Dear [Journalist’s Name / Editor],

I’m a Canadian citizen from New Brunswick. I lived in Taiwan for over 15 years and ran an education business there. I’m reaching out because my case may be of public interest as a story about a Canadian abroad, due process in a foreign justice system, and the limits of Canada’s response when citizens allege rights violations overseas.

The matter began as a civil rental dispute involving safety issues (a door that did not lock, contrary to the lease). The courts found that in 2021, during that dispute, I posted online documents containing my landlord’s personal data, including our lease, and that some of the material stayed online for months; my own account is that the lease was up for about two days. That resulted in criminal charges under Taiwan’s Personal Data Protection Act. I could not read the judgments and learned their findings only in September 2026; I am not asking anyone to retry the facts.

I was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. The conviction became final on 16 October 2024. A conversion to 1,086 hours of community service was revoked on 20 March 2025 for non-performance, which means imprisonment is now the default outcome if I return to Taiwan. On legal advice I had already left the country, losing my home, business, and community.

My concern is not the verdict but the process. The five witnesses I applied to call in March 2024 were never summoned. No document in the proceedings was ever translated for me. Some hearings were held with no interpreter at all; the court’s own file records an evening hearing in February 2023 that went ahead after the judge asked me, in Chinese, whether I understood Chinese. At others the person sworn as interpreter conveyed, by my account, a fraction of what was said. Legal-aid counsel sat with me at first instance and did not interpret; I had no counsel on appeal. The Supreme Prosecutors Office did not dispute any of this when it declined an extraordinary appeal in December 2025; in September 2026 it declined again, writing that whether an interpreter was used “obviously did not affect” the outcome, because my own appeals, written without an interpreter or a lawyer, had not argued that it did. Whether that meets the fair-trial standard of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Taiwan has incorporated into domestic law, is the question I am raising.

I want to be direct about one thing, because you would find it anyway. An earlier version of this page claimed that Taiwanese authorities had acknowledged I did nothing wrong. That was inaccurate and I have withdrawn it. I had been reading Chinese-language official correspondence using AI translation, without a lawyer, and two AI systems produced opposite readings of the same letter. I acted on the favourable one. Taiwan’s Control Yuan corrected me in writing in October 2025. That episode may itself be the more interesting story.

This raises a broader question: what meaningful recourse does a Canadian citizen have when alleging treaty-level rights concerns abroad—especially when local remedies are exhausted and domestic support remains limited?

I make no allegation of corruption against any judge or prosecutor, and I am not asking anyone to say a court was wrong. I’m not asking for advocacy—only whether this warrants journalistic review. I can provide court records, a detailed timeline, and relevant official correspondence. I’m willing to speak on the record.

Published record: JURIST, 29 September 2026 — When Court Interpretation Failed in Taiwan, I Turned to a Chatbot
Media brief (PDF, v2.0): Download
One-page summary (PDF, EN + 中文, v2.0): Download
Full documentation & timeline: /blogs/scam

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Ross Cline 柯受恩
rosscline.com
New Brunswick, Canada
+1 (506) 321-8659
iLearn.tw (formerly Taichung, Taiwan)

What this is

Four scholars of law, interpreting and forensic linguistics from Canada, Australia and Korea, writing in a personal capacity, have asked Taiwan’s Judicial Yuan to take three measurable steps on court interpretation for defendants who do not understand Mandarin: publish the number of Article 99 interpreter appointments, record an interpreter’s presence in every hearing record and judgment header, and introduce a mechanism for checking interpretation quality. The letter takes no position on any individual case, including mine, and asks for nothing on behalf of any party. I convened it; I am not a signatory. The Chinese text is the operative text and was delivered first; the English follows it.

Delivery record

Three signatories have consented to be named here: Kent Roach, Professor of Law, University of Toronto; Dr Diana Eades, Adjunct Professor, University of New England, Australia; and Holly Mikkelson, Professor Emerita of Translation and Interpreting, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who added her name on 20 October 2026, after delivery (the three recipients were notified on 21 October 2026). The other two signatories, scholars of interpreting in Korea and Australia, are not named on this page; names appear only with each signatory’s consent. The three recipients received the letter with the four original names. Any reply from the Judicial Yuan will be added here.

中文（送達本文）

司法院 秘書長 鈞鑒
副本：國家人權委員會；立法院司法及法制委員會

主旨：關於不通曉國語之刑事被告之法庭通譯，建請採行三項可量測之措施

我們是口筆譯研究、法律語言學與刑事司法領域的學者。我們不對任何個案表示立場，亦不為任何當事人提出任何請求。我們來函，是因為台灣做了許多法域尚未做到的事：2009年，台灣以施行法賦予《公民與政治權利國際公約》國內法效力（包括第14條第3項第6款免費通譯協助之權利）；2020年，台灣修正刑事訴訟法第99條，明定語言不通之被告「應由通譯傳譯之」。這些承諾，許多法域做得更慢。

2026年3月31日，國家人權委員會發布報告指出，此項權利在實務上未能穩定落實，而在有通譯之情形，亦無即時或事後查核通譯品質之機制。其後，最高法院將第99條闡釋為刑事被告之「通譯依賴權」，屬已內國法化之公約第14條第3項保障之一，並謂法院遇當事人為外籍人士者，即應徵詢是否需要通譯，並告知得聲請特約通譯（114年度台上字第2354號，2025年7月9日）；另一判決則以法庭錄音作為查核傳譯正確性之依據（114年度台上字第1495號，2025年7月30日）。然此等標準是否落實，無法自法院公開之裁判書得知：司法院裁判書開放資料中四個月份（2021年7月、2023年9月、2024年7月、2025年7月）之刑事裁判共105,762件，無一在首部記載有無通譯；其中被告姓名為拉丁字母者2,264件，全文提及傳譯者僅11件。我們謹建請司法院採行三項措施。三者皆屬紀錄與查核之措施，而非結果之要求；成本皆低；合而觀之，可使台灣及關注台灣的研究者看見這項保障如何運作。

一、於司法統計年報中公布被告不通曉國語之刑事案件依第99條選任通譯之件數與比率，按年度、審級與語言分列。司法院已按國籍與判決結果公布詳細之外籍被告統計；所缺者唯此一數字，而它正是第99條落實程度得以量測之數字。

二、於每份審判筆錄之固定欄位及每份刑事判決書之首部，記載有無通譯及通譯語言，使前項數字得由紀錄彙整，而非估算。

三、依人權會之建議，建立法庭通譯品質之查核機制：至少包括於上訴期間內保存法庭錄音，以及當事人於庭期中或庭期後就傳譯正確性提出疑義之明確途徑。

以上三項皆無須修法。我們之中數人曾就相同問題與法院合作，樂於與司法院同仁分享經驗。我們對台灣已完成之立法深表肯定，並期盼台灣進一步使其成果可見。

敬此

連署人：口筆譯研究、法律語言學與刑事司法領域之學者四人（加拿大、澳洲、韓國），以個人身分連署。連署人之姓名與所屬機構已載於送達司法院、國家人權委員會及立法院司法及法制委員會之信函；本頁暫不公開，待連署人分別同意後公布。

English

To the Secretary-General
Judicial Yuan, Republic of China (Taiwan)
cc: National Human Rights Commission; Judiciary and Organic Laws Committee, Legislative Yuan

Subject: Three measurable steps on court interpretation for defendants who do not understand Mandarin

We write as scholars of interpreting, forensic linguistics and criminal justice. We take no position on any individual case and ask for nothing on behalf of any party. We write because Taiwan has done something that few jurisdictions have done. In 2009 it gave the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the Article 14(3)(f) right to the free assistance of an interpreter, the force of domestic law. In 2020 it amended Article 99 of its Code of Criminal Procedure so that a defendant who does not understand Mandarin “shall” be assisted by an interpreter. These are commitments many jurisdictions have been slower to make.

On 31 March 2026 Taiwan’s National Human Rights Commission reported that the right is not reliably delivered in practice, and that where interpretation is provided there is no real-time or post hoc mechanism to check its quality. Taiwan’s Supreme Court has since described Article 99 as the accused’s right to rely on an interpreter, one of the Covenant’s Article 14(3) guarantees with domestic force, and has said that a court before which a party is a foreign national shall ask whether an interpreter is needed and inform the party that a special-contract interpreter may be requested (114年度台上字第2354號, 9 July 2025); in another case it treated the courtroom recording as the instrument for testing an interpreter’s accuracy (114年度台上字第1495號, 30 July 2025). Whether those standards are met cannot be seen from the record the courts publish. In the 105,762 criminal judgments released in the Judicial Yuan’s open-data archive for four months (July 2021, September 2023, July 2024 and July 2025), none records in its header whether an interpreter was present, and of the 2,264 in which an accused has a Latin-script name, only eleven mention interpretation anywhere in the text. We respectfully ask the Judicial Yuan to take three steps. Each is a measure of documentation and verification rather than of outcome; each costs little; and together they would let Taiwan, and those who study it, see the guarantee working.

First, publish in the annual Judicial Statistics the number and proportion of criminal proceedings involving defendants who do not understand Mandarin in which an interpreter was appointed under Article 99, by year, court level and language. The Judicial Yuan already publishes detailed statistics on foreign defendants by nationality and outcome. This is the one figure that is missing, and it is the figure on which compliance with Article 99 can be measured.

Second, record the presence or absence of an interpreter, and the language interpreted, in a fixed field of every hearing record and in the header of every criminal judgment, so that the figure above can be compiled from the record rather than estimated.

Third, introduce a mechanism for verifying the quality of court interpretation, as the Commission recommended: at a minimum, the retention of hearing audio for the duration of any appeal, and a stated avenue by which a party may raise a concern about accuracy during or after a hearing.

None of these steps requires new legislation. Several of us have worked with courts on the same questions and would gladly share that experience with the Judicial Yuan’s staff. We write in appreciation of what Taiwan has already legislated, and in the hope that it will now make the result visible.

Respectfully,

Signed by Kent Roach, Professor of Law, University of Toronto; Dr Diana Eades, Adjunct Professor, University of New England, Australia; and two further scholars of interpreting, from Korea and Australia, whose names were given to the three recipients and are not published here. A fifth signatory, Holly Mikkelson, MA, Professor Emerita of Translation and Interpreting, Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation and Localization Management, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, added her name on 20 October 2026, after delivery; the three recipients were notified on 21 October 2026. Institutional affiliations are listed for identification only; all five signed in a personal capacity.

Convened by Ross Cline, who is not a signatory. Text as delivered on 20 October 2026.