Published in Magdalene: "Bring Your Own Translator? What Taiwan's Law Actually Promises Indonesian Workers"

Magdalene, the Indonesian online magazine, published my op-ed on 8 October 2026. It is written for the Indonesian workers in Taiwan and the families at home who may one day get a frightened phone call from one of them, and it is the most practical piece I have written: the case is the worked example, and the rest is what to ask for, by name, when the police or a court get involved and you cannot read the paper in your hand. The editors proposed it as an English op-ed that they would translate into Indonesian for their readers; the English text is out first. It is the second outside publication in ten days, after JURIST on 29 September.

Read the op-ed at Magdalene →

“Bring Your Own Translator? What Taiwan's Law Actually Promises Indonesian Workers” — Magdalene, 8 October 2026, by Ross Cline. About 1,200 words. Illustration by Karina Tungari.

In the author's words

“There is a sentence printed on the summons that ordered me to report to prison in Taiwan. It is in Chinese, so someone had to read it to me. It says: if you do not read Chinese, please bring your own translator.”

— from the Magdalene op-ed

Why Indonesia

Indonesians are Taiwan's largest migrant community, about 329,000 people, many of them women working as caregivers in private homes. Taiwan's National Human Rights Commission reported in March 2026 that foreign defendants are not reliably given an interpreter or translated documents, that nobody checks whether the interpretation they do get is accurate, and that the people most affected are migrant workers from Southeast Asia. If the guarantee failed for a Canadian with savings, bilingual friends and fifteen years in the country, the reader can weigh what it means for a caregiver alone in a hearing room after a night in a police station. That is the whole argument of the piece, and it is made in one paragraph so that the rest can be practical.

What the piece tells a worker to ask for

Seven things, each in words a clerk will recognise, because “help” is not a request anyone can act on and Article 99 is:

• Say, and ask the court to write it down: “I do not understand Chinese. I request an interpreter under Article 99 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.” If a hearing begins without one, say it again and ask that the request be entered in the record.
• Ask for the indictment, the judgment and every paper the court gives you to be explained through the interpreter before you answer anything. Keep every paper, even the ones you cannot read; photograph them and send them to someone who can.
• Call 1955, the Ministry of Labor's 24-hour hotline for migrant workers, which answers in Indonesian.
• Call your own office: the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office in Taipei (KDEI) has a citizen-protection function.
• Ask the Legal Aid Foundation for its service for foreigners, and ask for the answer in writing.
• Ask a migrant-worker centre; the church-run centres know the courts.
• Watch the clock: a criminal judgment can be appealed only within twenty days of the day it is served on you, even if it arrives in Chinese.

The same seven lines exist as a one-page card in English and Chinese, with Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai and Tagalog to follow. It is free to reproduce; write to me for it.

The record, stated precisely

The courts found that in 2021, during a dispute with my landlord, I posted online documents that contained her personal data, including our lease, and that some of the material stayed online for months. My own account is that the lease itself was online for about two days, and that the witnesses I applied to call on that point, in March 2024, were never summoned. Taiwan enforces its Personal Data Protection Act criminally: I was sentenced to six months in prison, final at the Supreme Court on 16 October 2024. I could not read the judgments and no one ever translated them for me; I learned what they say only in September 2026. I am not asking anyone to retry the facts.

On the language: 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 other hearings a sworn interpreter was present and, by my account, conveyed a fraction of what was said. Legal-aid counsel appeared at the first-instance trial but did not interpret; I had no counsel on appeal. In December 2025 the Supreme Prosecutors Office did not dispute any of this when it declined to reopen the case; in September 2026 it declined again, writing that whether an interpreter was used had made no difference to the outcome, because my own appeals, written without one, had not argued that it did.

One correction in the open. One paragraph of the published piece carries an earlier, broader wording of mine from the first draft (“no interpreter was ever appointed for me”; the prosecutors “confirmed both facts”). I sent the editors the precise paragraph, the one above, on 20 September, and I have asked them to swap it in. The precise version is the one I stand on everywhere.

Where things stand

A Taiwanese wrongful-conviction foundation is reviewing the file, with a written result expected between November and December; this week a comparative note on how courts in England, Australia, Singapore, Nigeria and Canada have treated interpretation failures was added to that file. A second consultation with the Legal Aid Foundation is booked for 23 October. On 7 October the record was the case example at an Asia-wide roundtable of fair-trial practitioners. An open letter to Taiwan's Judicial Yuan from scholars of interpreting, forensic linguistics and criminal justice, asking for three measurable things, now has three signatories from three countries and the endorsement of a Taiwanese human-rights association; it is being convened for delivery on 20 October. Letters have gone, by fax, to two members of the Legislative Yuan. In Canada, an e-petition to the House of Commons, sponsored by my MP, has its five supporters and is with him for authorization. Two more pieces, one for a translators' journal and one for a language-industry magazine, are with their editors.

The documents

• iLearn.tw/newsbrief — the documents, with working English translations: the two prosecutors' letters, the hearing record, the summons, the judgments.
• Press page — the case in sixty seconds, every case number, and a short video.
• The JURIST commentary — the argument for lawyers, with the editors' links to the statute and the rights commission's report.

What you can do

If you know Indonesian workers in Taiwan, or a church, a shelter, a union or a Facebook group that they read, send them the Magdalene link; the Indonesian text will follow when the editors have it. If you work for a consulate, a legal-aid office or a migrant-worker centre, the card is yours to print. If you are a journalist, a podcaster or a researcher, I am reachable by video from Phnom Penh at any hour.

Two things I say everywhere: my correspondence and these posts are prepared with AI assistance from my own documents, and I check every fact personally; and in 2025 I publicly relied on a mistranslation of one official letter and corrected the record after written clarification. The Chinese originals govern; my translations are working translations.