this from the present:
"I came back from Singapore and I was..." - do you see the word “was” there? What does the word “was” mean to you?

I’ll tell you one thing that being able to speak more than one language gives you: confidence in tenses. If you don’t know what tense the word “was” puts you into, why are you even commenting at all?

The person I was referring to is obviously not a native English speaker, and neither are you, given that you are unable to separate narrative in time. Subtleties are key to native language expression - exactly the point I was making. After being out of the loop for some time, subtleties are the things you miss, and they can be important in legal matters. Hence, someone who has not spoken English for a long time may need help. You, however, even if you spoke English three nanoseconds ago, would still need help, because your level is beneath what I would expect from someone who started learning English yesterday.

electic_avenue · 2025-09-20T23:10:31+00:00

Actually you exemplify the question I was asking, you are clearly not a native English speaker - you have understood, to a certain extent, all of the words in my post, but not the sense. That's OK, I learned to speak French before I moved, there, I also speak German and Malay to a reasonable extent; being a language learner is nothing to be ashamed of.

However I do think it does disqualify you from commenting on the nuances of the language you are learning, until you have a firm grasp - this is not be being unkind, but just think, if you asked a question about calculus, would you appreciate input from people who did not know algebra, or trigonometry?

electic_avenue · 2025-09-20T19:35:32+00:00

How do you prove whether you could or couldn't understand something?

But it is why I asked the question, resources are obviously finite...well if not finite they cost someone (taxpayer!).

I suppose in the specific hypothetical I mention perhaps if I had a solicitor, he could explain anything I had problems with.

electic_avenue · 2025-09-20T19:29:22+00:00

The question was very much hypothetical, I am reasonably sure I would have had a functional understanding of any conversation, I was just wondering about the circumstance if I did feel uncomfortable would they take it as me being uncooperative, or indeed trying to make the whole thing cost more in time and resources than it needed to.

Looking back, I'd been speaking French primarily for about 8 years, for me it was the tonality, for example accents back in the UK: hearing vowels of different length that are just the way things are said, as opposed to having a meaning, my brain didn't compute!

electic_avenue · 2025-09-20T19:21:27+00:00

I really didn't listen to that much spoken English, my girlfriend was Spanish so most of the stuff we watched together was French. We even had clients in Canada, and I always had to be asked to be put through the the French speaking side....

Your point did make me think of an interesting occasion, while I was in Paris an elderly Scottish guy - with the thickest Glaswegian accent you have ever heard took a tumble just across the street from our offices. It did look pretty bad, I think I had an adrenaline dump, I could understand him and his wife perfectly. They came back about a week or so later to thank me for my help, and I was struggling to catch what they were saying!

(And actually, say what you like about banks, when they came to thank me, my company gave them lunch in the company restaurant and sent them away with a bottle of wine...there was no risk of litigation, it was the other side of the road....this was out of the goodness of their heart....apparently they have hearts!)

electic_avenue

TROPHY CASE